Che Guevara (63 page)

As it turned out, Cantillo was intent on a double cross. He returned to Havana, told Batista of the plot, and gave him until January 6 to leave the
country. He then sent a message to Fidel, asking for a delay until January 6 before launching the revolt. Fidel was wary, but by then events had begun to move so fast that neither he nor Cantillo could foresee what would happen next.

Che’s seizure of the armored train had sent alarm bells ringing loudly at Camp Columbia, the military headquarters in Havana, and the subsequent rapid-fire succession of army surrenders around the nation had accelerated Batista’s plans for departure. By the afternoon of December 31, his last hope for buying time rested on the ability of Colonel Casillas to hold out in Santa Clara. At nine o’clock that evening Casillas called to say he couldn’t resist much longer without reinforcements. When, an hour later, Cantillo warned that Santiago was also about to fall, Batista knew it was time to go.

At a New Year’s party for his top officers and their families at Camp Columbia, Batista led his generals into a room adjoining the one where most of his guests were gathered and revealed that he would hand over the armed forces to Cantillo. Then, rejoining the party in the other room, he announced his decision to give up the presidency. He named Carlos Manuel Piedra, the oldest supreme court judge, as the new president; after formally swearing in Cantillo as the new armed forces chief, Batista and his wife and a coterie of officials and their families drove to the nearby military airstrip and boarded a waiting plane. By three o’clock in the predawn darkness of January 1, 1959, Batista was in the air, en route to the Dominican Republic with forty of his closest cronies, among them the “president-elect,” Andrés Rivero Agüero. Before dawn broke, another plane had taken off carrying Batista’s brother, the mayor of Havana, and several dozen more government and police officials. Separately, two other notorious characters also made their escape that day: the paramilitary chieftain Rolando Masferrer and the American mobster Meyer Lansky.

When, sometime that night, Colonel Casillas and his deputy, Colonel Fernández Suero, heard the news in Santa Clara, they made haste to save themselves. After concocting a flimsy excuse for their underling, the blissfully uninformed Colonel Cándido Hernández, they disguised themselves in civilian clothes and beat an escape.

As daylight broke in Santa Clara, the first rumors of Batista’s flight were beginning to circulate. The No. 31 garrison surrendered; the final redoubts—the Gran Hotel and the Leoncio Vidal garrison—were surrounded; and by mid-morning Colonel Hernández asked for a truce. Che
said he could accept nothing less than an unconditional surrender and sent Nuñez Jiménez and Rodríguez de la Vega in to negotiate with Hernández.

“The news reports were contradictory and extraordinary,” Che wrote afterward. “Batista had fled that day, leaving the armed forces high command a shambles. Our two delegates [meeting with Hernández] established radio contact with Cantillo, telling him of the surrender offer. But he refused to go along because this constituted an ultimatum, and he claimed he had taken over command of the army in strict accordance with instructions from the leader Fidel Castro. We immediately contacted Fidel, telling him the news, but giving our opinion of Cantillo’s treachery, an opinion he absolutely agreed with.”

After the conversation with Cantillo, Hernández was understandably confused, but Che stood firm, insisting he surrender. At 11:30 A.M. their negotiations were interrupted by a broadcast address from Fidel over Radio Rebelde. Repudiating Cantillo’s notion of a “military junta” or any understanding between them, he called for an immediate general strike and a mobilization of rebel forces toward Santiago and Havana. He gave Santiago’s defenders until six that evening to surrender or be attacked, and he ended with a slogan:
Revolución Sí, Golpe Militar No!

The panorama was clearer now, and Che gave Hernández an hour to make up his mind; if he didn’t surrender by 12:30, he would be attacked and would be held responsible for the bloodshed that would follow. Hernández returned to the garrison, and the waiting began.

While Che had been negotiating with Hernández, his men had finally managed to dislodge the snipers from the Gran Hotel. The previous day, Enrique Acevedo had resorted to driving cars at high speed in front of the hotel to try to pinpoint the sniper fire, but he abandoned the tactic after one of his men was shot in the leg. That morning, however, with their comrades surrendering all around them and their own ammunition almost exhausted, the snipers gave in. Acevedo watched them come out with their hands up. They turned out to be a group of five
chivatos
and four policemen, some, in Acevedo’s words, with “debts to pay to revolutionary justice.” Those debts were soon paid; at 2
P.M.
, after a brief summary trial, the five
chivatos
were executed by a firing squad.

Colonel Casillas had not gotten very far in his civilian disguise. Victor Bordón’s fighters, west of the city, had been ordered to halt any soldiers fleeing toward Havana, and Casillas, wearing a straw hat and a July 26 armband, soon fell into their hands. He immediately began trying to woo Bordón, praising him as a “great strategist.” Bordón recalled that Casillas told him that “the only thing he felt bad about was not being able to stay longer with me, because he had to carry on to the capital to participate in the military junta, which was going to ‘resolve this business among Cubans.’” Bordón cut him short. “I told him to stop flattering me, that we didn’t need any junta, because it would be Fidel Castro who resolved life for Cubans from then on. And that he was going with me to Santa Clara, so that Che could see him. That’s where he changed color and asked me if I couldn’t take him to another
jefe
. I remember that when Che saw him, he told him: ‘Ah! So you are the murderer of Jesús Menéndez.’”
*

The victorious Rebel Army drives through Santa Clara toward Havana.

Casillas did not live out the day. The official version is that he was shot dead trying to escape while en route to see Che, but this, quite obviously, doesn’t mesh with Bordón’s own account. Given Casillas’s gruesome history of past atrocities and Che’s record for applying revolutionary justice, it is probable that Casillas’s failed “escape attempt” took place in front of a hastily assembled firing squad.

With ten minutes to go before Che’s deadline, Colonel Hernández agreed to surrender his garrison. His troops dropped their weapons and went out onto the streets, joining the rebels. A cheer went up around the city: Santa Clara had fallen. But Che was not celebrating yet. Order had to be restored,
there were henchmen and
chivatos
to be tried, and he needed to assemble his forces and give them their instructions.
*

Cantillo’s tenure as armed forces chief did not last long. Colonel Barquín, sprung that day from the Isle of Pines, was flown to Havana along with Armando Hart, and by early afternoon Barquín had arrived at Camp Columbia, where an outmaneuvered Cantillo promptly handed over his command. In Oriente, Santiago surrendered, and Fidel prepared to march into the city that night.

The next morning, January 2, 1959, Che and Camilo Cienfuegos were ordered to proceed to Havana. Camilo was to take over Camp Columbia, while Che was to occupy La Cabaña, the colonial-era fortress overlooking Havana at the mouth of the port. Camilo’s column moved out first, since Che still had mopping-up duties to attend to, including executing some
chivatos
and appointing Calixto Morales as the military governor of Las Villas. Afterward, Che addressed the people of Santa Clara, thanking them for their help in the “revolutionary cause.” He and his men were leaving, he said, “with the feeling of leaving a beloved place. I ask you to maintain the same revolutionary spirit, so that in the gigantic task of reconstruction ahead, Las Villas may continue to be in the vanguard of the revolution.”

At around three in the afternoon, with Aleida at his side, Che and his men set out on the drive to Havana. Most of his comrades were jubiliant at the prospect of liberating the Cuban capital, but to Che it was just the first step in the greater struggle that loomed ahead.

Havana, New Year’s Day, 1959.

It is impossible for revolutionary laws to be executed unless the government itself is truly revolutionary
.

L
OUIS
-A
NTOINE
-L
ÉON DE
S
AINT
-J
UST
1793, during the “Terror” of the French Revolution

The executions by firing squads are not only a necessity for the people of Cuba, but also an imposition by the people
.

C
HE
G
UEVARA
February 5, 1959

The Guevara family was celebrating the New Year in Buenos Aires when word came of Batista’s flight. Rebel columns led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos were said to be advancing on Havana. But the family’s jubilation lasted for only a moment. “We had not put down the drinks toasting the fall of Batista when some terrible news came,” Che’s father recalled. “Ernesto had been fatally wounded.” Two agonizing hours went by before the July 26 representative in Buenos Aires called to say the report was false. “We celebrated the New Year that night with the happiness that Ernesto lived,” his father wrote, “and that he was in charge of the La Cabaña garrison in Havana.”

When Che’s entourage arrived at the huge Spanish colonial fortress overlooking the city in the predawn darkness of January 3, 1959, a regiment of 3,000 troops had already surrendered and stood in formation. Che addressed them patronizingly as a “neocolonial army.” They could teach his rebel troops how to march, he said, but the guerrillas could teach them how to fight. Then he and Aleida installed themselves in the
comandante
’s house.

The day before, Camilo had shown up at Camp Columbia, on the other side of the city, and had taken over its command from Colonel Ramón Barquín. General Cantillo was arrested. Fidel had made his triumphal entry into Santiago and—speaking before cheering crowds—declared the city the provisional capital of Cuba. Manuel Urrutia flew in from Venezuela and Fidel proclaimed him the new president.

Carlos Franqui, who was with Fidel, couldn’t understand why Che had been relegated to La Cabaña. “I remember pondering at length the reasons for Fidel’s order,” he said. “Camp Columbia was the heart and
soul of the tyranny and of military power. ... Che had taken the armored train and the city of Santa Clara; he was the second most important figure of the revolution. What reasons did Fidel have for sending him to La Cabaña?”

Most probably, Fidel had chosen the less visible position because he wanted Che out of the limelight. To the defeated regime, its adherents, and Washington, Che was the dreaded international Communist, and it was only asking for trouble to give him a preeminent role so early on. By contrast, the handsome, Stetson-wearing, baseball-playing, womanizing, humorous Camilo was Cuban, was not known to be a Communist, and had already become a popular folk hero.
He
could take center stage. Fidel needed Che for the indispensable job of purging the old army and of consolidating victory by exacting revolutionary justice against traitors,
chivatos
, and Batista’s war criminals. Just as his brother Raúl, the other radical, was to be in Oriente—where Fidel had left him behind as military governor—Che was essential to the success of this task in Havana.

From the green rolling head of land where La Cabaña and its adjacent fortress, El Morro, sprawled, guarding Havana harbor, Che’s view in January 1959 would have been much like that evoked in Graham Greene’s
Our Man in Havana
, which had been published just months earlier: “The long city lay spread along the open Atlantic; waves broke over the Avenida de Maceo and misted the windscreens of cars. The pink, grey, yellow pillars of what had once been the aristocratic quarter were eroded like rocks; an ancient coats of arms, smudged and featureless, was set over the doorway of a shabby hotel, and the shutters of a night club were varnished in bright crude colors to protect them from the wet and salt of the sea. In the west the steel skyscrapers of the new town rose higher than lighthouses.”