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By Margaret Randall
A review
Recently
I finished reading Margaret Randall’s biography of the Cuban revolutionary,
Haydée Santamaría. For many reasons this is a profoundly inspiring book. This
book made me think of Nancy Stout’s biography of another Cuban revolutionary
Celia Sanchez. However, Randall’s book is a different kind of biography.
Margaret Randall
First,
I think it is useful to look at the life of the author Margaret Randall in
order to gain a background to the book. Randall was born in the United States
but spent 23 years outside of the country. She married and had four children
while living in Mexico. Then, there was the repression in Mexico in 1968 that
coincided with the Olympics held in Mexico during that year.
The
government murdered hundreds of Mexicans who protested the use of badly needed
funds for the Olympics. Many people in this country recall that time when
Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists during the playing of the
National Anthem at their awards ceremony.
Cuba
agreed to give Randall asylum, but she needed to go to Czechoslovakia first. At
this time Randall didn’t have a U.S. passport. In order to go to her ultimate
destination she needed to travel in the back of a meat truck through the United
States to Canada, then to Czechoslovakia, then to Cuba. She was ill when she
arrived in Cuba and needed to have one of her kidneys removed.
Randall
would spend about eleven years living in Cuba and worked with Haydée Santamaría
during those years at the Casa de Las Americas. After her time in Cuba she went
to Nicaragua and studied the revolution in that country. She has authored many
books aside from this biography that include: Cuban Women Now, Sandino’s Daughters,
and Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry.
Randall
returned to the United States in 1984. Upon her return, the government ordered
her deported under the McCarran Walter Act of 1952. The charges against Randall
that supported her deportation include the idea that her opinions are: “against
the good order and happiness of the United States.” And that, “her writings go
beyond mere decent.” However, in a court decision Randall won the right to live
in this country.
Haydée Santamaría
Haydée
Santamaría, or Yeyé to those who were close to her, was born in the provincial
town of Encrucijada, Las Villas, Cuba in 1922. She was one of five siblings and
her father was a carpenter and manager of the La Constancia sugar mill. Her
family was middle class—not wealthy, but she did not endure the grinding
poverty of most workers.
She
had a basic education in a one-room schoolhouse and never attended a
university. Haydée and her younger brother Abel resented the profound disparity
between the affluent owners of the sugar mill and the workers who struggled
merely to survive. Abel first moved to Havana and then sent for Haydée.
Their
apartment became a center for organizing the resistance to the dictatorship of
Fulgencio Batista. Their leader was Fidel Castro and Abel was second in
command. They planed a raid on the military garrison called Moncada in the city of Santiago.
That
raid was defeated. Abel as well as Haydée’s fiancé were tortured to death.
These deaths, as well as others, would affect her for the rest of her life. Haydée, as well as Melba Hernández, served
time in prison for their participation in the raid on Moncada. After their
release they both worked to transcribe Fidel Castro’s speech at his trial that
was titled, History Will Absolve Me. Haydée
also worked to organize those who survived the raid on Moncada.
Haydée
succeeded in avoiding capture in the city. She also travelled to the United
States where she raised funds and negotiated for the purchase of arms from the
Mafia. She said that she hated those negotiations and reported that most of the
arms that had been purchased were never delivered. After the revolution, the
new revolutionary government confiscated the lavish casinos that were owned by
the Mafia. Much of the ammunition used in the revolution had been smuggled into
Cuba and sewn into women’s dresses.
After
the revolution Fidel Castro assigned Haydée Santamaría to head up the Casa de Las Americas. This was the
cultural center where Cuba would attract artists from all over the world.
Haydée had not attended a university and she had no formal training in the
arts. Yet, for about 20 years she made Casa de Las Americas a center for some
of the best artists in the world.
We
might consider that before the Cuban Revolution there was the McCarthy era in the
United States. Artists like Dalton Trumbo served time in prison for refusing to
answer questions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Then,
Cuba had their revolution and suddenly there was a haven for artists who were
critical of U.S. government policies in the world.
So,
while the United States government was doing everything in it’s power to
isolate and militarily defeat the Cuban revolution, Haydée Santamaría was
attracting artists to Casa de Las Americas from all over the world. She took an
interest in every artist and these artists testified to their appreciation of
her efforts.
All
of us have had experience with managers of capitalist corporations. Rarely do
we see any concern for our interests. Their primary concern is the drive to
maximize profits. Haydée Santamaría demonstrated how someone who had no formal
college training can not only manage, but provide inspiring leadership to
artists from around the world.
We
might also think about the fact that in capitalist nations women have become
government officials as well as corporate officers. However, these women need
to be driven with the corporate drive to maximize profits. I believe that this
is the root cause for why there is poverty in the world.
At
the end of this book Margaret Randall included her wonderful biographical poem
about Haydée’s life. In the following passage we see how Santamaría was
completely different from women officials in the capitalist world. We also see
what she viewed as important:
“You
were a woman plain and simple,
slim-boned,
great-hearted,
who
thought a bus ride should cost 5 cents,
public
pay phones be free,
health,
education, shelter, food,
culture
and art:
all
that we need free,
bountifully
free!”
Santamaría’s
internationalist thinking was in line with the thinking of Ernesto “Che”
Guevara who left Cuba to join with revolutions erupting in the Congo and in
Bolivia. Haydée worked at the Casa de Las Americas during the time of the war
against Vietnam. Vietnamese women came to Cuba and refused to cut their hair
until their country was liberated. There is a photograph in this book of Haydée
Santamaría sitting with the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.
Margaret
Randall was surprised when Haydée Santamaría asked her to judge a Cuban beauty
pageant. However, as Randall was a guest of the Cuban government, she fulfilled
this request. After judging that contest, she wrote an article critical of the
idea of beauty contests for women. Randall asked Santamaría why she asked her
to be a judge in the pageant. Haydée answered: “Because I knew that you would
put an end to those awful contests.” Today, there are no more beauty pageants
in Cuba.
Haydée
Santamaría ended her life in a suicide. She had experienced continual
depression partly due to the murder of her brother and fiancé in the raid at
Moncada. Added to this she also felt a deep loss with the deaths of Ernesto
“Che” Guevara and Celia Sanchez who died of cancer shortly before Haydée’s
suicide. Even some of the best psychologists have questions relating to the
issue of suicide. All I will say is that Haydée Santamaría needs to be judged
by how she lived her life and not by how she ended it.
I
will conclude this review with two stanzas from the biographical poem Margaret
Randall wrote about the life of Haydée Santamaría:
“You
offered Cuba’s impossible possibility
to
those whose children were disappeared,
minds
drugged by torture,
hands
severed by loneliness
of
daring to dream beyond the ugliest schemes.
“At
the precise moment
we
were in danger
of
losing sight and hearing
to
smug opportunism or insidious drones,
when
reduced to rote applause
for
those who would rob us of our memory,
condemn
us to repeat lives
with
neither past nor future,
you
came along
and
made us whole.”
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