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

warehouses for the new crop. This little mill, the Cape Cruz, always produced more than its quota of sugar and he could sell the surplus at pure profit.
    Lobo’s executive staff circulated among his various mills throughout Cuba, and one of them, an economist named Ramiro Ortíz—described as second in command after the manager—was Celia’s boyfriend. He was a little older. They had a good relationship, and she would sometimes stay with his mother and brother when she visited Havana. Berta Llópiz, one of Celia’s closest friends, explains that Ortíz was a man she might have married (Berta called him “her last chance at a normal life”), but that Celia wasn’t in love with him, or not in love enough to put Ortíz through the double life she was starting. Yet he knew what she was up to, was supportive, and for that reason, Berta had urged her to get married. “I would tell Celia, it is because youare in the M-26 that Ramiro Ortíz can help you,” which I took to mean “ protect you.”
    We don’t know whether the charts were stored in Ramiro’s office; they probably weren’t, but Celia knew the office staff and left with the charts she wanted. Maybe she gave a plausible reason; in any case, she took the charts straightforwardly and signed them out, leaving her signature in the file. The mill didn’t have everything she needed, so she went aboard a Portuguese ship anchored in the harbor to get more. The ship came regularly to pick up sugar, and she had been on it several times with her father. She found the charts she wanted in the ship’s collection. When the officers of the Portuguese ship discovered that some of their charts were missing, they filed a report with the Cuban Coast Guard.
    The Servants of Mary took advantage of the extra harvest prosperity, and handing out toys on January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, was a tradition, so Celia was not the only one to officiate in such an event in Cuba—Mrs. Batista gave out toys in Havana. But it is safe to say that no one interpreted the custom in quite the way Celia did. She brought intensity, commitment, and a degree of detail to this project that no one had imagined. She initiated the toys project a few years after she moved to Pilón, at Christmastime in 1941 or 1942. In the beginning, her friends say, she gave children numbered tickets and told them to collect a gift at her house, but it became clear that small, poor rural children couldn’t come into town to pick up a present. Their parents were working virtually around the clock in the harvest (most for the first time in nine months) and were too busy, too exhausted, or too drunk to accompany their children to town. So she began taking a “census.” She drove to every plantation in her father’s old Ford convertible, would stop and take out her notebook, write down each child’s name, age, where he or she lived, and clothing sizes.
    This census and those toys are keys to comprehending Celia’s part in the early stages of the Revolution. Every year she raised money with exceptional dedication to purchase toys that, people point out, were of the same quality she received as a child, and purchased from the same vendors. Many in Pilón loved her for this. By 1955, Celia, with her annually updated census (which by now consisted of several hundred children’s names, addresses, sexes, ages, and sizes), was buying toys for a second generation.

     
    Celia’s charity, the Servants of Mary, raised money on New Year’s Eve. Traditionally, she’d go to Havana one or two days later to purchase toys to distribute on January 6, Epiphany. This photograph, showing her in Havana with a friend in 1941, may document such a trip. ( Courtesy of Oficina de Asuntos Históricos )
     
    This means that when she walked into the mill, as several people mentioned to me, the workers “would go crazy over her,” because they recalled receiving toys themselves, and were now relying on her to give a similar gift to their