“HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE ME.”

—FIDEL CASTRO, 19531

CUBAN PITCHER TURNS DOWN OFFER OF $5,000 BONUS TO SIGN WITH THE NEW YORK GIANTS; WILL STUDY LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HAVANA INSTEAD.

This might have been the slug of the Manhattan press on that fine summer day when Fidel Castro Ruz opted for a legal career over a baseball one. The native of Cuba was scouted by Joe Cambria of the Washington Senators, who told him he didn't have a major league arm. But a Pittsburgh Pirates bird dog was more impressed, remembering, “He could set ’em up with the curve, blow ’em down with the heater.” Castro tried out for several major league clubs, including the Philadelphia Athletics, but it was the New York Giants that showed a definite interest. The $5,000 figure was not random. Baseball rules at the time dictated that any amount over $5,000 tendered to a rookie required that he be kept on the roster of the big league club for a season. So the man with the golden arm would have been eligible for assignment to a minor league team, with the Havana Sugar Kings of the International League coming to mind. What may have offended Castro's sensibilities was that the Sugar Kings were owned by an official in the Batista regime. Fulgencio Batista was the Cuban Caligula, a dictator too long in power. But Castro never lost his love for the American national pastime, devotedly following Cuba's national squad and acquiring a batting cage of his own, though he was not destined to see his face on a bubble-gum card.

There are those, of course, who devoutly wish Castro had stuck with baseball. They don't include the Giants immortal Carl Hubbell, who undoubtedly would not have welcomed the stiff competition. But Castro himself found the stiffest competition imaginable when he later set aside his law books and took to the political hustings to deliver action-packed speeches that were distinguished by their length. But he spoke from the heart as he pleaded for an end to poverty in his homeland of eleven million people. The roads of Cuba never run straight, goes an old folk song.

At the University of Havana, Castro lost no time in becoming politicized in its hothouse environment. He was dominated by Cuban nationalism but affiliated with the Ortodoxo Party, which, like most Cuban political structures, was polemically flexible. Fidel's dominant theme in his speeches was the plight of the poor and what to do about it. He harped on agrarian reform that he saw as at least a partial solution in a country without rural electrification. Fidel had issued a manifesto on the subject in 1957 while still in the mountains. The move drew a furious response from the American legislator Harold Cooley, leader of the sugar lobby in Congress, and in the pockets of the corporate landholders such as United Fruit Company. But agrarian reform was a buzzword for American conservatives who viewed it as confiscatory socialism. It was not at all; usually the distributed acreage was unsuitable for agriculture. The Castro version was more like the ejiido model adopted in Mexico after the revolution.2 It called for division of surplus land and land holdings within reasonable limits. Critics charged that United Fruit Company, a huge presence in tropical countries, was the prime target of Castro from day one because his father, an employee, had been mistreated.

Be that as it may, Fidel's matriculation at the Havana institution was marked by controversy that carried beyond the ivied walls. The Fidel who went to the University of Havana in October 1945 both attracted and repelled his fellow “students,” some of whom even came to study, for this was a classic Latin American university system that was half devoted to learning and at least half devoted to fomenting political action.³

Castro's ability to deliver fiery speeches, albeit long-winded, gained him an approving audience in greater Havana that, when the time was right, coalesced into a solid political base. As a candidate he would have been a natural. Physically, Fidel stood out. He was markedly tall in a country of generally short men.4

He affected a somewhat rumpled look, perhaps the result of a conscious attempt to look unconventional. Yet he possessed the magnetic personality of a yacht salesman.

The conventional Cuban political scene was so turgid that it was perhaps preferable to be called a revolutionary. Consider the hapless Eduardo Chibás, a rotund little man who kept the political waters constantly roiled. “Every week on Sunday night, Chibás spoke,” Hugh Thomas recorded in his landmark volume Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom, and “crowds flocked to hotels or cafés to hear him.” Like Castro, Chibás was an Ortodoxo. “He spoke with extraordinary passion and energy, denouncing the unbridled corruption of the regime and the gangsters associated with it.” He believed that corruption was the most important problem Cuba faced. But Chibás had erred in identification. On August 5, 1951, he walked into radio station CMQ in Havana for his weekly radio broadcast. That day he had promised to furnish the evidence supporting his claim that education minister Aureliano Sanchez Arango was embezzling money. Instead, he talked about other topics, warned that Fulgencio Batista might attempt a military coup, and made a farewell statement. Chibás, who was also a senator, was supposed to present evidence from congressmen supporting his claim, who ultimately refused to do so. Chibás apparently believed that killing himself was the only way he could apologize for his inability to keep his promise, so he pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that his allotted radio time was only twenty-five minutes. The shot took place while the commercial ad with “Café Pilon” was running, thus eliminating the planned effect of “his grand finale.” The corrupt regime, as Thomas put it, was the presidency of Carlos Prío Socarrás.

Cuba wasn't mighty militarily, but with the possessions of Guantanamo it was strategically on the map. It was rich in natural resources such as nickel and copper, and a major player in world sugar markets. Behold the Cuban cigars, their labels second to none. It was the pearl of the Antilles, playground to the sophisticated traveler who bends an elbow at the Floridita bar, or the Bodeguita del Medio, where mojitos are the politically correct drink. The packing-crate United States Interest Section building forlornly faces the Malecon waterfront. Outside Havana, the white-sand beaches defy surpassing beauty, and the highland lakes abound with bass.

In the 1950s it was golden to be president of Cuba. Batista presided over the growing number of gambling casinos and spent many an hour clinking glasses with visiting notables. One such was Richard Nixon, who showed up with his constant companion, Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, at his elbow. For Batista, the slots clanking in the background must have been music to his ears, as were the sounds of the roulette wheels spinning and the dice rolling.

One of Batista's most useful partisans was Rolando “El Tigre” Masferrer, who can best be described as a man for all political seasons. In his youth, the powerfully built Masferrer was a militant communist, fighting on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War, losing a leg but gaining a reputation as an enforcer. It is safe to say that Masferrer was a Renaissance man, affecting silk scarves while scribing poetry, and painting landscapes while patronizing classical music. Speeding down the Malecon in a Cadillac convertible, he justified the acceptance of gangsterism to a German passenger, “Remember, chico, we're all gangsters. What did you expect? This isn't Europe.”5

But Masferrer was also capable of fits of idealism, as was shown by his enlistment in the romantically named Caribbean Legion, which was formed for the express purpose of overthrowing the rogue dictator Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo of the Dom Rep. Trujillo was well known for his grievous trespasses against human rights. His only competitor for cruelty honors was François “Papa Doc” Duvalier of Haiti. The democratic rulers of other nations in the region had gotten together and decided that the only way to go was to muster a mobile strike force.⁶ In recognition of his service in the Spanish Civil War, Masferrer was appointed an officer.

And who should come under his command but another volunteer, Fidel Castro. It was the summer of 1947, and the tryouts with the Major League Baseball teams were two years away. Nevertheless, his athletic prowess was about to be tested. The Caribbean Legion trained on isolated Cayo Confites on the north coast of the Dominican Republic and, with the democratic rulers looking the other way, launched an invasion. It was a disaster. Trujillo's efficient spy network found out about the Legion's intent. The Dom Rep regulars trounced the eclectic Legionnaires. Fidel, who had been leading a platoon of Dom Rep citizen volunteers, dove into the choppy waters between the Dom Rep and the north shore of Cuba. It marked the beginning of the Castro legend. When he finished the marathon swim, he found himself within hitchhiking distance of his father's modest farm.

It was at this point that Masferrer became all tough-guy and formed his feared Los Tigres in Santiago de Cuba at the island's eastern tip, celebrated as the nation's Cradle of Liberty. From Santiago, Masferrer dispatched his Los Tigres into the hills to try and run his ex-comrade-in-arms to ground. But Fidel and his now-downsized band of insurgents had disappeared into the fastness of the Sierra Maestra range.

I interviewed Rolando Masferrer on April 27, 1974, at his home in urban Miami. He gave the impression of a street fighter, although his days as commander of his private army were long gone. Flanking him on both sides were khaki-clad individuals with stern faces who, if drugstore clerks, would only smile if someone forgot their change. I asked Masferrer if he had any criticism of Castro during the Caribbean Legion expedition, since the youngster was under his command. Masferrer replied, “I blame myself as the man who gave him rudimentary training in military affairs—he was in charge of a platoon and behaved very discreetly.”

What Castro needed to start his revolution was money. He thought it would be a tough sell, but he knew his man, Carlos Prío Socarrás, had it. Prío had been regarded as the island's most corrupt president until he was unseated in Batista's bloodless coup in 1952. Ever since then, he had schemed to return to the baroque Presidential Palace. He had started his own paramilitary unit under the banner of the Autentico Party and merged with the Second National Front of Escambray that was physically much closer to Havana (the ultimate prize) than Fidel in the Sierra Maestra.

Prío provided funding for Castro to underwrite his revolution in the hopes that he would be allowed to finish out his term in office. But he worried that the Americans would somehow influence the outcome, and it wouldn't be in his favor. He made several trips to the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington to solidify his claim to be president-in-waiting as Batista's position deteriorated. “I told the head of the Cuban desk that we wanted a smooth transition—no massacres—and that it was the duty of the Americans to stabilize the situation,” Prío told me.7 State insisted that the situation would resolve itself.

As a source for financing, Castro also thought of the National Crime Syndicate (NCS) that was raking in millions of dollars a day through ownership of the casinos lining Havana's gamblers row, but the notion quickly passed. The Syndicate posed as legitimate businessmen but with few exceptions was under the rule of Meyer Lansky, the chief executive of the NCS. Just a percentage of the daily skim could finance Castro's revolution that had been staggering ever since the Moncada Barracks attack boomeranged in 1953.

That plan was to attack the barracks in Santiago de Cuba early in the morning when it could be anticipated that the soldiers would be dulled by hangovers, making the element of surprise the tipping point. The soldiers proved alert, however, and the Castro irregulars were routed, some escaping death only through the intervention of priests who happened upon the scene. The capture of the barracks was to be coupled with a general strike, but that never happened. Fidel, his brother Raul, and the surviving guerillas were hustled to the Isla de Pinos prison, where a panel of judges sat in Catalonian silence as Castro delivered his impassioned “history will absolve me” speech. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and Raul to thirteen years, but both were released two years later, in 1955, in a Batista general amnesty.

In exile in Mexico, Castro formed the 26th of July Movement, named after the date of the Moncada assault. By this time, Castro was regarded by many Cubans as a reincarnation of Jose Marti, the hero of the fight for independence from Spain at the turn of the century. Soon the guerillas were pop heroes called barbudos (“bearded revolutionaries”), and their cause reverberated through the nation. Now out of prison and up in the hills, Castro's growing popularity attracted an eclectic group of people visiting his mountain redoubt: journalist Herbert Matthews of the New York Times; Jules Witcover of the Chicago Tribune; parajournalist Andrew St. George, a contributor to Life; and Frank Sturgis, who was ferrying guns and ammunition to Castro. It happened that Sturgis had formed a small import-export company grandly called Interamerica Business Corporation, and it came in handy as a cover for his smuggling. He bought quality weapons at a suburban Washington firm that dealt worldwide and was closely aligned with the CIA, then devised an ingenious system to supply the Havana underground. Using rented vans, Sturgis would drop off sixty-pound packages of guns and ammunitions to trusted Cuban families in Miami. They would buy old jalopies and conceal the contraband in false gas tanks and door panels, then drive to Key West and take the ferry to Havana. The jalopies were left in parking lots for pickup by underground contacts.8

But the only practical way to supply the rebel army in the Sierra Maestra was by air. One evening in early 1958, as shadows crept up the majestic turret of Pico Turquino, the loftiest peak in the Sierra Maestra, Castro lit a Cohiba and sipped Añejo rum as he conversed with Sturgis, a chain-smoking teetotaler. Castro disclosed that he was about to open new fronts and an urban underground in an expanding offensive. But the weapons coming through from Miami came at a snail's pace. Could Sturgis do better? He could and did. Sturgis assembled a small fleet of light planes that landed on remote stretches or made air drops. After watching Sturgis sideslip a Bellanca loaded with arms into a mountain clearing, Castro marveled, “My favorite yanqui.”⁹ Sturgis was also flying for Carlos Prío and his Second Front, but Sturgis ultimately dismissed Prío as just another politician and devoted full time to flying for the 26th of July Movement.¹⁰

Castro's popularity began to extend beyond the borders of Cuba due to the journalistic output generated from these meetings, and resulted in a multiplying effect for his cause, drawing in other rebels, like Che Guevara, and bringing in financial support from around the world. Teenagers put Castro and Che on their bedroom walls. His guerilla war of attrition became successful. Fidel was the Eisenhower of the hills.

In late 1958, Castro, fortified by additional troops and supplies, ordered an advance on Havana. The advance was turning into a rout, forcing some army soldiers to hide in caves. The precipitous departure of Batista left a vacuum that several of the action groups could try to fill. Only five days earlier, Castro had met secretly with General Eugenio Cantillo, commander of the Cuban Army forces on the eastern front in Oriente Province. Cantillo had helicoptered to the meeting site, a sugar mill, in an attempt to save the army from demobilization and Batista from criminal prosecution.11 In addition to this, Cantillo harbored his own ambitions for the future of Cuba. The general promised that Batista would leave the country if the army was left intact. Castro was insistent, however, that the dictator be held for trial. Cantillo countered that the army would rise before 3:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve. Castro stood his ground that the army be dismantled. The talks broke off.

Now Castro's forces were advancing down the Central Highway toward Havana. It was a matter of hours, the glowing bulbs of the situation board showed, before the 26th of July banner hoisted on a Jeep would reach the Presidential Palace. Batista still had hopes of cutting a deal to participate in a rump government that would take over before Castro's lead columns reached the city center. But that didn't happen.

At the time the news hit, the CIA contingent attached to the United States Embassy in Havana was having cocktails on a glass-enclosed outer deck. The bearer of the tidings was E. Howard Hunt, the contemplative, pipe-smoking agent who would later be a major figure in the Watergate affair. Not to worry, Hunt said, Batista had given assurance that his air force had wiped out the invaders.¹² It was of course a canard.