A Cuban in Paradise

A CUBAN IN PARADISE

Antonio J. Guernica

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

A Cuban in Paradise

Copyright © 2012 Antonio J. Guernica

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.If there are only a few historical figures or actual events in the novel, the disclaimer could name them: For example: Edwin Stanton and Salmon Chase are historical figures… or The King and Queen of Burma were actually exiled by the British in 1885. The rest of the disclaimer would follow:However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-6137-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6139-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6138-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012921563

iUniverse rev. date: 12/10/2012

CONTENTS

PRELUDE

PART I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

PART II

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

PART III

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

PART IV

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

To my mother and father Georgina and Armando

and their enduring spirit.

PRELUDE

Santiago de Cuba

We’re losing them! They’re turning the wrong way!

Fidel Castro, riding in the second car, looked in the rearview mirror in time to see the Chrysler sedan veer to the left through the early haze at the entrance to the city of Santiago de Cuba, away from the caravan of twenty-six vehicles. They had left the farm near the beach of Siboney before dawn. His brother Raul trailed in the third car, following closely.

Cowards, forget them!

The Chrysler carried university students who had a change of heart once Fidel made his intentions clear. Two simultaneous strikes were to take place at dawn. The main force led by Fidel would launch its assault on the military barracks of Moncada; a smaller contingency of men would capture the garrison at Bayamo. The day chosen – July 26, 1953 – followed the night of the raucous Carnaval de Oriente, Santiago’s annual celebration of excess and abandon, plumed costumes, dancing in the streets, rum and disorder. The thousand soldiers stationed at Moncada would be sleeping off a communal drunken binge.

Others are following them! What the hell’s going on?

Two more cars trailed away behind the sedan. Fidel had begun the day commanding a force of 134 combatants dressed in sergeant uniforms armed with a few Army and Winchester rifles, an old machine gun, revolvers and a rash of .22 caliber guns. They had already abandoned a vehicle to a flat tire. Now Fidel lost more of his armed conga line to a wrong turn.

The lead car came to a stop at the gate to the barracks and the six passengers jumped out.

"Atención! Make way for the general!"

The sentries presented Winchester rifles, which the rebels snatched from their hands and turned against them. The rebels opened the gate and pushing the sentries in front of them as shields quickly advanced towards the barracks. They climbed their way upstairs into a dormitory that housed molasses soldiers, snores and rum dreams.

While Fidel closely followed the lead car, an Army sergeant and two soldiers on perimeter patrol happened upon the creeping caravan at the gate. The sergeant signaled for him to stop. Fidel floored the gas pedal and the car jumped the curb mauling the two soldiers against the gate. The sergeant lunged to the side, avoiding the collision. Firing his pistol in an urgent scramble he ran into the garrison to sound the alarm. Fidel’s car lurched to a stop. He threw open the car door and leaped out – the prearranged signal for the rebels in the other vehicles to slam on their brakes and rush the barracks firing their weapons. Fidel was merely trying to stop the sergeant but his men launched their .22 caliber assault prematurely.

Here! Towards me! Follow me! Fidel regrouped the rebels for a frontal push. The first handful made its way inside the barracks, killing a dozen of Batista’s soldiers and the officer of the day. But lacking immediate support, they withdrew before they were cut off. General alarm rang in the garrison as groggy infantrymen stumbled from their sleep and grabbed their weapons. Pissed off and hung over, the soldiers rushed to windows on the first floor in drilled response and set their sights on the exposed rebels in the street. The military fusillade erupted as Castro’s men sought cover behind parked cars and trucks, returning fire with runt rifles.

Pull back! Pull back! Fidel ordered.

Those near him heard the command and followed. They scrambled into the nearest cars and fled for safety, leaving the wounded behind. Beyond earshot the uneven battle continued.

Raul, who had successfully overrun the strategic Palace of Justice with a contingent of twenty men, also withdrew as he witnessed the debacle. Positioned on the Palace roof, he would have provided Fidel with covering fire into the courtyard of the barracks but his brother’s forces never made it that far.

The simultaneous attack on Bayamo failed even more miserably. Startled horses gave away the alarm and the soldiers easily overcame the insurgents. The shooting lasted fifteen minutes. The soldiers dragged three of the rebel prisoners behind an Army jeep for miles of fun before disposing of the bodies.

At Moncada, the brother of the dead officer of the day spurred the troops to exact their revenge as he would a slow nag. They struck Castro’s men with rifle butts and gusto. They lashed the rebels with barbed wire and crushed their hands and feet. They mutilated them until their prisoners became bloody recollections of humanity.

The men who had fled the battle with Fidel rushed back to the farm at Siboney and then dispersed into the hills. Some sought refuge in the home of friends in Santiago. Others headed for Havana, securing fleeting sanctuary wherever they could.

In the days following the attack, the Army searched the city house by house for the rebels who had mocked their destiny at Moncada. Fidel hid in the mountain forests of La Gran Piedra until a small patrol led by Lieutenant Sarria surprised him napping and took him prisoner. Fidel should have been shot rather than jailed. Those were the implicit orders but the lieutenant brought him in alive.

As Fidel awaited his upcoming trial, Oya, patroness of justice in the Santeria religion and mistress to Chango – god of war, fire, thunder and lightning – appeared to him in his cell with a warning. Poison. Oya pronounced the single word thinly before she dissolved before him like a broken dream. Fidel fasted until the day he came before the Tribunal.

I know that imprisonment will be as hard on me as it has ever been on anyone – full of cowardly threats and wicked torture, he told the courtroom as he argued his own defense. But I do not fear prison, just as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who snuffed the life out of seventy of my brothers. Condemn me. No matter. History will absolve me.

Surprise Attack on Moncada Barracks

By Alex Chandler

The New York Times

– SANTIAGO DE CUBA 1953 – Led by the fledging revolutionary Fidel Castro, a force of one hundred poorly armed and untrained men attacked Moncada Barracks, a fortified garrison in Santiago de Cuba protected by over one thousand government troops. The result was a massacre of Castro’s followers.

The soldiers in the garrison easily repelled the insurgents, the battle lasting about one hour before Castro gave the order to retreat and took flight. Those among Castro’s men foolish enough to surrender were struck down with gun butts and killed or tortured. Half of the attacking force died during questioning or was summarily executed by the Army.

Despite censorship, photographs of the mutilated bodies were smuggled to Havana and published in the August 2nd edition of the popular news weekly Bohemia. The bloody evidence built sympathy for the nascent revolution, turning public sentiment more strongly against ruling President Fulgencio Batista. Thousands attended a mass honoring the dead victims.

A prominent group of men from Santiago de Cuba, headed by Bishop Perez Serantes, an old friend of the Castro family, intervened to negotiate an agreement with Batista sparing the life of any rebel who surrendered. The Bishop drove into the forests, pleading through a megaphone into the bushes for the rebels to turn themselves in, guaranteeing their safety. After days of hiding, the Army captured Fidel Castro while he slept.

When the day of his trial arrived, the prosecutor asked Castro to reveal the intellectual author of the attack on Moncada. The rebel leader once again made headlines by invoking the holiest name in the national history of the island. Jose Marti, he answered. The Apostle, the Father of Cuba. In one of the first notable skirmishes in Cuba’s War of Independence from Spain, Jose Marti, a poet and thinker more than a fighter, rushed to the front line on a striking white horse to lead his men into battle, martyring himself at Dos Rios in 1895, a tragic casualty.

The court sentenced Fidel to fifteen years imprisonment and his brother Raul to thirteen. Mystifying his advisers, Batista granted the press access to the rebel leader while in prison.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

Santiago de Cuba

Alfonso Candela gazed at his oldest son and reclined in the pew of the school chapel of El Colegio Dolores, holding his wife’s hand. Her veil adorned the eyes that had mesmerized him ten years before. Mirta wore the lightest of pink silks cinched at her small waist, prelude to the full hips of a woman.

Luis was dressed in a white suit with white gloves and white shoes polished to a gleam. Brylcreem tamed his unruly hair. In his hands, he held a silver rosary and an ivory covered missal. One by one, Luis’ classmates promenaded to the altar and knelt in front of Bishop Perez Serantes. Luis gently extended his tongue.

Alfonso thought he spotted his son biting into the holy wafer, which according to the Jesuit brothers who ran the private school was to invite terrible consequences. It was the body of Christ. Alfonso had heard the admonition twenty five years earlier in preparation for his First Holy Communion in the same church. Like his oldest son, like many of the sons from Santiago’s prosperous families, he had also attended Dolores, as Fidel Castro himself had.

Outside the school chapel, the Candelas lingered long enough to exchange congratulations with their friends, not taking too much punishment from the unforgiving sun before proceeding to the car.

This is a special day, Mirta told Luis. You’re growing up.

Luis turned towards his mother. So that means I get to ride in the front seat with dad from now on, he proposed.

Oh no, Mirta laughed. But you do get to ride there today. Your First Communion has much more serious significance than where you sit. You went to confession, told the priest your sins. You asked for forgiveness.

Yes, but I’m not telling you.

I wouldn’t ask. That’s between you and God. Besides, what have you done that I wouldn’t know about?

Admit to nothing son, his father counseled. I’ve always found that to be the best policy.

Nonsense! Don’t tell him that Alfonso. In the eyes of the church he’s responsible for his actions now. He has an obligation to not sin, to resist temptation.

That really is nonsense. The boy is barely seven. What would he know about temptation?

He knows right from wrong, good from bad. Mirta answered for him. Isn’t that right?

Plead innocence son, or ignorance. Admit to nothing.

Luis looked leisurely from his mother to his father as his younger brother Bobby listened attentively in the back seat. I am innocent, he replied. I’ve done nothing wrong.

Good work! Alfonso concurred. We men must stick together.

Alfonso pulled the Thunderbird in the driveway and the boys ran out of the car and straight into the party. Their two grandfathers, Antonio Candela and Jose Barcena, held court on competing ends of the large patio. Both appeared to be in good spirits and raised their glasses in greeting. Antonio was a successful surgeon, one of the founders of La Clinica Los Angeles, the hospital where all the Candela women had given birth to their offspring, a gunshot’s distance from Moncada Barracks.

Alfonso embraced his father and lightly kissed his sister Vivian who had flown in for the occasion. She had married a Cuban diplomat, Rodolfo Padron, who served as ambassador to the Dominican Republic under Batista. Stationed in the Dominican capital of Ciudad Trujillo, they visited Santiago much too infrequently to suit the family.

Castro and his gangster movement are as good as dead, Rodolfo announced with customary authority.

You’re underestimating Castro, replied Enrique. He’s tapping into a current of discontent. The police are more abusive and capricious each day. Last week they beat one of our workers at the warehouse because he bedded the police captain’s mistress.

He should have kept his dick in his pants, Rodolfo laughed, biting the mint sprig from his Mojito. What you say isn’t news in Santiago, New York or Paris for God’s sake. The police take liberties. Don’t blame President Batista.

It’s gone too far, Enrique insisted. Yesterday, the police detained Rene Ayala without cause. You must remember him. He was on his way to join us at the Tennis Club for gin. They didn’t keep him for very long. But they were very disrespectful. No apology, no explanation.

An isolated incident. Rodolfo fanned the objection away, bordering on rudeness since the party was being held at Enrique’s home. Look, you don’t know if Ayala is involved in something shady or not. The police don’t stop the cars of people like us for no reason, you know that. They’re on our side.

If that’s the case, it’s time for Batista to remind them, Enrique concluded. You’re the diplomat. Whisper in his ear.

"Niños, come here! Mirta called the boys over to the outdoor bar. Dirt and grass had already stained the knees of Luis’ First Communion suit. I should’ve made you change when we got here. She brushed at the stains with a handkerchief moist with club soda. It’s ruined."

Rodolfo and your brother arguing politics, Alfonso commented and sipped his whisky. As usual.

It was nice of Enrique to host the celebration.

We could just as well have held it at our house if your brother hadn’t insisted. He is the boy’s godfather after all.

That’s high enough, Mirta called to her sons who had returned to the swing set. She opened the small box in her palm, a silver rosary wrapped in a silk pouch, a gift for Luis from his grandmother. I don’t want anything to change, she told Alfonso and ran her tongue slowly along her lower lip, as if applying lipstick.

You’re happy? Alfonso tapped the bridge of Mirta’s nose with his finger, gently sliding it down to the tip.

I wish we could hold this day forever. Bundle it in white like Luis’ rosary.

Bayamo

It’s not complicated, Alfonso told Luis. Sit on the horse and get comfortable. That’s the essential skill to master when riding a horse. If the rider feels confident in the saddle, the horse is his to command.

The Candelas stayed at the family farm in the rural town of Bayamo mostly on weekends and vacations. Rustic by city standards, the farm house was a mansion in comparison to the bohios, the dirt-floored shacks with walls made of wooden planks or tin panels and roofs of thatched palm leaves where the guajiros, the Cuban country folk lived. The house had electricity powered by a windmill and a diesel generator when necessary. The floors were made of ceramic tile. There was running water for the kitchen and the single bathroom, fed from a large tank behind the house. The three bedrooms, the living room and dining room all bordered an internal courtyard where a thick oak tree towered over the house providing shade. In the evening a breeze would play with the ashes that dropped from Alfonso’s cigarettes, scurrying them along the ground.

Alfonso walked the horse by the reins while Luis held on to the pommel of the western saddle and became accustomed to the sway. Luis rode Nieve, a gentle white mare. Alfonso had pulled the stirrups high so his son’s legs could reach them. After a few tame circles around the corral, Luis grew as bored with being led around on the mare as Alfonso did of walking him.

Ready to take the reins? Alfonso asked him.

"Si, papi."

"Muy bien. Here you go. Pull on this rein when you want the horse to turn right. Pull left when you want it to go the other way. Pull straight back on both when you want the horse to stop. Alfonso demonstrated. Simple."

"I see, papi."

Luis proceeded to successfully walk the white mare in a circle to show Alfonso and brought Nieve to a stop in front of him.

"Vaya! You got it. Let’s go for a short ride together. But very slowly, you understand?"

Alfonso mounted Azabache, a spirited black Arabian mare with a mean disposition. Father and son rode side by side.

Keep your feet firm in the stirrups.

Don’t tense your legs.

You’re holding the reins too tight.

Soon Alfonso found little to correct. You want to go ahead by yourself a little bit?

Luis nodded and Alfonso pulled back on the reins. As the white mare passed, Azabache took a nasty rip at her hindquarters. Nieve fled at a gallop. Alarmed, Alfonso dug his spurs into the sides of the Arabian and gave chase. But the closer he got to the white mare, the more agitated Nieve became. Luis bounced unsteadily as the saddle drifted off center.

Having grasped the cause of Nieve’s fear, Alfonso pulled back violently on the reins, bringing the Arabian to a sharp stop. Unthreatened, Nieve slowed to a canter then a trot and finally to a walk a safe distance ahead. Luis’ feet had been jostled loose from the stirrups. He hung on tightly as the saddle listed badly. Alfonso dismounted and hurried to the white mare on foot.

Are you alright son?

"Si papi. Luis looked up sideways at his father as he clung to the pommel. I like riding horses with you."

Alfonso lifted his son from the mare and hugged him closely. He knew, even if Luis didn’t, that a few more strides and the saddle could have slipped completely under Nieve. Alfonso had neglected to account for the old mare’s trick of puffing out her stomach when he strapped the saddle so the cinch wouldn’t pinch her belly. His son would have fallen, perhaps been trampled by the hind hooves of the mare.

Alfonso tightened the saddle snuggly around Nieve, kicking her firmly in the stomach so she breathed out before giving the cinch a final yank. He adjusted the stirrups, mounted the white mare and pulled Luis up by one hand. Alfonso sat Luis on his lap and handed him the reins. He ran his fingers through his son’s coarse light brown hair and straightened the cowboy hat on his head. Let’s go home, he said.

Batista Forces Ambush Castro

By Rafael Montes

Diario de la Marina

December 1956 – SIERRA MAESTRA, ORIENTE – The revolutionary Fidel Castro landed at Playa de los Colorados, a swamp in his native province of Oriente on December 2nd, driven by the fervent intention of bringing down President Fulgencio Batista who five months earlier had decreed a general amnesty for political prisoners. Fidel and Raul Castro had been granted their freedom having served less than two years. Preoccupied that Batista had him targeted for death and fearing that his release had been a cynical precursor to his execution by a government goon in a blind alley of Havana, Fidel Castro had until recently disappeared into self-imposed exile in Mexico.

The rebel leader was to have disembarked at Niquero where supporters would have joined the insurrection. The plan had called for Castro and his armed force to take the small town and advance on the larger port of Manzanillo in coordinated action with other assaults. But the overloaded vessel Granma arrived two days too late and at the wrong destination.

On November 30th, the day Castro had been expected, veterans of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks joined Frank Pais to launch an armed strike against Batista in Santiago. Pais set flame to the Customs House and captured the police and the harbor headquarters before withdrawing from the panicked city. The following day Pais struck again, setting the harbor headquarters on fire. President Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and airlifted reinforcements to Santiago.

Three days after the overdue landing, a unit of the Cuban army under the command of Colonel Cruz Vidal ambushed Fidel’s incipient rebel force, betrayed by a guide who reported their whereabouts to the rural guards. Batista’s troops killed 24 of Castro’s men and splintered the group of rebels who scattered in confusion, leaving behind most of their weapons. The United Press correspondent in Cuba filed two reports that Batista’s soldiers had killed Fidel, the second claiming to have found Castro’s identification papers on his body as evidence. Batista denied that Fidel had ever left Mexico.

Two weeks after the ambush, the surviving rebels re-assembled in the Sierra Maestra, chief among them Fidel and Raul and the Argentine Ernesto Che Guevara. Fidel’s purported demise was grieved and celebrated upon the greatly exaggerated reports of his death.

Palma Soriano

Mirta took her engagement ring and her wedding band off the ring finger of her right hand and carefully slipped them over her pinky with a furtive kiss, crooking its tip to hold them tightly. She followed the small ritual faithfully and slowly closed her eyes in the front seat of the Thunderbird to best conjure up memories of her wedding day. A breeze flew in from the open window as Alfonso drove, washing over her face.

She had worn a dress of white with a long lace veil that trailed behind her like a creek. She was a virgin, a disciple of that revered and ridiculed sect of Cuban women who make love with a man for the first time on their wedding night and intend to share their bed only with that man for the rest of their natural lives.

The society column Santiago Social published her picture in her bridal gown above fawning coverage of congratulations for the happy couple. The wedding had more than sufficient photographers to preserve the day and a cake large enough to accommodate a naked girl inside to jump out on cue – which it didn’t – unlike the stories that reached her concerning Alfonso’s bachelor party.

Their courtship had been predictably unsteady. If they were hopelessly in love one day, she was ready to call the wedding off the next. But ultimately the attraction proved irresistible. On their wedding day, Alfonso promised to turn over a new leaf and Mirta honestly believed he would.

Prizes were baked inside the cake – keepsakes, rings, and onyx amulets. In the receiving line, Mirta accepted well wishes from people she had known all her life and from people she had never seen before or likely would again. They drank from silver flutes of champagne and held each other tightly as they moved to the stylish music of the society orchestra of the moment among a dance floor of elegant colored gowns and black and white tails.

Mom, I’m done with my ice cream, Bobby said from the back seat. The sticky Dixie cup dripped on Mirta’s hand as she tossed it out the window.

Oh no! Oh my God! Stop the car! I lost my ring!

Alfonso braked harshly and pulled off the road as quickly as he could.

My engagement ring! It fell off when I threw away Bobby’s ice cream.

"Por Dios! What were you doing?" he scolded. The engagement ring was a Candela family heirloom.

It slipped out. Help me look, quickly. All of you.

They were a few miles past the town of Palma Soriano on an incline that provided a scenic view of the rolling fields below.

Look for the Dixie cup, she asked. The ring should be nearby.

Be careful with the traffic, Alfonso told the two boys sharply. Stay off the road. Cars and laden trucks whizzed by on the two-lane highway. Luis found the ice cream cup two hundred yards from where they had stopped but no ring. Mirta walked back and forth from T-bird to Dixie cup, eyes fixed on the ground, praying to San Antonio, blessed locator of missing articles, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Close to the horizon Alfonso sighted a burning field discharging thick black smoke. Soldiers set torch to patches of sugar cane, which quickly lit, adding to the flames. They could hear the crackling violence of the fire wafting in the air. The soldiers were distant scurrying figures but their intentions were clear. The wind carried faint, unintelligible sounds that betrayed the emotion of the voices if not the clarity of the words.

Alfonso saw the family of five guajiros pushed out of their bohio, rifles herding them along. He could make out that the woman was pleading to the soldier as he crumpled her man to the ground with an efficient swing of the butt of his carbine. Mirta gasped, her search momentarily detained and called her two sons over. They had also been watching the scene.

The soldiers torched what was left of the sugar cane field and set fire to the bohio as Mirta’s gaze followed the woman, who had dropped to her knees, begging the soldiers, hands in prayer. The highest flames in the sky danced from the bohio as its thatched palm roof caught fire.

The soldiers took target on the farm animals. The crack of the guns reached Alfonso an instant after he saw the recoil of the rifle and the inalterable consequence of the bullets striking their mark. The rooster flapped its copper wings; Luis heard the shot a beat after the cock dropped lifeless to the ground. The sow threw its head up in the air in pain, the sound of the firing carbine whizzed by, Bobby saw the muddied pig collapse. Animal corpses littered the yard. The soldiers took the family away.

Get back in the car, Alfonso told the boys. I’m sorry sweetheart but we’re not going to find the ring.

Just a little longer.

"Amor, we’ve looked for close to an hour. We’re not going to find it." But they searched some more.

Mirta turned to Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes, praying as she stared at the dirt, trailed by Luis and Bobby. They slowly walked one last time surveying the side of the road.

Should we go on to Bayamo? she finally asked.

I don’t think there’s any danger, Alfonso replied. They must’ve been helping the rebels.

"Papi we want to go to the farm, said Luis, joined by Bobby. We don’t want to turn around."

"Esta bien, Mirta consented. But remember where we stopped. I want to come back here and look some more." Alfonso pressed down on the accelerator.

Upon their arrival at the farm, Alfonso walked to the foreman’s shack while Mirta arranged things in the house for their stay with the help of the boys. As mayoral, Manolo was a competent foreman who had proven his loyalty well beyond administering the work of the farm. He had been born in the shack he still lived in and had never strayed more than twenty miles from his birthplace. Alfonso related what they had witnessed on the road.

A group of rebels came here two days ago asking for food and supplies señor. Manolo handed Alfonso a cup of coffee and they stepped outside. Their leader was very interested in the house, asked if it was empty."

Our house?

"Si, señor. The rebels keep an eye on things; they have people who help them. Manolo sipped the coffee. The rural police don’t come around anymore. Neither do the soldiers."

I see. Did they go in the house, take anything?

"I thought it best to give them some eggs and a couple of