CHAPTER FOUR

Recorded Interviews with Cuban Officials

The five interviews presented in this chapter were all conducted with people in some way attached to the Revolutionary Government, four of them associated with the military. Though some respondents did at times express their own sentiments (and in fact, Mills asked specific personal questions of two of them), they were generally speaking ex officio to a citizen of a country they perceived as a menace to their efforts to create Cuba as a sovereign state. Juan Arcocha worked for the newspaper Revolución, the official organ of the 26th of July Movement that aimed to organize, guide, and disseminate revolutionary ideology to the Cuban people. The two army captains—whom I’m calling Captain 1 and Captain 2—had long been involved in military and administrative capacities. Isabel Rielo, also a captain, had been a rebel soldier in the women’s platoon. At the time of the interview, she was working at the Camilo Cienfuegos School City in the mountains of Oriente. Comandante Dermidio Escalona had been appointed by Fidel Castro as commander of the rebel forces in Pinar del Río, on the western end of the island. He was, at the time, acting military commander of the province. In all, Mills’s taped recordings include three “captains” and one “comandante” (i.e., Escalona), military ranks held by about 200 and 40, respectively, at the time.1 None of these interlocutors, however, was a member of Castro’s inner circle.

Interview 1

Time: Approximately thirty minutes

Interviewee: Juan Arcocha

Appropriately enough, Mills began his series of interviews by talking with the man who would serve as his interpreter and companion during his entire time in Cuba, Juan Arcocha. In the Note to the Reader, I, Mills thanks Arcocha and describes him as the man “who interpreted for me in many long interviews and during much hard travel, and more than that, helped me to understand many things in Cuba.” Arcocha is the only one of his recorded interviewees who would eventually break with Castro and go into self-imposed exile.2

Thirty-three years old, tall, prematurely balding and wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, Arcocha possessed a bookish, sober look. But as is evident from this interview, he had an easy laugh and good humor, occasionally taking time off from his official duties as interpreter to play guitar for his traveling companions, Vallejo, Taber, and Mills. Being fluent in both English and French, Arcocha had served as interpreter to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir on their first, and well-publicized, visit to post-Revolution Cuba during February–March of 1960, and just a few months before interpreting for Mills.

Early in the interview, Arcocha, who had known Fidel Castro since they were university students (and who initially rejected him as an ambitious and irresponsible opportunist, then accepted him at the time of the interview as the sincere leader of Cuba, and ultimately would come to reject him again as a dictator on par with Stalin)3 describes his astonishment concerning Castro’s personality transformation from student days to the present.

Many years after speaking with Mills, Arcocha would record the details on first meeting Castro:

It was during the early days of October 1945. It was the start of the academic year at the University of Havana. A group of us, friends and recent graduates of the Colegio de la Salle [a Catholic preparatory school], had agreed to meet at a café near the School of Law. We were afraid to go to the University alone as it had the well-earned reputation of being a den of gangsters who used it as a springboard to enter into politics according to their own understanding—that is to say, their enjoyment of dubious privileges, and they usually obtained at gunpoint the grades that their intimidated professors dared not deny them.… We were approached by a tall, strapping fellow with a penetrating look, greasy complexion, with the beginnings of a double chin, who had a profile reminiscent of a Greek statue. Though his nose was not straight, it extended down from his forehead, wide and intelligent.… He came straight to the point: “Guys, all of us graduates from Catholic schools ought to unite to clean up the University. I hope that you will vote for me for class delegate.” He triggered in me an immediate and almost allergic dislike of him; of course, I did not vote for him.4

In the interview, Arcocha states that Castro’s remarkable transformation—Castro’s character, he says, is marked by sincerity—is most clearly exhibited in the latter’s numerous televised appearances, particularly through his didactic and garrulous speeches. Mills is skeptical that Castro’s sincerity can be ascertained electronically, since many charismatic personalities are adroit in “the television technique.” Later in the interview, Arcocha uses Sartre’s notion of “direct democracy” to describe Castro’s particular form of governance; given Castro’s skillful use of the television technique, his concept of democracy has also been referred to as “government by television.”5

Mills begins by asking for some biographical information. Arcocha gives his occupation as secretary for Carlos Franqui, the editor-in-chief of Revolución. He states that he graduated from Havana High School, a private Catholic school, and then attended the University of Havana, where he studied law and journalism. Arcocha completed his law degree in 1950 and began working as a journalist. In 1955 he studied French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he first became interested in politics.

After some discussion about Arcocha’s father, who had been a lawyer working for the Batista government, Mills then asks Arcocha, “When did you first meet Fidel Castro?”

ARCOCHA: At the University [of Havana].

MILLS: What was your impression of him?

ARCOCHA: Very bad. I thought he was a cheap politician who wanted to use me. He always wanted me to vote for him. He wanted to be the class delegate. Because the University was sort of a springboard. And it was like this: first of all you were elected delegate of the class, then you were a delegate of a year, then you were a delegate of a faculty, then you were a delegate of all the faculties that was a [inaudible] of the FEU, which means Federation of the Students of the University.6

[…]

ARCOCHA: … I had been strongly trying to fight against [Castro] in Paris.

MILLS: Figuring out how to get rid of him if he did win?

ARCOCHA: Exactly. I was convinced the only thing he wanted to do was to put Batista down and put himself in his place and go on exactly like before.

MILLS: The replacement of one with the other.

ARCOCHA: Exactly. A change of men.

MILLS: Yes. And what caused you to change your mind on that? I take it you have changed your mind.

ARCOCHA: Yes, I have. [Laughter]

MILLS: Given your position on Revolucíon we may assume that. [Laughter] Unless, you are a secret counterrevolutionary. [Laughter] That’s not likely.

ARCOCHA: [Laughter]

MILLS: OK, now, what was it that made you change your opinion?

ARCOCHA: Well, the first time he appeared on television it was agreeably shocking.7

MILLS: I see. Why?

ARCOCHA: Because I realized that he was sincere.8 That all those things he had been telling for so many years, he had meant them all of the time.

MILLS: But surely you can’t tell from one or two television appearances that suddenly the man is sincere. There are many people who are expert at the television technique.

ARCOCHA: Yes, but first of all, the things he spoke about. He had already won, so he didn’t have to keep his promises.

MILLS: Oh, I see. He had power after all. With such military force as existed in the country he could then have done anything he wished, if he wanted to.

ARCOCHA: Before, all the politicians had made many promises until the day they were elected, and then they didn’t even speak about it anymore. It was completely forgotten.

MILLS: So first he spoke of the agrarian reform.

ARCOCHA: He spoke of the agrarian reform, but those were not only words. Everybody was watching television that night. Absolutely everybody. We wanted to see how he was. He was such a legend. It was a normal curiosity to see how he was, what he was going to say. So he insisted very, very much on the poor conditions of the peasants, of the workers. But it was not a scientist discussing things in a cold way. He was discussing that from a very human point of view.9

MILLS: And so not only what he discussed but also the manner of his discussion.

ARCOCHA: Exactly, the way in which he participated. And I think that you can feel on television.10

MILLS: What other aspects of Fidel at this time impressed themselves upon you?

ARCOCHA: Well, he had his [inaudible] at the university period.

MILLS: So perhaps history will absolve him but we will never know …

ARCOCHA: No. I asked him. I called him and I told him, “Well, I’m very disappointed that the conversation hasn’t gone further.” Because I wanted to know something which I hadn’t found. And he said, “Well, what do you want to know?” And I told him, “Well, I want to know in which moment the Fidel I knew at the University became today’s Fidel?”

MILLS: Did he tell you the moment?

ARCOCHA: Well, he looked me in the eyes and said, “Well, you know, the Fidel you met at the University was a very primitive one. I was a product of all the frustrations that there were in Cuba. After that there was a long evolution.” Actually, he never explained, so I don’t know why the change took place.

MILLS: Well, perhaps those are things that a man doesn’t become aware of until a little later.

ARCOCHA: Perhaps. But he made such a spectacular change. It’s incredible.

The conversation then turns to those features that Arcocha found particularly attractive about Castro in the early months of the Revolution. Arcocha mentions his humanity, sincerity, intelligence, and courage. He describes Castro as speaking, not demagogically, but in a low conversational tone. This type of simple and human conversation was “a new invention in Cuba.” Arcocha mentions that he particularly liked Castro speaking on television because it was as though he were chatting with the people. Castro assumed a different intonation when he gave a public speech, Arcocha explains, but even then it was unique from that of any other public speaker.

MILLS: To what extent was [Castro’s] kind of nationalism at that time, in the spring of 1959, based upon his anti-Yankee remarks?

ARCOCHA: Well, even at that very moment, it was a very human and a very particular nationalism because all he said was, “We have been exploited for so many years by the United States. We are human beings. We have rights. So all we want is that the United States recognize these rights and treat us like human beings.”

[…]

MILLS: Now may I ask you a few general questions about your attitudes and opinions?

ARCOCHA: Yes.

MILLS: What is your real attitude now towards the possibility of the Cuban Communist Party increasing in power? I don’t mean internationally now, but strictly within the Cuban political scene.

ARCOCHA: Well, that’s a very interesting point. First of all, I don’t think they are increasing in power.11

MILLS: You do not think they will?

ARCOCHA: No.

MILLS: Why not?

ARCOCHA: Because, first of all, nobody likes them here.

MILLS: Well, you have undoubtedly heard the argument that there is a lack of competent administrative personnel. And they seem to have some administrative competence. Hence, do you think there is a possibility that they will, sort of by default, move into the vacuum?

ARCOCHA: Of course there are Communists which are occupying positions because of that vacuum you mention. And you hear a lot of talk about infiltration—Communist infiltration. But the point would be to see who’s infiltrating whom.

MILLS: Well, that is indeed the question I am asking.

ARCOCHA: Exactly. Well, I might say that the Communist Party12 is very strongly infiltrated by July 26 and it’s in a very dangerous position. I wonder if they have realized that.

MILLS: What sort of evidence do you have for that? Because American readers of the Yankee press certainly are not aware of the infiltration of the communists. Indeed, it’s a world historical development and I’m perfectly prepared, don’t misunderstand me, to believe that that might happen in Cuba. [Laughter]

ARCOCHA: [Laughter] There’s a very popular joke here. It’s, by the way, a counterrevolutionary joke. The counterrevolutionaries here, and the middle class and the bourgeois, they, of course, are convinced that we’re all communists. My poor father is convinced that I am. And the joke goes like this: When Mikoyan came to Cuba he went back to Moscow and he spoke with Khrushchev.13 And Khrushchev asked him, “Well, what do you think about Cuba?” And he says, “Well, I’m a little worried because there’s so much infiltration from the July 26 in the Communist Party.” [Laughter] Actually, it isn’t a joke anymore, I think. I mean I have no proof for that.

MILLS: Are the Communists quite a competent organization, in your impression of them?

ARCOCHA: No. The trouble is they are frozen.

MILLS: Rather dogmatic and inflexible, do you mean?

ARCOCHA: Yes, exactly. Very dogmatic. They simply don’t understand what’s happening here.

MILLS: Well, have they not learned from Fidel’s leadership and the actual course of the Revolution, anything?

ARCOCHA: The trouble is they have old leaders and there’s no hope that they will change. They are old Stalinists.

MILLS: And the younger men who are bright do not go into the party?

ARCOCHA: They have no young people.

MILLS: Really?

ARCOCHA: For instance, from the intellectual point of view. I am in the intellectual circles thanks to Revolución. And they have just one young intellectual who’s not very bright. The only one they have. The Communist intellectuals in Cuba are people over fifty years [old]. They have no one single young voice.

MILLS: If they do not recruit younger people …

ARCOCHA: They’re trying desperately to recruit them.

MILLS: Yes, but if they do not succeed, and it’s your impression that they will not, presumably, because of the many opportunities for leadership and everything else political within the 26 Movement and other revolutionary organs, then it is a question of waiting a little while and they will fade away.

ARCOCHA: Exactly. For instance, there is no such thing as a political apparatus in Cuba. And they have one, so it has been necessary to take some of the low- and middle-level members just to fill that vacuum.

MILLS: How do you mean there is no other political apparatus in Cuba? Isn’t the militia a political apparatus?

ARCOCHA: No, I mean a political organization like a political party, for instance.

MILLS: There’s no party whatsoever, in your opinion?

ARCOCHA: The Communist Party only.

MILLS: Well, don’t you think that the July 26 is, in effect, a party?

ARCOCHA: No. It’s something very strange.

MILLS: Yes, I know. That’s what I came to find out.

ARCOCHA: It is not a party.

MILLS: Why?

ARCOCHA: Because it has no …

MILLS: Because there have been no elections?

ARCOCHA: No, that doesn’t mean anything. […] For instance, take China or Russia, how it’s organized. There’s a political party and you have functionaries and functionaries […] and it’s a very complicated organization. That doesn’t exist [here].

MILLS: I see. So what you have here …

ARCOCHA: It’s a direct contact between Fidel and the people.

MILLS: And ministers, of course, and governmental agencies.

ARCOCHA: It stops at the level of the Council of Ministers, and then it goes to the people.

MILLS: In terms of decision.

ARCOCHA: Exactly, exactly. In the middle there are people who work and want positions in government but it isn’t organized. It is not a political organization.

MILLS: In what sense do you think of that as dictatorial? A dictatorship?

ARCOCHA: Well, perhaps a [inaudible] dictatorship but I mean we have never had such real democracy here.

MILLS: In other words, in terms of the realization of interests, which the people have at heart, and which are the people …

ARCOCHA: Exactly, exactly. That’s what Sartre calls “direct democracy.”

MILLS: Aha. Sometimes called “guided democracy.”14

ARCOCHA: They’re troubling words. When an American says “democracy,” well, you mean elections and so on and so forth. Personally, I think it’s a fraud. If you say that in the United States you’re automatically considered a communist.

MILLS: Not necessarily. I’ve said it very frequently. [Laughter]

ARCOCHA: Well, then, perhaps you’re considered a communist. [Laughter]

MILLS: On the contrary. It’s well known that I am not. This is the most worrisome thing about me, I think. [Laughter] What’s your attitude toward the real possibility of a military invasion of Cuba by the U.S. government?

ARCOCHA: Well, I think it’s very possible.15

MILLS: Even now?

ARCOCHA: Even now. It’s not so probable as it was some weeks ago. Until Khrushchev said he would send the rockets. Then it was rather a sure thing to come.16

MILLS: Oh, you do believe that it is the Khrushchev threat of retaliation that is keeping the U.S. Marines in Florida?

ARCOCHA: Yes.

MILLS: You really do?

ARCOCHA: Uh-huh. I wonder for just how long he will keep them there.

MILLS: You mean that they will still come to Cuba despite the Khrushchev warning?

ARCOCHA: They might. It depends on who’s running things in the United States.

MILLS: Do you think the [presidential] election will make a difference in the United States, coming up?17

ARCOCHA: I don’t think so. That won’t change anything. Well, I have read something in a French newspaper about the possibilities of a kind of mild revolution in the United States.… For some months I just don’t expect anything else from the United States so it doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican or a Democrat. They’re all the same. But then I read in that French newspaper it seems that Mr. Kennedy has some advanced ideas, which are considered very advanced in the States about, for instance, state planning and better organizing the whole economic structure of the country.

MILLS: I believe that this is [inaudible] dreaming, personally.

[…]

MILLS: And what is your considered opinion, Juan, of Time magazine?

ARCOCHA: Oh, it’s horrible. It’s the most dangerous thing for the United States.

MILLS: How so?

ARCOCHA: Because it so cleverly distorts truth.

MILLS: The truth about Cuba, for example?

ARCOCHA: About anything …

Arcocha goes on to explain that he initially experienced at firsthand Time’s distortion of the news when he visited Greece in 1958. According to Time magazine, there was supposedly a great communist danger in Greece, with the Greek people and government being implicated in adopting a communist ideology. He discovered that Time’s reporting about the Greek situation was completely false. Arcocha’s second experience of Time’s distortion of the truth happened when it started writing about Cuba and Castro. In this case, Arcocha was in the country and knew what was happening there. Since then he had resolved to stop reading the magazine.

Interview 2

Time: Approximately fifteen minutes. Juan Arcocha interpreted.

Interviewee: Unknown

The following interview is with an unidentified captain of the Rebel Army that probably took place in Oriente province. The captain’s identity cannot be deduced from any information provided in the interview or in Listen, Yankee. I will refer to him as “Captain 1.”

MILLS: Capitan, when did you first get into the Rebel Army?

CAPTAIN 1: Well, the Rebel Army was a modification of the struggle and it was formed during the tyranny.

MILLS: During 1958?

CAPTAIN 1: Well, I have been a soldier of the Revolution since 1952.

MILLS: Fifty-two? How old are you, Captain?

CAPTAIN 1: Twenty-nine.

MILLS: You started very early then, didn’t you?

CAPTAIN 1: There are others who started before me. There are comandantes who were seventeen and eighteen years old at the time.18

MILLS: I see. And what jobs did you have before you became a soldier?

CAPTAIN 1: Well, office clerk. Then I was a factory worker. I have had many other jobs.

MILLS: You were telling me a little while ago that there were militia attached to various enterprises here in this district and you are the captain of the army. What is the relation between these militia and your command of the army?

CAPTAIN 1: The relations between the militia and the Rebel Army are the relations that exist between different units of the same army.

MILLS: So they are sort of like a reserve, the militia is.

CAPTAIN 1: Well, we could call it a reserve army because we are currently working now. While there is no war, we work.

MILLS: Do your rebel soldiers, under your command, work in different enterprises?

CAPTAIN 1: There is a part that devote themselves strictly to indispensable military issues. There are other parts that belong to different state institutions.

MILLS: Such as?

CAPTAIN 1: Well, INRA, other public activities, and some of them are ministers. The official leader of the Revolution is the commander of the Rebel Army and prime minister.

MILLS: You, of course, train the militia—that is part of your duty.

CAPTAIN 1: Yes, of course.…

MILLS: I’ve heard some of the governmental officials and other people in Cuba say that there may come a time when the militia would be more important than the army as such. What is your opinion concerning that?

The captain states that he doesn’t understand the question and sets out to explain how the Rebel Army is different from any other army in the world. He contends that Cuba considers any citizen who is a good revolutionary to be a good soldier for the country. Mills replies that he doesn’t quite understand that because armies in many parts of the world issue from the people, that is, they are voluntary armies. The Cuban Army is voluntary, and so Mills doesn’t see how it is unique in the world. The Cuban Army is different, explains the captain, because the other armies fill their soldier’s heads only with unconscious discipline. For example, the U.S. Army goes to war without being aware of the motives, consequences, and the general significance of those wars. Mills then asks if the difference is that the Cuban soldier knows what he is fighting for. Of course, says the captain, the soldiers are taught about the causes and motives that produced the Revolution. Mills again interjects that many armies, including the Chinese Army, for example, do that. The captain acknowledges that other armies provide that sort of education, but at the moment he’s wanting to consider the Cuban Army in particular. The Cuban Army, the captain insists, possesses a disciplined consciousness [conciencia]19 because the rebel soldier understands that his cause is just. He therefore has a higher consciousness compared with the soldier who is just fighting for a salary or for his country’s false beliefs.20 Echoing the captain’s sentiments, Mills, in Listen, Yankee, writes in the voice of the Cuban revolutionary: “So ours, we think, is not like any other army in the world.”21

MILLS: Do you think that there are any other differences that are unique to the Cuban Army?

CAPTAIN 1: This is an army that is born from the most humble level of society and that guarantees the rights and the aspirations of the dispossessed classes. So, that is a right of the majority as democracy demands.

MILLS: Do you have classes in which the history and the causes of the Revolution are explained? You have many very young boys that are now only eighteen coming into the army and the militia. So, do you have classes to train them in the meaning of the Revolution?

CAPTAIN 1: Yes. But not only to the boys in the Rebel Army. Our leader, Fidel Castro, speaks to all the people every week.

MILLS: Are there no special classes for the army?

CAPTAIN 1: Cuban history, geography, economic geography, the thoughts and works of José Martí, political economy, and all of the other studies that complement the minimum cultural base that we should all have.

MILLS: And does the captain teach such a class himself?

CAPTAIN 1: Yes, and there are many compañeros who teach these classes.

MILLS: That’s part of the training of the soldiers?

CAPTAIN 1: Yes.

MILLS: What sort of books do you use in teaching the political economy of Cuba?

CAPTAIN 1: There are many books in political economy—French, North American, German. It depends on how much progress the class has made.

Interview 3

Time: Approximately fifteen minutes

Interviewee: Unknown. Juan Arcocha interpreted.

Like the previous interview, this short one was also with an unidentified captain of the army. The captain’s identity cannot be deduced from any information provided in the interview or in Listen, Yankee. I will refer to him as “Captain 2.” The captain had only been at his present command post for a few days when Mills spoke with him. Prior to that he had been a coordinator in the 26th of July Movement in the province. In this capacity he provided revolutionary orientation and organization to the civilian population.

As in the interview with Juan Arcocha, the likelihood of an invasion of Cuba with the backing of the U.S. government is again raised. Another issue discussed is that of industrialization, particularly the role of the Cuban military in building the industrial sector of Cuban society. If Captain 2 is vague about his actual involvement, and that of the soldiers under him, in the construction of a factory nearby, it is perhaps because, given the nonexistent preconditions for industrializing in Cuba, “what had been done along this line to date has been almost wholly in the realm of study, planning, preliminary preparations.”22 The first step toward financing industry had been articulated by Fidel Castro in a television interview earlier that year: that all workers should contribute 4 percent of their wages, and in this way raise $40 million for industrial development.

The interview begins with a brief discussion of a raised cultural awareness among the workers and also of their involvement in self-government—a concept that had been foreign to Cubans up to that point.

MILLS TO ARCOCHA: You were saying that the captain was just at a little town near here and he found a farmer …

ARCOCHA: A peasant in this place, and although he was illiterate he was saying many interesting things at a worker’s assembly.

CAPTAIN 2 TO ARCOCHA: Do you want me to explain about the campesino? Well, I was profoundly impressed by the way in which a man without any education or culture could achieve such a clear conception of the historical moments through which the country is living and of the position a worker is supposed to have. And he was explaining that he had not received that conception at any school, given that he could neither read nor write.

MILLS: What was his conception?

CAPTAIN 2: It concerns the position that the Cuban revolutionary worker should have regarding the events and development of our Revolution. He explained that he loved the Revolution and defended it. The education he received had been of coming home, late in the evening after a hard day’s work, and finding his children asking him for food, which he was unable to provide for them. Because the large sugar monopolies provided work only three months, and sometimes only two months out of the year. And there was no other place to work after that. And so during the dead season [tiempo muerto] they borrowed against their future salaries and went further into debt. The same company would take advantage of the situation by extending them credit that they could only use in company-owned businesses.

MILLS: Yes, I’m familiar with that situation.23 How is this worker living today?

CAPTAIN 2: With the hope and satisfaction of knowing that the imperialistic monopoly belongs to him now.

Mills asks how it is that the peasant feels that the sugar mill now belongs to him, and if the peasant is actually making decisions about how it is to be run. The captain states that at the aforementioned worker’s assembly, the newly appointed administrator told the workers that they were the ones to decide when they would begin readying the sugar mills in the district. Mills then asks who appointed the administrator. The captain explains that he had been an ice cream vendor who studied and made sacrifices, and the Revolutionary government and the worker’s assembly from the district appointed him.

MILLS: How long does that worker that you were telling me about, that was so happy in that hope that he entertained because he now had a share in that sugar mill, how long does he think it will be before his material standard of living goes up quite materially?

CAPTAIN 2: That depends on Yankee imperialism. If they attack us, if they continue to choke us economically, we will have to devote forces to the country’s defense.

MILLS: Does the captain really believe that there is any probability that the United States will actually invade Cuba?

CAPTAIN 2: It’s difficult for them to do it directly, but we have conclusive evidence that they provoke aggression with Cuba. In addition, they disrespect the American people by taking before the U.S. Senate the war criminals [Cuban exiles] who murdered 20,000 people in Cuba.24

MILLS: Do you believe that if there is any kind of actual military action against the Revolutionary government it will be indirectly, in the sense that these exiles and war criminals will be the ones to actually do it?

CAPTAIN 2: And anyone else who sells himself to the imperialist’s money and wants to participate in these armies.

MILLS: You mean mercenary armies.

CAPTAIN 2: Mercenary. Although we now have U.S. citizens who have died in the aggression against Cuba—those who came by plane. That’s an alarming matter because it shows the complicity of the U.S. government because they could have stopped these attacks.25

ARCOCHA TO MILLS: The captain wants to highlight the opinion of the Cuban working classes concerning the general state of the Revolution.

CAPTAIN 2: They are aware that it is not an issue of sectors but of the entire Cuban people. They know that the Revolution has to progress evenly for all. And that is why it has not been possible to achieve rapid progress in one particular sector. In other systems, in the capitalist system, certain sectors may grow rapidly in wages and a better standard of living. But there is a consequence to that, and that is the impoverishment of other sectors. In Cuba we are vigilant that that doesn’t happen. And we are industrializing the country to create other sources of work for those other sectors.

MILLS: Yes. Now, what is the role of the army in this industrialization program?

CAPTAIN 2: To work and cooperate with the people. The worker is giving 4 percent of his salary for the industrialization of the country. In all the municipalities, in all parts of the country, they are working for industrialization.

MILLS: That is to say, actually soldiers under the captain’s command will help build an industry?

CAPTAIN 2: Well, we will cooperate in everything we can. I’m thinking about getting some tools and going to where they are constructing a factory where the industry will develop. I’m thinking that one Sunday or Saturday I will go there to do some work. I will not order my soldiers to work. I will go, and those who want to help can come.

[…]

Interview 4

Time: Approximately ten minutes

Interviewee: Isabel Rielo. Juan Arcocha interpreted.

Mills’s next interview was held in the Sierra Maestra with Isabel Rielo, the only one of his interviewees that Mills mentions by name in Listen, Yankee. Rielo was a thirty-two-year-old rebel soldier with angular features, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, her dark-brown hair pulled back. When Mills spoke with her she was wearing her soldier’s uniform, holstered gun swinging at her hip. Captain Rielo had a quick smile and spoke animatedly in rapid-fire sentences to Mills, Taber, and Arcocha.

Originally from Oriente, Rielo came from a large peasant family of eight brothers and sisters. She was the only one of her siblings to enter university, in 1952, where she studied pharmacy. After the Granma landing, she became part of a clandestine cell in the 26th of July Movement involved in underground work. Later, she and her younger sister, Lilia, joined the rebel soldiers in the Sierra Maestra to work as nurses, treating the wounded and assisting in surgery.

During the interview, Rielo tells Mills that she had been in charge of the Mariana Grajales, the Rebel Army’s first all-women’s platoon and the only women organized into combat during the insurrection. The details of how the platoon was formed and how Rielo became its leader are as follows.26 In May 1958 Batista launched a large military offensive against the Rebel Army, and by July of that year the dictator’s forces had been badly beaten by the greatly outnumbered guerillas. By that point in the insurgency women like Teté Puebla, Eloísa Ballester, Celia Sánchez, Haydée Santamaría, Isabel Rielo, and Lilia Rielo had proven themselves to be as capable as any of the male rebel soldiers. Though they had not yet been organized as combatants, they had helped with cooking, sewing, tending to the wounded, and even taught some of the compañeros (comrades) to read and write. After Batista’s offensive had been defeated, some of the women asked Fidel Castro to let them fight with a rifle, face-to-face with the enemy. Castro agreed that the women had earned the right to fight, and on September 4 he formed the eleven-woman Mariana Grajales Platoon, armed them with lightweight M-1 machineguns, and taught them to shoot.27 In target practice, with a Garand rifle, the women (now called the “Marianas”) were to try to hit a U.S. quarter from twenty to thirty meters away. Isabel Rielo hit the coin and split it. She was named commanding officer as a result. The Marianas saw combat three times; first, at the battle of Cerro Pelado on September 26; then at La Presa, Holguín province, on October 21; and finally at the battle of Los Güiros on November 2. Rielo finished the war with the rank of first lieutenant and in 1960 was promoted to captain.28

In 1971 Rielo recounted the conviction that compelled the women to participate in combat:

Those of us who had formed the women’s battalion never felt we should have any different treatment from the men; we wanted them to look on us as just one more soldier. So we made them understand that we had suffered the same privations as they had, we’d confronted the same hardships, we’d endured the machine gun fire from the planes, we’d dragged the wounded back to safe positions and got them to the campaign hospitals so they wouldn’t be killed by the bombs.…

Combat was just another front you couldn’t deny our women, since it grew mainly out of our own desire to fight. We used to see a man go out and later they’d come and tell us, “They killed him,” and our anger made us want to go and share that danger.29

At the time that Mills interviewed her, Isabel Rielo was implementing the material and ideological foundations of what would become the Camilo Cienfuegos School City. Mills spoke with her on the campus, while she was serving as a teacher in makeshift buildings. The school cities were intended to provide education to the underserved children of peasants “in those rural, mountainous areas [where] the people are so scattered that it’s not really possible to build regular schools in such a way that they are convenient.”30 Part of the education these schools provided the children was an encuentro, an experiential nexus between city and country.

An educational complex composed of several units, with buildings of bioclimatic architectural design, the Camilo Cienfuegos School City was situated in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, about forty kilometers inland from Manzanillo. Its inauguration had taken place on July 26, just a few weeks prior to Mills’s visit, with 5,000 peasant children already enrolled. That day hundreds of people showed up, including Fidel Castro, to celebrate the first phase of construction. Loud speakers on towers were set up in the midst of the crowds, a mobile unit with television crew was stationed among the throngs. Pennants on tall poles fluttered in the wind, bunting with triangle patterns draped over the sides of buildings—all this with the towering Sierra Maestra mountain range as the backdrop. The initial plan was for the School City to include 40 schools, 2 to prepare teachers and nurses, and a 200-bed hospital, with the ultimate goal of matriculating 20,000 students, offering them a complete education from first grade to high school.

Rielo is the only informant whom Mills mentions by name and quotes directly in Listen, Yankee (see chapter 7, “Culture in Cuba”). In this interview Mills asks a question of Rielo that he would repeat with subsequent interviewees: “When did you first become aware of the Fidelista movement?” Before beginning his conversation with Rielo, however, Mills spoke the following into the recorder:

MILLS: I am at the military establishment of the women Rebel Army in the Sierra. I’ve just had an interview with two of these young women. Their situation seems to be as follows: There are about fifty of them who went into the Sierra in 1956 and 1957 and formed a Rebel Army unit and fought with Castro. What is now happening is that they are being trained. There are high school teachers here who are giving them grammar school or other kinds of education. And this Rebel Army unit will now become a military reserve unit, but its major function will be to do social work and teaching in the new centers [the school cities] in the Sierra Maestra. It can also be seen as a sort of cadre and is an excellent illustration of the way in which army and militia units are being transformed into organizations for more positive social functions, nonmilitary functions.

The interview with Isabel Rielo begins at this point and is conducted at the Camilo Cienfuegos School City.

MILLS: How long have you been building the [school] city?

RIELO: We brought the first children here in the middle of December.

MILLS: In last December [1959]. And had the construction started at that time?

RIELO: We’re just starting it now. The problem here is that the children help us to found the city. I personally brought the first children here from the Sierra. When we first brought the children only the first classrooms were built.

MILLS: And how did you select the children?

RIELO: The children were selected by Fidel personally who was here with us for a few days and he would go to the Sierra and knew the children of the humblest origin. I also knew the Sierra and I went to the places that he indicated to me: La Plata, La Plama Mocha, the lower slope of Turquino, Santo Domingo, El Jigüe, where a big battle took place …

MILLS: What was the attitude of the parents of the children when their children were selected to come to school here?

RIELO: Imagine. The selection must be intense. I stayed in the countryside for a year and the peasants would recognize me. When I arrived I would explain the reasons why I was there and the future for the children if they came to the [school] city, and so they consented very agreeably.

MILLS: Very agreeably. What arrangements are you going to make to have the parents and the children visit one another?

RIELO: There are no perfect arrangements. But we allow the parents to visit their children and we will build a hotel for each unit so that the parents will have facilities when they come visit the children. In addition, the children will get vacations so that they can go and visit their parents.

MILLS: Three months in the summer?

RIELO: I think less. Because we are going to use part of the vacations to take the children to travel to different places and then go home. So far we have decided that they will stay one month with their parents.

MILLS: And what grades of school do you have now operating?

RIELO: Imagine. All the children who are here are illiterate. Some of them who were brought in the month of December can manage the printing press. They know how to read and write. They know how to add and subtract. A project in the future will be basic high school. In addition, there will be a teacher-training school, a nursing school …

MILLS: But it’s now a primary school only, so far. When do you expect to complete the buildings themselves?

RIELO: This unit [right here] is complete from the point of view of children. We have 576 children. It was inaugurated on the 26th of July. If you are referring to the construction of the building, yes, there are things missing like sports camps, swimming pools, the hotel we were talking about, green areas. This area on the street on the right will all be a green area.

MILLS: How many such units as this will there be in the Sierra?

RIELO: Forty units will form the school city, with a capacity for 20,000 children. Twelve thousand males, 8,000 females.

MILLS: Does the captain think that this sort of boarding school—and I take it she will not object to our calling it that, a boarding school—is going to be the prototype for the whole of Cuba, eventually?

RIELO: Well, I think so. Because I understand they are going to create ten more school cities like this one. This is a system of life very suitable for children. We can’t call this a vigorous boarding school, because here they live as if they are at home.

MILLS: Will they have older women to take care of them, sort of housemothers, we might call them?

RIELO: No, no, no, of course not. The only women here are two compañeras and myself. We function as a cooperative. We cooperativize the units of the school city. Each unit will function as a cooperative. When there is a situation of administration in the cooperative there is [inaudible] an administrator, school police, even an economical board and the children themselves work with the teachers.

MILLS: May I ask the captain two or three personal questions?

RIELO: Delighted, if I can answer. [Giggles].

MILLS: When did you first become aware of the Fidelista movement?

RIELO: I became aware at the university. I was at the University of Havana.

MILLS: In what year was that?

RIELO: The same year that Fidel landed [1956].

MILLS: How old are you now?

RIELO: I am now thirty-two years old.

MILLS: Do you intend to dedicate yourself in the future to building new school units or will you stay and operate this one?

RIELO: I love the cause so much. I believe I’m being useful enough in that sense. If they are going to build ten more school cities I’d like to have the privilege of being in all of them—helping the children of the campesinos.31

At this point, Rielo details all the many services the teachers provide the children. She informs Mills that she is in charge of ordering shoes, clothes, toothpaste, medicines, and so forth for them. Rielo says that there are eleven former guerilla fighters working with her, in addition to two young women soldiers. Including her, there are three women in all.

MILLS: How long have you been a rebel soldier?

RIELO: Since I joined the insurrection. I went to countryside [the Sierra] in February. In 1958.… After we were in the Sierra they organized the feminine battalion.

MILLS: Oh, she was in the feminine battalion?

RIELO: I have historical photographs from the Sierra when we went to the plains. I was the one who founded the Mariana Grajales. I left the battalion last December [1959] because I wanted to come here and work with the children.

MILLS: I have been very rude, I have not asked the captain’s name. Could she please give it to me? And spell it, please.

RIELO: Isabel Rielo.…

MILLS: Has the captain ever been married?

RIELO: I am married. [Giggle]. I have been married ten months.32

MILLS: Although we do not have the honor of knowing your husband may we congratulate him nonetheless. [Laughter]

Interview 5

Time: Approximately eight minutes

Interviewee: Dermidio Escalona. Juan Arcocha interpreted.

Escalona was the highest-ranking government official whose interview Mills recorded electronically. Inspired by the Moncada attack, Escalona took part in what was perhaps one of the earliest armed military actions in the province of Holguín: the failed assault on a munitions depot in order to obtain explosives. Involved in the founding of the guerilla force in Pinar del Río, he participated in several combat missions, including the battle of Seboruco on July 17, 1958, where he was wounded. Just a few months before the interview, Escalona had served on the tribunal that tried Comandante Huber Matos for treason.33 The interview with Mills likely took place in Pinar del Río, where Escalona was serving as military commander of that province.

Mills had been talking with Escalona before turning on the recorder. He then activated the device and summarized what had been discussed.

MILLS TALKING INTO THE RECORDER: I’ve been talking with a captain of the security, Escalona, E-S-C-A-L-O-N-A. He confirms the general point that because the insurrectionary period was rather short, therefore there was not a great deal of time as was true in the, for example, Chinese Revolution, to build administrative and other kinds of personnel.34 However, from the very beginning there were schools set up in the Sierra and on the Second Front also for peasantry.35 And in November 1958 there were schools set up for the soldiers themselves. Not only schools to train them how to fight better, but also schools having to do with peacetime, after the insurrection was over. That is, to prepare cadres of an administrative … [At this point Mills asks Arcocha, “Was it also technical nature?” Arcocha replies, “[inaudible] … from the middle, eh. To prepare them from the civic point of view and revolutionary orientation.”]

Mills resumes questioning Escalona.36

MILLS: Just a moment ago, the captain mentioned that there was some ideological difference between the underground leaders in the city, during the insurrection, and the rebel soldiers. And that this became apparent in the variety of opinions when the victory had been won. Would he please tell me a little something about what those differences were?

ESCALONA: Fundamentally, the army leaders had a more radical sense of the Revolution. The people from the city were from the [inaudible] and by nature they were more conservative. For instance, when the agrarian reform was applied, there were initial differences, and then when the Revolution became more radical, before the aggressions—because the aggressions have been the determining factors that made the Revolution more radical—the desertions started.37 Those leaders belonging to the bourgeoisie and to the wealthy classes got scared.

MILLS: Is it his impression that most of the defectors from the Revolutionary movement were people who had been in the cities, in the underground at most, rather than among rebel soldiers?

ESCALONA: The defections have an origin of class, of fear. There is no one single peasant or worker in exile yet. But the fundamental nucleus of the underground resistance against Batista in the cities came from the working classes, the bourgeois classes.

MILLS: The labor movement did not do very much in that period.

ESCALONA: The labor movement had suffered decomposition since the period of [Carlos] Prío, almost from [Ramón] Grau. Because of the intervention in the syndicates, the imposition of leaders, they stopped syndicalist democracy since then.

MILLS: In other words, the unions were not democratic.

ESCALONA: Goodness, no. And then later on when Batista came, they were even less democratic. They had imposed leaders on the unions under the direction of Mujal.

MILLS: Who was he?

ESCALONA: He was secretary general of the CTC [Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba] from the beginning of Prío’s government to the end of Batista’s government.38

MILLS: I understand also that the Communist Party during the Batista regime had been rather corrupted in the same sense as you mentioned.

ESCALONA: I don’t know the details of the process. I know that those imposed directors presented as something fundamental the problem of anti-Communism. There was no Communist leader leading the unions. What existed during Batista’s first government, when he appeared as a democrat, was a packing by the Communist Party in Cuba to participate in Batista’s government. But at that time Batista pretended that his government was democratic.

MILLS: This was in what time? You mean before he took over in 1952, back in 1933?

ARCOCHA: Yes. During the first government of Batista from 1940 to 1944.

ESCALONA: From March 10 [1952, when Batista took power], there was no support or any kind of relationship between Batista and the Communists because Batista solidified his elite position as a great democrat in his anticommunism. And that justified the military missions from the United States—the bombing, the murdering of peasants in Cuba, the loans when Batista needed money, all the support he received from the American government until the end of his government.

MILLS: They were very useful to him then. They were a legal party, however, under the Batista dictatorship, were they not?

ESCALONA: Yes, to the first government of Batista [1940–44], yes.

MILLS: But not during the second government? [1952–59].

ESCALONA: No, no. It was President Prío who made the Communist Party illegal.

MILLS: And they existed then. Did Batista persecute the Communist Party?

ESCALONA: Yes. Batista also murdered Communist leaders. There was an event in the province of Oriente called the “Bloody Christmas,” where Colonel [Fermin] Cowley murdered twenty-nine union leaders, most of them were Communists.

MILLS: What year was that?

ESCALONA: That happened in 1957, sometime after Fidel landed. 1956 or 1957.39