To the Sierra Maestra

Castro is dead. This was the public proclamation made by the Fulgencio Batista government after an attack by the Cuban army at the foot of the Sierra Maestra in 1957. Newspapers, including The New York Times, reported that Castro was dead. The world believed that and the United States government, which backed Batista as part of its Cold War calculations to contain the spread of communism in Latin America, heaved a sigh of relief. One journalist, described by his more famous friend Ernest Hemingway as a person as brave as a badger, would not take the story. It was Herbert Lionel Matthews, then an editorial writer with The New York Times. He decided to visit the Sierra Maestra and to see for himself what the truth is.

A daring trek into the jungle breaching the impenetrable security rings of the Batista regime resulted in one of the great journalistic scoops of the 20th century. The publication of the front-page scoop in The New York Times proved to the world that Castro was alive and that he was backed by an army of committed guerilla fighters. The image created by Matthews of Castro as a radical, democrat and therefore anti-communist, says his colleague Anthony DePalma, stuck, helping Castro consolidate his power and gain international recognition.

In a working paper titled Myths of the enemy: Castro, Cuba and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times, published in July 2004, he says, US attitudes toward the conflict in Cuba changed, dooming Batista. But after the triumph of the revolution, US views again abruptly shifted and Matthews was blamed for having helped bring Castro to power. The perception that Washington had been hoodwinked by Matthews and State Department officials sympathetic to Castro led to the development of the hard line which still guides US-Cuban relations. The Cuban Defence Minister dismissed the interview as a work of fiction. There were other critics who said that the whole show was stage-managed by Castro.

How did the Cuban revolutionaries look at Matthews work? DePalma provides the answer in his book The Man Who Invented Fidel, published in 2006. He writes: Che [Guevara] had not been present during the interview. All he knew of it was what Castro had told him that Matthews seemed to understand what they were trying to do and had not asked any tricky questions intended to trip him up. Che Guevara, who was holed up in a thatched-roof hut of a peasant in a coffee grove, fighting asthma, heard about the interview on radio and understood its significance and impact later. In months to come, Guevaras appreciation for what the interview had contributed to the rebels cause would grow substantially. Eventually, he would declare that for the small group, Matthews brief visit had been worth more than a military victory.

DePalma gives his own assessment of the impact of the interview: The first few months of 1957 were a critical time for the rebels. The meeting of national leaders and Castros interview with Matthews marked the movements first steps out of the mountains and toward its final goal Havana.

The meeting of these two indomitable and restless men took place on February 17, 1957, and The New York Times published the interview on February 24. Here is the full text of the extraordinary work of journalism, which made history.