Free One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution by Nancy Stout Page A

quarter of 1956, he came to Pilón. The patriarch was sixty-one years old, with a square jaw, gray hair, blue eyes, with head reared back in his photographs, somewhat rooster-like because his head presided over such a solidly built, poker-straight body. He immediately promised to help her in every way possible. Álvarez Tabío thinks this happened so readily because Pérez liked rebellious causes, and Celia, by nature, was persuasive.
    She must have been curious to meet this man; and, though she always dressed meticulously, she would have taken special care of what she wore that day, so as not to disappoint him. He may have felt the same about her; Juan León would have filled him in on her background: that she was the daughter of the doctor, of a man who had spoken out against Machado, and would have told him about her political background, her support of the Orthodox Party, of Eduardo Chibás and Emilio Ochoa. León might have described what he knew, or had heard, about the men in her life, her love affairs. Celia found out from Crescencio that Ignácio Pérez, his favorite son, was already eagerly conspiring with the union-organized cane-cutters in their strike against mill owners, and she could see that this worked to her advantage, that the old man was eager to be dealt in, handed a role. Several things jelled, and Crescencio needed little encouragement to act.
    Guillermo García and Crescencio Pérez, in a completely natural way, began traveling in their own regions, saving Celia from exposing herself unnecessarily. This was helpful, since the Rural Guard watched everyone’s movements, especially those named on the government’s lists—Cubans say “marked”—as Celia was for her previous Orthodox Party activities. García, as he went about purchasing livestock, now rallied like-minded farmers near the coast. Pérez’s recruitment extended throughout his fiefdom: his children and their neighbors and relatives who lived in the central highlands from west to east in the Sierra Maestra range. The enlistment of these two men expanded Celia’s network to cover an immense territory; it soon had representatives in Belic, Ojo de Agua, Alegria de Pio, Rio Nuevo, Las Palmonas, Santa Maria, Guaimaral, Ceibabo, Convenencia, El Mamey, Palmarito, Sevilla, Las Cajas—all possible routes that Fidel’s men might take if they had to travel on foot from their landing point and into the mountains. Crescencio and Ignacio devoted themselves to Celia’s project, and by the middle of 1956, they had made useful contacts with people almost all the way east to Pico Turquino. Álvarez Tabío wrote that Crescencio and Ignacio passed through Purial de Vicana, El Cilantro, El Aje, La Caridad de Mota, La Habanita, El Lomon, Caracas, El Coco, El Jigue, and La Plata, laying the groundwork along a route the guerilla columns followed later. In other words, Crescencio and Ignacio Pérez had pledges from farmers and ranchers that paid off two years later, in early 1958, when the rebel army was being aggressively pursued by Batista’s army during the war.
    Celia could not let her field commanders know about each other. For one thing, Crescencio had, at some point in the past, compromised a woman in Guillermo’s family, and in the 1930s had treated Guillermo’s father so badly that feelings against him remained strong in the García family, enough that the antipathy would have outweighed even the most ardent anti-Batista sentiments. She no doubt evaded questions and lied flat-out when she thought it was appropriate to ensure her network’s survival until her first two great missions were accomplished.
    When Crescencio and his son Ignacio traveled from farm to farm, and house to house, they were recruiting clan members who were anti-Batista and anti-Rural Guard. People in this region had been exploited at every opportunity, for decades, and in an especially brutal manner, so it wasn’t all that hard to get them to come aboard—to say, in effect,