Che Guevara (64 page)

Closer up, Havana was a seamy city, booming with casinos, nightclubs, and whorehouses. The live sex show in Chinatown’s Shanghai Theatre featured a performer called Superman, for his manly endowment. Marijuana and cocaine were available to those who wanted them. The sleaziness had attracted Greene, who made several visits to Cuba. “In Batista’s day I liked the idea that one could obtain anything at will, whether drugs, women, or goats,” he wrote. Greene’s fictional British vacuum cleaner salesman, Wormold, walked the streets of Old Havana, taking it all in. “At every corner there were men who called ‘Taxi’ at him as though he were a stranger, and all down the Paseo, at intervals of a few yards, the pimps accosted him automatically without any real hope. ‘Can I be of service, sir?’ ‘I know all
the pretty girls.’ ‘You desire a beautiful woman?’ ‘Postcards?’ ‘You want to see a dirty movie?’”

This was the raucous milieu into which Che and his men were plunged after two largely abstinent years in the mountains, with fairly predictable results. Che tried to keep his bodyguards under strict control, but the temptation was too much for Alberto Castellanos. “I had never been in the capital before and I was in shock,” he said. “Because Che kept me working with him until dawn, I didn’t have time to see anything. Some nights I escaped into the city, especially to the cabarets. It fascinated me to see so many beautiful women.”

Sex was heavy in the air. The guerrillas slipped out of La Cabaña for trysts with girls in the bushes under the huge white statue of Christ that looms over the harbor. It was a chaotic situation and had to be taken in hand. Che soon organized a mass wedding for all those fighters with lovers whose unions had not been made “official.” The wayward Castellanos, who had a fiancée in Oriente, was one of those whose wings were clipped, in a ceremony at La Cabaña presided over by Che himself.

The war had captivated public interest, and hordes of foreign journalists descended on Havana to cover the installation of the new regime. “In Buenos Aires it was the only thing people talked about,” Che’s father wrote. But even in Cuba, few people understood what it all meant. While still in Santiago, Fidel had taken pains to give the new regime a moderate front, although he had also set the pattern for his future relationship with President Urrutia by allowing Urrutia to name but one appointee, the justice minister. Fidel named the rest, and Urrutia did not put up a fight. Even so, only a few July 26 men, most of them from the llano, were included in the initial cabinet roster.

From Santiago, Fidel began making his way slowly overland toward Havana, savoring his victory before adoring crowds. Reporters caught up with his caravan and followed its progress, filing dispatches to the outside world. Fidel repeated again and again that he had no political ambitions. He took orders from President Urrutia, he said. The revolution would obey the “will of the people.” He had, however, accepted Urrutia’s request that he serve as commander in chief of the armed forces.

Throngs of civilians cheered the ragged guerrillas wherever they appeared. A young rebel from Holguín, Reinaldo Arenas, recalled the atmosphere. “We came down from the hills and received a heroes’ welcome,” he wrote. “In my neighborhood in Holguín I was given a flag of the 26th of July Movement and for a whole block I walked holding that flag. I felt a little ridiculous, but there was a great euphoria, with hymns and anthems ringing out, and the whole town in the streets. The rebels kept coming, with
crucifixes hanging from chains made of seeds; these were the heroes. Some, in fact, had joined the rebels only four or five months earlier, but most of the women, and also many of the men in the city, went wild over these hairy fellows; everybody wanted to take one of the bearded men home. I did not yet have a beard because I was only fifteen.”
*

The atmosphere in Havana was a mix of festive anarchy and uncertainty. Hundreds of armed rebels were camped out in hotel lobbies, treating them like a guerrilla bivouac in the countryside. Most government troops had surrendered after Batista’s flight and had remained in their barracks, but here and there a few snipers held out, and manhunts were on for fugitive police agents, corrupt politicians, and war criminals. In a few places, mobs had attacked casinos, parking meters, and other symbols of Batista’s corruption, but they had been brought under control quickly when the July 26 militias came out onto the streets. Boy Scouts acted as ad hoc policemen. Meanwhile, the embassies were filling up with military officers, policemen, and government officials who had been left in the lurch by Batista’s sudden flight.

On January 4, Carlos Franqui left Fidel’s rolling caravan in Camagüey and flew ahead to Havana. He found the capital transformed. “The gloomy Camp Columbia, mother of the tyranny and of crime, which I had known as a prisoner, was now almost a picturesque theater, impossible to imagine,” he wrote. “On the one hand, the bearded rebels with Camilo, no more than five hundred of them, and on the other hand, twenty thousand army soldiers—generals, colonels, majors, captains, corporals, sergeants, and privates. When they saw us walk by, they stood at attention. It was enough to make you burst out laughing. In the
comandante
’s office was Camilo, with his romantic beard, looking like Christ on a spree, his boots thrown on the floor and his feet up on the table, as he received his excellency the ambassador of the United States.”

Then Che arrived. There were difficulties at the presidential palace. The Directorio had installed themselves there and appeared to have no plans to give it up. Che tried to talk with the leaders, but they had refused to see him. “Camilo, half joking and half serious, said a couple of cannonballs should be fired off as a warning,” Franqui recalled. “As I was not an admirer of the palace, I said it seemed like a good idea, but Che, with his sense of responsibility, told us it wasn’t the right time to waste cannonballs, and
he patiently returned to the palace, met Faure Chomón, and matters were straightened out. Camilo aways listened to Che.”

By the time Fidel arrived on January 8, Urrutia was installed in the palace and a semblance of governmental authority had been restored. Public buildings, police stations, and newspaper and trade union offices had been taken over. The Communist Party had come out of the woodwork to call for mass demonstrations in support of the victorious rebels. Exiled Party leaders began returning, and the Party’s banned newspaper,
Hoy
, began publishing again. Even Carlos Prío, the former president, arrived back from Miami. Abroad, the major Cuban embassies were occupied by July 26 representatives. Venezuela had recognized the new government, and so had the United States. The Soviet Union followed suit on January 10.

Cuba’s civic and business institutions declared their support for the revolution with hyperbolic expressions of gratitude and fealty. The “nightmare” of Batista was over; the Fidelista honeymoon had begun. The business community bent over backward to pay tribute, volunteering to pay back taxes. Some major corporations announced new investments while declaring their optimism about Cuba’s brave new future.

The media lionized Fidel and his heroic
barbudos
. The magazine
Bohemia
became an unabashed revolutionary fanzine, printing obsequious homages to Fidel. In one illustration he was rendered with a Christlike countenance, complete with halo. Even the ad pages were tailored to suit the moment. The Polar beer brewery emblazoned a page with a graphic of a sturdy peasant cutting cane and the words, “Yes!
IT IS TIME TO GET TO WORK
. With the happiness of being free once more and feeling ourselves prouder than ever to be Cubans, we must blaze a trail of work: constructive and intense work to meet the demands of the Fatherland. ... And after working,
IT IS TIME FOR POLAR
! There is nothing like a really cold Polar to complete the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled.”

In the once clandestine July 26 newspaper,
Revolución
, Carlos Franqui added to the flood of tributes by lauding Fidel as Cuba’s “Hero-Guide.” Grateful citizens hastily commissioned a bronze bust of Fidel that was erected on a marble plinth at an intersection near Havana’s military complex, with an engraved inscription honoring the man who had “broken the chains of the dictatorship with the flame of liberty.”

Che too came in for his share of lyrical tributes. Cuba’s foremost living poet, the Communist Nicolás Guillén, was in exile in Buenos Aires when the triumph came, and at the request of a weekly newspaper editor there he wrote a poem in Che’s honor.

CHE GUEVARA

As if San Martín’s pure hand,
Were extended to his brother, Martí,
And the plant-banked Plata streamed through the sea,
To join the Cauto’s love-swept overture
.

Thus, Guevara, strong-voiced gaucho, moved to assure
His guerrilla blood to Fidel
And his broad hand was most comradely
When our night was blackest, most obscure
.

Death retreated. Of its shadows impure,
Of the dagger, poison, and of beasts,
Only savage memories endure
.

Fused from two, a single soul shines,
As if San Martín’s pure hand,
Were extended to his brother, Martí
.

If Che was already a well-known figure to readers abroad, his literary consecration by Guillén—a peer of Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Rafael Alberti—brought him into the pantheon of Latin America’s most venerated historical heroes. Here he was, at the age of thirty, being compared to the “Liberator,” José de San Martín. The hyperbole had a resounding effect on Cuba’s hero-hungry public. When, a few days after his arrival, Che sent for Juan Borroto, the sugar expert who had smuggled him economic intelligence reports while he was in the Escambray, Borroto was awed. “He was already a legend,” Borroto recalled. “To actually see him for many Cubans was like a vision; you rubbed your eyes. He was physically imposing, too, with very white skin and chestnut-colored hair. He was attractive.”

To the American embassy officials in Havana, however, Che was already the fearsome Rasputin of the new regime. The influence of his ideology on Fidel and his new role behind the forbidding walls of La Cabaña were topics of much worried speculation.

Fidel made his triumphal entry into Havana like a grand showman, riding at the head of a noisy calvacade on top of a captured tank. After paying his respects to Urrutia in the palace, he hopped aboard the
Granma
, which had
been brought to Havana and was now moored in the harbor. Then, accompanied by Camilo and Raúl—while Che stayed discreetly out of sight in La Cabaña—he proceeded to Camp Columbia through streets lined with thousands of ecstatic, flag-waving
habaneros
.

That night, Fidel gave a long speech, broadcast live on television, stressing the need for law and order and revolutionary unity. In the new Cuba, there was room for only one revolutionary force; there could be no private armies. His words were a warning to the Directorio, whose fighters had vacated the palace but still occupied the grounds of the university and were reported to be stockpiling arms. Adding to the ominous signs that a confrontation was in the offing, Faure Chomón had publicly voiced the Directorio’s concerns about being shut out of power. But before Fidel had finished speaking, the Directorio relayed word that it would hand over its weapons. Fidel’s display of force majeure had won out.

Fidel also used his presence to reinforce the nationalistic nature of the new regime. Asked by a reporter what he thought of the rumored offer by the U.S. government to withdraw its military mission, he replied quickly, “It
has
to withdraw it. In the first place, the government of the United States has no right to have a permanent mission here. In other words, it’s not a prerogative of the Department of State, but of the revolutionary government of Cuba.” If Washington wanted good relations, Fidel was saying, it had some fence-mending to do, and the first step was to deal with Cuba as an equal. Meanwhile, he told the nation, the army would be reorganized. Henceforth it would be made up of men loyal to the revolution who would defend it if the occasion arose. He warned that victory was not yet secure. Batista had fled to the Dominican Republic with his stolen millions and sought the protection of that other reviled dictator, General Trujillo. It was always possible the two of them might counterrattack.

Fidel had deftly prepared Cubans for things to come, but what most people remembered from that night was the moment when white doves flew out of the audience to alight on his shoulder. To many, it was a mystical epiphany that validated Fidel’s standing as the charismatic
maximo lider
of the revolution; to others it was a masterful example of Fidel’s ability to put forward an awe-inspiring public image at exactly the right moment.

In the blur of rapid-fire events that followed, contradictory signals about the direction of the revolution kept observers off balance. By quickly recognizing the new regime, Washington had tried to appear conciliatory. In a second gesture of appeasement, Earl Smith resigned as ambassador and left the country. A chargé d’affaires remained in his place. The Eisenhower administration could hardly complain about the makeup of the new regime. Urrutia’s cabinet was stacked with politically safe Cuban political veterans and aspirants,
virtually all of them solidly middle-class, pro-business anticommunists, including many of Fidel’s former rivals. By giving them posts with apparent authority in the new government, Fidel had placated the conservative political and business community and co-opted potential sources of opposition.

The biggest surprise was his appointment of Dr. José Miró Cardona, an eminent lawyer and secretary of the Civic Opposition Front, as the new prime minister. “Miró Cardona’s designation was a bombshell,” Franqui wrote later. “He was president of the Havana Bar Association, the representative of great capitalistic enterprises, and one of Cuba’s most pro–North American politicians. Years before, he had defended the biggest thief among Cuban presidents, Grau San Martín, who had stolen 84 million pesos. He had defended Captain Casillas, the murderer of the black sugar workers’ leader, Jesús Menéndez. We did not understand Fidel’s choice but it was understood by those whom Fidel wanted to understand. It was actually an intelligent move, which confused the Americans, the bourgeoisie, and the politicians.”