"History will absolve me" — Fidel Castro, 1953
After visiting the dramatic memorials to Carlos Manuel Cespedes, and Jose Marti we spent the afternoon wandering the pebbled streets of Santiago de Cuba. Once the capital, and now the second largest city in Cuba, Santiago de Cuba is known as "Ciudad Heroe" (Heroic City).
Carlos Cespedes, "The Father of the country," is credited with starting the first war of independence from Spain. Jose Marti, who is buried here, was a Cuban intellectual and writer turned revolutionary who was martyred in his attempt to free Cuba from American domination during the 1880s. Known as the "spiritual leader of the Cuban people" his plaster likeness is displayed in front of every Cuban school, and he is undoubtedly the intellectual author of Castro's revolution.
Of the memorials to Castro himself, perhaps the most poignant is a squat masonry structure now used as a primary school. The front of the building is pockmarked with bullet holes from a machinegun burst fired on the 26th of July 1953. The intended target was Fidel Castro and the 120 armed men attempting to seize what was then the military barracks. The attack was a disaster. Six of the rebels were killed on the spot and 55 others were captured and executed. Castro, then a 27-year-old lawyer, was captured and brought to trial several days later. He prepared his own defence and announced to the court, and to the world, that "History will absolve me." And so began the "Movimiento 26 de Julio."
We had been longer than planned in Santiago de Cuba and by the time our bus ground its way up the steep switchbacks to La Gran Piedra Hotel the sun was already low in the sky. From our cabana, perched 1,000 metres above sea level on Cuba's largest ridge, I followed a trail up to the summit to watch the sunset. At the top, a ladder led to a small lookout where I met a middle aged Cuban man, a wood carver, who was waiting hopefully for a tourist to buy one of his creations. I was the only one there that evening, he spoke good English and when he learned I was from Canada we talked until sunset. He had worked for an export company until the collapse of the Soviet trading block in 1989 and was now one of Cuba's slowly emerging free market entrepreneurs.
Off to our west the mountains of the Sierra Maestra were silhouetted against a darkening yellow-orange sky. Those same steep ridges, covered with dense, often impenetrable tropical vegetation that provided cover for Castro's rebel army, were the site of fierce battles during the revolutionary struggles in the 1950s. To the east the last rays of the sun reflected off Guantanomo Bay, the American naval base and prison camp that symbolizes Cuba’s struggle to survive decades of economic blockade. As we talked, the hands of the Cuban wood carver were busy with a long strand of greenery and as I turned to leave he presented me with the palm-leaf cricket he had just made.
"A present for you," he said. "Canada is Cuba's friend."
I gave him the little Canada flag pin from my hat and headed back down the trail.
It has been more than 40 years since the small yacht "Granma" ran aground in the marshes of Los Colorados in 1956 and a handful of men, forced to abandon most of their equipment, waded ashore with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. They faced an attack by Batista's Cuban army and only 12 survived to reach the cover of the Sierra Maestra mountains. But over the next two years this small hunger-stricken lot, armed with only a few rifles, grew into a populist revolutionary force that, on Jan. 1, 1959, made a triumphal entry into Havana and overthrew the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
With the arrival of Castro, Batista and his family fled to the Dominican Republic, while thousands of wealthy Cubans, the sugar barons and landlords who controlled 75 per cent of Cuba's economy, ultimately left for the United States. Today over a million Cuban exiles live in Florida, and Miami is home to more Cubans than any city other than Havana.
It is impossible to travel in Cuba without being reminded of the turbulent events that followed Castro’s take over. On our way to Playa Larga we passed the sugar refinery where Castro set up his command post during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Farther on we stopped for lunch and entertainment at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the "Bahia de Cochinos" beach where on April 17, 1961, 1,500 CIA-financed anti-Castro mercenaries landed in a botched invasion attempt that lasted just 72 hours. Sitting here now, sipping a cool beer, listening to the Cuban band belt out a tribute to Che Guevara, it’s hard to imagine that 40 years ago the battle that raged on this beach led to the death of about 200 Americans and the capture of over a thousand others.
Following the Bay of Pigs debacle an embarrassed Kennedy administration paid a ransom for the prisoners’ release, but every country in the Western Hemisphere, except Canada and Mexico, broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Then in October 1962 American spy planes discovered Soviet missile launching pads on Cuban soil, less than 200 km off the coast of Florida. Cuba prepared for another invasion and the world held its breath while Kennedy and Khruschev faced off on the brink of nuclear war.
At La Guira National Park we walked along nature trails overhung by tropical vegetation to the cave complex where Che Guevara set up his headquarters during the Missile Crisis. Inside the caves a large central gallery, used as a commissary, is connected to a maze of passageways leading to openings that must have been observation points and gun emplacements. Sitting down to a picnic lunch in the serene beauty of Cueva de los Portales I tried to imagine the fear and tension that must have gripped this place 40 years ago.
A deal was cut. The missiles were removed and Kennedy, in return, promised not to invade Cuba. But he imposed a total trade embargo, forcing Castro completely into the Soviet block. With economic assistance from the Soviet Union, Cuba prospered and Castro’s government made dramatic social changes resulting in better health and education.
But with the collapse of socialist regimes from 1989 onward the Cuban economy was suddenly cut in half and Castro's socialist experiment seemed doomed. To speed things up, President Bush signed the Torricelli Act, a package of draconian laws designed to deal the coup de gras to Communist Cuba.
The effects of the blockade on Cuban life are tragically obvious, but so too are the positive social reforms introduced since the revolution. Faced with skyrocketing import costs and shortages of almost everything Castro, in 1989, introduced rationing of consumer goods, fuel, and electricity. I poked in to several of the austere government food markets where heavily subsidized staple items listed in the ration booklets can be bought with Cuban pesos. Prices are low but there is little choice and the ration book imposes limits on how much can be bought – usually not enough to make it through the month. For many Cubans, the quest for affordable food has become an obsession. Ironically, the well stocked dollar stores, where tourists can buy almost anything, including Coca Cola, are never far away, but they are beyond the reach of the Cuban people.
Despite the blockade health care and education continue to be the revolution's greatest successes. On one of our hikes along a remote section of the Escambray Ridge we stopped to buy some persimmons from a local farmer. Discovering we were from Canada his face lit up and he took out a picture of his daughter. A beautiful young woman sitting at the desk of her Havana University dorm where she is enrolled as a medical student.
Later that day I poked into a tiny tin-roofed rural school. While the kids played ball in the yard the teacher proudly showed me the TV, video, and computer. Since the ouster of Batista in 1959 illiteracy has dropped from 40 per cent to 4 per cent and health, measured in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy, is comparable to that in Canada.
So has history absolved Castro? It depends on who you ask. To the Cuban exiles he is a misguided Communist ideologue, a criminal who robbed them of their homeland and turned it into a prison. To thousands of others he is a hero, a saviour who freed the country from the bondage of internal corruption and foreign domination and returned Cuba to the people. Neither side can honestly accuse him of corruption or personal gain. But the final chapter in the history of Castro's Cuba has still to be written. Unfortunately, history is often written by the winner, and Cuba's David and Goliath struggle with the United States is still not over.
