RETURN TO A SECULAR LIFE
Arrangements were made for Roger to travel to Cuba on the first Sunday in June, with stops in Johannesburg, Brussels and New York. Early that Sunday morning, Brother Benito rang the bell to wake up the Brothers, a job he had done for the whole year, and then went to the cathedral in downtown Durban to hear Archbishop Hurley’s private Mass at six o’clock and receive his blessing for the journey. After Mass, Roger returned to St. Henry’s College to change into civilian clothes, to get his suitcase and take leave of the Brothers with whom he had spent a most memorable year and whom he would probably never see again. As he reached the downstairs from his room, every Brother came out of the chapel to hug him and bid him goodbye, a very close moment for Roger who, with tears in his eyes, truly appreciated their thoughtful gesture and deeply felt the permanent separation.
A taxi took Roger to the airport. The plane landed for the first stop in Johannesburg at noon. Since he had some time to spare, he walked around and went to a restaurant. Aware that he was no longer dressed as a Brother, he ordered a glass of wine to accompany his meal. He soon was reminded of a fact he already knew but had just forgotten: South Africa’s state religion is the Dutch Reformed Church, and nothing profane such as drinking wine and going to the movies is sanctioned on Sundays. In his state of excitement or bewilderment, Roger had temporarily become oblivious of that fact. He did not mind the change from wine to soda. Flying over the African continent on his way to Belgium, Roger reminisced some interesting moments of his stay in the land he was leaving behind. He remembered the day after he arrived in Johannesburg. His old friend Brother Agustín took him for a tour of the city. A black young man approached them and asked them for some money. Roger saw hunger in his eyes, the hunger he suffered after the Spanish Civil War. He took a “shilling” out of his pocket and gave it to the young man. To his surprise, Brother Agustín told him not to repeat that because those people who begged in South Africa used the money to buy drinks and to get drunk. They both watched the young man, and sure enough, he went into a liquor store after he got the shilling.
Roger relived with some glee his frequent excursions through Zulu land to learn the Zulu customs since he had to teach South African history to African students. One of the customs really amused him. When there was a wedding the father of the groom had to give seven cows to the father of the bride. Now, Roger thought, there you have a land, where you can truly say: “Blessed be a father with many daughters…”
Other experiences relating to his stay in Durban came to his mind. He recalled with sadness the cricket bat he kept next to his bed ever since a crowd of angry protesters walked to downtown Durban down the road behind the school. He relived with relish, however, the time when he was walking from downtown Durban to St. Henry’s, and Archbishop Hurley stopped his car and invited him to get in and drove him to the school. He learned, then, that Archbishop Hurley had a brother who was a Marist.
Also, could Roger forget the cook who was off on Sundays and seldom came sober Monday morning, when he came? He was an excellent cook, and it was difficult to replace him. Whenever Roger asked him how his week-end went he would hit his big belly with his hands as if to play the drums and say: “Shimea, shimea”. It meant that he had lots of that alcoholic beverage which has as one of its ingredients a snake liquid, outlawed in South Africa.
A very colorful scene of the streets of Durban came to Roger’s mind as well. It was the young natives who, dressed in glowing costumes, take the tourists around the city in their showy carts, the same as it is done in other parts of the world, with the only difference that in Durban those young men pull the carts, and in other cities, the carts are pulled by horses. Regrettably, those men in Durban die rather young.
Meanwhile, the plane continued its flight to Brussels where it landed early Monday morning. Roger had a few free hours and decided to take a bus into the center of town. It was a little bit foggy and even cold that morning. He visited the grounds where a world exposition had taken place months earlier. He also visited the cathedral, but lack of time and Roger’s mental disposition inhibited him in his desire to tour the capital of Belgium and appreciate its monuments and its people. He soon had to return to the airport and fly to New York.
Roger was looking forward to his stay in the United States before continuing to Cuba. His brother Antonio had given him the name of a man in the Spanish Harlem in whose house he could lodge for two days. During the flight from Brussels to New York he read two articles on Fidel Castro of Cuba, one written in English and the other in French. He knew very little about Castro, but he was puzzled by the diametrically opposing views the two papers expressed about the Cuban revolutionary leader. To his amazement, the American paper praised Castro, downplaying his tirades against the United States. The French paper, on the other hand, pointed out the weaknesses of the Cuban Revolution and was rather critical of the increasing attacks emanating from Castro against the Eisenhower Administration and the American military complex.
Roger arrived in New York with many questions in his mind about Cuba. He went to the house in which he was to stay before continuing the trip to his final destination, Havana. The family was a humble family but very hospitable. The husband did not know Roger’s brother and was just a contact from whom Roger was to learn the first lessons to be a true revolutionary. Introduced to many people in the neighborhood, Roger was surprised that Castro had so many supporters and spies in New York. He found himself in a nest of anti-American revolutionaries. He became concerned and did not feel comfortable in that environment. He was anxious to leave the place for fear of being discovered as unenthusiastic about the Cuban Revolution and supportive of the American way of life.
HAVANA, CUBA
Although disturbed by what he witnessed in New York and troubled by the prospect of political indoctrination to acquiesce to Castro’s ideology or face persecution or deportation from a land he had yet to know, Roger boarded the plane to Cuba. His brother Antonio and his sisters Delia, Dorita and Lidia were waiting for him at the airport and took him home to Antonio’s house, a very modern and comfortable one.
The disagreements between Roger and all his relatives with regard to the Cuban Revolution became immediate. There was not a single day without heated discussions about the direction it was taken and the damage Roger foresaw coming. They ridiculed him for entertaining such “ignorant” thoughts and promised him that they would prove him wrong some day. These differences of opinion did not diminish their love for him or his love for them, but they strained relations between Roger and his sister-in-law, Nínive. Some members of her family had been imprisoned under Batista for having helped Castro’s cause. Nevertheless, Roger remained in her house, and from there, he set out to look for a job.
To find work in Cuba was difficult, unless the person was a dedicated revolutionary or had the backing and full confidence of someone within the communist structure. Roger’s brother, Antonio, accompanied him in his endeavor. He found two jobs: one as a translator in Prensa Latina where he met Gabriel García Márquez, who would later win the Nobel Prize but at the time was working in that Castro’s news agency; the other, also as a translator, in Cine Atlantic. Both positions paid well, so Roger was able to save money which he deposited monthly in Banco Pujol where Jorge, a friend of the family, worked as the manager.
Fidel Castro made a determination to “educate politically” the whole nation. To that end, he launched a vigorous campaign of indoctrination. Roger’s place of work became a place of mental torture, for everybody was compelled to listen to Castro’s long speeches and daily hate programs, particularly those of José Pardo Llada of Radio Nacional, extolling the virtues of the Cuban Revolution and denouncing capitalism as evil and religion as opium. All news were state controlled, and very few publications from the Western World were allowed to enter the country. One of these exceptions was The “New York Times”, perhaps because it had been instrumental in Castro’s victory, through his chief reporter in Havana, Herbert Matthews. Since no impartial news was available in Cuba by October of 1960, reading “The New York Times” was becoming a risky proposition and a luxury few people could afford. In Roger’s office, it was avidly read by those who knew English, until its delivery was stopped even there.
Along with this brainwashing campaign in places of work, Castro embarked into a final phase of a carefully planned scheme to quiet all remaining voices of dissent. A radio program on CMQ, to which Roger listened in order to divert his attention from the state-imposed line of thought, was put off the air in September 1960 by direct order of the government due to its opposition to some aspects of the Revolution and its defense of social Christian doctrine. Though many organizations denounced this flagrant violation of freedom of expression, the protest went unheeded.
Meanwhile, after the closing of the many newspapers that were critical of the Castro regime such as “El Diario de la Marina” and “Avance”, which was to print Roger’s account of racial troubles in South Africa, “Información” was the only free paper still left in Cuba. This was the paper Roger used to enjoy reading. It became an obvious target of political attack when the government passed the law that all newspapers be limited to five printed pages. Since “Información” relied very heavily on its advertising section, it was choked out of existence for lack of funds in November 1960. Readers like Roger had nowhere to go to obtain balanced and unbiased news and viewpoints.
On July 18 of that year, as Roger was coming out of Mass at a Marist church, he heard, for the first time, shouts of “Cuba sí, Rusia no” as an answer to “Cuba sí, Yanquis no”. That very same day, the state militia attacked the faithful at the Jesús de Miramar church, injuring several and arresting others, while government-controlled Radio Mambí bitterly denounced Bishop Eduardo Masdival, President of Villanueva Catholic University, for one of his sermons against Communism.
One Sunday in August 1960, Roger went to hear Mass at Reina’s church. As he entered the church he noticed militia men in uniform with rifles inside the church as well as outside. Like other parishoners he wondered about this “occupation” of a place of worship by forces of the state.
Their presence there became evident at the time of the sermon, for the priest read a collective, pastoral letter from the Cuban Catholic Episcopate to all the faithful. In it, the bishops chastised the Government for having carried out social measures without respect for the rights of all citizens, and condemned Communism as materialistic and atheistic. There was some disturbance at the end of the Mass, and some faithful were arrested.
Nationwide, the Government answer to the pastoral letter was swift. It created the movement “Con la Cruz y la Patria” (With the Cross and Fatherland) to discredit Catholic unity and establish ground for a National Church answerable only to the Revolutionary Government. This movement had the President of the Republic, President Dorticós, as a prime mover, for two of his lawyers, Héctor Garcini Guerra and José Antonio Frías, drafted the first document intended to prove to the world that the Church in Cuba was divided.
At the instigation of the Government, many other disturbances were fomented in many churches by radical elements of the Revolution. In the combination of “Con la Cruz y la Patria” and a priest, Father Germán Lence, Castro thought to have found the appropriate vehicle to establish the National Church in its fight against institutional religion. He used this vehicle effectively in his effort to expel Protestant ministers and Spanish priests whom he labeled “Falangistas”, and to confiscate convents, schools and properties of foreign nuns.
The fight between the Government and the Church did not end there. Toward the end of September, Archbishop Enrique Pérez Serante of Santiago, who had saved Castro’s life in 1953, issued a pastoral letter in which he accused the Revolutionary Government of having betrayed the Revolution for which many people had given their lives. The Archbishop denounced the Government for condemning as traitors those who, in good conscience, would fight Communism. Once again, the reaction of the Government was swift: militia men were placed at the entrance of churches, making it difficult for parishoners to go to Mass. In order not to compromise the priest, Roger stopped going to daily Mass and changed church every Sunday, especially after he noticed that he was being followed.
In the meantime, people were becoming restless and apprehensive, and many were leaving the island. Numerous shoot-outs between the revolutionaries and the counter-revolutionaries, or “Gusanos” (Worms) as Castro called them, were constantly heard in several neighborhoods. Big bomb explosions had become a daily occurrence, and so had the arrests and the shootings by firing squads, often without the victims having been brought to trial. Roger still remembers vividly William Morgan and Sori Marín who were sent to the firing squad for “having carried out activities against the government of the people”. And, how can Roger forget Sebastier Rodríguez who was accused of burning a sugar field and sent to the firing squad before the law he had supposedly violated was actually promulgated?
During the middle of the summer of 1960, President Eisenhower imposed a sugar quota on Cuba. Workers from all over Cuba were mobilized to a massive demonstration in downtown Havana. Roger had to join the group from Prensa Latina, or face dismissal and persecution. He found it difficult to march through the streets of Havana with people shouting profanities at the United States, a country he dearly loved. He could not bring himself to join in the uttering of such phrases as “Eisenhower, mátenlo” (Eisenhower, kill him). He left the group as soon as he thought it safe, and went to the house of some friends who were watching with dismay the demonstration on TV. This family was from Spain and was very disillusioned by the direction the Revolution had taken.
Toward the middle of August, in preparation for the conference of the Foreign Ministers of the OAS in San José, Costa Rica, a massive demonstration was staged in Plaza Cívica, near Roger’s residence. Workers from all over Cuba were ordered to come and listen to Fidel, the Maximum Leader. He went on for hours attacking the United States and its policies. At the end of the rally, a car from the American Embassy with Americans in it was leaving the location. When Roger saw the American flag, he was happy to see the Americans. Very soon, however, some revolutionary zealots started attacking the Americans in the car, right in front of Roger. Right there, next to him and the embattled Americans was a group of girls from a Catholic school. They started yelling at the attackers, denouncing their foolish actions. Somehow the attacks on the Americans stopped, and they left without further harassment.
At the end of August 1960, then, the Foreign Ministers of the OAS met in San José, Costa Rica. The United States delegation, led by Secretary of State, Christian Herter, was a constant subject of ridicule in the press, on radio, on television and in the movie theater newsreels, while the Cuban representation, headed by Raúl Roa, was constantly being praised for its alertness and spirit of truth.
Upon his return from that celebrated conference, Jorge Massetti, one of Raúl Roa’s chief advisers and director of Prensa Latina, Roger’s place of work, gathered all his employees and gave a very biased, personal account of what had transpired in that OAS conference, extolling the virtues of accuracy and watchfulness of the Cuban delegation and chastising Christian Herter for his “clumsiness” and his “absurdities”.
A young man in the audience asked Massetti to explain why they had dispatched the wrong information to the Cuban press which created the impression of a battle being waged between Cuba and the United States, with Cuba always ahead. He cited as an example “El Mundo” which, the day before the final vote of the San José conference, headlined across the front page: “Cuba wins. Big loss for the United States of America”. The next day, when the actual vote took place not favoring the Cuban position, the same paper carried the story with the following title in small letters: “Moral victory for Cuba and defeat for Yanqui Imperialism”.
Infuriated by this question, Massetti pounded his fist on the table, loudly protesting that they had not sent any misinformation and that their press releases had all been accurate. Roger had observed that young man rather frequently in functions of state before this incident. After this confrontation with the Cuban official, Roger never saw him again, even though he made deliberate attempts to contact him. All that time Roger was thinking that the young man must have encountered the same fate that all critical voices had met before: incarceration or the firing squad. He now began to fear for himself.
Roger had good reason to be frightened, for in that public meeting about the San José conference Jorge Massetti had announced that every worker in Prensa Latina had to join the militia to defend the Revolution against the Americans who were going to invade Cuba in a not too distant future. Three different people asked Roger if he was going to join. He firmly replied: “No. I am not a Cuban and I do not believe that the United States will invade Cuba at any time soon.” Roger knew that this would mean the end of his career in Cuba. He had noticed that he had been followed wherever he went, and felt that this represented a planted excuse to oust him from his job and perhaps join other dissenting voices in their grim fates. The idea to leave Cuba was now becoming more and more appealing.
While Roger was looking for work, accompanied by his brother Antonio, he went to Havana University which, up to the middle of the summer of 1960, had enjoyed relative freedom under Castro and its faculty still possessed some independence. There, he saw Angela Davis who was nobody to him then, but who in later years reached some notoriety in California. There, too, Roger met and was introduced to Comandante Cubela, President of FEU (Federation of University Students). Moments earlier, Cubela burst into the Chambers of Havana University, and while its Senate was in session, ordered the President to sign a students’ petition. As the President asked the intruder with what authority he had entered those chambers, Cubela took out his gun and said: “With this authority”. He boasted with glee about the fear he had produced in those venerable professors.
Some time later, Cubela turned his attack against Villanueva University, a private institution, and declared that he was “sick” of that center of “gusanos” (worms). On November 12, 1960 he accused its President, Bishop Masdival, of directing subversive activities within the university. When the Government declared “unacceptable by the state” all diplomas granted by Villanueva University, that Catholic institution was forced to close its doors. Its professors and many of its graduate students had to leave the country.
As sad as the distruction of private schools was to Roger, a product of private education himself, it was not as painful as seeing school children indoctrinated to hate non-socialist nations, to spy on their parents and to report any anti-revolutionary activity around them. They were asked what newspapers and literature their parents read and were taught revolutionary slogans and tunes which they would use to get at their “gusano” relatives. When Roger would reprimand his pre-school niece for something she should not have done, she would try to get back at him by singing: “Fidel, Fidel. ¿Qué tiene Fidel que los americanos no pueden con él?” (Fidel, Fidel. What does Fidel have that the Americans cannot control him?). She knew well how he felt…! Roger could hardly hide his frustration and outrage at the Government’s attempt to sow the seeds of family disunity and disintegration through careful indoctrination at such an early age.
In the summer of 1960, Castro set out to get rid of all teachers opposed to his regime. He sent young high school students to the mountains to learn teaching techniques. After six months of training, they returned to Havana to receive their teaching diploma. Intended to replace the experienced teachers not willing to teach the Communist Credo, this process of training young High School students continued. The government, then, proceeded to confiscate close to eight hundred schools: more than four hundred non-denominational, two-hundred and fifty Catholic, sixty Protestant and four Hebrew.
Besides completely erasing all private education in Cuba through that process, Castro created another social problem of no small magnitude. When he decided to close all schools early at the end of spring to send students from Havana to far away provinces to teach people how to read, the totally unsupervised moral conduct of those youngsters resulted in anguish and, in some cases, despair to many young girls who became pregnant in the process of being taught.
Castro brought about an agrarian reform that, in its initial stages, had many supporters from all walks of life. To make this reform work, he imitated other Communist countries by establishing a “communal system”. Roger went to see one of those communes near Soroa. It was a very well run farm raising a variety of a large number of animals. There were four peasants in attendance there that Sunday afternoon. Roger asked them what they would do with the products. He was told that they had no say in the fixing of the prices nor in the selling. Everything was government controlled. The peasants showed very little interest in what they were doing, which is probably one of the factors that contributed to the failure of the system that produced fewer supplies and very strict rationing.
It is ironic that less than one year after the agrarian reform was launched, the first signs of economic disaster under Castro came to light. Rationing started to become a way of life for Cubans at the end of the summer of 1960. In November of that year, the per capita consumption of chicken, for instance, was two pounds per week, while in 1958 just before Castro took over the Government, it was six pounds. The picture became much bleaker as time went on.
Rationing was not limited to poultry. Cattle raising was one of Cuba’s most prosperous industries before the Castro era, ranking fourth in Latin America in the existence of cattle per capita, after Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. In 1960, the Castro Government became concerned that the cattle industry was becoming a big problem. He launched the “Operación vaca” campaign (Operation Cow) whereby every employee was “compelled to give freely” to the Government, so read the bulletin board in Roger’s place of work, a State determined percentage of their earnings so that cows would be bought for the peasants. To prove that “Operación vaca” was a suc cessful endeavor, thousands of cows were brought to downtown Havana. While the sight may have pleased Castro, the smell displeased everyone else in Havana.
In October 1960, when President Eisenhower put a partial embargo on Cuba, panic spread throughout the business community. Fearful of confiscation and possible bankruptcy, very few businessmen risked investments and those who made investments made them on a small scale basis. Moreover, panic spread even to government circles in such proportions that orders were given to militia men to go from door to door to collect clothes hangers, so that the steel parts could be used for industrial purposes. This operation went on for a few days, until a militia man was found hanged with hangers.
The second half of 1960 was marked by a flurry of weekly promulgation of governmental reform laws. The Urban Reform Law, passed in October, limited the number of houses to one per family, and claimed for the State the sole right to build housing projects. Furthermore, it provided that every person occupying rented property was to become the owner, and that the rent had to be paid to the State. Many families who had rented rooms in their houses had to face the reality that they had lost those rooms. Moreover, people who had invested in rental housing lost everything.
The Urban Reform Law fell like a bombshell in Havana. Many people were shaken. Some spoke sadly of acquaintances who committed suicide. Others complained bitterly of the devastating effect on their life time efforts. The day the law was made public, Roger was on a bus, early that morning on his way to a section of El Vedado. An elderly lady behind Roger’s seat was crying and telling her friend: “My husband and I have worked so hard all our lives to get the four houses we own so that we could leave one for each of our children. Now, our dream has completely been shattered”.
An atmosphere of an impending invasion by the United States was being created daily on TV, radio and the press. At the same time, a concerted effort was being carried out by the government to export the Cuban Revolution. The greatest percentage of revolutionary propaganda emanated from a room in the third floor of Havana City Hall. One day in July, Roger accompanied his brother to that room where he worked. There, Roger saw the revolutionary literature being sent to thousands of public and private Colleges and Universities all over the world. The objective, Roger’s brother remarked, was to cause the downfall of capitalism and influence of the United States by the year 1970.
In September, Castro went to New York to speak to the United Nations’ General Assembly. His long and bellicose speech was transmitted to Havana in its entirety. Radio and television carried nothing but his speech, and all over the city were loudspeakers placed at such distances that everywhere Castro would be heard. Roger tried to go to the movies. Everything was closed and traffic was at a standstill. He returned home and locked himself in his room, hoping to turn off Castro’s voice. Unfortunately, the loudspeakers were so loud that nobody could miss his vicious tirade against the United States. Some relief and delight for Roger came, however, when the President of the General Assembly cautioned Castro not to criticize the President of any country by name. Roger burst out of his room yelling with joy: “Finally somebody has stopped him”.
By the end of October, life in Cuba was becoming unbearable and hazardous for Roger. One morning, he was awaiting his turn for a haircut and overheard a conversation between the barber and a client on the chair that brought a chill through Roger’s spine. They were talking about “that Spaniard from America whom they are about to arrest to be executed”. Roger became alarmed and thought it was a veiled warning to him to take whatever steps necessary to secure his well-being. From the barbershop he went home. He found his sister Lidia in tears. She told him to leave Cuba because “they are going to kill you”.
That afternoon, Roger took the bus, as usual, to report to Prensa Latina for work. As he sat in the last row of the bus, two young men sat one at each side of him. They asked him to show them the ticket, which he did. They never gave it back to him. Very soon, a ticket controller got on the bus and proceeded to ask Roger for his ticket. He told the controller how the two men had taken it from him. The two protested that they had not seen, much less taken his ticket. Seeing himself trapped, Roger rushed to the exit door and got off the bus. When he arrived at his place of work, he was accused of being a CIA agent, dismissed as an employee of Prensa Latina, and told to pick up his check the next day. At the time, Roger did not know what the CIA was. Skeptical of these happenings, he did not return to Prensa Latina for his check, or anything else, after that day.
The next day, Roger went very early in the morning to the American Embassy to try to obtain a permanent visa to stay in the United States. The lines in front of the embassy at seven o’clock that morning were long. At about ten o’clock, two young men made their way towards Roger and started talking to him about political topics, such as comparisons between Franco of Spain and Fidel Castro, the United States policies in Latin America and Russia’s role in Cuba. At about eleven o’clock, an official of the American Embassy came out and announced that they had just received orders not to process any more visas that day. Just then, one of the young men asked the other: “shall we take him now?” While the other was nodding “yes” among the cries and the commotion that the news produced in the crowd, Roger ran to a side door reserved for embassy personnel and obtained admission into the compound after a short explanation of what had transpired. He stayed in the embassy until late that afternoon when his brother Antonio came to pick him up.
It became obvious to Roger that he was not safe in Cuba anymore. He could no longer rely on his brother’s protection. Though he was a Spaniard, he could not obtain refuge in the Spanish Embassy which feared being accused of harboring antirrevolutionaries. In addition, the Embassy compound was surrounded by Cuban militia men after Castro went on TV to order the Spanish Ambassador to leave the country as a “persona non grata”. He considered asking the American Embassy for political asylum, but felt that he would not get it because he was neither American nor Cuban. The only option open to him was to leave Cuba.
Accompanied by his brother, Roger began to prepare for his departure. In declaring his reason to leave Cuba, he was advised not to tell the true motive or he would not be allowed to leave the country. He had to say: “I am not Cuban, and the permit for my stay in Cuba has expired”. This was the only explanation acceptable, but it worked, though he had some other hurdles to overcome before an airline ticket could be obtained and a departure date established.
Roger went to Banco Pujol to withdraw the money he had deposited. He was stunned when he found out that a “young revolutionary” had replaced Jorge as manager of the bank, and that he could not take any money out, including the dollars he had deposited when he arrived from Africa. An appeal to Che Guevara, who had nationalized the banks before he was appointed Minister