At La Cabaña we arrived at dawn on January 3. We were waiting for the one who served as head of the fortress, Colonel Manuel Varela Castro, who, according to my understanding, belonged to the group of so-called "pure soldiers", along with Jose Ramon Fernandez and others. Che was informed about the troop stationed in the polygon, which was composed of unarmed soldiers, and he decided not to review. He went to the Military Club, where committed officers and prisoners remained. The officers still carried their short weapons.

In the middle of an amazing calm, we went to the old Headquarters. After ordering some details and receiving the command, we retreated to the house of the Commandant of La Cabaña, Lieutenant Colonel Fernandez Miranda, brother of the wife of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had fled the country, as well as all the most connoted Batistans. .

What happened in those first hours seemed unusual. Before such a fortress, it was strange to observe how that mass of soldiers subordinated themselves to the rebel command without opposition of any kind. This fact told us a lot about the moral breakdown of the dictatorship, but above all about trust and respect for the new Rebel Army, which had the unconditional support of the entire people.

Che and all the members of the comandancia were located in the house of Fernandez Miranda and there we woke up; most slept in the big room and they left me the smallest. I slept a few hours - rest was not yet allowed; On the other hand, the two or three compañeras that had arrived with the troops had to give us the task of looking through the clothes of Fernández Miranda's wife, in order to change us.

In the morning Che worked in the house, in a small office, and then returned to the Headquarters. On the way, those of us who followed him went snooping around: the gardens, the view of the sea, marveling at the beauty of the place. We were the dispossessed, who for the first time felt ownership of our destiny. We were facing the first breezes. Che had already warned that from that moment on, the real revolutionary struggle was beginning.

There was a new life for everyone. Initial chaos was restored order and the first steps were taken to organize ourselves, for which other houses in the surrounding area were used.

On January 5 we moved in a cargo plane to Camagüey. I did not know where we were going, let alone who we would meet. During the trip, Che began to dictate some notes on the duty of the rebel soldier. In this way I started in my first job, still without having been officially defined. But the most important thing was that Che was already ordering his thoughts, to put them in terms of the tasks he knew were essential for the best performance of the revolutionary process.

I stayed in a place inside the airport in the company of the commander Manuel Piñeiro (Barbarroja) and Demetrio Montseny (Villa), and then returned to Havana with Che, who had actually gone to meet Fidel, at the airport itself, to examine the steps that were being taken and receive new directions. There is a graphic testimony of that meeting between Fidel and Che, in which we can see that both speak, relaxed and satisfied.

On January 7 we drove to Matanzas, where Che met again with Fidel. I stayed in a nearby cubicle and there I met Celia Sánchez and later Fidel, whom Che brought to introduce me.

It was the first time I saw it and I evoke it as if it were today. For me, Fidel has always had the gift of becoming mute. How many things could he have said at that moment? But the words did not come out, it was as if something mysterious held them in the heart. Maybe I could have expressed to him what this encounter meant to me, to say that I seemed to know him for a long time. Besides, it had been with him and for him that my life had a purpose, something for which he deserved to live. And that I did not know how much I should thank him, not only for everything I owe him in the present, but because if it were not for him I would never have met Che.

That same day we returned to Havana, to await the arrival of Fidel on January 8, an unforgettable date full of mixed emotions. We saw the arrival from the walls of the fortress of La Cabaña, in that panoramic view mixed with sea and waves of people.

The order was imposed, as far as possible, in a revolutionary process that bet to sweep the turbulent past of a republic that could never reach its fullness. In the midst of that effervescence, I found myself ordering my personal life and adapting myself to the capital.

(...) Che went out with the escorts, always in my company, to make work arrangements; We would walk through the streets of the Malecón, where we would get lost; When we did not know the places, sometimes we stopped in front of a red light, believing it was a traffic light and then we realized that it was the light of a pharmacy, which ended in jokes and laughter. To paraphrase the title of a film, we were "peasants in Havana".

(...)

In the midst of everything, the strength of La Cabaña had become one of the bastions of the Revolution, and Che was beginning to emerge as one of its most capable and charismatic leaders. Of the illiterate troop and unprepared for the new challenges, it was necessary to begin to select the future cadres that the country would need and for this it was necessary to act firmly, without leaving them free time.

In a few days La Cabaña was transformed into a great training school and small factories were created, continuation of those founded by Che in the Sierra Maestra and forerunners of his future work in the process of industrialization of the country. A kind of magazine was published with the name of Cabaña Libre, which on one of its pages dealt with cultural issues; and events were organized, attended by important personalities of the national culture, including Nicolás Guillen and the declaimer Carmina Benguría.

It was an incessant movement, which pursued the formation of the Rebel Army as its central objective. Literacy and follow-up schools were created, with a lot of effort and perseverance because not infrequently the evasions and indisciplines of soldiers occurred, which in the combat were an example of courage and courage, and yet they were not able to understand the reason of the new demands

For Che meant a double effort, because the enormous daily work was added his perseverance and dedication to try to summarize the experiences, to serve as an example to possible revolutionary movements that, like the Cuban, were willing to start the struggle of national liberation.

That, perhaps, was one of the facets that caused more impact and amazement, because he knew, so far, his skills as a military strategist, but nothing about his theoretical training, despite the reputation of a communist who had won in some sectors.

In fact, for many the speech he gave at the Our Time Cultural Society, a few days after the triumph of the Revolution, represented the first point of reference for friends and enemies. In this dissertation he clearly outlined the projections of the Rebel Army, in its vanguard condition and future cadres for the Revolution, as well as attempting an analysis in which it tried to approach a Marxist approach, as far as the current situation allowed. . This was the preamble of what would later make up his theoretical legacy.

The important thing for everyone was the enormous and varied work that we had ahead of us. In January, the Revolutionary Courts were organized and the first trials of the henchmen of the tyranny began, based on the work carried out by a purification and investigative Commission, presided over by the captain of the Rebel Army and lawyer, comrade Miguel Ángel Duque de Estrada.

This has always been a controversial subject and distorted by our enemies, even though it represented a legitimate act of revolutionary justice, in which neither cruelty nor improvisation mediated. We acted with the procedural rules of these cases and I remember that Che, although he did not attend any of these trials, nor did he witness the executions, did he participate in some appeals and interviewed some relatives who were going to request clemency, in correspondence with our humanistic and respectful actions towards the enemy, before a decision that, although fair, was not unpleasant.

Oscar Fernandez Mell, Adolfo Rodriguez de la Vega and Antonio Nuñez Jiménez were the assistants of Che in La Cabaña. The Military Intelligence was created, in charge of Arnaldo Rivero Alfonso, to act as a kind of police control over the rebel soldiers.

As for me, the workload was huge, because above all I had to attend to the needs and personal problems of the soldiers, as ordered by Che, in addition to trying to control the number of characters and journalists who came to try to see it .

There are innumerable photos of the time that record the presence of national or foreign personalities, such as Herbert Matthews, Loló de la Torriente and a court of women of different strata and professions that requested audience to be received by Che.

(...) We were also visited by fighters of the clandestine struggle. I think some did it with the objective of getting to know the "communist" who had liberated Las Villas and others to see who was already a legendary fighter, who, like Máximo Gómez, the Generalissimo of our libertarian struggles against the Spanish metropolis, born in the Dominican Republic, had risked his life for the conquest of independence for so long a time. Máximo Gómez in his time and Che to revolutionary triumph, were proclaimed, according to our constitution, Cubans by birth.

My temporary office in the residence was my own room. I remember that the dog of the house could not stand the soldiers. I never knew if it was only with ours or if it was a general rejection. The former residents not only left the dog, but also the children's and family's movies and something else that they could not take away during the flight. When I left La Cabaña to move to Tarará, I took the puppy with me, who remained in our care until his death.

I also started as a "treasurer", using money that was in the fund since the Escambray stage, and whose documentation and records I still have. Although it seems surprising, that was the austerity with which we acted: Che ordered to distribute ten pesos for each soldier for his holidays.

(...)

Within the intensity of events, I can clearly reconstruct the visit of foreigners, among them some Haitians who talked at length with Che, in search of Cuban support in their attempts to overthrow Duvalier's dictatorial regime. In the light of time, I can understand that on an occasion as early as February 1959, the first steps were taken to know and collaborate with the liberation movements, as well as with the progressive forces of the world, of which I was a privileged witness.

(...)

Events rushed. His parents arrived on January 18 and we went to meet them at the airport. Then the father asked him who I was, and that was when Che introduced me as the woman he was going to marry. Later, we moved to the hotel where they would stay. It was actually very exciting, because Che breathed happiness through all his pores from the moment he saw them. There are photos and a short film of the meeting in which Che appears with an expression of joy and overflowing feelings, after so many years of separation.

(...)

That's how February arrived and with him my birthday, which was not very pleasant. Che already presented the symptoms of a pulmonary emphysema, a sequel to the difficult times of the guerrilla and the agitation of the first days of the revolutionary triumph. (...)

Subsequently, in the first days of March, we moved to a house in Tarará with the purpose of recovering Che, away from all the hassle and infinite tasks. We were accompanied by his escort, whom he considered my brothers and whom I often had to defend against some other indiscipline, in a kind of complicity full of affection. (...)

The famous house of Tarara -which motivated a disrespectful letter and with all malice towards Che, published in the magazine Carteles, and duly answered by this one-, was a house designed with very good taste, although the most significant thing was that it had belonged to a customs inspector linked to the dictatorship, who supposedly only earned a modest salary. The question was where the money had come from for those luxuries on the beach; that is how the usurpers of the town's money lived.

Although they were nothing more than two months and days those who live in that house, recapitulate that time I am extremely pleased because, although it did not become a definite home, or even rest properly "we do not bathe even a day at the beach ", We felt closer to each other and we could have more privacy.

(...) It was a comfortable house that allowed Che to make the dispatches from his room. Unable to travel daily to La Cabaña, I could lie down all the time and I was allowed to move freely. It breathed a different air and more elegant and comfortable than there, to be the house surrounded by large windows with opaque glass and have plenty of ventilation, because it was located on a small hill.

On the ground floor, among other details, I had a small office, separated and located at the end. In the high rooms, in the large room occupied by Che, there were furniture with neat lines, a small striped sofa and a very large dressing room. Next to it was a large marble-clad bathroom, attached to a walk-in closet. Then came another room, which was my room, because as we were not officially married, due to my lags and taboos, we pretended to sleep separately. At the end of the corridor, and all along, there was a large room where the escort was kept, and a small pantry.

When we went down we found the living room, historical place, of which photos are kept, because in it the innumerable versions of the first Law of Agrarian Reform were discussed, prepared and drafted; then, the dining room covered with wood and a modern kitchen that overlooked the garage, where I remember there was a small cellar, to please the taste of the ancient inhabitants.

(...) Che also had a discipline regime in place, with a teacher and everything, so that the soldiers of the escort could continue their studies.

Of course, everything did not always happen with total understanding. On one of those days a visit was received from Nicaraguan comrades and to my surprise, Che told me to leave the meeting, which I did not understand because it was usual for me to be present, as had happened with Dominicans, Panamanians and Haitians. When I left, I began to cry and to question the confidence that Che had in me.

Then he explained that it was going to be a very complex meeting, where he had to say very unpleasant things that he did not want me to witness, because they were going to feel very overwhelmed. I was really sorry, but in the meantime it helped me to understand the future scope of those activities.

If something reproaches me at present it is not having had more insight to glimpse that future and not having worried about leaving record of those facts, at least although they were only brief notes. It is clear that none of us measured the magnitude and the real meaning of what was happening and the importance of these contacts in the preparation of the groups that would lead the liberation movements in our continent. As I did not receive the order to take notes of those meetings and meetings, even though I was always present, I have to regret it more than ever now that I want to count them and I am aware of the limitations of memory due to the years that have passed.

Meanwhile, in Tarará, one of the most awaited laws by the Cuban people took shape: the Agrarian Reform Law. Many reasons explain that Che served as a kind of coordinator of the project because, from the Sierra Maestra, Fidel had entrusted Sorí Marín and him with this work, in addition to having applied to Escambray in the territories under his command.

These meetings were daily for many nights, Fidel attended as time allowed, especially because he lived in Cojimar at that time. Also they went Raul and Vilma, Núñez Jiménez, Oscar Pino-Santos, Alfredo Guevara, among others, to give him final form to the document that would appear in May of that year.

He also frequented the Carlos Rafael Rodríguez house, I remember him very well; He spent practically the night arguing with Che and sometimes took him until morning. I was witnessing the preamble of what later became one of the most significant theoretical polemics in the socialist world and in which both were protagonists of the first order, although, of course, there was still a lot to define and do.

(Fragments of the book Evocation / Taken from the site Che Guevara Books)

SOURCE: CUBADEBATE

BY: Aleida March de La Torre