By Alejandra Garcia on December 2, 2021
photo: Juvenal Balán
On December 2, 1956, the Granma yacht arrived in Cuba at Las Coloradas beach, in the eastern part of the island, after a seven-day voyage that began in Mexican waters. On more than one occasion during the trip, the 82 Cuban expedition members, led by Fidel Castro, believed that the small ship would not reach its final destination.
On November 25 of that year, the small wooden yacht, built-in 1943, set sail down the Tuxpan River towards the Gulf of Mexico. It was close to two o’clock in the morning, and barely a soul could be seen. It sailed with its lights off and in absolute silence to avoid the attention of the Mexican guards. The darkness and the sacks of oranges that were placed on the bow did not let them see the course of the boat, and they almost took a detour, which would have taken them away from the open sea.
Fortunately, the revolutionaries corrected the route, and the Granma yacht advanced through the wide Tuxpan river with the expeditionaries piled almost on top of each other. Raúl Castro, brother of the Cuban leader, wrote down every detail of those first hours aboard the Granma: “We left at full speed while we saw just a few lights of the city of Tuxpan”.
Historian Heberto Norman Acosta added other little-known details in an article published recently in Cubadebate: “When the ship was far enough away from Mexico’s mainland, the lights were turned on, and the 82 expedition members excitedly sang the National Anthem. How happy Fidel and the rest of the expedition members must have been when they saw themselves already on their way to Cuba.”
The first days of the journey were the most difficult ones. The Argentine doctor Ernesto (Che) Guevara, in his “Pasajes de la Guerra” (Passages of the war), related what happened onboard the yacht once it reached the turbulent waters of the gulf.
“The instability of the waters made most of the crew sick. The whole ship looked ridiculously tragic: men with anguish on their faces, clutching their stomachs. Some had their heads stuck in a bucket, and others were lying in the strangest positions, immobile and with their clothes soiled by vomit. Except for two or three sailors and four or five others, the rest of the eighty-two crewmen were seasick,” he described.
While this was happening, the lower cabins began to fill with water due to a malfunction in the vessel. Raul wrote in his diary: “The yacht was about to sink, as it was taking on a lot of water and the turbine was unable to drain it. We were bailing it out with buckets. The helmsman told Fidel that we had to go ashore. Fidel said we had to continue even though we were sinking. The swells were higher than the ship.”
Years later, Fidel recalled those hours of despair, “We were not going to stop because of a storm nor by the risk of sinking. Nothing would hold us back or turn our course away from Cuba. We could sink on the way. But we were not going to turn back.”
After a frantic hours-long battle, they noticed that the water had begun to recede little by little because humidity expanded the wood and allowed the water to stop coming in.
The last of the challenges they had to face was the moment when a man fell into the water, just as they were sighting Cuban land from the southern waters of the Caribbean Sea.
At the cry of “Man overboard!” Fidel gave orders to stop the stop the course and maneuver to rescue the comrade. One of the expedition members, Pedro Sotto Alba, wrote in his diary: “At about one o’clock in the morning, Roque was holding on to the yacht’s antenna, and in a moment of swell he fell into the sea, antenna and all. No matter how fast he got afloat, he was already far away”.
The boat didn’t go anywhere until their comrade was rescued. It was about three-quarters of an hour of going in circles trying to find him. They managed to scan him through the choppy waves by the faint light of a flashlight.
Shortly after the rescue, the disembarkation would begin, which happened two days later than planned. The arrival of the 82 revolutionaries on the eastern side of Cuba changed the course of the island forever. That December 2, the words Fidel said shortly before setting sail on that small yacht full of men from a dock in Tuxpan were fulfilled: “If I leave Mexico, I will arrive in Cuba; If I arrive, I’ll enter; If I enter, I’ll triumph.” And so he did.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English