Read One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution for Free Online Page A

here, the guerrillas could land on the beach, follow the Macio Riverinland, and move straight into the mountains to the west of Turquino. Then she showed them Marea del Portillo, between El Macho and Pilón. Less wild, it even had a road away from the beach. Loaded into trucks, Fidel and his men could be in secluded mountain areas in a matter of minutes. This part of the coast was miles from the Rural Guard in either direction, as well as close to the mountains. As they traveled westward, she showed them other good landing spots, past Pilón in the general direction of the large port, Niquero, close to the tip of the peninsula that was Oriente Province’s western extreme.
    They got back at dark, wet from a storm that had blown up, and her guests changed into dry clothing from a stock of vacation clothes left behind by Celia’s brother-in-law, brother, and father. Celia served dinner that night in the Mango Bar, as they called their stone-paved dining terrace under the giant tree. She had selected a traditional but special Cuban meal: puerco ahogado (piglet, deep fried), congri (black beans cooked with tomato sauce and spices added to rice, which came to Cuba from the Congo via Haiti), tostones (green plantains cut into rounds, then crushed and deep fried), and salad, followed by guayaba con queso crema (a dessert of local white cheese accompanied by guava paste), and coffee. Her visitors slept in the mill’s guest house and had breakfast the next morning at the Sánchez house before setting off for Manzanillo. From there, Frank headed east to Santiago, while the others drove Miret west to Havana.
    Celia’s life was never the same again. Soon after that meeting, Fidel gave her the go-ahead to develop the plan for the landing, and ordered all directors of 26th of July groups in the coastal region to help her.
    After the meeting, Celia walked across the street to get her younger second cousin, Elbia Fernández, to help tidy up the mill guest house. As they were stripping off the sheets, Celia casually mentioned that Frank País had spent the night there. “No, Celia!” the younger woman told me she exclaimed. Elbia describes being covered by goose bumps: “I knew he was important and that the whole thing Celia was involved in was dangerous.” Because Celia’s house had been full of Christmas guests, family members, she had gone some days earlier to the mill manager’s house and, as Elbia recalled, “told him that she was expecting some visitors soon fromSantiago and her house was full of family. She asked if she could put them in the guest house. He said, ‘Yes, of course, Celia. But you’ll have to find the Jamaican who takes care of the guest house to be sure it’s clean.’ Celia never once mentioned who those visitors were.” She and Elbia had cleaned the place themselves, brought sheets to make up the beds. I asked Elbia what she had thought of Frank País, and she replied, “He was just divine.”
    SOON AFTER THIS , Celia went to the mill and removed a set of nautical charts from the office. The mill was an easy walk from her house, and she was on friendly terms with most of the people who worked there. If they noticed her poking through the files, I get the impression that nobody thought it suspicious. At any rate, no one chose to mention it.
    The mill office would have been in something of an uproar. The harvest started sometime in early December, with cane arriving at the mill even before the machinery was in working order. After that, the Cabo Cruz mill was running day and night, from mid- or late December through February. This was the start of the season, and when a handful of executives, plus one or two chemists, would arrive from Havana. The owner of the mill, Júlio Lobo, widely referred to in Cuba as the Czar de Azúcar (Sugar Czar), showed up at the beginning of the harvest as the mill’s machinery was put in place to negotiate the sale of last season’s sugar in order to make room in the