Haydee Santamaria.

Photo: Granma Archive

On the occasion of the 69th anniversary of the Assault on the Moncada Barracks, this July 26, and on the occasion of the centenary of Haydee Santamaría, which is commemorated on December 30 of this year,

The first of them was made by Xenia Reloba and René Arencibia, at the Casa de las Américas, in 2009. The second was a dialogue at Marta's house, in 2014, with Esther Barroso Sosa and Ana Niria Albo in order to specify details , review documents and film their statements for the documentary.

This testimony of Marta Rojas is part of a book in preparation that collects anecdotes, impressions and evaluations of about twenty people, including companions in struggle, intellectuals, artists, friends and relatives of Haydee Santamaría, gathered by Esther Barroso Sosa from 2014 to the present.

I saw Haydee for the first time without knowing it was her on July 26, 1953, at approximately 1:00 pm.

There was a press conference at the Moncada.

She had graduated from Journalism, I still didn't work as a professional, but I was in Santiago de Cuba, I signed up with the journalists and I was at that press conference.

A photographer, Panchito[1], told me: "There are two women prisoners down that corridor. If you ask permission to go to the bathroom, they will surely tell you to go to the officers' bathroom and look to the left."

That I did and I saw these two women, a blonde and a brunette.

I looked at them and they looked at me surprised.

They were interrogating them.

So when the press conference started, I asked Chaviano[2]: “Who are the two women prisoners?”

And he told me: "There are no prisoners here, they all fell in combat."

An officer said something to him and he then said: “It is possible that in the meantime they have caught some imprisoned women, I don't know who they are”.

I did not see them again until September 21, when the Moncada trial began.

Melba and Haydee sat down among the other combatants and she looked at me again, with a questioning look.

She was like that, she looked curiously.

If you analyze the photographs of her, you will realize.

I smiled at them and Melba smiled, but she didn't.

Haydee, Melba and Marta Rojas, at the bus stop, outside the Guanajay Prison, 1954. Photo: Granma Archive

One day of trial and another… They didn't want Haydee to testify.

One day, it was very hot in that room and Haydee and Melba were wiping their sweat with the same handkerchief.

In a short break, I sent him to the bailiff a black linen handkerchief with some embroidered leaves that I had.

She took it and smiled, it was like a smile of thanks.

When the trial was over, I went up to them and said, “How can I find out about you?

And quickly she said: “Jovellar 107”.

I returned to Havana and went straight to that address, which turned out to be Melba's parents' house, something I didn't know.

There I came into contact with Elena and Manuel, they could go to jail, I could not.

January 6, 1954 was Three Kings Day, and it was customary for society ladies and nuns to bring gifts to the children of prisoners.

Already at that time I was working with Enrique de la Osa in Bohemia.

I told Enrique that I wanted to go to that gift giving to try to see Haydee and Melba.

I called Melba's mother to let them know that she would try to go.

But we found out that the First Lady was going to the prison and that perhaps they would not allow the door of the assailants' cell to be opened.

The photographer Panchito Cano went with me, he had two cameras and he gave me one.

While he was doing the gift-giving ceremony, I said to one of the children: “show your toy to that blonde” and I told them: “stand up”.

And that is the famous photo where they are standing behind the fence, which was published after the triumph of the Revolution, but the first photo I took was of the children in front of that cell, which was published in a report 20 years later and one of the children recognized himself.

Haydee, in the midst of that maelstrom, wanted to know my version of Fidel's trial and I never made a better summary than the one that day.

In the Guanajay Prison, 1954. Photo: Granma Archive

Later, when their release from prison was announced, I went to Guanajay and it's that other photo on a bench outside the prison.

And that's when we were close for the first time and talked.

Haydee asked me: “And the photo, the one that the photographer took of us at the Moncada?”

And I told him: “no, that photo was never taken”.

And then she told me: "A soldier told us that we had been saved because a photographer had taken a picture of us."

From there we went to the cemetery to bring flowers to Chibás[3] and from then on, we began a friendly relationship and saw each other almost every day.

One day I asked her: “Haydee, why did you look at me with crossed eyes that day at the Moncada?”

And she replied: “Because it seemed strange to me that such a young girl was in that barracks where there were so many murderers walking through the corridors.

I had no idea you were a journalist.

I thought they were going to use you to interrogate us and that's why my reaction.

In Bohemia all journalists had to travel by car.

The director gave an entrance and you continued paying it monthly.

One day I went to Ambar Motors[4] to get the car and since Jovellar is nearby, I arrived with the car at Melba's house, where Haydee went to live when she got out of prison, and I told them: "I have a car." .

And immediately Haydee said: "That's the car we need, you take us."

And I said “Where to?, if I don't even know the mechanisms of this car”.

"In that car we go to a place we have to go."

They got dressed and in a second I had them both in the car and we went to various places.

They were working underground to publish History Will Absolve Me.

"This is the car that we need because it is not circulated."

Haydee had a tremendous spark.

When we were coming back, it started to rain and at the corner of Ayestarán, Infanta and Carlos III, with tremendous traffic;

I didn't know where the windshield wipers came on and I couldn't move forward.

And suddenly Haydee called a policeman who was at the traffic light to help us.

Later I realized that if we stayed there longer, it would have been worse.

Those were Haydee's things.

When we got home he told me: “The day after tomorrow we have to go to other places”.

She was an exceptional worker of the underground fight.

From that very traumatic moment of the death of Abel and Boris, she says in the Moncada book, the task that Fidel gave her with respect to the argument of the trial helped her to overcome such traumatic situations.

She received a letter from Fidel with the mission of publishing it.

Haydee told me that this was one of her happiest moments because she “had a reason to live”, and that was to get The Story to absolve me.

She began a feverish search and that idea of ​​death was overcome.

She was a euphoric Haydee.

Having a History will absolve me was like having dynamite in your hands.

I unpacked the booklet, a first edition that Haydee gave me.

I put it in an encyclopedia, because it was harder to find that way.

After the triumph I took it out, clipped it and saw it again a few years ago.

Fidel made a trip to Birán[5], I took that copy and told him: “Look what I have here, it's the one that Haydee gave me”.

And Fidel told me: "I'm going to sign it for you."

I keep it, of course.

One day I showed up very happy because I was going out with a boyfriend and I was wearing a beautiful sweater.

And Haydee told me: "That sweater looks good on me, I'll give you a blouse."

I said: okay, but I thought it was a whim.

When she went to the US she took it with her, she had it for a long time.

After '59, one day he brought it to me in a little box.

And she told me: “I have used it several times, but that day I asked you because I had a clandestine meeting in a cabaret”.

I didn't go to Santiago de Cuba much, they advised me in Bohemia because before July 26, 1953 I wasn't known, but after that I was.

However, I had to go to Santiago once in complete secrecy.

And one day I was on Enramada street waiting for a bus and there was a cafe there called The News.

The bus stopped, but just at that moment I see a disheveled woman, as if without teeth, but with an air that was familiar to me, she didn't look like a beggar because she was clean.

I looked at her and looked at her until the woman approached me and she told me: "She just got you on that same bus."

It was Haydee!

She seems like she sensed that I was about to say something to her.

After 1959, one day he told me: "Hey, you were bad as an underground fighter, you almost gave me away that day."

Those were typical Haydee things.

She had the ability to transform.

When the Revolution triumphed, a few days later I went to the airport to meet her when she returned from Miami.

There is a photo that I took of him that day.

On another occasion, I saw her at the Ministry of Education where she started working and that day she asked me about Panchito, the photographer.

I was also at the meeting where the name of the House of the Americas was discussed.

Someone said that she could put the House of Latin America on it and she kept thinking until she said: "And why not the House of the Americas?"

And that later had a lot to do with the Casa's commitment to the Caribbean, to Latinos in the US, etc.

She suggested that I go to work at the House.

And I told her: “No, I'm your friend, but not your subordinate, leave me in Bohemia and I can help more from there”.

But I often went to the House.

Haydee, Melba and Marta Rojas.

Photo: Granma Archive

She lived near the sea, where she died.

I used to visit her a lot.

In July I was not absent.

Those were difficult days, she would start talking about what happened at the Moncada, she would get tense, she would get emotional.

Sometimes I told him: "I want to do an interview with you."

And she told me: "Not me, interview the relatives of the martyrs who are little known."

When I worked on the Revolution newspaper, I organized a team for that because she suggested that they do a book called Mártires del Moncada.

In other words, that was a very difficult month for her.

But in reality our friendship was like that, it had a political component, the Moncada event.

The desire that I had was professional, but from there it passed to sympathy and then to solidarity and from there to political commitment.

She moved from one state to another, she was provocative, she liked to play pranks on loved ones.

She had great intelligence.

And she was always very careful about her image, as much as possible.

And that is seen in the photos.

I was putting together my book during all that time, from the assault on the barracks, with data that I was writing down.

It was not published until after the triumph of the Revolution: The Moncada trial.

And when the International Festival of Youth and Students was held in 1978, I did some reports and it occurred to me to make a book with the testimonies of the hospital that had not been included in the Moncada book.

I had prejudices of modesty, that because of my friendship with Haydee I shouldn't send the book to the Casa Prize.

I called it He Who Must Live because Haydee told me that at the crucial moment, she and the nurses wanted Abel to save himself.

It could have been saved because the hospital had four exits and Fidel was at post 3 in Moncada, but since Abel knew everything, he wanted to draw enemy fire towards the hospital.

They wanted to get him out and he said, "No,

the one who must live is Fidel.

And you to tell this story.

I stay here".

I didn't tell Haydee that she was going to submit the book to the contest and when she found out, I told her: “You were the only one who couldn't find out”.

For me, that Haydee who overcame that terrible trauma of the Moncada and sometimes acted festively, carried a pain inside.

For me Haydee was a martyr of the Moncada, a living martyr.

When I went in July it was to talk about Abel and the others, it was very stressful.

All that suffering, the torture, the deaths, inside there was something very strong.

Her suicide was in July, the 28th, it had just been celebrated on the 26th. I remember her with joy because she knew how to overcome, serve the country and raise a family.

She is admirable.

[1] Panchito Cano.

Correspondent of the magazine Bohemia in Santiago de Cuba.

Together with Marta Rojas he covered the Santiago carnivals for the magazine.

[2] Alberto del Río Chaviano.

Military of the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista, nicknamed El Chacal de Oriente.

Main murderer of the assailants to the Moncada Barracks.

[3] Eduardo Chibas.

Santiago de Cuba, 1907-Havana, 1951. Cuban politician, founder of the Party of the Cuban People (Orthodox).

He stood out in the fight against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado and the denunciation of corruption

in pre-revolutionary Cuba.

[4] Amber Motors Corporation.

General Motors distributor in Havana.

His office was located on the corner of Avenida Infanta and 23.

[5] Birán: small town in the municipality of Cueto, province of Holguín.

It refers to the farm where Fidel Castro Ruz was born.

(Taken from The Window)