One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (46 page)

All the men went over the fence: Fidel, Raul, Almeida, Dermidio Escalona, Felipe Guerra Matos, and many others. But Celia noticed a tree farther up the fence. She climbed the tree and got onto a limb. Her safe transit of the fence required all the men to pull on the limb to move it to their side, so she could hop down. The story offers a metaphor: in the years to come, the men would often come up with a plan and rush forward while she chose another, possibly less immediate but more practical route. In power as in opposition, they pursued different ways of arriving at their destinies.

IT WAS WIDELY ASSUMED
that the new government would establish its headquarters at the historic residence of Cuban presidents, the wedding-cake-shaped Presidential Palace. When Fidel commented that they’d have to find some way to get people to love the Presidential Palace, no one expected that he would abandon it. In the weeks to come, people began snapping up apartments on Calle Zulueta and the Avenida de las Misiones, to be nearby.

The situation, however, was complicated. The 26th of July Movement couldn’t move in because the Revolutionary Directorate
held it. But Fidel had no intention of moving into the place where Batista had nearly been assassinated, and turned to the newly built Havana Hilton. It became a military zone for the rebel army territory, renamed Hotel Habana Libre, and the top floors became his command headquarters.

The determining fact, though, was simpler: Celia and Fidel had no place to go. They both hailed from the far end of the island. Fidel had spent his high school years in Havana, at the Jesuits’ Colegio de Belén (Bethlehem). While still at university, he’d married and lived with Mirta Diaz-Belart. But the marriage and apartment were long gone, and he had no place to call home.

In the beginning, Celia’s idea was to establish an official residence for all five members of the rebel junta. Living along with her in this place would have been Fidel, Che, Camilo, and Raúl. After arriving in Havana, she started to look for a large house to rent, one that was modern and elegant, for just this purpose. Two pieces of furniture are surviving mementos that she bought for this project: a huge black marble-topped dining table and a 1950s modern sideboard with Chinese detailing and black Bakelite trim. She’d been working out this idea, where and how to live, for some time. Once she’d felt confident victory would come in the near term—basically, this seems to have been at the end of July, after the spectacular success of the rebel army at the Battle of El Jigue—she asked her sister Silvia to find an apartment “with at least two bedrooms, someplace central, for herself, for Fidel, also, and maybe for the others.” It had to be expandable, and Celia instructed Silvia to furnish it with their father’s furniture, which friends had rescued and sent to a Havana warehouse, where it had been stored since September 1957.

Not long after this, police had surrounded Silvia’s building (the Aparthotel on the corner of 8th and 19th, in Vedado); Silvia’s husband thought they’d come for his family but they arrested another resident. The SIM took the hotel register, and she and her husband were frightened enough to leave that same night. They went to the home of a politically sympathetic doctor, who welcomed them and their two sons, Sergio and Pepin. But the doctor’s house already had too many people crowded into it. So Silvia began to look in earnest for an apartment she could live in and turn over to Celia following victory. With help from the
26th of July, she found a vacancy on Once (11th Street). The lease restricted children, pets, and Afro-Cubans (at the time, a fairly standard Vedado lease), but the owner saw fit to make an exception, given his revolutionary sympathies. Silvia and her husband and boys moved into Calle Once, No. 1007, at the end of August 1958, along with Ernestina González, Celia’s Afro-Cuban cook from Pilón. Expediency, not design or style or glamour, had been the criterion for Silvia’s selection.

Celia would move there in February 1959.

IN THE WEEKS AND MONTHS
that followed the dramatic arrival of the rebel army in Havana on January 8, 1959, the 26th of July Movement was contested by other groups. The Revolutionary Directorate, the university-based clandestine organization originally directed by José Antonio Echeverria, occupied both the university and the Presidential Palace and had done so since Batista fled, and continued to hold these two strategic locales after Fidel entered the city. Its leader, Faure Chamon, complained that Fidel hadn’t consulted them when he set up a provisional government during his victory speech in Santiago. Meanwhile, another group, the
Directorio Estudiantil
, collected arms and prepared to challenge the 26th of July supremacy. Both opposing groups claimed that unity belonged to everyone, not just to Castro’s group, and that left the third group, and possibly the strongest organization to be won over, the People’s Socialist Party, second in size to the 26th of July Movement, the most prestigious party among the trade workers. Even though Fidel had no intention (because of security) of moving into the Presidential Palace, he didn’t have the consolidated power at the time to do so (a fact that is rarely mentioned). In the end, no one could match Fidel Castro’s charisma, or his magnetism.

IN JANUARY, CELIA WAS OFFICIALLY
appointed Secretary to the Commander in Chief and this meant, in practical terms, that the new ministers, formerly members of the revolutionary army, could still rely on her to interpret what Fidel wanted. This may not have been apparent, initially, to
habaneros
and even to those new rebel army soldiers who, although they might be winners of battles and heroic commanders, hadn’t been there since the beginning; that is, they had recently joined up and were not the elder statesmen of the founding 26th of July,
Granma, Comandancia
La Plata club. This new group apparently didn’t know how Celia and Fidel had operated in the Sierra Maestra, but original members of Column 1 “José Martí” realized how much Fidel trusted her, and were greatly relieved to see Celia at his side in the capital. They had witnessed Fidel and Celia’s ability to communicate as a team, recalled what it had been like in early days, when he gave her military orders, asked her to do things like build trenches and install a telephone—military duties. Those same rebel soldiers were now somewhat scattered, were taking up completely new and overwhelming duties around Havana, a city they didn’t know, and were reassured to be able to go to Celia to get orders or permission or approvals from Fidel. She could always give them an answer. As in the mountains, they could count on her to explain just what it was that they were supposed to do. It is usually said that Che is the one who initiated this practice in Havana. If he wanted to speak to Fidel, he talked to Celia first, or sent his message via Celia as he’d done in the Sierra. It could have been a courtesy, or a way for the two of them to keep intact their friendship. Anyway, it was a procedure that stuck.

In early January, 1959, days after victory, Fidel, Camilo, and Celia listen to Randol Cossío, who, as a member of Batista’s army, had provided statistics to Celia and Frank as they prepared for the landing of the
Granma
. Cossío was recruited by Celia in 1956. In this picture, he appears to be advising the three leaders of the 26th of July Movement. (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

In early 1959, Celia converses with Commanders Calixto García Martínez and Che Guevara. Following the custom established in the Sierra Maestra, commanders who wanted to speak with Fidel contacted Celia, or sent their messages via her. It is usually said that Che is the one who initiated this practice in Havana by speaking to Celia first, as he’d done in the Sierra. (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

Yet, after arriving in the capital, by necessity the small group of commanders went separate ways. Raúl Castro and Juan Almeida left Havana and returned to the eastern end of the island to take up posts with their columns in the regions of Santiago and Guantánamo (to protect the Revolution against invaders). Celia and Fidel became a unit as the others paired off. Raúl got married first (in Santiago); Che married next, but continued to live in the Cabaña fortress. Camilo lived at Camp Columbia. That left Celia and Fidel, of the original five commanders, so Celia gave up on the plan of the house for all of them, which would have been fun, something on the order of a radical clubhouse. It definitely would have been interesting in the evolution of state residences. Biographically, it’s a milestone: she gave up on what she had wanted.

AT HOTEL HABANA LIBRE
, members of the rebel army patrolled the lobby. Journalists wanting to see Fidel killed time in Las Canas, the big second-floor bar that faces the swimming pool, although Fidel did not use this bar. He favored the deeply shaded, grass-ceiling-and-walled Polynesian Room, oddly reminiscent of the interior of the
Comandancia
La Plata in its materials and dark protectiveness. After all the lean years (in prison and as a guerrilla) he liked the luxury of pork loin slowly cooking in barrels. Fidel was the conquering hero, glorious, not about to resist pleasure. He started an affair with a young woman, Marita Lorenz, the daughter of the captain of a German cruise ship, who moved into an adjoining room on the top floor of the Habana Libre.

AT THE END OF THE FIRST MONTH
of 1959, the 26th of July government had secured its place as victors; and Celia felt she’d made her mark, done her duty, and declared that she was happy with their victory and was going to get on with her life. From the 23rd to the 26th, she visited Venezuela as part of a large delegation invited by President Larrazabal, to commemorate Venezuela’s first anniversary (after having overthrown Marcos Perez Jimenez). In photographs documenting this trip she’s the elegant face of the Revolution, dressed beautifully, with the look of refined elegance. She’s attending receptions, or speaking to the Venezuelan president, or riding on a tank. She created a stir, and the men in the rebel army were proud of her.

Flávia says that when Celia got to Havana, she had very little to wear except her uniform. She hadn’t worn a dress since October 1957, and wouldn’t have wanted to go back to her zebra dress or any of her
clandestino
clothes, even if they had been shipped from Manzanillo. She went to El Encanto, the best department store in Havana, where some of her friends—members of the 26th of July underground—were saleswomen. There she bought four dresses, one in navy blue silk chiffon with white polka dots, and purchased several pairs of high-heel shoes with pointed toes. Havana had expected a woman who was tough and heroic, but Celia turned up looking delicate, lovely, and expensive. Many people remarked on this, impressed. Writer Miguel Barnet saw Celia Sánchez for the first time at a cocktail party. He says that he had been unprepared for her elegance; although everybody talked about
her, nothing had given him the idea that she would be so refined, how softly she spoke. He explained that drinking martínis was in style then, and that people in Havana felt the very act of drinking this cocktail signaled modernity and sophistication. He’d been stunned that she drank nothing, remembered how thrilled he’d been to discover she’d be representing his country, and soon after this composed a poem about her—inspired when he saw her driving down Linea in a jeep, completely alone. In Havana, Celia made sure to appear as the woman the world wanted to see. Or, as Maria Antonia Figueroa described it: “The people knew only that she could withstand the life in the Sierra, which is hard, isn’t the same for a woman. And then they found out that she was a sophisticated, educated woman, who had traveled abroad. There is a big difference there.”

CELIA LEFT THE HABANA LIBRE
when the Revolutionary Government got back from Venezuela. She wanted a place of her own and moved into the Calle Once apartment in the first days of February. Not missing a beat, or unable to function without her, depending on how you want to look at it, Fidel started showing up there, daily.

RIGHT AWAY, WITH A PLACE
to spread things out, Celia hauled out her collection of documents collected in the Sierra. There were battle plans, pieces of correspondence, tapes from her adding machine, notations for her expenses dating back to the landing of the
Granma
, messages from her Manzanillo helper Elsa Castro, Fidel’s and Frank’s letters. She’d kept this collection close at hand for such a long time. It is a collection of materials that Pedro Álvarez Tabío describes as “born in Celia’s knapsack and the most precious treasure of the Revolution.” This collection, from its inception, is something she had gone about making with the steadfastness of a woman on a personal mission. She’d argued her way around any and all opposition, including Fidel’s, and less than a year before, on May 3, 1958, as they began the offensive, she’d written a letter from Las Vegas de Jibacoa describing exactly why she wanted this collection: “There are many papers without importance today but in the future and for history, they [will] have great value. I am interested in this; when history is written it is real and there is no more proof than documents, for all are important later.” From the storage vault constructed under a trapdoor in the floor in her section of the house at the
Comandancia
, to the battlefield she’d carried her documents from one place to the next inside a nylon bag during the last stages of the war. That bag came with her to Havana, stuffed into a canvas postman’s bag she kept under her bed until she was able to begin to organize its contents at her new Once apartment, in the early days of February 1959.