Ernesto Read online

  Rather than attackers, they resembled fugitives on the run, hungry, overheated, and fatigued as they took fire, split up (into two columns—under Cienfuegos and Guevara’s respective commands), hid in the woods, and agreed to reassemble once they reached the Escambray Mountains, their objective. Making their own luck like the fishermen Hemingway admired, the rebels marched forward toward the Escambray proving themselves with each forward step, no matter how many steps they had already taken, that meant nothing.123 By mid-October, Che and Camilo took up positions in the Escambray Mountains, and Fidel was poised to take control of the East.124

  At the end of October and in Early November, insurgents hijacked three airplanes carrying hostages, supplies, and weapons. The most notorious was Cubana Airlines flight 495, a Vickers Viscount 755D, taking off from Miami, Florida, destined for Varadero but never landing due to the insurgents’ ill-conceived plan. It instead splashed into Nipe Bay drowning seventeen out of twenty passengers. Attributing the disastrous mission to overzealous M-26-7 members acting on their own initiative, Fidel Castro emphasized that he had not ordered the attack.125

  On November 8, Cuba held a controversial election that many believed to be either rigged, or impossible to hold under insurgent threats and duress, and declared Andrés Rivero Agüero—Batista’s puppet candidate—to be the new president of Cuba, the day after the rebel army seized Alto Songo Garrison in the East of Cuba.126 With dissension in the ranks, Batista’s army suppressed a military conspiracy on November 27 and arrested several top officials including much-respected General Martín Díaz Tamayo, for a plot to overthrow the government.127

  On the fourteenth of December, Che Guevara’s column seized the town of Fomento in Sancti Spíritus, and the rebels now closed in on the stronghold of Santa Clara to the northwest. The threat so unnerved US officials that Ambassador Smith paid a visit to Batista in his swank private residence in Kuquine, to inform the dictator that Washington had decided it was time for him to go.128 What if Uncle Sam assisted him to install a provisional military junta, Batista inquired, he…he could lay low for a while, then once things cooled down, return to power?129 No, they answered, at this point that was not in the cards. After that, said Batista, “There was not much to talk about,” so Smith got up, shook hands, and left. After this meeting, General Cantillo was chosen by military brass to be the one who would negotiate with Fidel Castro. By December 19, the rebel army was taking cities rapidly in shocking succession: Jiguaní, Caimanera, and Mayajigua, then Guayos, Cabaiguán, Placetas, Manicaragua, Cumanayagua, Camarones, Cruces, Lajas, Sagua de Tánamo, Puerto Padre, and Sancti Spíritus, and a few days later Caibarién, Remedios, Palma Soriano, and Cienfuegos.

  By taking Santa Clara, Fidel Castro had reasoned, he could cut the island in half, stop counteroffensives, suffocate supply lines, and cover the rebels’ advance upon Santiago de Cuba in the east. If the rebels took Santiago, and its notorious Moncada Barracks, they could acquire the sort of armament, tanks, and artillery that they would need to emerge victorious in subsequent battles for key strongholds, like Agramonte in Camagüey, in Pinar del Río, and in Havana. By the end of December, rebel forces had swelled with sympathizers, defectors, and peasants to approximately two thousand troops in the east under the Castros’ tactical control, and a thousand in Las Villas under Guevara, Vega, and Cienfuego’s command.130

  On January 1, 1959, Che Guevara’s rebel forces took the city of Santa Clara, defended by approximately sixty-five hundred heavily armed men, ten tanks, B-26 bombers, and “un tren blindado” (“an armored train”), which was neutralized by bribery or by Molotov cocktails, depending upon one’s source, thwarted Batista’s last attempt to reinforce the linchpin city.

  While most of Batista’s men snivellingly surrendered, Colonel Cornelio Rojas, the chief of police, and his men put up a fight. Rojas was taken prisoner.

  At first sending a note of salvo conducto (safe conduct) to Rojas’s family to assure them that his life was in good hands, Comandante Guevara then decreed instead that Rojas would be executed, filmed the execution, and televised it across Cuba as a warning to others. During the first moments they saw Rojas on television, his daughter, wife, and grand daughter thanked God that he was alive. When they realized he was standing with other prisoners in front of a brick wall, they gripped each other tightly and screamed.131

  Refusing the blindfold, Cornelio Rojas waved and said his last stoic words: “Muchachos, ya tienen su tu revolución. Cuídenla.” (“Boys, now you have your revolution. Take care of it.”) Then he faced the line of rifles sighting in on him head on and gave the order himself: “Apunten, listos, ¡fuego!” (“Ready, aim, fire!”) Disseminated in world news, the graphic murder was perhaps the first ever witnessed on television.

  CHAPTER 13

  New Year, New Government (1959–1960)

  In the Idaho mountains, three inches of snow were finally falling and making it look like Christmas, delighting skiers and the Hemingways alike as they warmed their bodies by an open fire in Trail Creek Cabin on a Saturday night, sang Austrian mountain songs, dined beneath a bower of spicy pine, and danced to “Jelly Roll Blues.”1

  After Spanish grape eating on New Year’s Eve, a sweetly aging couple went early to bed but awakened cheerfully at midnight to exchange a kiss, to wish each other happy New Year, and to think good thoughts for family and friends in Cuba.

  In the grand open windows of Old Havana, Cuban high society and vacationers could be seen sipping at flutes of champagne. Ringing in “Nochevieja” in ballrooms of the last soirées, lovers fell endlessly into each other’s arms to the tempo of clave clacks, the maracas’ scratch, the hum of bass strings, and the warble of trumpets and trombones.2 In the casino cabarets of towering new hotels that shined before the sea, revelers munched las doce uvas de la suerte, twelve grapes for twelve new months of luck, one for each clock strike at the Puerta del Sol, to ward away the witches, for superstition, and for hope.

  At a hushed gathering at dawn, Batista announced his resignation to “prevent further bloodshed.” He appointed Carlos Manuel Piedra as provisional president with General Cantillo supporting him as commander of the army. General Cantillo had met with Castro previously in the Sierra Maestra, established a secret alliance, and promised to help him bring Batista to justice. The general then double-crossed Castro by helping Batista escape and attempting to seize control of Cuba with a military junta backed by the United States.

  At 2:00 a.m., Batista, his family, and his top military aides departed aboard five airplanes bound for the Dominican Republic (where dictator Rafael Trujillo offered Batista the asylum that the United States deemed too prickly politically), New York, Jacksonville, Miami, and New Orleans. The provisional president that Batista had supported, Andrés Rivero Agüero, fled with him to the Dominican Republic and later settled in Miami. In their entourage were approximately 225 people and millions in assets, national treasures, art, and jewels, to add to those already amassed in Swiss banks. Some valued the heist as high as $700 million, but others said it was closer to $300 million.3 Hemingway wrote, “Batista looted [Cuba] naked when he left. He must have 600 to 800 millions and that will buy a lot of newspapermen—and has.”4 When the batistianos arrived in Miami, they were met by a mob of two thousand Fidelistas who had to be beaten back with riot gear.5

  During the same year, Batista would find refuge in Madeira, Portugal, in 1959, then in Estoril in 1963, and would migrate later with his family to Costa del Sol, Guadalmina, Spain, where he would die in 1973 of a heart attack at the age of seventy-two. His widow, Marta Fernández de Batista, died in 2006 at the age of eighty-two in West Palm Beach, Florida. During the seven years of his last presidency, Fulgencio Batista was estimated to have murdered twenty thousand people.6 Under the revolutionary government, Cantillo was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison on the Isle of Pines.

  While the hollow shell of Batista’s power was crumbling at the end of 1958, Ernest Hemingway had received an invitation from Bi
ll Davis and wife at Villa la Consula in Málaga, Spain, and uncertain of his next move, he had been imagining a mano a mano of six magnificent bulls and two valiant matadors: Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín, Antonio’s brother-in-law.

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  When the people of Cuba learned that their tyrannical ruler had fled, they roared into the streets on New Year’s Day to loot casinos, banks, department stores, and hotels.7 Cruise ships set sail and American tourists fled Cuba en masse to escape the chaos. At Moncada, five thousand army regulars laid down their arms for Huber Matos’s Ninth Column, and Fidel took Santiago de Cuba without firing a single shot.8

  From the heart of the Oriente after a victory at Santiago, Fidel proclaimed to a cheering crowd, “This time the revolution will not be frustrated! This time, fortunately for Cuba, the revolution will achieve its true objective. It will not be like 1898, when the Americans came and made themselves masters of the country.”9 He was referring to the moment of the Spanish-American War when General Calixto García and his men, after fighting fiercely alongside Americans to liberate Cuba from Spain, were prohibited from entering Santiago. It was a moment that Cubans remembered, but America did not. Castro appeared expertly aware that the American press was not present that day in Santiago to cover the speech.

  Many Americans would have been baffled to hear such ingratitude from Cuba’s new leader, including Eisenhower, who would say, “Here is a country that, you would believe on the basis of our history would be one of our real friends. The whole history…would seem to make it a puzzling matter to figure out just exactly why the Cubans and the Cuban government would be so unhappy when, after all, their principal market is here, their best market. You would think they would want good relationships. I don’t know exactly what the difficulty is.”10 Hemingway perhaps understanding this history, but perhaps not hearing the speech, wrote a friend in a letter then: “The Cuban people now have a decent chance for the first time ever. I wish Castro all the luck.”11

  While Mr. and Mrs. Hemingway were watching the Rose Bowl game on New Year’s Day in Ketchum, the news services phoned to ask Ernest to comment on the change of power in Cuba. Ernest said, “I believe in the historical necessity for the Cuban revolution and I believe in its long range aims. I do not wish to discuss personalities or day to day problems.” When asked specifically about Fidel Castro’s rebels, Ernest told them he was “delighted” with the news. Mary told her husband, not knowing what excesses Castro would commit or if the firing squads were lining up that very moment, that the comment seemed imprudent: “‘delighted’ was too strong a word.” “One bloody word,” he grumbled, not wanting to retract what he said. When she insisted that he made his living with words and that the distinction was important, he called them back and changed his word to “hopeful,” which the New York Times changed just minutes before the article went to press.

  Calling for a general strike, Fidel demanded the appointment of Manuel Urrutia Lleó, a judge sympathetic to the revolution, as provisional president in Piedra’s place, and on the evening of January 1, the Supreme Court followed this order, installing Urrutia the following day. Under pressure from the United States, who sought an alternative to the Castros, Batista’s colonel Ramón Barquín was released from prison and appointed by the Cuban Supreme Court to the command of the Cuban army on January 1.12

  On January 2, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos marched their rebel columns into Havana victorious. Founding a new government, José Miró Cardona took the reins as prime minister on January 3. Both Cardona and Urrutia were liberal, but not Communist. Supported for the moment by the Supreme Court and by Fidel Castro as commander in chief of the rebel army, Miró and Urrutia were officially recognized by the United States on January 5, and Fidel Castro was recognized two days later.13 The following day, the first issue of the first rebel newspaper, Hoy, published the news.

  From the far reaches of Oriente, Fidel Castro’s much-anticipated troops arrived triumphantly in the capital city of Havana on January 8. Despite the fact that he was not yet officially connected to the provisional government, he was a popular and articulate commander of a winning army, and like Caesar, the conqueror returning with his legions to Rome, Castro had influence and made a huge impact. A natural orator and showman, and a “good talker,” Castro was very skilled at managing his image and the press. The young barbudo soldiers that accompanied him, piled atop Sherman tanks, looked as tickled as they were confused in their tangled beards, muddled green uniforms, ingenuous eyes, and rifles roughly slung. Looking like amateurs was part of their allure. Fate had chosen them to defend, to become martyrs, and like Maccabees or samurai, soldiers for a sacred Cuban cause, they had listened to the call. Or at least that is how these mountain men seemed as they descended from the sierra, and compared to Batista, they looked marvelous.

  Establishing his headquarters in the penthouse of the Havana Hilton hotel along with his men who used its fancy restaurant like their chow hall, Fidel met with reporters and government officials there, creating an appealing contrast made for television only a decade after NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont had begun broadcasting full schedules. The rebel stumbled through English while his bearded buddies became a bit too jubilant in the background. The reporter, hamming it up at the end of the interview, asked if Fidel might shave his beard: “Now that the revolution is over, American ‘touristas’ will come here, and you will be the main attraction. Will you shave off your beard?” Thoughtfully stroking his whiskers, Fidel kept calm and searched for the unknown phrase in English, asking one of the barbudos behind him for help. “I am…,” then a light came suddenly to his eyes, “used to it…the beard. It does not bother me at all! I have asked the people if they want that we cut. [He then pointed both index fingers into the air.] Ev-ery-body say no, no.”14

  Years later Fidel, the old man, would elaborate, “The story of our beards is very simple: it arose out of the difficult conditions we were living and fighting under as guerrillas. We didn’t have any razor blades. Everybody just let their beards and hair grow, and that turned into a kind of badge of identity. For the campesinos and everybody else, for the press, for the reporters we were ‘los barbudos’–the bearded ones.”15 Sometimes they did not even have soap. As attached as Fidel became to his facial hair, he would tell Barbara Walters in an interview in 1977 that he would shave it if the US lifted the embargo. Members of the press, historians, and biographers have repeatedly described Fidel Castro as a “Christ-like” liberator or “redeemer” who suffered on his people’s behalf.16 For a moment, the next generation was taking over, and the truth was as simple as this description.

  Some remained skeptical. With twenty-five years as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian, Alistair Cooke had seen dictators come and go, and watching “the hero himself” enjoy his slow approach into Havana while thousands cheered, the reporter found it difficult to accept his renunciations of ambition for power while retaining his position as chief of staff of the armed forces. For the moment, Fidel was “the living symbol of release from an interminably brutal and corrupt dictatorship,” perhaps because he looked “so young and modern, and talks so gallantly,” yet one could also recall at that moment that, as a young soldier, Fulgencio Batista had also once been hailed as a “poor audacious rebel” before becoming “just another bigshot” ensconced in an office downtown, with brutal secret police at his disposal.17 While some still remember barbudos arriving to deliver Havana and grandmothers jostling just to touch Fidel or pass him a rosary, others recall widespread disorder and rough bearded men barking at people in the streets ordering them to get into their homes and stay there, or be killed. With the assistance of the urban civil leagues they implemented, soon the rebels had the anarchy somewhat under control.

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  Ambassador Smith resigned on January 1 but continued to work until his replacement, Philip Bonsal, arrived. Hemingway knew Bonsal from the 1930s in Spain with Pauline. Shortly
after Batista left and Fidel came to power in 1959, Hemingway wrote a letter from Ketchum to his new editor at Scribner’s, Harry Brague, in which he would make some of his most explicit comments about the United States’ role in the changing political situation in Cuba: Things were “ok” in Cuba. They had friends in the new government, like Phil Bonsal, who had been with them at the feria in Salamanca, and the officer commanding the Havana garrison, who was an old San Francisco de Paula boy who played baseball on their local team. “Castro is up against a hell a lot of money. The island is so rich and has always been stolen blind. If he could run a straight government, it would be wonderful.”18

  Keeping close tabs on the situation and his property in Cuba, Ernest was receiving news from Herbert Matthews’s ongoing dispatches, from United and Associated Press, from friends still in Cuba like the Herrera brothers, Mario Menocal, and Jaime Bofill, and from his majordomo, René Villarreal. From Idaho, Ernest wrote Gianfranco Ivancich that he heard from René Villarreal that there had been a general strike and a shortage of food, so he told him to butcher one of the calves and loan the station wagon to any revolutionaries should they need it. He heard the bittersweet news that the policemen who had killed his dog had been executed “with the usual mutilation.” The newspapers were announcing the retreat of Batista to the Dominican Republic and the cruise ships fleeing with him. He wrote to Gianfranco: “They all sailed as soon as they could round up the revelers. Wish we had been there together. Very funny. You and Liugino saw him come in, remember. I wish we might have seen him go. Remember we went to Cayo Paraíso on that 10th of March—Mary and Gregorio and I—Sic transit hijo de puta [so passes the son of a whore].”19