Ernesto Read online

  While somewhat worse for the wear, Ernest reconstructed his past from the Paris notebooks meticulously arranged across his Finca’s floor, straining to assign order to the details of a world where reality and fiction collided. Outside of his gates, Cuba was at full-scale war again, stubbornly and foolishly flirting with hope, its people killing one another on the brink of change.

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  Following Fidel’s orders, Frank País and Faustino Pérez travelled with fake identification papers to Havana to establish alliances with other factions that could advance the movement’s objectives in the capital. Coming out of the tree line at the mouth of the Plata River on January 15, Castro’s band of twenty-one guerrillas with twenty-three weapons approached a small army garrison, and after observing its fifteen men from a distance for a day, ambushed them, killing two soldiers and wounding five fatally. Taking three prisoners, they took control of the garrison.31 It was their first victory, but the rebels were also aware that they had just thrown a pebble at Goliath. Indeed, twenty-one guerrillas had just picked a fight with thirty to fifty thousand army regulars (ejército permanente), the navy, and the air force—which benefited from aircraft, armored tanks, artillery, and heavy weaponry—seven thousand police, and the national guard (Guardia Rural).32

  In response to the attack, General Batista’s army ordered two of its best officers to hunt the rebels down and knock them from their mountain perch: Lieutenant Ángel Sánchez Mosquera, leading a crack platoon, and Major Joaquín Casillas, at the head of a column. Understanding that their attack on the garrison would draw Batista’s army in large numbers, Fidel’s insurgents looked around them at the dark forests and narrow clearings that were the natural ways of approach and decided to prepare an ambush. Having studied guerrilla tactics in Mexico, they applied their training, setting up positions around a natural clearing at Arroyo del Infierno to surprise the enemy. From miles away, the rebels could hear Lieutenant Sánchez Mosquera’s frontline platoon arriving and skittishly shooting at rustling in the trees. Waiting patiently for them to come, the rebels at last opened fire—killing five and causing the rest to take flight.33

  Applying General Boyo’s teachings, Fidel’s men did not pursue the attack, but pulled back into the mountains. Shooting his first enemy soldier with a single bullet through the heart, Che’s gun whetted his appetite for blood; while adrenaline was still coursing through his veins, he wrote his wife, Hilda Gadea, a letter: “From the woods of Cuba, alive and thirsting for blood, I write these fiery lines in the spirit of Martí. Just when they think we’re in their grasp, they see us disappear like soap through their fingers. Naturally, the fight is not completely won and many battles lie ahead, but things now lean in our favor, as they will increasingly.”34 The rebels had not only something to fight for but also effective tactics in their favor. “Guerrilla warfare resembles a boxing match in which there is no Knockout for round after round, but one of the fighters is winning on points and a time comes when the K.O. can be delivered,” Herbert Matthews later wrote.35

  After two armed clashes, it was no longer possible to deny the rebels’ existence in the Sierra Maestra. General Batista deployed fourteen hundred troops to the region under the command of Colonel Pedro Barrera Pérez. Surrounding the insurgents to cut off their supply lines and prevent additional members from joining their ranks, the colonel rattled their bones with airstrikes on their positions at Caracas Peak with five of the American planes acquired from World War II: B-26 Invaders and P-47 Thunderbolts.36 Under cover and on the move, the rebels avoided three bombardments largely through a streak of luck, missing a direct hit by two hundred yards. If the airpower had been better coordinated, the revolution might have ended by February 8.

  On the morning of the ninth, forward scouts informed Fidel that 140 men to their north, from Major Casillas’s column, were advancing into attack position. Before they struck them at Altos de Espinosa, Fidel dispersed his men into three units and ordered them to fall back and reassemble three days later at a predetermined position. Leading one unit, Fidel gave the other two to Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. Their guerrilla tactics were working against an enemy that appeared poorly trained in counterinsurgency techniques. As Che predicted, they were slipping like “soapy water” through the fingers of Batista’s commanders just when they thought they had them in their grasp. When it was discovered that a peasant, Eutímio Guerra, had betrayed them by informing the enemy of their position and had plotted to assassinate Fidel (in exchange for ten thousand dollars and a farm promised by Batista), “El Che” stepped forward to execute him when the others avoided the unpleasant task. Establishing a reputation as a man willing to take life or give his own for the cause, he would later be feared for this ruthlessness. If both men were able soldiers, clever, and articulate, followers gravitated to Fidel as a more level-headed, judicious, and political leader.

  An essential element of the movement’s noncombatant strategy was to win the favor of the foreign press, particularly that of North America.37 To assure his mission’s success, Fidel sent two of “the Twelve” Granma survivors, Faustino Pérez and René Rodríguez, to establish contact with Felipe Pazos, former president of the Cuban National Bank, and his son Javier, a student activist at the University of Havana. Felipe knew Ruby Hart Philips, the New York Times’ resident correspondent personally. When Felipe walked into her office that morning to whisper in her ear that Fidel was alive, Ruby nearly dribbled her morning coffee down her chin.38 As the island’s most visible American journalist, she had to rule herself out from making direct contact with Fidel.39 After she racked the brains of her officemate Ted Scott, he said, “Ding dong. Got a letter yesterday from a guy who’d be perfect for it.”

  Having reported for the New York Times since the Spanish Civil War, Herbert Matthews had been as inspired with the Loyalist cause and the International Brigades as Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, and as heartbroken when they had been crushed by Franco’s fascist army. Ernest called him “as brave as a badger,” and Martha said he had most likely been Ernest’s model for Robert Jordan, the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  Slipping past enemy positions, the rebels brought Matthews undetected to Fidel’s hideout.40 At dawn, the master of ceremonies appeared like a black-bearded wizard on the scene. The other barbudos, as they were called because of their beards, had laid out a blankie for them and served tomato juice, and ham-cracker sandwiches, and hot coffee in tins. Ever observant, Fidel noticed Matthews checking out his sniper scope, so he informed the journalist that his men had more than fifty of the sort, infinitely useful for killing Batista’s soldiers from a thousand meters away: “They never know where we are, but we already know where they are.” Like a gracious host at the end of a business luncheon, the guerrilla broke open a box of good cigars, which he had commandeered for this special occasion, and during a three-hour interview, the two men smoked and whispered in Spanish and English. Throughout their talk, soldiers ran here and there, taking orders from Fidel and bringing the report from the “second column,” which did not exist, as they wanted Matthews to believe they were more numerous and better organized than they might have been.41 As the interview was ending, Fidel called one of his men over to show him “the cash” used to pay the guajiros (peasants). Unwrapping a stack of pesos one foot high (the equivalent of four thousand dollars), Fidel assured the reporter of his financing that would assure his victory: “He had all the money he needed and could get more.” The coinage he had obtained from displaced previous governors who had raided the coffers was a powerful weapon against poorly paid and resentful troops. The morale of Batista’s soldiers was too low, and they would not fight: “Why should soldiers die for Batista for $72 per month? When we win, we will pay them $100, and they will serve a free and democratic Cuba.”42

  “You have taken quite a risk in coming here, but…we will get you out safely,” promised the rebel leader as Matthews left; in truth, both men had taken a risk, well worth it in
the end. Having attended to the gringo del periódico, Fidel, the “great talker” whose personality, said Matthews, was “overwhelming,” turned to the deadly business of revolt during the first National Directorate of M-26-7, meeting with Frank País, Raúl Castro, Armando Hart, Haydée Santamaría, Celia Sánchez, Faustino Pérez, and Wilma Espín in the mountains. When a guard stopped Herbert Matthews and his wife on their way back into Havana, then let them go, Mrs. Matthews, exhaling in relief, appreciated that the private could have been promoted to general if he had only searched them and found the notes containing Fidel’s signature.

  Even though the rebels remained alive in the sierra, a thorn in Batista’s side, they were not likely to succeed without recruiting more soldiers. Many new recruits had been urban rebels who became suspects due to their subversive activities, and, hunted by homicidal police, fled town to the relative safety of the mountains. During the first meeting, the National Directorate worked out a system for recruiting new guerrillas, equipping and resupplying themselves, and communicating with each other. A month after the meeting, the police arrested and jailed M-26-7 leaders Frank País, Armando Hart, Carlos Franqui, and Faustino Pérez for their subversive activities.

  On February 24, the New York Times reported, “Cuban Rebel is Visited in Hideout: Castro [Leader of Revolt] Is Alive and Still Fighting in the Mountains. First Reporter to Talk with Fidel Castro Is Informed that the Movement Is Gaining,” and published an interview that won Fidel’s rebels much support in America and around the world.43 The article exposed the lies concealed by the Cuban dictatorship and Batista’s army, and made a laughing stock of Herbert Matthews’s rivals at his own paper, who had previously declared Fidel dead. Apparently enthralled with Fidel’s “overpowering personality,” wild beard, and glowing cigar, Matthews confirmed that Fidel was indeed full of life and described him in the most glowing terms—idealizing the revolutionary and solidifying his position as the leader of the movement: “This was quite a man—a powerful six-footer, olive-skinned, full-faced, with a straggly beard…educated, dedicated, fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage, and of remarkable qualities of leadership. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island.” By Fidel’s own profession, he was committed to “democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution.”44

  Possibly equating Castro with the International Brigades that he still adored and could not let go, Matthews had written from the heart, and his article had transformed Fidel Castro from “hot-headed communist to youthful face of the future.”45

  Batista’s administration initially censored the New York Times interviews and reports about Fidel Castro from the island’s news, so Matthews and Ruby Hart Phillips ran articles about its censorship, causing his administration to look worse, forcing him to shift gears, and to respond. His defense minister, Santiago Verdeja, said the story was a “chapter in a fantastic novel.”46 His military chief in the eastern provinces, General Martín Díaz Tamayo, said that the “imaginary interview” could not have taken place, for it would be “impossible for anyone to get through the lines of troops surrounding the section in which Señor Castro is operating without being stopped by Government patrols.” When the New York Times answered these pronouncements with a photograph of Fidel Castro and Herbert Matthews smoking cigars during their interview in the sierra, they caused further embarrassment and hilarity to ensue.47

  Batista’s administration was not the only one caught with its pants down, for the American embassy, headed by Arthur Gardner, had been closely allied with the Cuban dictator, regardless of his violence, suppression, and corruption, because he supported the BRAC and the CIA’s war on Communism. Regretting Matthews’s “unbalanced” and “overzealous” portrayal of the rebels, the US embassy contacted the reporter to tell him off the record that several officials were “seething” about the article and to inquire if he could begin pitching for the home team.48

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  In addition to Fidel, there were many other revolutionary leaders, such as the president of the Federation of University Students (Federación Estudiantil Universitaria, or FEU) and founding member of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) José Antonio Echeverría, who had participated in military actions in Costa Rica, campaigned for the Castros’ release from the Isle of Pines, and had visited their group in Mexico to sign a pact pledging the DRE’s support in overthrowing Batista. Echeverría had many supporters, and some argued he was a better leader for the movement than Fidel. When Echeverría was reelected unanimously to the FEU, he told those who elected him: “The History book is awaiting us. We shall write in it actions worthy of our ancestors. Ahead us on our shoulders we representatives of Cuban youth must accomplish a serious task.” There was two-time former congressman from the Authentic Party and DRE member Menelao Mora Morales, who had fought against Machado as an Abecedario. There was Frank País Pesqueira, leader of the Santiago de Cuba group, Revolutionary National Action, and urban coordinator of M-26-7. Some felt that the New York Times fathered Fidel Castro by thrusting him into the limelight and to the top of the movement, yet one must too appreciate that many leaders became martyrs in 1957, dying in the fighting, as did Echeverría, Mora, and País, leaving a vacuum of power and one man at the forefront. Fidel survived when others, including Che and Camilo, died.

  On a clear day of spring, a bright red truck, with “FAST DELIVERY, ENTREGA RÁPIDA DE PAQUETES. EXPRESO HABANA” (“Havana Express Package Service”) written in white across the side, sped down San Lázaro Street toward the center of Havana. When it reached the southern entrance of the presidential palace, the truck and two cars beside it screeched to a halt. Fifty men with submachine guns and grenades poured out the back, shot a private at the gate, then the sergeant behind him, and a colonel in the interior on the first floor, forcing their way into the southern entrance of the palace. On the rooftops of neighboring buildings (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Hotel Sevilla, and a tobacco factory), snipers had taken positions to support the attack. They succeeded in entering the first floor of the palace, hoping the dictator would be in the offices there.

  Having received a tip-off from an informant that an attack was imminent, President Batista barricaded himself and his family on the top floors, awaiting the perpetrators with a “loaded .45,” and took up the telephone to bark orders to his aides as they defended the citadel. The only way to reach the third floor was by elevator. Finding themselves trapped on the second floor without a way to get through, the attackers were cut down by machine guns. For forty minutes gunfire rang out in the presidential palace, and for three hours more when a line of ten tanks, several thousand troops, and antiaircraft guns fired at a neighboring building to dislodge a sniper. “Witnesses said the palace steps and patio ran with blood.”49 Thirty-five insurgents and five palace guards were killed that day in March. Among them was a former congressman and an important leader in “the movement,” Menelao Mora Morales, and Peter Korinda, an American tourist who had stepped out on the Parkview Hotel’s balcony to survey the action and taken a stray bullet to the neck.

  Meanwhile, another group of fifteen militants, led by José Antonio Echeverría, simultaneously attacked the radio station Radio Reloj in Vedado while the famed news program was in progress to shout an announcement into the microphone: Batista had been assassinated, rebel forces had taken control, and a general strike was already underway.50 Leaving several bullet holes on the recording booth glass and delivering their message, the attackers fell back toward the safety of Havana University, but as their aquamarine-and-cream Ford ‘57 turned the corner of L Street to University Avenue, José Antonio Echeverría encountered a patrol car full of policemen who gunned down “the Manzanita” (the twenty-four-year-old was affectionately nicknamed “Little Apple” by his friends for his chubby, rose-colored cheeks) in plain view. Two hours later, General Tabernilla’s voice came on the airwaves to deliver the ominou
s message that the rebellion had been put down and that Batista had survived. Had the attack succeeded that day, Echeverría’s supporters have theorized, it might have given more importance to the anti-Communist DRE and “saved” Cuba from the Castros.51

  Beaming on the front page of the New York Times in a picture where he is surrounded by his soldiers cheering, Batista emerged as a survivor from the attack and emphasized prophetically to the press:

  It is not important whether or not Fidel Castro is alive, but it is important that Mr. [Herbert] Matthews has stated that he heads an “anti-Communist and pro-democratic group.” This is entirely erroneous…Unemployment in Cuba is today much less than in previous regimes. Since the population is increasing as rapidly in Cuba as in the rest of the world there is bound to be a considerable number of unemployed. However, the economic conditions of Cuba have never been better.52

  After the assassination attempt, Batista’s men locked down the capital city, suspending the usual twelve flights per day between Havana and Miami, curbing television and radio broadcasts, and imposing a 6:00 p.m. curfew as Batista’s men searched vehicles and hunted down assailants in a backlash of violence that continued throughout the night with gun battles erupting across the city. Some victims had improbable connections with the attack and appeared to have been killed gratuitously by Batista’s police as collateral damage, or simply for being members of the opposition, such as distinguished attorney and former senator Pelayo Cuervo Navarro. Carlos Márquez-Sterling, another vocal opponent of Batista, attorney, and professor of law at Havana University, was also detained and later released.