I am always in the front line

Face to face with Fidel Castro in his mountain hideout in February 1957.

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.

* * *

FIDEL CASTRO, the rebel leader of Cubas youth, is alive and fighting hard and successfully in the rugged, almost impenetrable fastness of the Sierra Maestra, at the southern tip of the island.

President Fulgencio Batista has the cream of his army around the area, but the army men are fighting a thus-far losing battle to destroy the most dangerous enemy Batista has yet faced in a long and adventurous career as a Cuban leader and dictator.

This is the first sure news that Castro is still alive and still in Cuba. No one connected with the outside world, let alone with the press, has seen Castro except this writer. No one in Havana not even at the United States Embassy with all its resources for getting information, will know until this report is published that Castro is really in the Sierra Maestra.

This account, among other things, will break the tightest censorship in the history of the Cuban republic. The province of Oriente, with its 2 million inhabitants, its flourishing cities such as Santiago, Holguin and Manzanillo, is shut off from Havana as surely as if it were another country.

Havana does not and cannot know that thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Castro and the new deal for which they think he stands. It does not know that hundreds of highly respected citizens are helping Castro, that bombs and sabotage are constant (18 bombs were exploded in Santiago on February 15), that a fierce government counterterrorism campaign has aroused the populace even more against Batista.

Throughout Cuba a formidable movement of opposition to Batista has been developing. It has by no means reached an explosive point. The rebels in the Sierra Maestra cannot move out. The economic situation is good. Batista has the high officers of the army and the police behind him and he ought to be able to hang on for the nearly two years of his present term that are still left.

However, there are bad spots in the economy, especially on the fiscal side. Unemployment is heavy: Corruption is rife. No one can predict anything with safety except that Cuba seems in for a very troubled period.

Castro and his 26th of July Movement are the flaming symbol of this opposition to the regime. The organisation, which is apart from the university students opposition, is formed of youths of all kinds. It is a revolutionary movement that calls itself socialistic. It is also nationalistic, which generally in Latin America means anti-Yankee.

The programme is vague and couched in generalities, but it amounts to a new deal for Cuba; radical, democratic and therefore anti-communist. The real core of its strength is that it is fighting against the military dictatorship of President Batista.

To arrange for me to penetrate the Sierra Maestra and meet Fidel Castro, dozens of men and women in Havana and Oriente Province ran a truly terrible risk. They must, of course, be protected with the utmost care for their lives would be forfeit after the customary torture immediately if any could be traced. Consequently, no names are used here, the places are disguised and many details of the elaborate, dangerous trail in and out of the Sierra Maestra must be omitted.

From the looks of things, Batista cannot possibly hope to suppress the Castro revolt. His only hope is that an army column will come upon the young rebel leader and his staff and wipe them out. This is hardly likely to happen, if at all, before March 1, when the present suspension of constitutional guarantees is supposed to end.

Fidel Castro is the son of a Spaniard from Galicia, a Galego like Generalissimo Francisco Franco. The father was a pick-and-shovel labourer early in the century for the United Fruit Company, while sugar plantations are on the northern shores of Oriente Province. A powerful build, a capacity for hard work and a shrewd mind led the father up in the world until he became a rich sugar planter himself. When he died last year, each of his children, including Fidel, inherited a sizable fortune.

Someone who knew the family remembers Fidel as a child of 4 or 5 years, living a sturdy farm life. The father sent him to school and the University of Havana where he studied law and became one of the student opposition leaders who rebelled against Gen. Batista in 1952 because the general had staged a garrison revolt and prevented the presidential elections of that year.

Fidel had to flee from Cuba in 1954 and he lived for a while in New York and Miami. The year 1956, he announced, was to be the year of decision. Before the year ended, he said, he would be a hero or a martyr.

The government knew that he had gone to Mexico and last summer was training a body of youths who had left Cuba to join him. As the end of the year approached, the Cuban army was very much on the alert, knowing that something would be tried and that Castro was coming back. He was already, in a measure, a hero of the Cuban youth, for on July 26, 1953, he had led a band of youths in a desperate attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba.

In the fighting then about 100 students and soldiers were killed but the revolt failed. The Archbishop of Santiago, Msgr. Enrique Perez Serantes, intervened to minimise the bloodshed and got Castro and others to surrender on promises of a fair trial. Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison but there was an amnesty at the time of the presidential elections of November 1, 1954, and he was let out. It was then he crossed to the continent and began to organise the 26th of July Movement. It is under this banner that the youth of Cuba are now fighting the Batista regime. The blow, which at the time seemed utter failure, was struck on December 2, 1956.

That day, a 62-foot diesel-engined yacht, the Granma, landed 82 young men, trained for two months in a ranch in Mexico, on the Oriente shore below Niquero at a spot called Playa Olorada. The idea had been to land at Niquero, recruit followers and lead an open attack against the government. However, the Granma had been spotted by a Cuban naval patrol boat. Planes flew in to strafe and the men on the yacht decided to beach her.

Playa Olorada, unhappily for the invaders, was a treacherous swamp. The men lost their food and most of their arms and supplies and soon were being attacked by army units. They scattered and took to the hills. Many were killed. Of the 82 no more than 15 or 20 were left after a few days.

Batista and his aides were remarkably successful from then on in hiding what happened. The youths they captured were forced to sign statements saying that they had been told Castro was on the Granma with them but that they had never seen him. Thus doubt was cast that he had ever come to Cuba.

Because of the complete censorship, Havana and the other Cuban cities crackle with the most astonishing rumours; one, encouraged by the government, has been that Fidel Castro is dead. Only those fighting with him and those who had faith and hope knew or thought he was alive and those who knew were very few and in the utmost peril of their lives if their knowledge was traced.

This was the situation when the writer got to Havana on February 9 to try to find out what was really happening. The censorship has been applied to foreign correspondents as well as Cuban. What everybody, even those who wanted to believe, kept asking was: If Fidel is alive, why does he not do or say something to show that he is? Since December 2 he had kept absolutely quiet or he was dead.

As I learned later, Castro was waiting until he had his forces reorganised and strengthened and had mastery of the Sierra Maestro. This fortunately coincided with my arrival and he had sent word out to a trusted source in Havana that he wanted a foreign correspondent to come in. The contact knew as soon as I arrived and got in touch with me. Because of the state of siege, it had to be someone who would get the story and go out of Cuba to write it.

Then came a week of organisation. A rendezvous point and a time had to be fixed and arrangements made to get through the government lines into the Sierra Maestra.

After the first few weeks the army had given out the report that the remnants of Castros forces were being starved out in the Sierra. In reality the army had ringed the Sierra with fortified posts and columns or troops and had every road under heavy guard. The reports reaching Havana that frequent clashes were taking place and that the government troops were losing heavily proved true.

The first problem was to get through the government roadblocks and reach a nearby town that would be a jumping-off place. Late on the afternoon of Friday, February 15, Castros contact man got in touch with me in Havana with the news that the meeting was set for the following night in the Sierra and that Castro and his staff would take the chance of coming a little way toward the edge of the range so that I would not have to do too much climbing. There are no roads there, and where we were to meet, no horses could go.

To get from Havana to Oriente (more than 500 miles away) on time meant driving all night and the next morning, so as to be ready Saturday afternoon to start for the Sierra.

The plan worked out to get through the armys roadblocks in Oriente was as simple as it was effective. We took my wife along in the car as camouflage. Cuba is at the height of the tourist season and nothing could have looked more innocent than a middle-aged American couple driving down to Cubas most beautiful and fertile province with some young friends. The guards would take one look at my wife, hesitate a second, and wave us on with friendly smiles. If we were to be questioned a story was prepared for them. If we were searched the jig would be up.

In that way we reached the house of a sympathiser of Castro outside the Sierra. There my wife was to stay amid warm hospitality, and no questions asked. I got into the clothes I had purchased in Havana for a fishing trip warm for the cold night air of the mountains and dark camouflage.

After nightfall I was taken to a certain house where three youths who were going in with me had gathered. One of them was one of the 82, a proud phrase for the survivors of the original landing. I was to meet five or six of them. A courier, who owned an open, army-type jeep, joined us.

His news was bad. A government patrol of four soldiers in a jeep had placed itself on the very road we had to take to get near the point where we were to meet the Castro scouts at midnight. Moreover, there had been a very heavy rain in the Sierra in the afternoon and the road was a morass. The others impressed on him that Fidel Castro wanted me in there at all costs and somehow it had to be done.

The courier agreed reluctantly. All across the plain of Oriente Province there are the flat lands with sugar and rice plantations. And such farms have innumerable crisscrossing dirt roads. The courier knew every inch of the terrain and figured that by taking a very circuitous route he could bring us close enough.

We had to go through one army roadblock and beyond that would be the constant risk of army patrols, so we had to have a good story ready. I was to be an American sugar planter who could not speak a word of Spanish and who was going out to look over a plantation in a certain village. One of the youths who spoke English was my interpreter. The others made up similar fictions.

Before leaving, one of the men showed me a wad of bills (the Cuban peso is exactly the same size and value as the United States dollar) amounting apparently to 400 pesos, which was being sent in to Castro. With a rich American planter, it would be natural for the group to have the money if we were searched. It was interesting evidence that Fidel Castro paid for everything he took from the guajiros, or squatter farmers, of the Sierra.

Our story convinced the army guard when he stopped us, although he looked dubious for a little while, then came hours of driving, through sugarcane and rice fields, across rivers that only jeeps could manage. One stretch, the courier said, was heavily patrolled by government troops but we were lucky and saw none. Finally, after slithering through miles of mud we could go no farther.

It was then midnight, the time we were to meet Castros scouts; but we had to walk and it was hard going. At last we turned off the road and slid down a hillside to where a stream, dark brown under the nearly full moon, rushed its muddy way. One of the boys slipped and fell full length in the icy cold water. I waded through with the water almost to my knees and that was hard enough to do without falling. Fifty yards up the other slope was the meeting point.

The patrol was not there. Three of us waited while two of the men went back to see if we had missed the scouts somewhere, but in 15 minutes they returned, frustrated. The courier suggested that we might move up a bit and he led us ahead, but obviously did not know where to go. Castros men have a characteristic signal that I was to hear incessantly two low, soft, toneless whistles. One of our men kept trying it, but with no success.

After a while we gave up. We had kept under cover at all times, for the moonlight was strong and we knew there were troops around us.

We stopped in a heavy clump of trees and bushes, dripping from the rain, the ground underfoot heavily matted, muddy and soaked. There we sat for a whispered confab. The courier and another youth who had fought previously with Castro said they would go up the mountainside and see if they could find any rebel troops.

Three of us were to wait, a rather agonising wait of more than two hours, crouched in the mud, not daring to talk or move, trying to snatch a little sleep with our heads on our knees and annoyed maddeningly by the swarms of mosquitoes that were having the feast of their lives.

At last we heard a cautious, welcome double-whistle. One of us replied in kind and this had to be kept up for a while, like two groups meeting in a dense fog, until we got together. One of our party had found an advance patrol and a scout came with him to lead us to an outpost in the mountains.

The scout was a squatter from the hills, and he needed to know every inch of the land to take us as he did, swiftly and unerringly across fields, up steep hills, floundering in the mud. The ground levelled out blessedly at last and then dipped suddenly. The scout stopped and whistled cautiously. The return whistle came. There was a short parley and we were motioned on, sliding down into a heavy grove. The dripping leaves and boughs, the dense vegetation, the mud underfoot, the moonlight all gave the impression of a tropical forest, more like Brazil than Cuba.

Castro was encamped some distance away and a soldier went to announce our arrival and ask whether he would join us or we should join him. Later he came back with the news that we were to wait and Castro would come along with the dawn. Someone gave me a few soda crackers, which tasted good. Someone else stretched a blanket on the ground and it seemed a great luxury. It was too dark in the grove to see anything.

We spoke in the lowest possible whispers. One man told me how he had seen his brothers store wrecked and burned by government troops and his brother dragged out and executed. Id rather be here, fighting for Fidel, than anywhere in the world now, he said.

There were two hours before dawn, and the blanket made it possible to sleep. With the light I could see how young they all were. Castro, according to his followers, is 30, and that is old for the 26th of July Movement. It has a motley array of arms and uniforms, and even a few civilian suits. The rifles and the one machine gun I saw were all American-discarded models.

The captain of this troop was a stocky Negro with a black beard and moustache, a ready, brilliant smile and willingness for publicity. Of all I met, only he wanted his name mentioned Juan Ameda, One of the 82. Several of the youths had lived in the United States and spoke English; others had learned it at school. One had been a professional baseball player in a minor league and his wife is still in the United States.

The part of the Sierra we were in grows no food. Sometimes we eat: sometimes not, one rebel said. On the whole, they obviously keep healthy. Supporters send in food; the farmers help; trusted couriers go out and buy supplies, which the storekeepers sell them at great risk and against government orders.

Raul Castro, Fidels younger brother, slight and pleasant, came into the camp with others of the staff, and a few minutes later Fidel himself strode in. Taking him, as one would at first, by physique and personality, this was quite a man: a powerful 6-footer, olive-skinned, full-faced, with a straggly beard. He was dressed in an olive gray fatigue uniform and carried a rifle with a telescopic sight, of which he was very proud. It seems his men have something more than 50 of these and he said the soldiers feared them.

We can pick them off at a thousand yards with these guns, he said.

After some general conversation we went to my blanket and sat down. Someone brought tomato juice, ham sandwiches made with crackers, and tins of coffee. In honour of the occasion, Castro broke open a box of good Havana cigars and for the next three hours we sat there while he talked.

No one could talk above a whisper at any time. There were columns of government troops all around us, Castro said, and their one hope was to catch him and his band. The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.

As the story unfolded of how he had at first gathered the few remnants of the 82 around him and kept the government troops at bay while youths came in from other parts of Oriente as Batistas counterterrorism aroused them; got arms and supplies and then began the series of raids and counterattacks of guerilla warfare, one got a feeling that Castro is now invincible. Perhaps he isnt, but that is the faith he inspires in his followers.

They have had many fights, and inflicted many losses, Castro said. Government planes came over and bombed every day; in fact, at 9 oclock sharp a plane did fly over. The troops took up positions; a man in a white shirt was hastily covered up. But the plane went on to bomb higher in the mountains.

Castro is a great talker. His brown eyes flash; his intense face is pushed close to the listener and the whispering voice, as in a stage play, lends a vivid sense of drama.

We have been fighting for 79 days now and are stronger than ever, Castro said. The soldiers are fighting badly; their morale is low and ours could not be higher. We are killing many, but when we take prisoners they are never shot. We question them, talk kindly to them, take their arms and equipment, and then set them free.

I know that they are always arrested afterwards and we heard some were shot as examples to the others, but they dont want to fight, and they dont know how to fight this kind of mountain warfare. We do.

The Cuban people hear on the radio all about Algeria, but they never hear a word about us or read a word, thanks to the censorship. You will be the first to tell them. I have followers all over the island. All the best elements, especially all the youth, are with us. The Cuban people will stand anything but oppression.

I asked him about the report that he was going to declare a revolutionary government in the Sierra.

Not yet, he replied. The time is not ripe. I will make myself known at the opportune moment. It will have all the more effect for the delay, for now everybody is talking about us. We are sure of ourselves.

There is no hurry. Cuba is in a state of war, but Batista is hiding it. A dictatorship must show that it is omnipotent or it will fall; we are showing that it is impotent.

The government, he said with some bitterness, is using arms furnished by the United States against all the Cuban people.

They have bazookas, mortars, machine guns, planes and bombs, he said, but we are safe here in the Sierra; they must come and get us, and they cannot.

Castro speaks some English, but he preferred to talk in Spanish, which he did with extraordinary eloquence. His is a political mind rather than a military one. He has strong ideas on liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the constitution, to hold elections. He has strong ideas on economy, too, but an economist would consider them weak.

The 26th of July Movement talks of nationalism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism. I asked Castro about that. He answered, You can be sure we have no animosity toward the United States and the American people.

Above all, he said, we are fighting for a democratic Cuba and an end to the dictatorship. We are not anti-military; that is why we let the soldier prisoners go. There is no hatred of the army as such, for we know the men are good and so are many of the officers.

Batista has 3,000 men in the field against us. I will not tell you how many we have, for obvious reasons. He works in columns of 200; we in groups of 10 to 40, and we are winning. It is a battle against time and time is on our side.

To show that he deals fairly with the guajiros he asked someone to bring the cash. A soldier brought a bundle wrapped in dark brown cloth, which Castro unrolled. There was a stack of peso bills at least a foot high about $4,000 he said, adding that he had all the money he needed and could get more.

Why should soldiers die for Batista for $72 a month? he asked. When we win, we will give them $100 a month, and they will serve a free, democratic Cuba.

I am always in the front line, he said; and others confirmed this fact. Such being the case, the army might yet get him, but in the present circumstances he seems almost invulnerable.

They never know where we are, he said as the group arose to say goodbye, but we always know where they are. You have taken quite a risk in coming here, but we have the whole area covered, and we will get you out safely.

They did. We ploughed our way back through the muddy undergrowth in broad daylight, but always keeping under cover. The scout went like a homing pigeon through woods and across fields where there were no paths straight to a farmers house on the edge of the Sierra. There we hid in a back room while someone borrowed a horse and went for the jeep, which had been under cover all night.

There was one roadblock to get through with an army guard so suspicious our hearts sank, but he let us through.

After that, washed, shaved and looking once again like an American tourist, with my wife as camouflage, we had no trouble driving back through the roadblocks to safety and then on to Havana. So far as anyone knew, we had been away fishing for the weekend, and no one bothered us as we took the plane to New York.

(Herbert L. Matthews, 1900-1977, was a war correspondent and editorial writer for The New York Times for 45 years.)

c.2008 Herbert L. Matthews (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.)