December 16, 1958: a never ending day for our family. The beginning of the end of life as we knew it. Neither my father, Blas Elias Thumas, nor my mother, Digna Elias Rios, learned to drive. Transportation in our hometown was plentiful and cheap, and in 1959, when we came to live in the US as exiles, they did not have the energy to learn something as complicated as driving. They were already in their 50’s, and the little energy they had was consumed by survival. They were starting a new life with nothing, in a country where they did not speak the language, did not understand the ways, with fear, loneliness, and terror in their hearts. This new beginning was happening at an age when they were ready for retirement. Besides, who needed to drive in Bayamo! Although we had a chauffeur, we all liked to ride the horse drawn carriages. The carriages were made of black leather, had a movable top, and tufted seats. The clip clop of the horses was delightful to the ears, and most riders knew the drivers and the horses by name. Think of the carriages in central park, except these were utilitarian and painted black, not white, like the ones for fancy tourists in New York City. Bayamo was a nicely laid out old city. Mariita always says it was laid out like Paris. More than a city, it was a municipality because of the adjoining towns that fell under its aegis. In 1958, it had about one hundred thousand (100,000) residents. In 2012, it had about two hundred thousand (200,000). Although very old by US standards, Bayamo was not the first town established in Cuba. That honor belonged to Baracoa, established in1511by Don Diego Velazquez, the same man who established Bayamo in 1513, Trinidad in 1514, and four more towns in as many years. Baracoa and Bayamo are about 187 miles apart. Both are in what was then Oriente, the eastern most province of the island, close in proximity to Haiti, on the east, and Jamaica, on the south, and with immigrants that came to Cuba from both. Baracoa has direct access to the sea, which made it vulnerable to the pirates and buccaneers that sailed the waters of the Caribbean in the 1500’s – 1700’s hundreds. By contrast, Bayamo was inland and protected. Accessible by land (although there were no roads), and by water, via the Rio Cauto (the longest river on the island with a flow of about 230 miles), Bayamo had enough distance from the sea that warnings of impending hostilities could be easily heeded. . The Cauto’s direct access to the sea lasted until 1616, when a flood inundated the river with refuse from pirate ships and, trees. Subsequent to this natural disaster, the sea was only reachable from Bayamo by navigating the Cauto to Manzanillo, a coastal town further east. What helped Bayamo prosper in the 1500’s - 1700’s were its protected location, its agricultural fertility, its trade in contraband, and the initiative of its people. To this day, Bayamo and Trinidad have an old world flavor, and both are recognized for their use of horse drawn carriages as a primary means of transportation. The Iznagas, among the first families to follow Don Diego Velazquez to Bayamo, were full of initiative and ideas. They built sugar mills, and became quite wealthy. While a branch of their family remained in Bayamo, another moved to Trinidad, and other descendants moved to Louisiana. In later generations, the Iznagas became close friends with the Vanderbilts, married into the Tiffanys and into Irish and English nobility, and participated in the grand life with European and United States royalty. The use of carriages has been particularly useful since 1959, when the new owners of the island no longer allowed Cubans to purchase cars, unless they were assigned that privilege by them. To alleviate the new shortage of transportation, the ever resourceful Cubans reverted to even older and less effective ways of moving: by using oxen/donkeys/horses drawn wooden carts. When there is nothing, Cubans will invent something. An Iznaga was the first Mayor of Bayamo. My father was the last. Now, Bayamo has intendentes, who are not elected, but appointed by the government, and whose main job is not to create opportunities for the citizens, but to create pseudo services like poorly stocked coffee and pastry shops, where cleanliness is optional, and where few foods are available. These pseudo institutions appease the anger of residents who cannot find sufficient food to buy, unless they have US dollars (the average salary in Cuba is now $250 pesos, which is about US $20 a month. Foods/goods are available in government owned stores that sell only in convertible pesos, quoted at a daily exchange rate fixed by the price of a pound of pork. The pound of pork is currently quoted at $25 pesos. To buy a convertible peso is expensive. For a US $1, one gets $.87 cents in convertible pesos. A salary of $20 dollars goes only so far. Figure it out). Since my father could not drive, and we did not have a telephone, he was driven by my brother Blas to important meetings that required discretion. Phone messages were also sent to my brother, who was really dad’s right hand man. Blas lived in Miramar, a lovely area with stately homes close to the sea, where the foreign nations had their embassies. Blas had been married for about a year, and lived with his wife and in-laws at that location. My parents had recently moved from Paseo 115, about a block from the recently built Riviera Hotel, to La Coronela, a neighborhood on the outskirts of La Habana. So it was that at 5 pm on December 16, 1958, my brother, Blas Elias Elias (I don’t think he has a middle name, although our eldest brother, Rolando Garcia Elias, calls him Augusto or Gregorio), drove my father to the Presidential Palace to see Batista. The President’s assistant told my father the President was not available, but he would take a message. My father said he would speak only to the President, and left. When Blas got home, he found a message: the President would see dad. He reversed the trek, and he and dad returned to the Presidential Palace. The meeting with the President began at about 7:30 pm. Present were Batista, my father, and my brother Blas. After the niceties of how are you, how is your family, what are the “classes” saying (the classes referred to the officers in the armed forces who held the title of sergeants or above), my father, who was very direct, and believed that the less words, the more said, told Batista there were rumors from the classes that he was leaving Cuba. Batista said he would never leave Cuba: “that would be the coward’s way out”. Yet, in the next sentence, Batista encouraged my father to take the family on an extended vacation to the United States, to spend time away from the pressures of the revolutionary incidents taking place in Bayamo. My father did not hear the meta message, only the spoken words. Maybe dad’s love for Bayamo and Cuba, did not allow him to hear what he did not want to think about: leaving Cuba. The message sent by Armando CM’s was next. Castro will destroy Cuba. Bomb La Candelaria, on December 19, 1958. Castro and Armando will be there. The President dialed ST, one of his generals from a family with many high ranking officers, and gave the order to bomb La Candelaria. The order was not carried out. ST lives in Mexico, and was recently interviewed by the son of a former revolutionary leader. Never was this incident mentioned. The general had sold his soul to the rebels. If the US was supporting Castro, then he was coming to power no matter what. After all, the President of Cuba was only the second most important man on the island. The first was the US Ambassador. By December 16, 1958, Batista knew he had to leave Cuba. The order from the United States had already come. Batista had been told by the US government, specifically by its agents on the Fourth Floor of the State Department in Washington, that he had to leave Cuba by January 1, 1959. The philosophy of Cubans was if the United States supported Castro, then everybody in Cuba was going to support Castro. Except for a few, like my father, Armando CM, and those others who knew who and what Castro really was. And so it was, and so it is, fifty-four years after that day. (My brother, Blas Elias Elias lived these events from the inside. His recollection of Cuba is prodigious, and I want to thank him for sharing his memories with me. He is the one who should really write a book about Cuba, our family, and the politics of the time).
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 01:09:55 +0000
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