Free Island that Dared by Dervla Murphy Page B

long wait for the bus we were on the beach by 9.00 a.m.
    Two hours later the royal palms suddenly became wildly agitated, reshaped by a gale, all their fronds pointing south as masses of low charcoal clouds poured over the Sierra de la Gran Piedra and whiteness flecked the sea – now jade green. We made for the nearest shelter, an improvised café two hundred yards away where the awning was irrelevant because the gale drove the rain horizontally across the tables. Happily the storm passed as quickly as it had arrived and we strolled to the restaurant through a fine drizzle, the slight drop in temperature compensating for the mild discomfort of sodden clothes.
    That was a jolly birthday party, if not gastronomically memorable (noodles, pork steaks, grated carrot). Inevitably I recalled Rachel’s tenth birthday, celebrated in the little town of Andahuayalas towards the end of our three-month Andean trek. There it took over an hour to find a cake – any kind of cake. That evening we ate steak, onions and chips in a large grotty restaurant lit by an oil-lamp. The bottle of Peruvian wine spotted on the top shelf of a dusty shop was challenging – as was that hard-won sponge cake. But aged ten the symbolism of a birthday cake is what matters.
    The clouds began to break up as we returned to the junction, sniffing a medley of strong scents released by the rain: unfamiliar herbs and blossoms, rotting vegetation, ripe pig manure, over-ripe papaya. Outsidethe long, low junction shed, where locals collect their rations, several groups stood around awaiting transport though no bus was expected for the foreseeable future. Soon a 1950s jeep stopped to pick up two young men carrying tool bags. Some time later an already overcrowded car, minus both rear doors, found space for two slim elderly women. Their fat friend was left behind but her protestations held no rancour. Meanwhile swarms of day mosquitoes were tormenting us though the Cubans seemed indifferent to them. As our itch bumps multiplied, even Rose complained.
    Shouts of joy greeted the arrival of an open-backed empty farm lorry and we were urged to climb aboard – easier said than done, for the uninitiated. This was a high truck, without steps, but a strong young man locked his hands together for me and kind arms stretched down to help the Trio. We stood at one side, holding a bar, able at last to appreciate the landscape – and to see Granjita Siboney.
    From this little farmhouse Fidel and his hundred and twenty companions, wearing army uniforms bought on the black market, set out by starlight on the morning of 26 July 1953 to assault the Moncada barracks, hoping to equip the Rebel Army by robbing its armoury. Most men were armed only with .22 rifles or shotguns; a few carried heavier weapons. During the previous weeks, as the Movement surreptitiously assembled its volunteers and weaponry on Granjita’s two acres, Ernesto Tizol, a poultry farmer who had rented the premises, told the locals that he was building a new battery-hen unit. Now, viewing this tranquil pastoral scene, it seems little has changed since that convoy of motor cars and buses moved off, led by Fidel in a large hired Buick which had just taken him the five hundred and sixty miles from Havana, a black lorry-driver at the wheel, posing as the young white lawyer’s chauffeur. Soon more than half those volunteers would be dead. When the Moncada raid failed, many were shot after enduring extreme forms of torture – so extreme that some of Batista’s soldiers (not sensitive types) couldn’t bear to watch. Moncada’s commanding officer, Colonel Chaviano, had demanded ten rebel lives for every one of the nineteen soldiers killed. The rebels had lost six. Several military doctors and junior officers, appalled by what they saw and heard, tried to rescue some of the rebels but were warned not to interfere. One doctor, Mario Munoz, protested so vigorously that he was shot dead. Photographs of the tortured bodies