A Note on the Interviews

In the foreword—“Note to the Reader, I”—to Listen, Yankee, Mills explains that “for convenience of presentation and for brevity,” he does not cite names in the text. Thus, the book as such cannot be consulted to identify the respondents he interviewed. Several clues, however, can be culled from the Note and the interviews themselves to determine the identities of most of his respondents.

Of the nine interviewees audiotaped by Mills, three can be positively identified from the recordings either because Mills explicitly asks them their name or because he addresses them directly by name. These are the journalist Juan Arcocha, Mills’s interpreter; the professor and psychiatrist Franz Stettmeier; and the rebel soldier Isabel Rielo.

A fourth, whom Mills describes in the Note simply as “Captain Escalona, Aide to the Prime Minister,” is likely the comandante who had organized the Pinar del Río Guerrilla Front, Dermidio Escalona. I arrive at this conclusion circuitously, based on the fact that Juan Arcocha, who introduced Mills to Escalona, also introduced K. S. Karol to an “Escalona” (no first name provided in either case) the following year. Karol describes his Escalona as “young, slim, and with an impressive black beard,” which closely resembles a photograph of Dermidio Escalona.1 Of some minor interest may be the fact that Escalona is the only one not named in the acknowledgments in a preliminary draft of Listen, Yankee.

The name of another respondent, Stettmeier’s wife—Elvira Escobar, also an academic—can be inferred with a very high degree of certainty based on three circumstantial pieces of information. First, her name is listed in the Note right after Stettmeier’s; second, Stettmeier, in his interview, recommends to Mills that he speak with his wife, and in the interview Mills asks her how long she had been married to Stettmeier; third, in the Note Escobar is identified as being affiliated with the University of Oriente, a fact she discloses in the interview.

The identities of the other four respondents are more difficult to ascertain, but I feel quite confident that the couple Mills interviewed at the Rousseau ranch are the housekeeper, Elba Luisa Batista Benitez, and her husband, the mechanic Lauro Fiallo Barrero. I infer this from two clues. First, they are the only couple that Mills interviewed jointly, and theirs are the only names he lists together in the Note. Also, in the Note Elba Batista is said to be from the port city of Manzanillo, a fact established during her interview.

As for the two army captains whom Mills interviewed and whom I call Captain 1 and Captain 2, I was unable to find any identifying information. They will have to remain anonymous.

Biographical and other public information on most of Mills’s recorded interviewees is sparse or simply nonexistent, in any language, inside or outside of Cuba. Juan Arcocha, who was a novelist of some prominence, is the most well-known, and material by him and on him can be easily obtained from a number of sources, in English and Spanish, most of which are cited in this book. Isabel Rielo is recognized outside of Cuba—in two English-language sources also cited in this book—mainly for her participation in the all-women’s combat platoon in the Sierra Maestra. Dermidio Escalona is occasionally referenced, usually in passing, in histories on the Cuban insurrection and on the trial of Huber Matos.2 Some limited information can be found on Franz Stettmeier on the Internet and in the Spanish-language journal article cited in Chapter 5, note 3. I have been unable to locate any material on the remaining interviewees.

It is safe to assume that the order of the recordings reflects the sequence in which Mills carried out the interviews. In this book, however, I have presented them in a different order, placing the respondents into two general categories. Though Mills characterized all of his informants as “revolutionaries,”3 some of them—military officers and government functionaries—could speak in an “official” capacity, whereas those who were private citizens were largely speaking only for themselves. It is for this reason that I separated the responses of those working for the government (in Chapter 4) from private citizens (in Chapter 5).

Two of the interviews were conducted by Mills directly in English, the rest relied on the formidable skills of translation provided by Mills’s Cuban interpreter, Juan Arcocha. I have provided my own translations from the Spanish in those parts of the recordings where the interviewee’s responses can be heard clearly. In doing so I furnish a more flowing and easier-to-read rendition than Arcocha’s more literal interpretation. However, in those cases where the Spanish response is unclear or inaudible, I employed Arcocha’s translation exclusively. In addition, I opted to leave untranslated certain Spanish words—e.g., campesino, cura, latifundista, siquitrillada—because of their unique flavor in that language and because I feel that no English equivalent quite captures their connotation or colloquial nature. In the more technical of these cases I gave their closest English meaning in the text or else explained them in a footnote.4

There are a handful of places where I felt that, for purposes of conversational flow, it was best to summarize those segments of the recorded interview. Also, in a few cases I have omitted short sections—indicated by ellipses—where I deemed that what was being said was not relevant to the larger discussion, or that it would not be of interest to the reader. These brief omissions are based entirely on my editorial judgment, and I hope I have not erred in making them. In addition, I also indicated where there are gaps, due to technological or other reasons, in the audio recordings. My sense is that these gaps are short and they do not adversely affect the discussion.