Through August and well into September and October, Ambassador Smith kept up his denunciation of Castro and the rebels, imploring his bosses to end the military embargo and thereby allow Batista to face the rebels with gloves off. Failure to act promptly, he said in late September, would only invite “chaos and loss of U.S. property and life.”1 There were at least two problems with this argument. First, the lamentable state of the Cuban government’s battle against the Castro insurgency could not be attributed to a disadvantage in weaponry; the army faltered thanks to a combination of incompetence and demoralization in the ranks and to Batista’s unpopularity (never mind the rebels’ surprising military prowess). Second, the rebels’ descent from the Sierra Maestra into the plains of Oriente Province had occasioned no episodes of violence against civilians. The rebels wanted to tax local profits not appropriate U.S. property. In fact, the rebels retained stable working relations with businesses throughout Oriente Province.
On November 3, 1958, the Cuban people went to the polls to elect a president to succeed Fulgencio Batista. The election took place in a climate of suspended constitutional guarantees and voter intimidation, some of it carried out openly by Castro’s rebels, some of it covertly by Batista’s army. In Oriente and Las Villas Provinces, under partial rebel rule, Castro had announced that individuals who went to the polls would be treated like criminals. Agents of the July 26 Movement engaged in sabotage throughout the country, cutting electrical lines, setting cane fields ablaze, littering highways with nails. To good effect, apparently. In Oriente and Las Villas, an estimated 80 percent of eligible voters stayed away. Elsewhere the turnout was not much higher, with some estimates putting the national tally of eligible voters at a mere 30 percent. In advance of the voting, the Batista government produced a counterfeit set of returns in favor of its candidate, Andrés Rivero Agüero, who “defeated” former president Ramón Grau (Auténtico) and Carlos Márquez Sterling (Free People’s Party), by an improbable 70 percent to roughly 15 percent and 12 percent, respectively. The electoral fraud was not lost on anyone, including the U.S. State Department, which refused to honor the results.2
In early November, anticipating the collapse of Batista’s army, Castro warned his lieutenants to beware of a military coup, which would mean the end of the Cuban Revolution. In the event of a coup, he told his commanders, the rebels must seal off Oriente to prevent weapons from getting out. Meanwhile, with each successive victory and expansion of the Liberated Territory, Castro took on more of the trappings and function of a chief executive. In early December, he told the citizens of Oriente that they should not worry about where their next meal would come from. “You will have what you need,” he said. He was particularly concerned that the people not be idle, promising that they would soon be able to “invest their time in work useful to society.”
On November 9, Castro contacted Cantillo again, proposing to release captured Cuban Army officer Nelson Carrasco Artiles in exchange for jailed Army Major Enrique Borbonet, imprisoned on the Isle of Pines for allegedly participating in a coup attempt. Learning there would be no deal, Castro released Carrasco anyway. “The General Staff disgusts me,” he said. Later that month, Gustavo Arcos, a Movement organizer in Las Villas, reported receiving queries from Cantillo and Archbishop Pérez Serantes about whether Castro could accept a provisional government different from the one he had proposed if Batista resigned. There is no record of Castro’s response, but he had always insisted that the rebels would not lay down their arms until Manuel Urrutia Lleó, a federal judge who had upheld the rebels’ right to protest back in 1957, occupied the provisional presidency.3
A few days later, Castro gathered together the men and women under his command and set out on what would become a seven-week march on Santiago. The guerrillas were as outgunned as ever, but few besides the U.S. ambassador would have bet against them by this time. Castro and his forces spent the first ten days of the counteroffensive winding uncontested through the little towns that lay between their old home atop the Sierra Maestra and the plains of the Cauto River delta to the north. On November 20, just outside the town of Guisa, the rebels’ procession halted, when one of their companies engaged a rural guard patrol just after 8:30 a.m. By 10:30 that morning, the air over Guisa buzzed with spotter planes and bombers. By late afternoon, the army’s heavy artillery arrived, with army and rebel batteries transforming the once quiet town into a shooting gallery. In the exchange of gunfire, the rebels destroyed a light tank, forcing the government to retreat. For the next several days an uneasy quiet settled over the region as the rebels hastily entrenched.
On November 26, the army returned with more spotters, more bombers, more light tanks. Again, the rebels fought the enemy to a standoff. Again, the army retreated, returning the next day with heavier (Sherman) tanks and still more airpower. After yet another standoff, the army paused for a day to marshal its resources, unleashing a two-day assault on November 29–30, consisting of two companies, four battalions, and fierce aerial bombardment. The rebel lines held, and the army retreated, effectively marking the beginning of the end of the battle for Oriente. Over the course of the next month, the rebels marched inexorably on Santiago, surrounding and taking the towns along the way. The fighting remained hotly contested through the end of the year. But the odds were now overwhelmingly in Castro’s favor, with the question flipped: how long could Batista’s forces hold out?
U.S. officials regarded these developments with alarm. Smith became increasingly desperate, trafficking in ludicrous reports that Castro suffered from a “syphilitic inheritance” and was bent only on destruction. Meanwhile, officials at the U.S. State Department and CIA reached out to Cantillo, Archbishop Pérez Serantes, and others in a last-ditch attempt to forestall the inevitable.4 In mid-December, Washington tried a more direct approach, sending William D. Pawley, former U.S. ambassador to Peru and Brazil, to Havana to offer Batista a way out. The idea for Pawley’s mission originated in a meeting in Miami late the previous month, attended by, among others, William Pennell Snow, deputy assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs at the State Department and J. C. King, chief of the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA Directorate of Plans. Everyone in attendance agreed that something must be done to stop Castro, Pawley later remembered. “I told them that we should . . . see if we can go down there to get Batista to capitulate to a caretaker government unfriendly to him, but satisfactory to us, whom we could immediately recognize and give military assistance to in order that Fidel Castro not come to power.”
Pawley had spent some of his childhood in Cuba, later returning there as a business executive. He was friends with President Eisenhower and the powerful Dulles brothers, Foster and Allen, secretary of state and CIA director, respectively. In early December, Pawley presented his plan to Eisenhower and Foster Dulles, both of whom signed off on it. Foster Dulles was sick at this time, and his stand-in, Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter, insisted that Pawley proceed to Cuba as an “independent citizen” rather than as a representative of the U.S. government. Ambassador Smith was not informed of the initiative and was recalled to Washington to clear the way for Pawley, who arrived in Havana on December 7. Two days later, he presented Batista with the following deal: in exchange for his stepping down and relinquishing power to a caretaker government, he could retire to Daytona Beach, Florida, with his friends and former colleagues free from reprisals for at least eighteen months. Batista was many things, but stupid he was not. He refused to entertain a solution not officially sanctioned by the United States government.5
A few years later, in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA Chief King told a Board of Inquiry that the Pawley mission was one of two operations conducted by the agency in late 1958 designed to prevent Castro from coming to power. The other transpired just a few weeks before, when King’s agents approached Justo Carillo, founder of the Montecristi Group, about orchestrating a coup led by army Colonel Ramón Barquín.6 By contrast to Batista and his U.S. patrons, most Cuban officers recognized that there could be no solution to the conflict at this stage that did not involve the rebel leader. This included General Cantillo and Castro’s old nemesis Chaviano, who reached out to Castro via intermediaries toward the end of the month. Would Castro be willing to partake in a civil-military junta, they wanted to know, combining forces with the jailed officers Barquín and Borbonet, along with Urrutia and two other civilian leaders to be chosen by Castro himself. After taking control of Oriente, the junta would march on the Cuban capital and install Urrutia at the head of a provisional government. In exchange, the mutineers wanted only that Chaviano and other former Batista stalwarts be allowed to leave the country. The U.S. embassy was fully on board, Castro was informed, and was prepared to recognize the junta. Time was short, the messenger emphasized. The Revolutionary Directory was more bent than ever on assassinating Batista and seizing control of Cuba. Batista’s chief of staff, Francisco Tabernilla, was rumored to be contemplating a coup of his own.7
A U.S. government endorsement was not the key to Castro’s heart. Nor was he willing to grant immunity to perpetrators of the crimes that had rent Cuba since Batista’s return to power. On Christmas Eve, Carlos Franqui responded to this overture on behalf of the National Directorate of the July 26 Movement. Any North American–supported junta was unacceptable to the rebels, he said. The following day Castro reiterated Franqui’s rejection in a note to the emissary. If Cantillo was serious about seeking an end to the violence, he should come see Castro in person.8 Cantillo agreed, with word arriving the next day that Cantillo would be contacting the rebel leader through a priest. By Christmas 1958, Castro could taste victory. For the first time since returning to Cuba, he visited the family home in Birán, accompanied by his brother Raúl and Celia Sánchez.9 Ramón Castro, the eldest son, and their mother, Lina, prepared a festive Christmas dinner, complete with a twenty-pound roast turkey, a Castro favorite.
The closer victory approached, the more determined Castro became not to let it slip away. As impressed as he was by Guevara’s and Cienfuegos’s success in central Cuba, he was astounded to hear that Guevara was sharing command of Las Villas with members of the Revolutionary Directory, thus compromising his “authority, prestige, and power.” The war was “won, the enemy in free fall,” he wrote Guevara on the day after Christmas. “In Oriente we have ten thousand troops surrounded. Those in Camagüey have no escape.” This victory was a result of one thing and one thing only, Castro said: “Our work.” It made no sense at this point to give a leg-up to individuals and groups whose ambitions the Movement was all too aware of—and who were sure to be a source of difficulties down the road.10
With this problem in mind, Castro made some strategic and tactical adjustments. He established a National Executive with himself, Pérez, Franqui, and Aldo Santamaría (Haydée’s and Abel’s brother) in charge. The leaders had rethought the role of a general strike. At the beginning of the guerrilla war, with the rebels confined to a remote section of the Sierra Maestra, Castro and his lieutenants regarded the general strike as decisive and military operation as symbolic—as simply a sign that the spirit of the Mambises lived on. Now, with the Cuban Army disintegrating and the rebels occupying major swaths of the country, the military operation had become the focal point and the general strike a means of consolidating a military victory.
The previous February, Castro had told the visiting senators Nené Ramírez and Lalo Roca that he and other members of the July 26 Movement would not serve in a provisional government at the triumph of the Revolution. They would help oversee honest elections and the restoration of the 1940 Constitution, then constitute a new political party devoted to revolutionary reforms. Castro repeated this pledge to Andrew St. George of Look magazine that same month in an interview designed for a U.S. audience. By the end of the year, with victory in sight, and with the U.S.-sponsored competition circling like vultures, Castro altered his message. The July 26 Movement would remain in power after the triumph of the Revolution. In the face of recent developments, surrendering power seemed both modest and naive. “The National Executive has agreed that the provisional government will be a revolutionary government,” Castro announced. Members of the Movement would head government agencies. Limiting the rebels’ role in a transitional government would mean “wasting a unique opportunity to realize the Revolution for which we have fought so hard.”
Was this Castro’s plan all along? To seize power and never let it go? Maybe. It is easy to claim that power is not your aim when power is out of your grasp. But there was plenty of evidence by this time that a change was called for. The machinations of the Liberation Junta did not cease with the Movement’s denunciation of the Miami Pact the previous year. The United States government seemed more determined than ever to ensure Castro’s demise, and he was justified to wonder just who among his interlocutors was operating in good faith. Not Batista, not the U.S. government, not the former government officials, ministers, and rival opposition groups conspiring in Miami, not supposed allies like the Revolutionary Directorate, not the ostensibly honorable military officials who had their own designs on the reins of power now that Batista’s end seemed nigh. Castro did not say the rebels alone would comprise the government, only that they would not now walk away. They needed the help of honest professionals and experts in every field and Castro had been talking to such people for years.11
Moreover, despite the insistence of U.S. intelligence officials, there was plenty of evidence from the Sierra Maestra that the Revolution was taking seed. Since consolidating control of the territory in summer 1957, the rebels had been establishing schools and hospitals and distributing land to peasants. The rebels continued to use the territory as a hot-house for revolutionary projects through the following year, establishing a legal code, a taxation system, and other rudiments of state administration. Perhaps to their own surprise, the rebels turned out to be rather good at governance, at least in the Sierra Maestra. Many of these initiatives cut against the grain of recent Cuban history and conventional political priorities. They would have to be protected—and enhanced.
By late December, Castro’s command was knocking on the door of Santiago de Cuba, having overcome the last-ditch resistance of the Cuban Army at Jiguaní, Maffo, and Palma Soriano. The question confronting General Cantillo was whether to capitulate or defend Santiago, and at what cost. By this time, much of the navy and no few of Cantillo’s own officers had approached Castro secretly and asked to switch sides. The last Castro had heard from Cantillo there had been talk of Archbishop Serantes sending a priest to arrange a parley between the two commanders. That priest, Father Francisco Guzmán, finally arrived at Castro’s mobile headquarters at Central América, the large U.S.-owned sugar plantation outside the town of Contramaestre, on the morning of the 28th. A meeting between Castro and Cantillo was scheduled for later that day.
The two men came together at Central Oriente, formerly Central Miranda, which bordered the Castro family estate to the south. Cantillo had the endorsement of Batista’s chief of staff, Tabernilla, though not of Batista himself. Castro was in the driver’s seat. He was accompanied by, among others, his brother Raúl, Raúl Chibás, and José Quevedo, his former schoolmate and recent adversary in the battle of the La Plata River valley. Assisting Cantillo was Colonel José María Rego Rubido, second in charge at Santiago and commander of the other garrisons in the province.
Cantillo began by repeating his earlier suggestion that Castro join a military junta and that Batista and his closest associates be allowed to leave the country. Castro refused. Cantillo was in no position to object. In the end, Cantillo agreed to cease fighting and combine forces with Castro beginning at 3 p.m. on the afternoon of December 31. The combined forces would occupy the three eastern provinces while Cantillo proceeded to Camp Columbia in the capital to arrest Batista. As the men talked, reports circulated of government and rebel troops exchanging hugs and well wishes and toasting the end of the war.
That same day, some three hundred miles to the northwest, Che Guevara’s column departed the town of Caibarién, along the north-central coast of Las Villas, headed for Santa Clara, the provincial capital, fifty miles distant. Along the route, Guevara and his men were greeted by rapturous crowds, with government resistance melting away. Late on the afternoon of the 28th, Guevara arrived at the university on the outskirts of the city. There he divided his column in two, sending one group toward the southern margin of the city to engage the army, while the other hurried to cut off a government train laden with arms and reinforcements. On December 30, using earthmoving equipment commandeered from a local agricultural school, the rebels tore up the railroad tracks northeast of the city, overturning the train and capturing its contents and crew, including millions of dollars of precious weaponry and an estimated 350 officers and enlisted men. The spectacle caught the imagination of the local citizenry, making legends of Guevara and his men and effectively signaling to Batista that the game was up. When the hostilities ended at Santa Clara on New Year’s Eve, Batista’s bags were packed, his plane revving its engine on the tarmac at Camp Columbia.
Meanwhile, back in Santiago, on December 31, Cantillo sent Castro a note from Havana saying that the capitulation of Santiago had to be pushed back a week; something had come up. Castro smelled a rat. He responded by upbraiding Cantillo’s second-in-command, Colonel Rego Rubido. There would be consequences for Cantillo’s backpedaling. The rebel attack on Santiago would proceed. Cantillo’s decision to postpone the handover of Santiago was “ambiguous and incomprehensible,” Castro wrote Cantillo the following day. “You have made me lose faith in the seriousness of our agreements.”12
In Washington, the latest National Intelligence Estimate revealed U.S. officials still struggling to get a bead on Castro. U.S. business interests on the island now wanted both Batista and Castro out of the picture. More sober minds acknowledged that if Batista was unable to dislodge Castro with all of Cuba’s consolidated military might at his disposal, then it was unlikely that any self-appointed military junta would succeed at doing so. Unsure what to do, the U.S. intelligence community was clear where it stood on the subject of the rebel leader: Castro must be stopped. Failing that, “a prolonged period of instability and disorder, like that which followed the fall of the Machado regime in 1933, would almost certainly ensue, with consequent peril to American and other lives and property.”13
President Eisenhower was surprised by how quickly things had come to a head. How had the rebel forces gained strength so rapidly? he asked a meeting of the National Security Council on December 18. The answer, of course, was that they hadn’t. The rebels had been growing stronger day by day since the previous winter, with Batista’s incompetence and brutality enabled by an inept U.S. ambassador. Five days later, at another meeting of the National Security Council, Allen Dulles announced that the United States must prevent Castro coming to power, with a grave Eisenhower noting that this was the first time such a statement had been made in that setting.14
U.S. officials would later insist that that they had initially supported the anti-Batista opposition and even Castro’s campaign for social and political reform. A State Department report released in April 1961, just days before the Bay of Pigs invasion, maintains that Washington “rejoiced at the overthrow of the Batista tyranny, looked with sympathy on the new regime, and welcomed its promises of political freedom and social justice for the Cuban people.” With rare individual exceptions, the historical record emphatically contradicts this. Initial U.S. government opposition to Castro derived not from a consensus that he was communist but from fear that a social revolution would threaten U.S. political and economic hegemony on the island. In short, long before Castro nationalized American property or committed himself to communism, the U.S. government decided that the Cuban Revolution needed to be suppressed.
Rewriting this history enabled U.S. officials to claim that Castro, not they, betrayed the Cuban people. “It is not clear whether Dr. Castro intended from the start to betray the pledges of a free and democratic Cuba,” the State Department report stated, “to deliver his country to the Sino-Soviet bloc, and to mount an attack on the inter-American system.” In fact, it was perfectly clear that he had not—doing so in response to U.S. interference in the Revolution as early as autumn 1958.15 Despite the noble rhetoric, the U.S. government had never put Cuban interests first—not when standing idly by as Cuban patriots waged an unsuccessful war of independence in 1868, not when intervening in the Spanish-Cuban-American War when it was all but won, not when making Cuba safe for capitalist exploitation during the U.S. military occupation, not with the Platt Amendment, not with the Reciprocity Treaty, not in helping crush the 1933 Revolution, not when propping up Batista, and not in December 1958 when it declared Castro and the Revolution dead. U.S. officials’ claim to have done otherwise was plausible only in a country with a credulous public and no historical memory.
On the evening of December 31, 1958, as Guevara mopped up in Santa Clara, as Castro exchanged notes with Colonel Rego Rubido, and as U.S. intelligence officials continued to denigrate Castro’s ability to govern effectively, Fulgencio Batista affected an air of business as usual, ringing in the New Year at several Havana casinos, before heading to the airfield at Camp Columbia, where his family and close associates awaited, their bags long since stowed aboard a fleet of Cuban passenger planes. At 2:30 in the morning of January 1, 1959, Batista turned over control of Cuba’s armed forces to Cantillo. Civil authority was put in the hands of Supreme Court justice Carlos Modesto Piedra y Piedra. Batista then departed Cuba for Santo Domingo.
Confirming the U.S. role in this, Cantillo, now in command of the Cuban military, kept in close touch with Ambassador Smith throughout the night. Smith dispatched his first cable after Batista’s departure to the State Department at 6 a.m. Approximately two hours ago, Batista, along with “top members of the GOC,” abandoned the country, Smith wrote. Cantillo was now in charge of the armed forces, with Piedra set to assume civilian control. Cantillo hoped to enlist the support of Archbishop Pérez Serantes and pledged to reach out to the Castros. Early that afternoon, in another cable, Smith reported that Cantillo had agreed to “fly all asylees out as soon as possible,” and was “ready to turn over authority to whoever should have it.” At 6 p.m., Smith noted that Justice Piedra had declined the position of provisional president, thus leaving Cantillo in control of the country. At 8 p.m., Smith reported that the rebels had declared a general strike and that this time the strike was holding. Travel and communication throughout the country was paralyzed. American tourists were trapped. Then came this news, directly contradicting Smith’s prediction of chaos: the rebels had taken to the radio and called for order. The people had listened. For the first time since March 10, 1952, the country was at peace.
At 9 p.m., Smith posted his last wire of the day. Colonel Ramón Barquín had been released from prison on the Isle of Pines and was now at Camp Columbia, where Cantillo relinquished power to him. Barquín summoned Castro to the capital. Barquín was the U.S. government’s military strongman of choice. His step into the breach soothed nerves at the U.S. embassy. “Military vehicles now patrolling disturbed areas of city with military police to maintain order,” Smith noted. The possibility of cooperation between the rebels and the armed forces was an “encouraging development,” which “strengthens position of the military vis-à-vis rebels.”16
Castro was not so naive as to show up at Camp Columbia and present himself to an army against whom he had been waging war for over two years. Surely, it would arrest and (finally) execute him and announce the Revolution over. Nor would he allow Cantillo, Piedra, or Barquín to call the shots. Instead, he ordered Cienfuegos and Guevara to the capital to secure the nation’s arsenal, with Cienfuegos taking command of Camp Columbia, Guevara La Cabaña fortress. Simultaneously, Castro confirmed the general strike and declared Santiago de Cuba the transitional capital of Cuba. Urrutia would be sworn in as provisional president the following day.
At mid-afternoon on New Year’s Day, Castro emerged on the balcony of Santiago City Hall, overlooking Parque Céspedes, to make the biggest speech of his life. For nearly seven years, he had worked tirelessly to oust the perpetrator of the March 1952 coup d’état and restore the 1940 Constitution. Along the way, he came to embrace a social program focused on improving rural Cubans’ access to land, education, and health care. On this day, in the heart of Santiago, he largely eschewed talk of the revolutionary program. He had more urgent work to do, namely, to convince the assembled crowd, along with Cubans huddled around radios throughout the country, that the rebel victory was really their victory, and to regard him, Fidel Castro, as the embodiment of the popular will. In this speech and in many statements leading up to it, Castro insisted that he himself did not seek political office. At this point, he still seems to have meant it. In his message that day, he did not claim that he was the state (L’état c’est moi ), but that he spoke for the people (Les peuple, c’est moi ), which was as presumptuous as it was crucial to his future success.
It is hard to know for sure how many Cubans outside the Sierra Maestra identified with the Revolution in early 1959. Until recently, the rebel army had been isolated from much of the Cuban population, with membership in the July 26 Movement numbering in the low thousands. The failed strike of the previous April demonstrated that the reach of the July 26 Movement did not extend much beyond the Sierra Maestra and certain neighborhoods in Havana and Santiago, along with a few isolated pockets in small cities and towns throughout the country. If this was really to be a people’s revolution, as Castro claimed, he would have to make it so overnight.
This made for interesting, sometimes twisted logic, starting with his explanation of the Revolution’s first act—unilaterally declaring Santiago de Cuba the provisional capital of Cuba. He had done so, he said, by authority of a “Provisional President,” who had not yet been inaugurated, as well as that “of the rebel army and the people of Santiago,” which was also a stretch. Castro allowed that some listeners might “be surprised by” the move. They would have to get used to it. For such was the way with revolutions, which did “things that have not been done before.” Castro then announced that Manuel Urrutia, a former judge, would be inaugurated provisional president the next day in Santiago by virtue of his being “elected by the people.” Of course, the Cuban people had not elected Urrutia to be the president of anything, unless, that is, the people and Castro were one and the same.
Ever since his rise in university politics, Castro had insisted that none of Cuba’s political parties, past or present, truly represented the interests of Cubans in general. In Parque Céspedes that day, he tried to settle this debate, using the story of Cantillo’s alleged deception and “coup d’état” to convince his audience to regard opposition to the new revolutionary government as a personal affront to each and every Cuban citizen. By setting aside his pledge and heading off to Havana, Castro said, Cantillo had “prepared a coup behind the backs of the people, the backs of the Revolution,” in order to “cheat the people of power.”
Castro assured the crowd that he had not been naive in his negotiations with his army counterpart. The lessons of 1898 (when Shafter insulted Calixto García) and 1933 (when Batista betrayed Grau and Guiteras) were fresh on his mind, he said. Cantillo had presented himself as a “Paladin of liberty.” In a conversation witnessed by his fellow officers and by Raúl Chibás and other dignitaries, Cantillo had seemed to concur with Castro that Batista and his cronies must not be permitted to flee, that Urrutia would assume the provisional presidency, that war criminals would be prosecuted, and that rebel soldiers would join the armed forces on equitable terms. Above all, Castro said, “I told Cantillo that . . . the people and only the people have conquered their liberty”—that “the military will answer to the people and only the people and the Constitution and the laws of the Republic.”
Cantillo’s duplicity was more than simply dishonorable. By letting Batista, Tabernilla, and other fugitives escape—“with three or four hundred million pesos of stolen money”—Cantillo ensured that the battle for the soul of Cuba had not, in fact, at long last ended but had only just begun. “This is going to cost us heavily,” Castro observed clairvoyantly. Batista and his fellow criminals were headed for “Santo Domingo and other countries, from which they will launch propaganda against the Revolution, stirring up as much trouble as possible.” Castro predicted that this menace would last for the “foreseeable future, threatening our people, maintaining us in a constant state of alert, and paying for and contriving controversies among us.”
Castro then turned to the subject of justice and reconciliation. After years of repression and abuse, the public was understandably keen on revenge. But if temporarily satisfying, revenge could never restore peace and prosperity to Cuba. He pleaded with his listeners to exercise restraint. Upon coming to power, the revolutionary government would appoint a joint commission of army and rebel officers to try accused perpetrators. So long as justice was meted out scrupulously, nobody would oppose it, neither the victims, nor the army, who more than anybody wanted to restore its integrity. Castro acknowledged that some listeners would be disappointed by these words. He assured them that the rebels would not betray the people’s confidence.
The problem with erecting a political regime on people power, Alexis de Tocqueville and others had long since observed, is that the people’s desire for equality does not always jibe with liberty, toleration, and minority rights. Careful listeners might have detected tension between Castro stoking popular enthusiasm (“What is legal right now is what the people say is legal”), while counseling restraint. If the Revolution and the Cuban people were one and the same, then criticism of the Revolution was unpatriotic, even treasonous. “I hope there will be no resistance,” Castro remarked ominously. Resistance would be futile anyhow—“smashed in an instant”—as it would defy “the law, the Republic, and the will of the Cuban Nation.”
Castro promised to once and for all deliver the peace and prosperity, the sovereignty and independence, for which Cubans had fought for nearly a century. This would be a world governed not by personal whimsy but by constitutional guarantees, in which peasants and workers no less than politicians and professionals enjoyed a full complement of civil rights and civil liberties. Liberty and justice, in turn, would generate economic prosperity, with tax revenue going not into military equipment but into new infrastructure conducive to industrial and agricultural development. Of course, change and innovation do not come easily. The hard work had only begun. “We will make mistakes,” Castro allowed, before insisting that the one thing that would never be said about the revolutionary government is that it “robbed, bribed, exploited, or betrayed the Movement.”
This had been a long struggle and Castro seemed to be relishing the moment. “We can say with jubilation that in the four centuries since its founding, for the first time we are entirely free and the work of the Mambises is complete,” he exclaimed. Still, he had to get to Havana. In a fit of inspiration, he decided to proceed there not by air, but by road, sometimes literally on foot, stopping at one town after another, repeating his Parque Céspedes address almost verbatim. By doing so, he figuratively (and in some cases literally) brought the Cuban people along with him. By the time he arrived in Havana on January 8, he had done his job: the people had adopted the Revolution as its own, for now, anyway, regarding Castro as its personal embodiment. Resistance now seemed impossible.17