Chapter 1
Chapter I
Trinidad, Cuba
January 4, 1959
“Are you telling me not to go?” Elpidio García asked his older brother, Ortelio.
“Elpidio, it’s such a long drive to Santa Clara, up and down mountains.”
“Really? Look, Ortelio, most of my friends are going. Many of yours too. This is an important moment for our nation. No one can deny that Fidel’s triumph is anything short of miraculous.”
“Don’t use that word together with that man’s name, Elpidito,” Elpidio García, the family’s patriarch, admonished from his wheelchair, shaking a gnarled index finger at his youngest son and drilling him with his teary blue eyes. “He’s no saint.”
Elpidio didn’t respond. They all had fresh in their minds their father’s volatile temper and quick hands, until the stroke a few years ago. It was an old Spanish thing—discipline and respect were better taught with pain.
People in the region respected the old man for having turned the land he inherited into a successful enterprise with hard and at times beastly work. Physically very strong, he had never known the meaning of fear. He was barely educated, only a few years of primary school as a child, and the rest of his life dedicated to the land, like his parents before him and the ones before in Spain, who could not even sign their names on a piece of paper but were of hard-as-nails stock.
At twenty-four years of age, Elpidio was the youngest of the three García boys, a pregnancy later in life that had surprised his parents, who were already in their mid-forties at the time. It had cost his mother her life. Blond, with blue eyes and very fair skin, short and muscular, he was the only child in the family who had inherited all his Spanish ancestors’ traits, including a mind of his own.
“We talked about it yesterday and the day before. No one knows this guy’s real agenda,” Ortelio said. “His so-called ‘rebel army’ is full of well-known communists and shady guys.”
“Yes, you’re right, we’ve talked about it again and again.”
“My son”—the old man intervened once more, now mellower, out of steam—“why don’t you listen to your older brother’s opinions? Remember the old Spanish saying, El que no oye consejo no llega a viejo—He who doesn’t listen to advice will not make it to old age.”
“I want to witness history in the making, Dad. I would like to be there when Fidel rolls into Santa Clara with his troops. And if he gives a speech, I want to see and hear him in person. What’s wrong with that?”
“I’ll tell you what, Elpidio,” Ortelio said. “Why don’t you save yourself the grueling drive and we all watch it on TV from right here, our ancestral home?” He swept the air around him with his hands, in a faintly comical attempt to lighten up the conversation. “We can roast a pig, chill the beer, maybe Rosita will make those special black beans we like so much.” He shot a glance at Rosa, the family’s quasi adopted daughter, who was standing outside the room talking with his own daughter, Soledad. “I’m sure Dad won’t mind opening a couple of those old bottles of rum he has stashed away, and we can toast your hero and wish for the best, for him, us, and the country.”
“He’s not my hero, Ortelio, but he has accomplished something remarkable.”
“We can invite the whole family to come,” added the patriarch, “but I will open only one of the bottles, only for us, the immediate family. Every time there’s a celebration you guys want to rid me of my stash. And this is not a family celebration, this is… just… a…” He waved a hand, dismissing the thought.
“Dad, you barely drink anymore,” Elpidio said with a slight grin, looking at Ortelio, who rolled his eyes.
“He’s going to take that fancy booze with him when he departs,” Ortelio quipped.
“Don’t you be making departure plans on my behalf, sonny. Not yet. I know I’m old and sick, but I might still surprise all of you and stick around longer than you expect me to.”
“We all pray to God for that, Dad,” Ortelio was quick to respond. “We still need you.”
No one could usually deter the young Elpidio from doing what he wanted once his mind was made up, but this time he relented. Like the rest of the family, Elpidio was very aware of his father’s increasing frailty and he abhorred the notion of being responsible for anything untoward happening to the old man. Not because of him. Not again. He came to his father’s ranch three times a week to help Ortelio run it. Their father couldn’t do it anymore. Ortelio was very good at business in general, but help from his brothers was always welcomed. Ramón, though, almost never showed up; he was very busy with his fishing boats, surely a half-truth at best.
Next day all of the Garcías, their families, some distant relatives, and a few friends
and neighbors came to the sprawling, old country estate. The family had built the mansion over many years, one chunk of stone and masonry at a time, the sporadic construction leaving ample space for a central patio with the ubiquitous water well in the middle, its circular wall covered in old Spanish tiles that showed off the colorful shiny arabesques. The roof of the house was finished with the traditional red clay tiles, and it was easy to distinguish the age of each of the house’s additions by the hue the roof tiles had acquired over the years, the darkest being the oldest.
Lush tropical vegetation and palm, fruit, and shade trees surrounded the property outside its walls. On the mountain-facing side of the house, all the way to the first elevations of the thick-forested Sierra del Escambray, man-tended landscape and wild growth created the illusion of a continuous natural green carpet. Several orange trees prospered and perfumed the central patio and the rooms of the house that wrapped around it. The plants’ greens, oranges, and yellow, the white wash of the walls, and the burnt and bright reds of the roof, all of it under the radiant blue Caribbean sky, seemed to have sprung from an Impressionist painter’s palette.
That day, January 5th, 1959, Fidel Castro Ruz spoke from the Leoncio Vidal Park in Santa Clara to great popular acclaim, and promised his people that a new era was dawning for the Republic. Five months later, in June of the same year, Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform Law, which prohibited the ownership of more than 993 acres by any person or corporation, national or foreign. Although this law was interpreted to be more to the detriment of the huge American interests on the island, it gave young Elpidio pause. The family ranch was smaller than the limit, but it was pretty big. He wondered if it would stop there.
It was well known that the size of the García ranch was an anomaly in this area of the island. Here, most of the arable land was divided among thousands of small property owners, all direct descendants of the men and women who had fought in the Wars of Independence from Spain, after which a grateful nation had bestowed on them five-acre parcels of farming land. Nevertheless, all the landowners, big and small, in the Sierra del Escambray and beyond began to worry. And not only the Escambray’s landowners, but many people from all walks of life also worried; everyone knew what had happened in Russia after Lenin’s revolution and in the eastern European countries after World War II.
Eighteen months later, the big speech came, and it was broadcasted live to the nation. Start writing here…
