Next Year in Havana(34)
Comprehension dawns, bringing with it a fresh new horror.
“Is that why you’re in the city? The election?”
The revolutionaries have been doing everything in their power to disrupt the election for months now.
Pablo dodges my question. “Batista might hold Havana, but his control over the rest of the island is rapidly dwindling. There are places even he can’t send his candidate for fear of what will happen,” he boasts.
Fidel Castro’s infamous threat to attack polling places has left many Cubans afraid to vote. His threats to jail and execute any candidate have left few men willing to run.
“And you support this? You agree with Fidel’s actions? You call for democracy, and yet, what is this if not standing in the way of democracy?”
“It’s preventing Batista from rigging another election.”
“By what, rigging it before he can?”
“No.” Frustration fills his voice. “I’m not saying I agree with the threats, with the calls for violence, the attempts to suppress the election, but at the same time, Batista must be stopped. There’s no clear answer here. He has all the power at his disposal, and unless we do something to wrest it away from him, this will never end.
“It is not enough to control the countryside; we need to control the entire country, including the government. We must drive him from Havana and show the people they no longer need to fear him and his firing squads, his secret police. We must give them the power to determine their own future, to decide the direction the country will take, but it’s impossible to achieve that under the current system.”
“It sounds as though you’re willing to play the villain in order to defeat one.”
“Please don’t think that I have become as bad as Batista, that I am driven by the same power and greed that fuels him.”
I’m afraid, and that thread of doubt threatens to unravel whatever relationship exists between us. I worry I’m surrounded by madmen who desire to burn the world down without thought for the consequences of their actions, without regard for all the innocent lives that will be charred by the flames.
“Please don’t look at me like that.” There’s a plea in Pablo’s voice I haven’t heard before and a hopelessness in his gaze.
“Like what?”
“Like I repulse you. As if I’m a monster like Batista and his cohorts. Please, Elisa.”
I want to believe he’s different, but right now both sides blur before my eyes, each claiming to possess the answer to Cuba’s future and willing to do abominable things in order to bring that future about.
“I don’t understand. I’m trying, but it’s difficult. Doesn’t the violence wear on you? The killing?”
“How can I not fight for my country? Nothing changes. If we continue on, if we don’t alter our strategy, if we don’t give them a war, then Cuba’s current state, the government’s failure, is our responsibility.
“Look at what Batista has turned us into. Look at what he has brought into the country. Gangsters and drugs—that is Batista’s legacy. Not to mention the casinos, the brothels. He has handed our country over to the Americans. They have more power here in a foreign land than we have in our own home. And in turn they give Batista military aid, weapons he uses against his people to maintain an iron grip on the country. The Americans preach liberty, and freedom, and democracy at home, and practice tyranny throughout the rest of the world. Batista is a despot. You know this.”
He’s right; but my father was one of the men who donated large sums of money to Batista’s presidential campaign years ago, is frequently welcomed at the Presidential Palace. How can I condemn my own family, my parents? That’s the difference between me and my brother—for better or worse, I am a Perez before I am a Cuban.
“Batista is bleeding us dry,” Pablo continues. “But because he is in bed with the Americans, he is untouchable. He has slaughtered tens of thousands of Cubans, and still he remains in power. We’ve endured his cruelty for far too long and look where it has left us.”
“And yet you think you and your friends can defeat him.”
The hubris in his words terrifies me; they are tempting God and the rules of nature to think that such a small group of men can do such a thing.
“Yes.”
“And the Americans?”
“If we are loud enough, if our voice is one, if we are successful in defeating him, then what can they do? They will accept us eventually.”
I’m not so sure about that. It all sounds so easy when he puts it that way. But if it is so easy, why has Batista held such power over the island for so long?
“And if you aren’t successful?”
“Then at least I will have spent my life serving a cause I believe in, a cause greater than myself.”
“You think it’s worth dying for.”
I try to imagine loving something so much that I would die for it. I would die for my family. For my child. For the man I loved. But a country?
“I cannot imagine anything more sacred than the willingness to give one’s life for one’s country,” he answers, his voice solemn.
Those are a martyr’s words, and perhaps one day they will honor him in the annals of Cuban history, but I don’t want to love a martyr. I don’t want this war or bloodshed to touch my corner of the island more than it already has. I don’t want to lose him. And suddenly, I feel young and foolish, impossibly coddled. He speaks of revolution, and I worry over my heart.