[From the book, A CUBAN SONG IN MY HEART]
By Iván Acosta
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The mercenaries and traitors have landed,
but our glorious revolutionary army is winning. Fatherland or death was the
slogan that proclaimed a Cuban victory. It was broadcast repeatedly on national
radio all over the island. It was April 17, 1961. Accompanied by the Riverside
Orchestra, Tito Gomez was singing “Vereda Tropical.” They played the song more
than ten times that day. Around 10:30 a.m. I went with Uncle Nené to the bus
terminal, for he was returning to Santiago de Cuba. That was the last time I
saw him. The streets looked empty early in the night. Only military vehicles
and buses full of detainees were in the streets. I returned to the restaurant where
I worked, on Carlos III and Infanta Avenues. Bonifacio was a bus inspector who
always stood on that corner; he came close to me and literally whispered:
"The boys are here." I could see the inner turmoil reflected on his
face, although no one let their feelings show for fear of being arrested. We
were in the midst of very difficult times. Two minutes later, two militia
trucks stopped in front of the restaurant. They went in with a belligerent
attitude, and one of them yelled: "No one move!" Everyone remained
silent. The militiamen arrested all the restaurant employees at gunpoint. I was
hiding under the counter from where I could see what was going on. Suddenly, I felt
a pistol in my face and heard its owner, a black miliciano, say: "Get out
of there, worm!" The weapon was a 45 caliber pistol. They loaded us unto a
meat truck that smelled rotten and was full of flies. The truck stopped after a
twenty-five minutes, and we heard people yelling: "Down with communism,
the invaders are here.” They forced us off the truck still pointing the machine
guns at us, as if we were the invaders.
I was scared and confused. They searched
us one by one, and brought us into the sports arena,
a huge stadium built for the people. Ironically, the people in there were kept
under lock and key: women; rebel soldiers stripped of their weapons; bus drivers;
clergymen; even children with their mothers. An evangelical minister stood up and started to pray out loud. A soldier struck him
down hard with the back of his machine gun, silencing him. An engineer who had
been a rebel commander now also under arrest- made a fast assessment of the
situation, and told us we were among twenty thousand innocent souls imprisoned
in the arena.
THE YOUNGEST IN THE MORRO CASTLE MOATS
At seventeen, I was the youngest among the
six thousand men detained in the ditches that made up Morro Castle's moat,
across the Havana skyline. April 20th marked the third day without
food. By then, three of the men had died from thirst and sunstroke. Over the
fortress loud speakers, authorities kept repeating military reports such as: “The Yankee imperialist invasion
with the help of its mercenary worms has been defeated by our heroic naval
forces, under the leadership of our Commander-in-Chief, our top leader…” More
than 150,000 soldiers and militia were deployed to fight the thousand or so invaders that were left
to their own fate by orders from the White House. By April 24th, the invasion
had been totally defeated. They began releasing prisoners slowly. Five men had
died without medical assistance. We had slept on top of stones and sand for
eight days. Some of us managed to eat twice in all that time.
We had to push hard against one another to
get a sip of water from a watering hose that was turned on thirty feet above
us. One of the corners of the moat that became an improvised toilet, showed
blood stains from all those killed at the fateful firing wall. I found a piece
of charcoal and jumped to a reef to write on the old wall a line that came to mind: “Since the precarious situation
I'm under doesn't allow me to prove that God exists, that is proof in itself
that He does." I didn't know if the applause that followed, coming from a
few prisoners, was for me or for my heroic deed. They let me go the next day.
My fathers was among the hundreds of faces that waited outside for the release of their loved ones. Two
restaurant employees, my dad and I took a taxi back home. En route, we saw
several milicianos putting the final touches on a huge poster on one of the
fortress walls. It read: Death to the Invader - Cuba, First Socialist Country
in America. With a pained look on his face, the driver said: "We have to
leave Cuba, or we have to stay and die fighting." No
one uttered a word. He refused payment, but kept on driving. We traveled the
rest of the way in silence, listening to the radio. First the “Queen of
Guaguancó”, Celeste Mendoza, followed by Colombian, Nelson Pinedo, singing with
the Sonora Matancera Orchestra I'm Off to Havana and Ain't Coming Back.
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