Son de Camaguey

By Angel Gonzalez

"Y morir por la patria es vivir."
Cuban National Anthem

From my airplane window I look down at the coast of Cuba, an island known by many names – the Bulwark of the Indies, the Faithful Isle, the Pearl of the Antilles, the Lady of the Mexican Gulf.

How does Carmelo fit in our long familial tradition of war-mongering, rebellion and political involvement? That’s what I’ve come to Cuba to find out.

'Cuando salí de Cuba…' says a popular 60's tune. 'When I left Cuba, I left my life, I left my love… when I left Cuba I left my heart buried in there.' I have never left Cuba, but I am returning to the country my father fled in 1961, to visit for the first time the cities and landscapes I have imagined since childhood. I’ve considered these cities kidnapped, frozen in a Spartan, alien lifestyle, while the rest of us, the Cuba that left, prospered.

The island below is the land my ancestors discovered, populated and built. Looking at the beautiful landscape bathing in the Caribbean I struggle to hold back my tears. It must have been difficult to leave. Maybe that's why my uncle, Carmelo Gonzalez del Castillo, chose to stay, even though most of his family went to exile.

Who was Carmelo Gonzalez? From what I know, he was an idealistic young man deeply involved in one of the most important events in the history of the Western hemisphere: the Cuban Revolution.

Carmelo was a revolutionary, a counter-revolutionary, and the once again part of the Revolution. Some say he despised Castro, but some say that after serving time in Castro’s prisons, he lived out his life as a committed Communist. How does Carmelo fit in our long familial tradition of war-mongering, rebellion and political involvement? That’s what I’ve come to Cuba to find out.

photo courtesy of Angel Gonzalez Carmelo and his wife, Josefina

"Hay sol bueno, mar de espuma…" 'There's good sun and a sea of foam', reads an advertisement at the airport, promising perfect beaches to the hordes of tourists who come looking for sex, music and sun. To me, those words say much more: they are from a poem written in 1889 by Jose Marti when he lived in exile in Newport Beach, a poem that, line-by-line, my grandmother asked me to memorize when I was a small child.

I too lived in a kind of exile, born in Venezuela, but brought up in the Cuba of my grandmother's memory. From her I learned Marti's poem, the name of Cuba's first seven cities, the order in which they were founded, and the sweet Caribbean accent of the Cuban province of Camaguey.

My grandmother Elba del Castillo is an aristocratic woman, a descendant of Mambises, the liberal Cuban planters who rose against Spain in the wars of 1868 and 1895. She was born in the early years of the Republic. Her father, Ángel Castillo y Quesada, a Cuban Cavalry commander in the war of 1895, followed the military tradition of his father, General Ángel del Castillo Agramonte, one of the original conspirators behind the birth of the First Cuban Republic in 1868. My grandfather was killed, according to the Cuban history books I used to read as a child, by a Spanish bullet, crying out "see how a Cuban general dies!"

Their battles became my childhood fantasies, and in my grandmother's room, full of books of Martí and maps of Cuba, I forgot entirely about Caracas and the limited life of a five-year-old. The endless stories about pirates, elegant ballrooms, revolutions and the strange Marquis of Santa Lucía - a distant relative of my grandmother who had lived in England and ate canaries and mockingbirds - were far more interesting, far more real.

My little brother and I commuted between kindergarten lessons about Bolivar's liberation of South America, and my grandmother's Cuba. In both worlds, we indulged in the cult of Independence heroes, but in my grandmother's country we had heroes that bore our name.

In the same shelf where my grandmother placed a glass of water to our ancestors - a magical custom inherited from her black nanny - there was an album that contained a picture of her family: my grandmother, my grandfather, Carmelo González de Ara, a dark, elegant Spanish accountant and Rose-Crucian, and their two sons, Ángel and Carmelo. Ángel, my father, a student at the University of Havana when the photograph was taken, had inherited his mother's fair skin and ironic smile. Carmelo, my uncle, was a revolutionary student leader still in high school at the Liceo de Segunda Enseñanza of Camaguey. He bore his father's dark skin and fiery, Arab eyes.

My grandfather was killed, according to the Cuban history books I used to read as a child, by a Spanish bullet, crying out "see how a Cuban general dies!"

The picture was taken in 1960, barely a year after the fall of Batista and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. In the following months, that family¸ like many others of the time, would be divided by the Revolution.

Many members of the middle class had supported the ousting of Batista, but couldn’t stomach the executions* and opposed Fidel Castro's embrace of Communism. "Even the music is sad," my grandfather used to say of the socialist hymns of the era. In 1961, he arranged for my father and Carmelo to take a ship to Venezuela. My father left, but his brother stayed. By this time, Carmelo had turned from revolutionary to counterrevolutionary and he was determined to oust Fidel

"Carmelo," my grandmother still says when calling my brother Miguel, mistaking him for her son. "Your father was very smart, but Carmelo was always surrounded by women. And he was a 'guapo', " a Spanish word that means 'handsome' but in Cuba, also reckless and brave. A 'guapo' like our grandfathers, the legendary fighters for the Cuban independence, had been.

photo by Mimi Chakarova A view of Havana.

It’s an early, fresh Cuban morning, and I wake to the sound of Fidel’s voice on TV. I am staying at a splendid 1950s apartment in El Vedado. Sunlight fills the room, the smell of the sea, mixed with gasoline, is everywhere, just like the chirping of canaries. The caged is a Cuban obsession – my father has had dozens of the little birds.

This is the center of Havana, where the great hotels are. The Nacional, the Capri, the Habana Libre. Amid the ruined high rises and faded condo buildings, crowds wait for the ‘camellos,’ the huge Hungarian-made buses that transport up to 400 people, to take them to work. I try to picture Carmelo as an eight year old in 1950, taking a different, American-made bus to school.

"Habana, quien no la ve no la ama," who hasn’t seen it, cannot love it, goes the saying. And it is true: even though I was brought up with stories about its splendor, I never imagined it like this, the most beautiful city I've ever seen. Its late 19th cenutry architecture reminds me of the monumental constructions of Madrid and Barcelona. Its warm climate and veranded houses remind me of Sevilla. A huge Cuban flag flies from the Hotel Nacional, its lone star waving in defiance. In the presence of this flag I feel something resembling pride, nationalism. It’s the symbol my grandfathers fought for.

I try to picture how it must have been back then, in the times of ‘Cuba Libre.’ Some things must look the same: the Art Deco buildings, the incredible abundance of 1950s cars. But many things that my father talked about are missing: the street vendors who used to sell mussels in lemon juice, the advertisements, the elegantly clad people, the bourgeoisie that built these modern houses and apartments, now crumbling structures.

New things are there, though: the Yara movie theater that shows films by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, and Coppelia, the nationalized ice-cream parlor where Cubans stand in line to feed the national obsession for 'helado', or icecream. My father wouldn't recognize the Soviet-made Ladas and the Eastern German Trabbis, symbols of the alliance with the socialist countries; and he would be surprised at the Toyotas and the Nissans driven by the European, Canadian and Mexican managers of the new economic regime.

I feel vaguely at home, for the weather, the colors, and the sounds of the street are remarkably like those of Caracas. These high rises are part of a city that used to be American: they wouldn’t be out of place in Miami's South Beach. The streets are lined with trees, and their shadow, combined with the ocean breeze, ease the tropical warmth. But what fascinates me is that Havana is frozen in the 1950s. Cuba was very developed back then, while Caracas, the capital of a far bigger and richer nation, was barely emerging. Life in Cuba now happens inside structures that bear the façade of another era, like insects dwelling on a hollow, fallen tree.

Hundreds of foreigners walk the streets amid thousands of Cubans. Everyone is a hustler: I can barely walk a couple of blocks before an Habanero coming at your side to peddle cigars, a tour of the city, or a fine woman.

But it’s also dynamic here. There is energy. Hundreds of foreigners walk the streets amid thousands of Cubans. Everyone is a hustler: I can barely walk a couple of blocks before an Habanero coming at your side to peddle cigars, a tour of the city, or a fine woman. Bicycle taxis swarm around tourist hotspots. The bar at the rooftop of Hotel Inglaterra is as alive with music as it was during its heyday in the 1930s. Life is returning to the frivolous city the Revolution set out to change.

From the steps of the imposing University of Havana, founded in 1737, I can see the ocean, and I imagine my father and Carmelo meeting there, by the Malecon. My father, the practical 22-year old engineering student on his way to Venezuela, trying to talk his little brother into abandoning the fight against Castro, a fight that was not Cuban anymore. It was in the hands of the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War superpowers. Carmelo refused. And so my father left his brother standing there, by the Malecon, an angry youth stranded on this tragic island. That was the last time they saw each other.

Carmelo Hector Antonio Gonzalez del Castillo was born in the city of Puerto Principe de Camaguey in 1942, at a time when the world was at war and Hemingway was chasing Nazi submarines off the coasts of Cuba. He belonged to an increasingly Americanized middle class that profited from the prosperity brought by the war.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

When I fly to Camaguey, I see first the red tiles of his city, so different from the Bourbonic glitz of Havana and so reminiscent of the early days of colonization. I can picture our great-grandparents riding on horseback through the surrounding plains, their sugar cane factories set on fire by the Spanish loyalists.

'What a joy. The city of Ignacio Agramonte, Angel Castillo… this is the birthplace of immortal feats, and the immense dust of the streets seemed luminous to me. " These lines were written in the late 1880s by Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, a distant relative of mine and Carmelo’s cousin, who eventually became one of the main figures of the war of 1898. Loynaz was born in exile, and the Camaguey he returned to was the Cuban city that kept the traditions inherited from the Conquest in their purest form, and many families, like the Castillos, kept a strict record of their genealogy, tracing it back to the Conquistador Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa.

That’s the immemorial Camaguey of my implanted memory – snapshots from my grandmother’s stories and Caracas and Miami’s nostalgic exile newsletters. But as I descend from the Soviet-made Antonov whose safety signs are still imprinted in Cyrillic letters, I wonder if 40 years of Communism will have erasedall traces of my family’s past.

It's dusk already, and churches and royal palms dominate the skyline. It's hot, and humid, and there are very few electric lights on - it looks sinister and impoverished, this city of my ancestors. But in the central plaza, as if to assuage my fears, there’s a statue of a man closely related to Carmelo and to our family: Ignacio Agramonte, Camaguey’s most prominent warrior in the struggle for Independence against Spain.

Yolanda del Castillo is my grandmother Elba’s sister, the youngest of the 13 children of Colonel Angel Castillo Quesada. She is 86 years old, and I am meeting her for the first time. I talked to her couple of times by telephone, and when I call her from the Gran Hotel in Camaguey, she recognizes my voice.

"Family is a strong tie," she says, adding that I talk just like my father, who lost his Cuban accent a long time ago and now speaks like a Caraqueño.

Yolanda lives on Jaime street, right behind the Iglesia de la Soledad, Camaguey's impressive Romanesque church. In the entrance a young woman awaits. She has very pale skin, and she looks exactly like my grandmother, but sixty years younger. "Hola. I am Livia. We are family," says Livia del Castillo, Yolanda's niece, embracing me cautiously.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

When we enter my great-aunt’s house, a lone oil painting of my great-great-grandfather dominates the wall - General Ángel del Castillo Agramonte, his mustache fashioned to a point, his beard clipped, and his military uniform adorned with the stars of his rank. That portrait was painted in 1868, and it is present in every house of every branch of our family, be it in Miami or in Caracas. We were taught to venerate it, and I always carry a copy with me. But I never imagined the original to be in color - all the copies my family has, which come from a photograph taken in in a hurry before leaving in 1960, are in black and white. "That is the portrait of Abuelito," says Livia. I had never heard anyone refer to our glorious ancestor with such intimacy.

"Abuelito" had captured the first canon used by the Cuban Liberation Army during the First Independence War, which the revolutionary government baptized as "The Angel" in his honor.

"Angel del Castillo had created the best trained and most brilliant nucleus of the Liberation Army at the time," says Jorge Juárez Cano in his book "Apuntes de Camagüey." His exploits ended in 1869, when he was killed trying to defeat a Spanish garrison. He is described by historians as an impulsive, violent man with endless courage. ‘La tempestad a caballo’, the storm riding on horseback, as he was called by his followers. Carmelo and my father grew up in the shadow of this portrait, surrounded by war memorabilia and the past glory of a patriotic family. "When Carmelo was a child, he wanted to be as brave as Abuelito," says Yolanda.

Yolanda reminds me of my grandmother-- aristocratic, headstrong, orderly. She and her husband were like parents to Carmelo and my father when they were children. At times, they spent as much as six months a year living at their home and at their hacienda. "We never had any children, so they were like ours," she says. The Carmelo of Yolanda's stories is a brave, impulsive and intelligent little kid.

"He was courageous," says Yolanda. "We gave a horse to your father and Carmelo when they were little. We kept it in our ranch. One morning, upon hearing that the animal had fallen inside a hole in the field, Carmelo woke up and ran outside, screaming 'I am going to save my horse.'" He was only five, but willing to save the horse upon which he would become a tempest, like his great-grandfather. The horse could be saved, but was eventually sold. With the money, Yolanda bought Angelito and Carmelo their first suits, preparing them for a bourgeois, capitalist Cuba that was entering the fifties under the wing of the United States.

I walk by the "Casablanca" movie theatre, a whitewashed remainder of the times when the Cubans, the most avid moviegoers of the Western Hemisphere, came to watch Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. In 1959, revolutionaries, my uncle among them, put a bomb in this place.

Carmelo had grown up to be a popular student in his high school, always surrounded by friends. At 17 he was elected as the president of the school's student federation. It was Carmelo who identified the most with the family's Independence heroes - and for a young man interested in politics at the end of the 1950s, the budding revolution against the corrupt dictatorship of Batista offered an irresistible draw. He prepared Molotovs, distributed political fliers, and sold revolutionary bonds that Yolanda bought in quantity.

The Revolution triumphed in January 1959. Fidel entered the city and my grandmother, like many other middle class housewives, offered shelter to the long-haired olive-clad barbudos on their march to Havana. The students expressed their sympathy towards the new government by wearing red and black armband with the colors of the M-26 movement. Many thought democracy would follow.

But the Revolution proved to be 'olive green on the outside, red on the inside,' as many Cubans say. When Castro embraced Marx, Carmelo, like many others who had cheered the revolution, objected.

Huber Matos, the revolutionary commander of the province of Camagüey, wrote a letter to Castro in October 1959 resigning from his post and warning him of Communist infiltration. Castro answered by sending the legendary commander Camilo Cienfuegos to Camaguey to arrest Matos who was then charged with plotting an uprising and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Others were unhappy as well. When Soviet foreign minister Anastas Mikoyan visited Cuba, in April 1960, he placed a wreath in the shape of a hammer and sickle on the grave of José Martí. A group of students led by Alberto Muller protested by placing a wreath in the shape of a Cuban flag on the following day.

The students carried banners that read 'Long live Fidel' and 'Down with Communism'. The police broke the march and threw many of the students, including Muller, who knew my uncle, in jail. "It was there when we realized that Castro had the intention of establishing a totalitarian regime," says Muller, who now lives in exile in Miami.

It was Carmelo who identified the most with the family's Independence heroes - and for a young man interested in politics at the end of the 1950s, the budding revolution against the corrupt dictatorship of Batista offered an irresistible draw. He prepared Molotovs, distributed political fliers, and sold revolutionary bonds that Yolanda bought in quantity.

In the next couple of months, my uncle and others created the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil to overthrow Fidel. Muller said that at the root of this group were the student organizations that led the fight against Batista. Carmelo, then the president of the Federation of Students at his high school, was among those ready to form the counter-revolutionary Directorio. "We are going to do to Castro the same thing we did to Batista," he told a cousin back then, and it wasn’t long before he came the Directorio’s provincial leader in Camaguey. "Cuba has a very violent history," says my great-uncle Laines as we enter his beautiful, run-down house in Tomás Betancourt street. "We have always been under attack. Even our ancestors came here attacking." He hugs me frequently, not quite believing the fact that I am there. Lagnes was a baseball player, an adventurer. "I was the black sheep. There is always one in every generation, " he says, referring to his favorite nephew. I know I am following the steps of Carmelo, for he lived in this house for a while.

He points to his brown and white square shirt. "This was a gift from your uncle," says the tall 90-year old. "What a great man he was. What strength, what character," he says.

And the time he lived in called for it. After the arrest of Huber Matos, the acts of violence multiplied, and most Cubans unable to live with a regime that had turned Communist, left. When the revolutionary governor of Camaguey heard that my father and his family were leaving, he summoned my father to his office, asking him to convince Carmelo to leave as well. Carmelo refused.

During that year of 1961, a strong guerrilla force composed of anti-Communist students and peasants operated in the mountains of Escambray. Bombs exploded in the cities. Electricity plants were sabotaged. Insurgent expeditions disembarked every month and the government detained more than 100,000 people to prevent an uprising on the eve of the Bay of Pigs. Sometimes it seemed as if the Revolution would fail – but its opponents, who counted on American aid to counter the Soviet support to the regime, were crushed.

In a dark room, full of portraits of old baseball legends and newspaper clippings, Laines keeps an archive of our family's history. "Look at this," he said, handing me a huge packet of newspaper clippings, containing the history of the Castillos. "Our genealogical tree," he said. It’s a stack of yellow paper full of names of Spanish army officers, slave-owning planters, arbitrary oligarchs, Cuban independence fighters and liberal revolutionaries. They were men of wealth, men of violence. Among the papers I find a yellow typewritten sheet, dated from June 1962. Carmelo Hector Antonio González y del Castillo, it states, was part of "a group of counterrevolutionaries that had been operating in our country under the political direction of the State Department of the United States, and its organization of betrayal and espionnage denominated CIA."

According to the transcript, Carmelo and others were caught unloading a weapons shipment in Santa Cruz, in the northern province of Pinar del Rio. They intended to set out for South Florida to join 'mercenary forces' there. They were carrying weapons, and fired them against security forces when they were discovered. 'Carmelo González y del Castillo was captured with an olive green uniform and a pistol caliber .975,' says the report.

Yolanda and her husband were the first to hear about the ambush, on the Voice of America. The first radio report announced that Carmelo Gonzalez had been killed. "That very same afternoon I had had an intuition", she says. "I told my husband to prepare luggage, for we would have to make a trip. When we heard the news, I knew that was it." Her husband and my grandfather took Yolanda's car and went out to ask about Carmelo's whereabouts. They finally found out with State Security that he had been captured alive. Three months later, he was transferred to Camaguey, unrecognizable behind his prisoner's beard.

According to Yolanda, young Communists drove their cars around the prison screaming 'paredón para Carmelo'. But Carmelo wasn't shot. At 20, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. That was the end of his counter-revolution.

A bicycle taxi takes me to the Children Hospital. "This used to be known as La Colonia Española, a clinic for rich people," says my taxi driver, pedalling furiously. I step down of the cab, pay my fare, and start taking pictures of the yellow, formerly luxurious 1920’s building. A middle-aged man in a guayabera – the Cuban white, plaid shirt that is still a symbol of tropical elegance – comes towards me. He’s a state security agent, I’m sure – a journalist friend who lived in Cuba told me once that the guayabera is the uniform of state security. He asks me what am I doing, and why I am taking pictures. "My grandfather died here," I answer.

Sons do not belong to their parents — but to their time.

In April 1964 - Carmelo was allowed a short visit to my grandfather’s deathbed. He arrived to La Colonia escorted by a large number of state security guards. "Your grandfather could barely recognize Carmelo, " says Laines, who witnessed the encounter.

Carmelo was eventually transferred to the infamous prison at Isla de Pinos, now rebaptized Isle of Youth. My grandmother had to traverse the whole island to see him. His rebelliousness earned him long periods of time in the "gaveta", literally a "drawer", a small cell with no light, which damaged his eyesight.

While in prison, he married his girlfriend Miriam, the daughter of a prominent official of the regime. Soon after, his sentence was commuted to seven years.

"Carmelo lived here right after his liberation, " says Laines, showing me Carmelo's shoes and college textbooks. "He slept in that very same sofa you're sitting in." When Carmelo was set free in 1969, he found work as an electrician at a local factory, and eventually divorced Miriam. The next year he was admitted to the University of Havana, and became an agronomist.

And in 1974, the same year that he remarried, this time to Josefina de Quesada, a cousin of his, and a Communist party militant, he started to work at the Triángulo 3, Camaguey's biggest ranch, of which he would one day become the director. "Even after he left, he used to come here all the time in his jeep. -Uncle! Uncle!- he used to yell, and drove me in all throughout the city." He was 'una panetela', a candy bar.

There's a heavy atmosphere in Camaguey. The land-locked city is extremely hot, the streets are narrow, and everybody seems to be working, producing, doing something, moving around in bycicles or horse-drawn carts. I am lost, buried in newspaper clippings relating the story of Angel Castillo, watching the statue of Ignacio Agramonte watch me, and walking the same streets Carmelo walked once and again. My father made his life in Caracas, a big, cosmopolitan city, where air conditioned cars clog the highways, and life goes from offices to shopping malls to highrise appartment buildings to Miami or New York.

Carmelo stayed in this colonial city, whose laberynthine cobblestoned streets and one-story quintas can send you back 200 years. Through these streets he drove his jeep, in calle Maceo he shopped, in the surrounding countryside he worked, in this city he died.

"Your uncle was a great man," says Jesús Rodríguez, one of Carmelo's best friends and the director of Triangulo 3. Camagüey differs from the other provinces of Cuba in the fact that its wealth is based in cattle and not on sugar cane.

The ranch's administrative headquarters are located in the outskirts of the city. The office is a small room with green walls, two metal desks and a large window, flies buzz in. It's hot, and a small cohort of functionaries is waiting at the door to meet Carmelo's nephew. Everybody seems to remember him, and they tell me how much they loved him. Such a reaction for a man who died more than 17 years ago surprises me.

photo courtesy of Angel Gonzalez Carmelo speaking to an audience of farmworkers.

Rodríguez reminds me of a Venezuelan hacendado, with his macho manners, straw hat and an assurance that comes from years of experience. The only difference is that he works for the State. He is a man in his late fifties, the same age my uncle would be if he were alive.

"He saved me more than once from being fired," Jesus remembers. I imagine Carmelo as his friend describes him, sitting in his desk, going through two packs of cigarettes a day, smoking the butts when he ran out. "He didn't want to interrupt his work to look for more cigarettes," Rodriguez says.

That discipline enabled Carmelo to become a leader in the Triangle. I have a picture of him clad in a white guayabera, giving a solemn speech in front of an audience, maybe talking about the wonders of the plan, defending the achievements of the Revolution.

I ask Rodriguez about Carmelo’s revolutionary involvement. In Miami, the font of all Cuban gossip, I had heard that Carmelo might have been a double agent—a circumstance that would explain the commuted sentence, the decision to stay. Rodriguez doubts it.

"Carmelo failed when he was young," Rodriguez explains. "He was a Revolutionary, but became involved with some people in this Province that betrayed the ideals they had been fighting for, and he paid for it. But this is a great Revolution, and it knows how to recognize a leader."

Josefina de Quesada is a handsome woman in her fifties. A distant cousin of ours, she is the daughter of Angel Carlos Quesada Castillo, my grandmother's favorite cousin. Even though she works as chief nurse in one of Camaguey’s hospitals and she teaches at the local university, she lives in a cramped apartment in a modest neighborhood close to the train station.

She was a nursing student when she started dating Carmelo. She became his second wife. According to Josefina, he was a very picaresque man, always surrounded by beautiful women.

Josefina, who is accompanied by her sister Elita, brings out a folder of pictures. And there he is, larger than life. In one taken in Angola in 1978, he is standing in front of a truck, shirtless, smiling, looking at the horizon while one of his comrades aims a Kalashnikov at some unknown target. "He was an agricultural advisor," says Josefina, who remains a Communist Party militant.

When I ask again, specifically what he was doing there, Josefina insists he was a private man, but only an agricultural advisor. The picture suggests more, but I don’t bother to press. Instead, I can’t help but feel proud to see my uncle there, looking at the horizon, carrying the family's martial tradition to other lands, other continents. I can picture him in the swamps of Kuanza, giving instructions to Angolese farmers, or who knows, soldiers. "In Angola they used to mistake Carmelo for a Moor," says Josefina who was there for a two year stint that overlaped for only one of the two years of Carmelo's mission, in 78-80.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

Cuba’s involvement in Angola reached its paramount in 1975, when the Portuguese colonial government retreated from the country. Cuban volunteers helped the Movement for the Liberation of Angola, a Marxist guerrilla, gain control of the situation. And during the next decade, more than 50,000 Cuban troops went there, helping the newly established government control insurgency and repel a South African military invasion. The fight became, in Cuba's eyes, a war against Apartheid. And Cuba’s victory over South African troops is regarded as one of the most important feats in Cuban military history, celebrated both in Cuba and in Miami. Its victor, General Arnaldo Ochoa, was regarded by many, both on the Isle and off, as a potential successor for Castro. But he fell in disgrace in 1989, and was judged, demoted and shot under drug trafficking charges by the same Revolution that he defended.

Josefina dispels the notion that Carmelo was a counterrevolutionary. "He failed when he was very young," says Josefina, making his counterrevolutionary period seem like an act of immaturity. "He got involved with some people he shouldn't have been, with that traitor Huber Matos. But when he was in prison they saw that he was a good man, brave and stubborn, and they gave him the opportunity to join the Revolution."

"Carmelo could have left but he didn't, " she says, "because he convinced himself of the mistake he made when he was young." Josefina said that Carmelo never became a Communist militant himself, but his honesty and character were such that he was allowed to join the ranks of the Revolution abroad, and was given a top responsibility at the Triangle. "He always had a car," she adds, a sign of his privileged status.

"But the guilt of having failed at such a young age haunted him for the rest of his life," she says. Carmelo, in her words, was repentant of his counterrevolutionary involvement. And certainly, his life demonstrated it. He worked hard in keeping up production at Triangle 3, collaborated with State Security, and participated in the Revolution’s exotic adventures abroad.

Carmelo's heavy smoking developed into cancer in 1984. The disease was detected in September, and three months later he died. More than 300 people attended his funeral. According to several accounts, it resembled an official funeral. The entourage included representatives from the Ministry of the Interior who said that Carmelo had worked for State Security, and that his efforts had been greatly appreciated by the Revolution.

I can’t believe that the ghost of my uncle still raises suspicions among these people. Didn’t he become a faithful revolutionary? Maybe they don't know the truth either.

I join a funeral in the cemetery of Camaguey, built in 1813 by Don Diego Antonio del Castillo Betancourt, an ancestor of ours and the man who published the first anti-Spanish proclaim in Cuba. Oddly enough, there's no place better than this to realize that a mass exodus took place. Many of the graves are in disrepair, for the family members that should take care of them are either dead or in exile. The Zayas-Bazan, the Mirandas, the Varonas - the great names of yore - seem stranded here. The lid of one tomb has been broken. Morbid curiosity makes me peer inside. I see nothing.

The people in the funeral march are crying for a dead soldier. Men in military uniform surround us. I walk with Josefina and Elita, to pay a last homage to Carmelo’s grave.

Suddenly, one of the graveyard keepers, a man I had befriended on a previous visit to the place, comes up to me and warns us to leave the place as soon as we can – a state security patrol is watching us. "I just received a phone call from the local Vigilance Committee," he says, visibly nervous. "They told me that there’s a Venezuelan youth looking for information about Carmelo Gonzalez del Castillo, who was in prison with Huber Matos back in the sixties," he says.

I can’t believe that the ghost of my uncle still raises suspicions among these people. Didn’t he become a faithful revolutionary? Maybe they don’t know the truth either. Josefina senses my anger and tries to calm me. She takes me away, tells me to be brave like a Castillo, and leads me to Carmelo’s final resting place. "Sons do not belong to their parents, but belong to their time," Josefina reminds me as we approach the grave.

The remains of Carmelo lay in a state ossary, in a niche among hundreds. The small white tombstone sits next to Josefina's father's, and fresh flowers adorn it. I touch the tombstone and recite a small prayer. It is with mixed feelings that I come from abroad to pay homage to this grave. I do not agree with the Revolution my uncle made - especially when several men dressed almost in rags, wander among the graves, looking at us from time to time. I suspect they belong to state security, and Josefina's wariness confirms it. I am sure she told them to come here. The 40-degree heat is making me dizzy, I am scared, and I want to leave Camaguey forever. Finally, Josefina, Elita and I join the young soldier's funeral entourage, and we leave in peace.

Back in Havana I sit in a terrace overlooking the Paseo del Prado, the city's equivalent of Champs Elysees. From here I see the Capitol, a perfect imitation of the one in Washington D.C. I also see the Teatro del Tacon, the Madrilene buildings, the art-deco skyscrapers built by American banks, silent monuments to a Cuba that might have been. I wish that Carmelo was here, sharing a drink with me and telling me if it was worth it, if the country he inherited is better off now than it was in 1959.

I would ask him if there are not better ways to establish justice and to satisfy nationalist pride than give away most freedoms and submit, even symbollically, to the voice of a caudillo. I wonder if my uncle imagined that the voice would last for so long. What would he think of his nephew, a student in an American university, sitting in this terrace full of European tourists, watching his Revolution come to an end?

In any case, what matters is that Carmelo, when he was a kid, wanted to become like his great-grandfather. In this, he succeeded: that photograph of him in Angola will hang next to the portrait of Abuelito, for generations to come.

 

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