One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (62 page)

THE ARCHIVES HOLD THE CONTENTS
of the tiny purse Celia carried to the hospital. It is a leather envelope with a zipper, and held the essentials of her existence: two cigarette lighters, four pens (gifts of friends), a vial of pills (with label obscured), an emery board, and a slender white plastic hairbrush.

42. J
ANUARY II
, 1980
The Country Is in Mourning

ON JANUARY 11, 1980
, the newspaper
Juventud Rebelde
printed a 12:30 p.m. edition. Its headline: THE COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING. “At 11:50 a.m. today
la compañera
Celia Sánchez Manduley, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Deputy to the National Assembly, and Secretary to the Council of State, passed away.”

The Council of State had declared that flags would fly at half-mast from 4:00 p.m. of that day, the 11th, until 6:00 p.m. on January 12. The casket would be placed at the base of the José Martí monument in the Plaza of the Revolution at 8:00 p.m., the paper announced, “where workers and all people are welcome to visit. Tomorrow, at 3:00 p.m., it will be moved to the Pantheon of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.” Another headline read: “She lived for the Revolution, she lived and will live on in the Revolution.”

The next day, January 12, 1980,
Granma
, the official paper of the Communist Party, printed its masthead in black ink instead of the usual red ink.

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT OF THE 11TH
, people arrived from all parts of Cuba and filed past the casket at the foot of the Martí statue in Revolution Square. The newspaper carried a picture of a line so long that it winds in a huge oval. On the front page,
along with the headline “Celia Sánchez Is Dead” is a picture of her, in her uniform, taken on Pico Turquino. “The country is in mourning. She was one of the daughters most steadfast and loyal, a tireless fighter, a heroine of the Cuban Revolution,” and telegrams, on the inside pages, were printed that had been sent by people from Manzanillo, Pinar del Rio, and “heroic Santiago.” Messages continued to be printed throughout the week, along with editorials about her and poems. One poem described her as “a violet among the grasses.” This wildflower image would be the theme of Armando Hart’s funeral oration. He called her Cuba’s most authentic native flower. He did not assign a species, but the orchid and the mariposa are usually coupled with her image.

Partnership with a wildflower, especially the mariposa, in Cuba’s collective memory, suits her well. Brought up in the philosophy of José Martí, Celia is still the embodiment of his particular form of Cuban patriotism; and she is referred to as
martíana
. She was true to herself, and to her country. She was a tireless worker who toiled until the day she died, a Catholic, a revolutionary, a communist, a tenaciously loyal friend.

HER BODY LAY IN STATE
for nineteen hours while special groups traveled from Manzanillo, Santiago, and the Isle of Youth to participate in the funeral.
Juventud Rebelde
reported that during those nineteen hours millions of people had walked past the casket to honor “a revolutionary woman.”

Eduardo Sánchez, the young hairdresser she’d brought to Havana, went to see her body reluctantly because “I felt it couldn’t be true. I hadn’t done her makeup or anything. I was so upset, I couldn’t eat or bathe or anything.” But he had gone, and when Celia’s sisters saw him, they’d lowered the velvet rope and asked him to stay with the family who were in an adjoining room, and with Fidel. They all sat in rocking chairs throughout the night. “When you see any man cry, it is very impressive, but to see Fidel Castro cry. . . . I was on the other side of the coffin and Fidel was facing me. He was very red, like a pomegranate. And tears flowed down both sides of his face. I saw everyone who passed: priests, beggars, night people, from every sector of the population. Military—even members of the military would embrace the coffin. They didn’t leave the plaza. The people stayed. Everything was
quiet, and when the cortège left at three, it was a sea of humanity that you saw there. It was a human wave.”

TV channels were scheduled to carry a documentary film at 2:00 p.m. of the interview Celia made with Santiago Álvarez, describing her arrest at the La Rosa bar in Campechuela, and her escape into the
marabu
. And funeral coverage began at 3:00 p.m.

At 2:30, the cortège began to move from Revolution Square. The vanguard carried a huge straw wreath covered with hundreds of orchids with the words, on a satin ribbon, “For Celia from Fidel.” (In 2000 I attended a commemorative service on the 11th of January marking the 20th anniversary of her death. Old combatants carried in a huge round wreath of orchids, but the banner on the wreath read “Council of State,” which amounts to the same thing since Fidel was president, but was less intimate.) Her funeral procession was made up of five groups, and reflected the new revolutionary Cuba. In the vanguard were members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, ministers of state, followed by chiefs of other state organizations. Next were ex-soldiers and collaborators of the rebel army, and this group contained many of her women couriers, members of the underground, men and women from Manzanillo, Campechuela, Pilón, and from the Sierra Maestra.

The last three groups, those closest to the coffin, began with members of the rebel army—Faustino Perez was among this group. There were survivors of the
Granma
and of combat in the Sierra Maestra. The penultimate group was entirely political, and Jorge Risquet was in this group. It was followed by the honor guard, composed of Fidel, his brother Raúl, Juan Almeida, and Ramiro Valdes, leaders of the 26th of July Movement and the rebel army. Celia’s old friend from Media Luna and member of her Farmers’ Militia, Guillermo García, walked there, as did Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, leader of the Communist Party. The honor guard also included the former president of Cuba, Osvaldo Dorticos; the 26th of July Movement’s national director, Armando Hart; Sergio del Valle and Pedro Miret, for whom she’d stolen those maps for Fidel of the Cuban coastline; and her colleagues in the Politburo.

The honor guard and the casket were the last to leave the square. At 3:00 p.m., the procession moved out to the wide
empty streets skirting Nuevo Vedado; it went past her new garden and turned in the direction of the sea, of the archives, of Once, but stopped short of these to pass directly in front of her stained-glass workshop before entering the gates of Colón Cemetery. At 3:43 the casket was placed on the marble floor of the FAR (
Forces Armadas Revolucionarios
) monument in Colon Cemetery, as the “26th of July March” was played at a slow and mournful cadence. At 3:52, the body of Celia Sánchez Manduley was sealed in tomb No. 43, next to the tomb that holds Haydée Santamaria. Armando Hart began his eloquent and heartrending speech, in which he called Celia Fidel’s “alter ego”—his trusted
compañera
, his second self.

EUGENIA ALSO STOOD INSIDE
the monument along with members of the family, and with Fidel. They gathered around Celia’s coffin. To her amazement, she saw tears fall from Fidel’s lowered head and splash on the floor. There were no sobs, just huge tears falling to the stone floor in an outpouring of grief. She was shocked. “Nobody dared look at him.”

Eduardo Sánchez recalls this: “The nightmare started when she died. I felt so bad that I went home and made a big thermos of coffee. I asked a friend to take me out of there. We’d visit people, and I’d ask them to replenish the coffee. I walked the Malecon, crying, and saying I didn’t want to go home. Then I drowned all that in work. I kept the storeroom at Verano better than I ever had, did my best work ever, and did it in honor of Celia.”

IN 1982, TWO YEARS AFTER CELIA’S DEATH
, Fidel contacted Dolly Gómez and Mario Giróna to ask them to design an orchid garden in her honor.

That year, Teresa Lamoru Preval got married. “My brother and I stayed at Once after Celia’s death because we were the only unmarried ones. He got married in 1980, and I in 1982.” Fidel made all the arrangements for their two weddings, just as Celia would have done. “I got married in Ana Irma’s house. Cuco, Celia’s tailor, who made all our clothes, made my wedding dress. I had him make my daughter’s
quinceanera
dress.”

After two years of living in her husband’s apartment, Eugenia asked Fidel if he would help her find a place to live. She felt
that Celia would not have wanted her to live in that miserable room with no running water forever. “She wanted me to live a normal life, didn’t want to punish me. Celia solved everyone’s problems, and she would have gotten around to solving mine, too.” Fidel replied with a note. He wrote: “First thing, don’t pick a mansion. And above all, put the house in your name, not your husband’s.” But Eugenia says, “I didn’t understand it was good advice. I was still in school. My husband was working. He had to pay the rent.” So she informed Fidel of her opinion on the matter, and he didn’t budge from those conditions. Only then did Eugenia grasp that the check she got every month, part of a scholarship to continue her education, could be the basis of budgeting; she could put the lease in her own name and pay rent to the state, from her monthly student’s stipend. “My husband was very upset. He couldn’t understand it. So I would just say, ‘These are Fidel’s orders.’” She and Victor divorced not long after that, and Eugenia raised her two sons in that apartment, of which she is now the owner.

IN 1996, FLÁVIA WENT TO MIAMI
. “I woke up one night and my father was on my mind. I was reminded of the unification he taught us to practice, and that I hadn’t seen Chela for thirty-three years. Only she, Silvia, and myself were still alive then. And I decided I would go and see her. Chela was eighty and her husband eighty-four.”

Flávia spent about a month in Miami and the trip went as well as can be expected, considering the fact that no one had changed their politics. According to Pedro, “One day she told me, ‘I am a Fidelista, a Raúlista, and an Internationalista.’ I didn’t know what to say.”

Although Flávia enjoyed being with her sister, she saw no point in staying in Miami. What Miami had to offer was not enough. She missed Cuba. “I’ve complied with all my duties of the Revolution,” she declared. Then she tried to explain what she’d meant by this: “I am not a militant member of the party. I believe in God. I believe in the spirit of my father. And I can die and say that I was there at the beginning [of the Revolution].” Then, laughing, she added, “I will never step out of Cuba again.”

IN HAVANA, CELIA’S LEGACY
is in her buildings and projects, such as Coppelia, the Cohiba cigar factory El Laguito, the archives, Lenin Park, vegetable gardens, and in the people who grew up in the capital, brought there for an education, and who stayed to go on to lead successful lives, and never looked back. If Celia has a successor, he is the historian of the city of Havana, Eusebio Leal, whom she encouraged personally. He has created large projects funded by the state, sanctioned by Fidel, projects that enhance the city, generate income, create jobs, and celebrate Cuba.

The painter Asger Jorn died in 1973, and the Danish government decided it was important to preserve the large group of murals he made in the Office of Historical Affairs in 1968. Three years, from 2006 to 2009, were spent restoring them, including the scene painted by Celia.

In the years following Celia’s death, special medals and commemorative stamps were issued with her image; her portrait is the watermark on several pieces of the country’s currency; a Spanish ballet was named for her; her name is on schools, hospitals, and various community centers, from Cuba to Zimbabwe. In recent years, the house in Media Luna where she was born was declared a national monument. The house in Pilón, badly damaged by the 2011 hurricane, is in the process of restoration. Wood to rebuild the house is being seasoned.

In Manzanillo, her image dominates Revolution Plaza in an extravagant tableau, mostly made of shining steel, of the landing of the
Granma
, a powerful reminder of her role in the Revolution. Yet there is another monument, located on the upper end of Caridad Street. This old thoroughfare, once a steep, two-way street, has been converted into a wide set of steps paved in dark red terracotta. Cross streets intersect it, functioning as wide landings, as the steps climb upward. On each landing, the buildings are covered in murals made of ceramic tiles that glitter in the sunlight. At the bottom, the murals feature palm trees against a clear blue sky, but as you climb higher, the murals are of fields of sunflowers. Cubans place sunflowers on the altar of the Caridad del Cobre Virgin, and this mural casts Celia Sánchez in the same manner. White doves hover and swarm in a field of sunflowers. At the top of this strange picture, Celia’s head, sculpted in terracotta, emerges. It is as if she’s wearing a dress, stiff and enormous, like the jeweled dress worn by the Caridad Virgin. The monument is two-sided and faces the Sierra Maestra in the east, the sea, and Havana to the west. In a tradition I find fitting both in its beauty and its irony, people of Manzanillo commonly use the monument as a marriage altar.

Acknowledgments

A few close friends gave me good advice and generously shared their expertise: film-editors Thom Noble and Antonia von Drimmelen; television producer Lucy Scott; Cuba expert Sandra Levinson; fellow writer Corey Sabourin; historian Anne Hayes; graphic designer Lawrence Wolfson; architect Gabriel Feld and psychoanalyst Nellie Thompson, who assisted me in many different ways.

In the book world, I have been loyally supported by literary agents Charlotte Sheedy and Meredith Kaffel; and senior editor at Rizzoli, David Morton who have provided encouragement to me personally every step of the way. As the project expanded, they were joined by Jess Taylor, a master at storytelling. At Monthly Review, I’d particularly like to thank John Simon for his enthusiasm for the book. Michael Yates, Martin Paddio, and Scott Borchert have gracefully guided the manuscript to publication.