Killing Castro by Lawrence Block Page B

Association had not been permitted to see him while he was in jail, that he himself had been denied access to documents important to his defense. Nevertheless he made an impassioned and eloquent plea to the court, lashing out against the excesses of the Batista regime, presenting his projected reforms, criticizing the inequality and oppression which he saw around him throughout Cuba. His defense, doomed from the start, since the courts were in Batista’s hands, was not successful. It had no chance.
    But his speech was successful. People listened to the tall young man with the firm voice. People who had never known Castro existed began to take him into their hearts as a leader. The trial, designed by Batista to squelch the resistance forever, had an opposite effect. It increased Castro’s following. And Fidel himself saw with greater confidence something he had already learned at the University of Havana: when he spoke, Cubans listened.
    “I end my defense,” he told the court, “but I shall not do it as lawyers always do, asking for the defendant’s liberty. I cannot ask for this when my companions are already suffering imprisonment on the Isle of Pines. Send me to join them and to share their fate. It is inconceivable that honest men are dead or jailed in a republic unless the President is a criminal or thief.
    “As for me, I know that jail will be hard as it has never been for anyone else, pregnant with threats and with cowardly ferociousness. But I do not fear it as I do not fear the fury of the wretched tyrant who has already torn away the life of seventy brothers.
    “Condemn me! It does not matter! History will absolve me!”
    The judges may or may not have been impressed; there is no way to tell. But, whether or not history would absolve Fidel Castro, they had no intention of so doing. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on the Isle of Pines.
    Prison can be an end or a beginning. For Fidel, the time spent on the Isle of Pines was not time to be wasted. With Raul and his other comrades in arms, he maintained strict revolutionary discipline, sang songs of rebellion and planned for the future. Castro organized a school in prison, teaching his fellow prisoners history and philosophy. The cheers and loyalty of followers was something he was accustomed to now, something he needed. He would drive himself to impossible extremes to serve those persons who, he felt, were counting on him.
    But his activities with his fellow prisoners only aggravated the government. He was isolated, made to serve what amounted to solitary confinement. Still the young man from Oriente refused to waste his time. He read constantly, poring over every book he could get on Cuban history and the age-old fight for Cuban independence. He waited for his release from prison and planned a rise to power.
    It was May of 1955 before Batista ultimately gave in to outside pressure and granted amnesty to the political prisoners on the Isle of Pines. At last Castro was released, returned with Raul by boat to Havana. He prepared to enter politics once more. Batista was attempting to preserve a front of honest elections while holding the reins of power as tightly as ever, and friends presumed that Fidel could now climb to power by legal means. But Castro knew better.
    He tried to make speeches, and found that radio time was closed to him. He sent letters to the newspapers and they were never printed. Throughout Cuba he saw nothing but oppression, nothing but the hand of a dictator. And he decided once more that he had been right the first time, that revolution was the only method of ridding Cuba of a dictator.
    He went to Mexico. His wife, the sister of an ardent Batistiano, had already deserted him; now she divorced him. He had no money and little support, only his image burning in the hearts of silent Cubans. He found a man named Bayo who had led guerrilla forces in the Spanish Civil War and persuaded Bayo to help him train an army of rebels. He went