BY MIKE TABER
An officer in the Cuban army prior to the revolution who graduated from the artillery school of the U.S. Army, José Ramón Fernández opposed the 1952 coup that placed U.S.- backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in power. In Secretos de generales, Fernández tells the story of how he became a revolutionary.

Fernández was part of an unsuccessful revolt on April 4, 1956, by army officers who became known as "los puros" (the pure ones). "Among the officers in that group, I was the most radical," Fernández says. "I thought we had to arrest Batista and execute him for his responsibility in the killings of thousands of people. I had proposed that we needed to carry out an agrarian reform, purge the armed forces, implement the 1940 constitution, and confiscate the goods stolen by public officials. That's as far as I got at the time." For his participation in that revolt he was arrested and imprisoned by the Batista regime, remaining in jail on the Isle of Pines for the next three years.

Fernández was assigned to Building 4, one of several cylindrical cell blocks that made up the Isle of Pines prison. More than 500 political prisoners eventually were incarcerated in Building 4, the vast majority of them members of the July 26 Movement, the organization led by Fidel Castro. Through these revolutionists, Fernández recalls, "I became familiar with the real objectives of the struggle. I got a clearer understanding not simply of the justice of the cause - which I already believed in - but of the determination, firmness, ability, capacity for struggle, and will to win of that improvised army that was meting out lesson after lesson to the army of the tyranny, as well as to the supposedly more capable officers who were leading it."

The members of the July 26 Movement designated Fernández as head of Building 4. For more than a year he also acted as military instructor to the revolutionary prisoners, who organized their own battalion within the prison - training they would put to good use on January 1, 1959.

On that day Batista fled Cuba in face of the advancing Rebel Army, whose victories had unleashed a revolutionary rising and general strike across Cuba.

Revolution in the prison
As soon as the prisoners figured out from the unusual broadcasts they were receiving on their carefully concealed transistor radio that something extraordinary was happening, Fernández and another prisoner, Enrique Borbonet - also a former officer in the Cuban army - demanded to see the warden, Maj. Carlos Viera de la Rosa. A few minutes later Viera came. "Amid generalized tumult in the cell block," Fernández says, "we vehemently demanded that he let us out, since we knew Batista had fled." Instead Viera said he had to go to Havana, a short plane ride away, to get more news.

When the warden returned a few hours later, he reinforced the guard, placing a well-aimed machine gun tripod at the entrance of the prison building, all the while telling the prisoners to remain calm, that they would soon be pardoned. Their noisy indignation "had no effect on Viera, but it did have an impact on some of the soldiers accompanying him, who were in favor of opening the prison doors. Viera de la Rosa took them outside and severely upbraided them."

Meanwhile, Washington was directing a frantic effort to forestall the victory of the Rebel Army and maintain the old regime in Cuba, only without Batista. A key player in the U.S. rulers' plans was Col. Ramón Barquín. Barquín had been the central leader of the 1956 "los puros" conspiracy, and he was imprisoned on the Isle of Pines along with Fernández. Once it became clear to the U.S. government that none of Batista's associates were acceptable to the Cuban people to head the military, Barquín - a former military attaché to Washington - became the Yankees' choice. On January 1 Barquín was released from prison and flown to Havana, where he took command of the main military base, Camp Columbia.

Later that same day Barquín flew back to the Isle of Pines. No longer a prisoner, he was now the leader of a U.S.- sponsored attempt to derail the revolution. Barquín "proposed to name an officer he trusted among the prisoners to take control of the Isle of Pines garrison," Fernández says. But the maneuver was flatly rejected by the July 26 Movement as well as some of the officers, including Fernández.

That's when Armando Hart, the ranking July 26 Movement leader in the prison, "came to see me in my cell," recalls Fernández. Hart "asked if I was prepared to take charge of the Isle of Pines on behalf of the July 26 Movement and the revolution. I said yes."

As the former warden and his deputy exited the prison compound, Fernández and another officer went to the garrison. "I spoke with the soldiers in a clear and energetic voice," he says. "I told them there would be no persecution of anyone who hadn't committed crimes, and I ordered them to stack their weapons up in the gun racks."

Together with an escort of four or five sympathetic soldiers, Fernández then went to the cell block itself. With the aid of the machine gun that had been placed in front of the entrance, Fernández - who had rapidly donned a first lieutenant's uniform - confronted the surprised guards. "I ordered them to open the cell doors. I had to issue threats," Fernández says, "since there was determined opposition to doing so.

"Rapidly the battalion of political prisoners I had been training for months inside the cell block fell into rank and marched out of the prison in perfect formation."

Fernández and Hart, at the head of the July 26 Movement battalion, quickly took control of the Isle of Pines. Hart headed the island's civil authority, and Fernández became military commander. Forty-eight hours later, they were called to Havana.

As for Barquín, his ill-fated effort to hold onto power collapsed January 2, when the Rebel Army columns of Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara entered Havana.

Joining the Rebel Army
On January 12, 1959, Fernández met Fidel Castro for the first time. Castro proposed that he serve the Rebel Army as head of its school for cadets. Fernández replied he wasn't sure he wanted to.

" `Do you have a job?' " Castro asked. " `I told him I'd been offered a job as manager of a sugar mill. He went on to ask me: `How much does it pay?'

"I told him 1,000 pesos.

" `I don't know if I could pay you that much.'

"I continued arguing. Fidel began pacing the small room. Suddenly he stopped and said:

" `I think you're right. You go off to the sugar mill. I'll go off to write a book. And let the revolution go to hell!'

"That very day," Fernández says, "I became director of the school for cadets."

Two years later, in the early morning of April 17, 1961, Fernández was called on by Fidel Castro to be the chief field commander of the Cuban militias and regular forces combating the U.S.-organized Bay of Pigs invasion. Working under Castro's command, Fernández directed operations until the mercenary army was crushed, within 72 hours.

"I went to Girón with enthusiasm not merely because I would be defending a just cause and confronting a powerful enemy. In addition, in my own case it was a long-sought opportunity to fulfill a personal goal.

"It's true that I had rebelled, gone into opposition, and broken with the Batista regime, and we shouldn't underestimate what that meant in those days," Fernández says. "But unlike the compañeros who had fought in the Sierra, and those who operated clandestinely in the cities day in and day out, I hadn't had the opportunity to put my life on the line to demonstrate the justice of the ideas I held.

"At Girón I participated with my own hands in defense of the revolution and socialism. It strengthened my conviction that my destiny would be forever linked to that of this heroic people."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home