Eyewitnesses to History

They stayed in Havana about a week and, after a brief encounter with Camilo Cienfuegos in the Hilton lobby ("He was euphoric," de Cardenas recalls, "but he looked a little worried"), finally flew back to Mexico. "I was very angry," de Cardenas says. "I couldn't believe after risking my life for him he wouldn't even talk to me. But now I'm glad he didn't." Any remaining feelings of solidarity were extinguished, de Cardenas says, by the 1959 arrest, show trial, and imprisonment of Haber Matos, a provincial commander in the rebel army who had publicly criticized the government's growing communist tendencies. They didn't know Matos, de Cardenas explains, but they, like other observers, were offended by Matos's spectacle of a trial, the lack of due process, and his severe twenty-year sentence, which he served in full. (Matos now lives in Miami and operates a shortwave radio station that broadcasts to Cuba.)

Back at Radio Mambi, an AM station whose signal can be heard clearly on the island, Mario Chanes and Orlando de Cardenas continue to recollect their different roles in the revolution and the contrasting turns their lives took after the Granma began its labored journey for Cuba. "What was the atmosphere like on the Granma as you were leaving? Was there a spirit of adventure?" moderator Tamargo asks Chanes, who had been closely allied with Castro since the Moncada attack.

"Not really," Chanes replies. "There was strong discipline. Several of the men had been at Moncada, and we were all conscious that this was going to be a pretty difficult undertaking, a hard struggle." Chanes goes on to describe the overcrowding on the 64-foot boat that was built to accommodate 8 instead of 82 -- how everyone was seasick and vomiting, the late and off-target landing that left the crew at the mercy of the army and the elements. "That seems like suicide on Fidel's part," Tamargo observes.

Chanes cocks his head and levels his eyes. After spending almost half his life in prison, he still carries himself like a soldier. "Unfortunately," he says, "many times being a revolutionary is suicidal."

A few minutes later, de Cardenas responds to a caller's admiring remark about his courage in submitting himself to "extreme danger" for a cause -- "but a mistaken cause."

"Yes, I recognize I was wrong," de Cardenas says. "But the only real wrong one can do is to do nothing.