THE SCENE IS so vividly conjured in The Godfather: Part II that it has become part of popular culture. On New Year’s Eve, well-dressed Cuban and American revelers, including a bevy of Mafiosi, led by Michael Corleone and his brother Fredo, gather at an aristocratic reception with Batista and his family. Midnight tolls, the champagne flows, the crowd rejoices. Outside, fireworks are let off and rich Cubans party as if they don’t have a care in the world. But then Batista quiets the room to make a shocking announcement: he is fleeing the country. The rebels have won. Even as the dictator is talking, members of the audience start to slip out. When news reaches the streets outside, the partygoers turn angry, looting casinos and attacking parking meters. As panic spreads through the city, rich Cubans with their suitcases rush the yacht marinas in a desperate attempt to escape before the guerrillas arrive like avenging angels.
The reality of that cataclysmic night was somewhat different—and in many ways more gripping. It is true that Batista fled Havana like a cowardly comic-book villain, surprising even many of his closest confidants. But the details later became so confused—and buried beneath Coppola-esque mythology—that a timeline is needed to follow the convoluted ups and downs of the night. Piecing together newspaper reports and eyewitness testimony, the most dramatic twelve hours in Cuban history had a dreamlike pace:
10:00 p.m.: A sense of anxiety has already ensured that this will be a New Year’s Eve like no other. The rebels have given the codename “03C” to the evening—cero cine, cero compra, cero cabaret (“zero cinema, zero shopping, zero cabaret”). Word of the boycott has spread under the authorities’ noses: For days, cryptic ads have been appearing in newspapers with no text other than those three letters. They were paid for by a sympathetic American businessman, who told gullible censors that it was a teaser for a new hair tonic. “03C” meant, he said, “zero calvicie (baldness), zero caspa (dandruff), zero canas (gray hairs).”
Radio Rebelde then provided the real explanation: “What is 03C? What is 03C?” one announcer asked. “Pay attention! Because 03C is a matter of life or death for you. 03C is the watchword for public shame! Zero cinema, zero shopping, zero cabaret.” The musical Medina family then burst into song:
If all of Cuba is at war,
Don’t you go to the cabaret!
Although the guerrillas have disavowed terrorism, rumors have spread that they might target nightclubs. Many middle-class Cubans decide to party at home. Even so, the tourist hotels are hopping with affluent foreigners, including hundreds of Americans from two large cruise ships docked in port. The Cuban-owned Tropicana always seems to be above politics, luring braver habaneros; a line of cars keeps its four valets dashing nonstop. Instead of joining the festivities at his own Riviera Hotel, Meyer Lansky is dining with his mistress in the modest, low-profile Plaza Hotel downtown, joined by his trusted driver, Armando Jaime. He has put the word out at the Riviera (and to his wife) that his ulcers have kept him in his twentieth-floor suite.
Tradition is modified in Batista’s circle, too. For decades, the dictator has hosted a lavish New Year’s Eve party at his ample apartments in Camp Columbia, complete with live bands, feasting, and dancing. Instead, earlier in the afternoon, his secretary has invited about seventy intimates to join him for a simple midnight toast.
In the faraway Oriente, Fidel is in the América sugar mill planning the attack on Santiago with his staff. The Hollywood actor Errol Flynn (of all people) has been with him throughout the day.
Around Cuba, any M-26-7 supporters trying to find updates about the revolution were glum. Radio Rebelde is silent (it is moving studios), so the only information comes from US broadcasts, which are filled with terrible news. On his New Year’s Eve roundup on CBS, Ed Murrow reports that Che’s guerrillas have been forced back in Santa Clara. An announcer in Texas goes one further, declaring that the Cuban army has “smashed the rebel offensive and sent Castro’s bearded warriors fleeing back to their mountain hideouts.” Batista’s US spokesman also confidently confirms that Fidel has been beaten and “the two-year-old Cuban civil war [is] nearing its end.” Few are optimistic that the conflict will conclude any time soon.
11:00 p.m.: Lansky is absent, but his chic Riviera Hotel is playing host to the venerable New York Times journalist Herbert L. Matthews, who is visiting Havana by chance with his wife, Nancie; Ruby Hart Phillips and other American expats join them for dinner. The mambo band is spirited, the paper party hats colorful, and the cuisine—a set menu of turtle soup, filet mignon, and Baked Alaska—top-notch. The evening is going well until a guest whose house overlooks Camp Columbia casually mentions that he saw cars heading to the base filled with women, children, and valises. This puzzling news has Matthews and the reporters acting “like cats on hot bricks,” Nancie notes.
11:30 p.m.: At the Tropicana, the cabaret show Rumbo al Waldorf begins. A dance number called “What a Thrill to Fly Cubana Airways!” includes film footage of a passenger plane taking off from Havana. It is followed by the theme song from The Bridge on the River Kwai, (William Morgan’s favorite, aka the “Colonel Bogey March”), set to a cha-cha rhythm.
In an uncanny echo, the three DC-4 airplanes lined up on the tarmac at Camp Columbia are ready with their engines idling. The pilots have been pulled from their family New Year’s Eve celebrations but given no idea where they will be flying or why. At the other end of the enormous complex, Batista’s guests have arrived at his headquarters, a Spanish Gothic mansion with stained glass windows, for the downsized fiesta. As they await the president in the second-floor ballroom, conversation is strained. Chicken with rice is served on bone china. Some guests pensively sip champagne but most take coffee.
11:45 p.m.: Five hundred miles away, an exhausted Fidel retires with Celia to his quarters in the América sugar mill and falls asleep immediately.
11:50 p.m.: Batista’s cavalcade roars up to the doors of his hushed soiree. He mingles with guests, calmly offering pleasantries; in his pocket he is carrying his list of names. (The night before, two of his sons, aged eight and eleven, were flown to New York City with servants and bodyguards, to be installed in a Waldorf Astoria Hotel suite.) In the seconds before midnight, an aide hands Batista a cup of coffee laced with brandy.
Midnight: “Cinco, quatro, tres, dos, uno . . . Feliz Año Nuevo!” The champagne corks pop all over Havana. Many revelers, following Spanish tradition, eat a dozen purple grapes with each stroke of the clock for good luck; those celebrating at home also toss buckets of water from their balconies. Cheers ring out. Firecrackers explode in Old Havana.
In the América sugar mill, some cheeky rebel soldiers disobey Fidel’s orders and shoot off their guns. Other guerrillas listen to the Women’s Platoon sing the “26th of July Hymn” and “Silent Night.” When bearded well-wishers knock at their door, Celia apologizes that Fidel cannot join them because he is already sound asleep. The newly engaged Vilma and Raúl toast with shot glasses filled with Coca-Cola, overlooking the soft drink’s imperialist overtones.
12:35 a.m.: In Camp Columbia, Batista takes his highest-ranking guests away from the main party downstairs to his airless office. Without preamble, he reads in a detached monotone a two-page statement announcing his resignation, referring to himself in the third person. The group’s reaction is disbelief mixed with dread: Batista is washing his hands of Cuba and leaving thousands of his supporters to their fates. He names General Cantillo, the leader of the failed “Operation Fin de Fidel,” as head of the armed forces, and an elderly supreme court judge as new president. An aide then reads the list of passengers who have seats in the escape planes; among them is the president-elect from the recent sham vote, Andrés Rivero Agüero, who has not been informed of Batista’s departure until now.
Guests in the main party only learn of the drama when someone dashes upstairs gasping: “Batista is leaving.” A few supporters elbow their way into the dictator’s office, where the grim news is confirmed. “When we leave this room,” the strongman advises them calmly, “grab your wives. Get in your cars. Don’t tell your chauffeurs or bodyguards anything. Get in the planes. The engines are running. This is the most dangerous moment of all.” A rush for the door begins; everyone is shouldering their way out to the garden. Men jump into their limousines shouting, “To the airfield!” Women trip over their long gowns and lose high heels. Batista’s bodyguard later compares the scene to “a stampede of cows in a Western movie.”
Military officers who live on Camp Columbia are able to rush home and grab jewels and cash; the civilian passengers are forced to leave Cuba with what they have on them. As he reaches the airfield, Agüero bitterly counts 215 pesos in his wallet. The execrable Havana police chief, Colonel Ventura—“the assassin in the white suit”—cannot understand why Batista did not warn him in advance to bring his wife and children with him to the party. “This is cowardice and a betrayal,” he stammers to Batista. On being assured that his family will follow in a plane the next day, he reluctantly climbs aboard. Soldiers taunt the departing officers from the darkness: “Viva Fidel!” comes one distant cry. Then: “You should have left sooner!”
12:45 a.m.: Phillips and Ted Scott, editor of the English-language Havana Post, drop off Matthews and Nancie at their usual haunt, the Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel, then go to their office and call Camp Columbia. There is no answer. As Phillips drives home, the streets are deserted; even the police have vanished.
1:30 a.m.: The American-style shindig at the Plaza Hotel, complete with inebriated renditions of “Auld Lang Syne,” is in full swing when Meyer Lansky is approached in his booth by one of his sidekicks, who whispers in his ear. Lansky’s expression does not change. He stands up, apologizes to his mistress, and walks out with his driver. He orders Jaime to speedily make the rounds of his casinos before news of Batista’s exit leaks out. “Get the money,” Lanksy says. “All of it.”
2:40 a.m.: From the doorway of a DC-4, Batista shouts “¡Salud! ¡Salud!” without apparent irony to a crowd of abandoned supporters, then disappears inside. One by one, the three aircraft roar off into the moonless night. An army officer left behind mumbles, “God help us.”
Residents of the upscale suburbs of Marianao and Playa nearby have their celebrations interrupted by the din of the planes banking out over the ocean. Many think they are going to crash or that the pilots are intoxicated. The timing is unusual: commercial flights almost never leave Havana at that hour. CIA agent David Atlee Phillips is sipping champagne in a lawn chair when he sees lights receding in the sky like UFOs. He calls his case officer in Washington and says, “Batista just flew into exile.” The reaction: “Are you drunk?”
At the Tropicana, a phone call comes in for a rich Batista crony. He has passed out at the roulette table, so the croupier passes the receiver to the man’s wife. She blanches and gasps: “¡No me digas!”—“Don’t tell me!” —then asks the dealer to carry her husband to their car. From that moment, Rosa Lowinger writes in the memoir Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub, “like the first fat raindrops of a tropical thundershower, the rumors started.”
4:00 a.m.: On board Batista’s escape plane, the president casually informs passengers that they are flying to the Dominican Republic, not Florida as they had all assumed. He does not explain that the US had denied him asylum. The silence, one passenger says, is “funereal”; Agüero later compares the plane to “a huge casket carrying a cargo of live corpses.” Still, there is a moment of black humor. As they pass over the Sierra Maestra, a senator wonders aloud what sort of reception they would get from the Rebel Army if they crash-landed.
5:00 a.m.: Word of Batista’s cut and run filters thought Havana; telephone calls multiply, families wake each other with cries of “¡Se fue!”—“He’s gone.” Phillips calls up Matthews with the news, and soon he is on trunk calls to New York. As the sky pales, habaneros leave their houses, cheering, banging cymbals, drums, and kitchen pans in an instant Carnival. Convoys of cars honk horns through the city. Church bells ring. The years of frustration spill out: crowds attack parking meters with baseball bats and sledgehammers, sending rivers of coins onto the sidewalks. (The meters are despised symbols of corruption in auto-loving Havana, since the proceeds went straight to Batista’s chums.) Shop windows are shattered. Then the casinos are targeted.
6:00 a.m.: Hollywood actor George Raft, who has been employed as MC at the Mob-run Capri Hotel—an inside joke for Americans, since he often played gangsters on-screen—is slipping between the silk sheets with his inamorata when he hears gunfire. He phones the front desk and is told, “Mr. Raft, the revolution is here.” He throws on some clothes and dashes downstairs to find pandemonium. A hundred furious Cubans are destroying the lobby. One even lets loose with machine-gun fire at the bar, disintegrating the liquor bottles and mirrors. According to his own account, Raft climbs onto a table and shouts, “Calm down! For chrissake, calm down!” Miraculously, the crowd leader recognizes him and yells: “It’s George Raft, the movie star!” Improvising wildly, Raft says that everyone is welcome to food and drink if they leave the hotel alone. After some “lightweight looting,” most of the Cubans happily depart. Other casinos fare worse. The Plaza, where Lanksy was dining, is trashed. At the Riviera, farmers will soon arrive to let loose a truckload of pigs in the lobby, stomping mud over the carpets and defecating in the casino.
The malevolent Rolando Masferrer, chief of the Tigers death squad, throws 20,000 pesos into a bag and orders supporters to meet him on a former US Coast Guard vessel, the Olo-Kun II, which he has converted for just this emergency. They speed directly north to Florida. Top naval officials pile onto Batista’s private yacht, the Marta III, and cast off.
7:00 a.m.: Matthews and Nancie venture out of the Sevilla-Biltmore to find the capital “a madhouse.” While Matthews will knock out a front-page report for the Times, the most candid account comes from Nancie, who jots a detailed letter to their son Eric on scraps of paper and hotel stationery. No sooner have they stepped out the door than they run into “villainous-looking” armed throngs and are forced to drop to their stomachs to avoid stray bullets; police watch the looting from a distance, aware they will be lynched if they intervene. Scrambling back inside the hotel, they find that the lobby has been wrecked—“a mass of broken glass, overturned [tables]” and “full of Americans stranded.” As at the Capri, the bar has been a target. “We couldn’t even get a beer, much to Daddy’s disgust who certainly does like his little drinks.”
By now Batista has landed in the Dominican Republic, where he gives the pilot and copilot $1,000 in cash each. The second plane arrives within half an hour. The third, carrying several of Batista’s children and other collaborators, lands in Jacksonville, Florida, where the fifty-two passengers are stuck in the airport for hours. Miami was deemed too full of pro-Castro exiles to be a safe destination, but even here the new arrivals are taunted in a terminal café. “Torturer,” one Cuban yells at a SIM officer. A silver-haired man sitting next to him adds: “You’re a killer . . . And we’re going to kill you.”
8:00 a.m.: The first American tourists from the cruise ship Mauretania land in Havana Harbor for shore excursions, unaware that the city is teetering on the edge of chaos. As they set off in convertible taxis, few wonder why the national radio station has canceled regular programming and is playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony over and over again. Far away in the Oriente, with no telephone or telegraph service, Fidel and his rebels greet the New Year no better informed about the earth-shattering events of the night before.