A nod to the Past

“It was a joke that turned real, nobody thought these guys were going to win. They would walk into the Catholic churches, trying to win over the clergy and end up genuflecting on the wrong knee. They marched into Havana wearing rosary beads and look at what they did.”

My mother was old enough to remember the early days of the revolution with vivid detail. On New Year’s Day, 1959, the family awoke at home in Miramar without the knowledge that Batista had fled. The prior evening, they had enjoyed a typical Cuban New Year’s Eve meal of pork, black beans and rice and the essential 12 grapes eaten typically by Spanish families at the stroke of midnight. The only difference this time was the uncertainty that pervaded the festivities. It was quieter than usual on that night. For months, the rag-tag group of bearded rebels, holed up in the mountains were considered nothing more than a farce by the island’s middle and upper class citizens. An upstart like Fidel Castro didn’t have a chance against a Cuban behemoth the likes of Fulgencio Batista. Corrupt or not, he was a powerhouse in those days, a man who had presided over the island nation’s most prosperous years and besides, everyone knew Fidel was a communist. The evidence went all the way back to the Bogotazo riots of 1948, when Castro, then 21, was part of a group of rioters that destroyed the Colombian capital following the assassination of liberal leader, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. The evidence was all there. Why on Earth would Cuba’s citizens allow a rabble-rousing Fidel to take hold of the reigns?

Early that morning, my grandmother Lola heard voices on the second floor of the house. Her brother Cucko and father, Eugenio were in the midst of a serious conversation when she snuck down the steps from her third floor bedroom and tip-toed barefoot to her father’s bedroom door. At the foot of his bed, Eugenio Villalobos, one of Cuba’s most powerful industrialists sat with a look of disbelief on his face. Running a hand through his disheveled hair, he listened as Cucko told him the news. Batista had fled, providing Fidel with a defacto win. The revolution was over. Eugenio sat silently for a moment, gathered his composure and remarked. “Now begin the bad times.”

He wasn’t born into money. Those serving as apologists for the revolution often remark that Cuba’s middle and upper class population deserved what they got from the Castro machine. They were born into lives of privilege, never having worked a day in their lives. The revolution was for the downtrodden and if those of financial means were taken down as scapegoats in the process, so-be-it. Eugenio Villalobos however, hadn’t come from a wealthy background. He was a penniless immigrant from the Mallorcan village of Estellences when he arrived in Havana at the age of 15. Mallorca, like much of Spain at the turn of the 20th century was in love with Cuba. An ironic fact considering that only 7 years earlier, Spanish soldiers had a fought a bloody war against a Cuban insurgency backed by the United States in a bid for independence that would later seal Cuba’s fate as a pseudo-colony of her immense brother to the north.

He had begged his father to allow him to make the lengthy journey alone. In April of 1905, his father, a Mallorcan tomato farmer gave his oldest son his blessing. To ease the voyage for him, Atanasio Villalobos arranged for a prep cook on board the steamship to look after the boy. Half a century later, Eugenio, by that time, a well-known Cuban industrialist, would return to his hometown with a family of his own in tow. The morning following his arrival, his chauffeur was busy washing one of the Chevrolets brought along for the trip when an elderly man approached, asking to whom the two shiny new vehicles belonged. Upon hearing the response, he replied that he would have to see Villalobos at once. It was imperative.

Eugenio was a man of formalities and etiquette, the spur-of-the-moment request was met with confusion and just a bit of disdain. Taking one of his sons with him, he set off from his ancestral house to the garage where the two cars were being kept. There, seated beside a 1953 Chevrolet sat the aged prep cook. His face had wrinkled and creased with the passage of time but he was instantly recognized. As a child, I was told of a lengthy embrace between the two men, a detail that flabbergasted my grandmother, as her father was known for his stoicism and not his outward expressions of emotion.

And so it is with great affection, respect and reverence that on this New Year's Eve, I raise a glass to "Papa-Yel" as I once referred to him (that's a story in and of itself). Wherever you are, my only hope is that you realize how much people are struggling to restore some sense of decency on your adopted island.

Posted by at December 31, 2007 01:05 PM

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Posted by: Larry Daley at December 31, 2007 04:42 PM

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