One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (61 page)

Celia chose Santiago as the place to make her last public appearance. She traveled there November 30, 1979, for the anniversary of Frank’s great uprising, and pinned medals on the old combatants, knowing they wanted to see her one last time. (
Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos
)

CELIA CHOSE SANTIAGO
as the place to make her last public appearance. She traveled there November 30, for the anniversary of Frank’s great battle, and pinned medals on the old combatants, knowing they wanted to see her one more time.

At the Nico Lopez School, she very nearly finished her coursework, but was unable to attend classes in December, or take exams, and had two subjects pending. She didn’t graduate, but except for those two exams, she’d completed her degree. Ochoa suggested to the director that they waive those last exams and award her a diploma. “But it was never done. She was already in very poor health.”

In December, she still managed to spur on a new project that had been several years in the making. She’d noticed that Cubans
were not eating enough vegetables, and decided to grow more varieties in Cuba. Seeds were purchased from Holland and other countries, and planted in fields not far from the palace. Organic gardens there still actively produce vegetables, rimmed by herbs and flowers—cosmos and marigolds—to attract insects. A form of this garden has been duplicated behind nearly every school, military post, and police station since Celia’s death.

IN RESEARCHING THIS BOOK
I listened to stories and was given countless examples of Celia’s making decisions for Fidel. Suppliers of these accounts ranged from soldiers to architects to staff members and family, including the adopted children. Tony recalled that Fidel would be resting, and somebody would come with a problem, and Celia would tell them how to solve it. “Are you sure that’s what I’m supposed to do?” the person would ask, and Tony claims that she’d say, “Yes. Do it just as I’ve told you.” And they’d better do it that way, Tony added, because she and Fidel discussed everything.

It had been this way since the Sierra Maestra. Their inter-changeability certainly started there, when Fidel would tell her to please go down the mountain and dig trenches or brief the men what to do while he dealt with planning a battle. Now, in Havana, he’d tell her: Celia, I need some sleep, take care of everything. At her death, this exchange of roles took some by surprise. It is just that some people forgot that it was the way the two of them dealt with life.

At the end of her life, it came as a surprise to many that Fidel took care of everything that was hers. “They felt they had the right to this close relationship,” Raysa Bofill said of Fidel and Celia. “The fact is that he could make decisions for her. They would discuss things between themselves, and that was that.” Nobody else was privy to what they were thinking. And that is how it played out at the end. “At her death, we knew nothing. Fidel kept her illness from us,” Alicia Otazo stated bitterly.

As Christmas approached, Celia concerned herself with everyone’s annual holiday. She wanted Flávia to take her daughters to Guama. She didn’t really want to go, but Flávia and Griselda went to the resort, and the girls planned to join them there. Alicia and Elena went to Once to see Celia on December 22. “She was
in a room at the back of the house. You entered it from one of the halls. She had an intravenous tube in her clavicle and she had on a sports suit of light wool she liked very much. She had two of these, one blue and one green, and was wearing the green one that day, I think. My mother and Griselda were in Guama only because Celia wanted them to go, so the two of us were alone when we went to see Celia at Once.” Celia encouraged the girls to leave for Guama the following day. “Raúl came in. We were surprised by this. Raúl leaned down to give her a kiss. She looked up at him and said, ‘Be careful, you’ll catch something.’ I will remember this forever. The last time I heard her voice,” Alicia said. “My sister and I were embarrassed to stay there any longer, with Raúl in the room. We thought they needed to say something privately. We left out of respect for them.” It would be Celia’s bitter humor that stuck with Alicia.

On that day, or the next, Eugenia went to see Celia. “We knew she was ill, but not terminal, so I said, ‘Godmother, I am going to marry Victor.’” This is the same Victor that Celia had rejected as a bad husband for Eugenia. Celia replied, “If you are going to marry Victor, then let him find a house for you because I’m not going to find you one.” Eugenia had never actually been to Victor’s apartment, but knew he had one. Celia asked her when the wedding was going to take place, and “I gave her the date. I told her the 29th of December, 1979.” That was a week away. “So you’ve picked the date,” was all Celia could answer.

Eugenia feels sure that, by mentioning the house, or lack of one, Celia still thought she could forestall the marriage. During the following week, Ernestina started to make Eugenia’s wedding arrangements, and Eugenia recalls going to Once every day. “Celia had switched bedrooms, and her room was next to mine. I was studying at the teachers’ college in Guines, but came home every day.” Celia discussed Eugenia’s wedding plans with Fidel, although Eugenia says, “Fidel came and I told him. He also asked me if I had a place to live. I said yes. He said, ‘Be sure to send me an invitation. I’ll come.’”

During that week, Celia was very unwell. She would try to get up, but soon go back to bed. Eugenia saw how ill she was and was filled with remorse; she decided to postpone her wedding. “I told Fidel, and he advised me not to. He said, ‘The invitations have
been sent out. What are you going to tell people? What can be the reason to postpone your wedding? The enemy can’t know that she is sick.’” (I asked if he meant the CIA, and she confirmed that it did.) “Fidel told me: You must go ahead and get married. This is the only thing I have to give you.” And he pulled a few hundred dollars from his pocket and handed it to her. Then he went in to see Celia while his bodyguard, Pepin Naranjo, followed Eugenia into the kitchen, asked her, “Where are you going to live?” Pepin soon rejoined Fidel in Celia’s room, and Eugenia pressed her ear to the door.

Eugenia continued: “They had all been speaking softly, but I wanted to know what they were saying, and tried to hear. I couldn’t, but found out from Migdalia what happened. Celia asked Fidel why he’d given me money because she was going to give me a week at the Marazul Hotel as a wedding gift. Fidel had replied: ‘Don’t worry; she can spend it on whatever she wants.’ Then Fidel said that he wanted me to spend my honeymoon at the Hotel Riviera, and it sounded like an afterthought.”

Sometime that week, Celia recovered a little. She was able to move around. She met with some of her friends, talked to the Nico Lopez students who got together in the back apartment schoolroom. She read, went over some papers while reclining on the living room couch. Then she had a relapse and decided to go to the hospital. She switched on a lamp that lit the balcony. This was a signal, only done when there was an emergency, alerting the guards outside that they should bring a car to the door. She walked downstairs, told them to take her to Calixto García Hospital. An x-ray was taken and read before she was transferred to the small clinic within the palace, but soon she felt well enough to return to Once. After that, a member of the family stayed in her bedroom at all times, and Celia’s sisters returned to Havana. It was during this time that Celia asked Eugenia to tell her all her wedding plans. Eugenia says that she felt miserable, but described them, and “Celia told me that she’d didn’t want to see me in a veil. I’d like you to wear your hair loose, held by some combs, and put flowers in your hair. And wear a white dress.” Then they set about finding a design that they liked, and sent for Cuco. “All this was happening within a week,” Eugenia reminded me.

ON THE AFTERNOON OF THE WEDDING
, Fidel came to tell Eugenia he couldn’t attend. He had to be somewhere at eight. “I was packing my suitcase. I cried a lot. I felt terrible. Fidel tried to console me. ‘How can you be crying now? Are you afraid of the man? You’ve been going steady for four years.’ And I said, ‘I’m crying because my godmother is so ill.’ And he told me not to worry, and to remember that the enemy cannot find out that she is ill.”

The ceremony took place at 8:30 p.m., only a few doors away. It was photographed by Raúl Corrales, at Celia’s request. Everybody waited hoping Fidel would come, but he didn’t, so they all continued on to a city park nearby, between 8th and 10th on the Malecón, for a buffet supper arranged by Ernestina, and attended by Eugenia and Victor’s colleagues and school friends. Eugenia took her wedding bouquet and placed it at the foot of José Antonio Mella’s statue, across from the steps of the university (Eugenia’s idea, not one of Celia’s). After the reception in the park, they went, by Fidel’s arrangement, to a formal sit-down dinner, held at a diplomat’s house, where two or three more photographers were present.

At 4:00 a.m., the couple was ready to leave. “In spite of all the attention I received,” Eugenia admits, “I was a very independent person and I had asked my boyfriend to find a hotel for us. We chose the Capri. When we finished signing our papers, which were witnessed by Ana Irma before all the people of the immediate family, Victor and I received an order from the commander in chief.” Fidel had learned about the last-minute switch to the Capri, and had their luggage removed from the Capri and sent to the Riviera. She didn’t realize that Fidel picked the Riviera because it was so much closer to Once. “I wanted to go see Celia, so she could see me in my wedding dress, but Dr. Selman said no. It would be too emotional. So we left for the Riviera. Our luggage was there waiting for us.”

During the following week, Eugenia went to visit Celia every day. Ernestina and Ana Irma had filled her in on the wedding details. “She knew everything about the wedding. She told me that I had looked just the way she wanted, with my hair loose, with combs. She knew that Victor had worn a blue tee-shirt under his jacket. She’d liked that. . . . I couldn’t keep from crying. Celia
just looked at me and said, ‘How long is it going to take for us to get the photos?’”

On her honeymoon, Eugenia was studying for an exam and attending classes every day; she became ill. “Looking back, it was probably from tension.” And disappointment: Victor’s apartment was a basement room next to a garage. “Like a janitor’s room. Cars parked outside the door. It was horrible.” I asked if she thought Celia had known where the apartment was. Eugenia thought a moment or two and said, “Celia would have known. She knew everything.” There was no running water; Eugenia had to draw water in a pail and carry it to the apartment. Eugenia hadn’t come very far from the days of her childhood, when she’d carried water in the Sierra Maestra.

ON JANUARY 4, 1980
, Celia went to the clinic in the palace, where she died on January 11. Alicia Otazo remembers: “Two guards took her. When they were carrying her out—she was taken in a chair—she told Flávia to remember to bring her slippers. These were pink chenille slippers she’d put aside for the hospital.” During her final week there, she ordered her loyal photographer, Raúl Corrales, to take pictures of the plants in the new garden nearby. He told me that she wanted photographs of plants growing. It had been difficult, but he had done the best he could to carry out this poignant request. He’d photograph the young seedlings, spend hours developing the negatives and making prints. He did this every night that week and would take prints to her in the morning, then leave and start all over again—until she died. Celia kept busy with at least one other project during that final week. She selected marble to be installed in some of the floors at the Convention Palace, and ordered some new landscaping. That is how she died: watching plants grow, adding finishing touches to her country’s newest piece of architecture.

ALL THE FAMILY MEMBERS
were with her except the children. In Celia’s delirium, she called out the names of Flávia’s daughters and of Sergio, Silvia’s son, who was in Angola. On January 6, the doctors decreased the sedation so she could speak to the family. “We saw her for a moment. She couldn’t speak well,” Alicia says. Not everyone could fit into the room, so they went in two groups:
her brothers and sisters, her cousin Miriam Manduley, Ernestina and Ana Irma, and Flávia’s daughters. “It was a Friday, and she died the following Friday.”

A day or two later, everyone assembled at Once. Fidel had asked them to be there, Alicia says, to tell the family the truth. “He said it was his responsibility that none of us knew that she was dying of cancer. Our feelings were very strong, because no one could understand what was the matter with her. A close person is in denial. We couldn’t think that she would die.”

SINCE THAT TIME
, Fidel has pained them all by not speaking publicly about Celia after her death, keeping her memory for himself. “Fidel was a jealous widow,” Alicia remarks. “He was a possessive husband. He compartmentalized all her illness for himself. He kept the family from knowing until three days before her death.”