Camaguey’s Clandestine Chapel When Organized Religion Left Camaguey at Gunpoint on the Morning Train

Late on Monday, May 1st, 1961, two young Roman Catholic priests in their street clothes, each carrying a burlap sack, approach the 18-foot-tall reddish-brown mahogany double doors to one of the many colonial mansions packed cheek by jowl on both sides of narrow Republica Street in provincial Camaguey, hundreds of miles from Cuba’s capital. 

It’s almost midnight but the street was still wet from a late evening rain shower. The weak and widely spaced streetlights on this cobblestoned residential block in the old part of town did little to light the deserted street.  The full moon was doing a better job than the streetlights—and casting moon shadows—until another fast-moving cloud covers it and plunges the street back into darkness.

Before they can knock, a manway—a small door inset into one of the big doors—opens and the priests are quickly and silently ushered in.

“In mid-April, when the failed [U.S. initiated] Bay of Pigs invasion [of Cuba] took place, the [Cuban] army held almost all of Camaguey’s diocesan priests prisoner (some had managed to hide beforehand), including the Bishop, Carlos Riu Anglés. They were held for over a week.

While they were in prison, the militia entered many of the city's churches (about 9 or 10 of them) and destroyed the interiors; in some cases, such as at the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, they broke open the tabernacle and threw the Consecrated Host to the floor. When, feeling secure in the face of the invasion's failure they released the priests, the Bishop ordered all the churches to be opened and left for a whole day in the same state as the militiamen had left them. The purpose of this measure was for the people to see with their own eyes the actions of [the totalitarian communist government] who claimed they were not persecuting Catholics or the Church.

—fragment of the testimony of María Eugenia Fernández, a former student of the Teresian School in Camaguey, sworn before a judicial notary in Barcelona, May 2007. Translated from Spanish.

Dr. Martínez at a lecture circa 1955
Seated: Dr. Benito Prats; Mons. Riu, Bishop of
Camaguey; Fernando Rivero Diocesan Deacon 
and his wife, Flor de María Sarduy

Earlier that same Monday, Antonio Martínez—my grand uncle—was passed a note while he was at morning Mass. The note said that the bishop would like to speak with him urgently. Could he come to the chancery at nine? He thought that was odd—a phone call to his home leaving a message would have been much easier. Back home and breakfasted, Antonio grabbed his gray fedora and set out on foot for the bishop’s office, just a few blocks away.

Dr.  Antonio R. Martínez y Martínez, 56, was a bachelor who lived with his brother, Joaquin Ventura, his wife, Elia Rodriguez, and two aging great aunts, at their home at 208 Republica Street. Both a tall and an ample man, Antonio was tenured chair of the Logics and Psychology department at Camaguey’s Secondary Education Institute, a psychologist with office hours at his house, and a friend and advisor to Camaguey’s Roman Catholic bishop, Carlos Riu. A very catholic Catholic, he began each day attending early morning Mass at the Church of Our Lady of Solitude—two blocks north of his house—returning for breakfast, and then setting out for the Institute for his morning classes and lectures. He was lay Eucharistic Minister at his parish helping priests distribute Holy Communion at Masses on Sundays. And he was a high-ranking member of the Knights of Columbus’ Camaguey chapter—a Catholic fraternal organization devoted to charitable works.

Secondary Education Institute, Camaguey
Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza

Later that morning at the capital, Havana, Maximum Leader Fidel Castro spoke on a radio and television broadcast to the country, denouncing religion and ordering all foreign Catholic priests and religious orders as well as foreign clergy, to leave the country immediately to avoid arrest because their visas had all been cancelled. He ordered all religious land and structures seized. Religion, the opiate of the people, was instead stirring up the rabble, and the government wanted a monopoly on its population’s faith.  It also wanted its property.

Carlos Riu, Bishop of Camaguey
(b. 1901 – d. 1971)
Undated Passport Photo

In his office at the diocesan chancery Monsignor Carlos Riu, the Bishop of Camaguey, told Antonio that he had just received intelligence from contacts at the Brotherhood of Railroad Workers that government troops were enroute to Camaguey to deport all clergy, not just foreign-born ones. Additionally, the railroad had been ordered to make up a special train with capacity for hundreds of passengers to be available early Tuesday, staffed for a trip to Havana—a ten hour non-stop run.  If this report was correct, there was not a moment to lose.

A Tabernacle in a Catholic Church

Mons. Riu said he was departing in a few minutes on the next flight to Havana for a meeting of the island’s Roman Catholic bishops to discuss this new escalation. The bishop worried that the military would again ransack churches and desecrate the Sacred hosts each held. 

Sacred hosts were unleavened wafers consecrated during Mass for distribution to the faithful during Holy Communion. At each Mass more than the required number were consecrated, and the Sacred hosts that were not consumed at the end of Mass were stored at the altar of the church or chapel in a small ornate locked box permanently attached to the altar called the tabernacle. Consecrated hosts would be removed and added to at a subsequent Mass—and taken by priests on their rounds to give Holy Communion to the faithful who could not attend Mass, such as hospital patients, the elderly and other shut-ins.

Church of Our Lady of Solitude, Camaguey
Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad
The parish Antonio, Ventura and Elia attended
before religion was upended in Camaguey.

That morning the bishop had tasked two young priests with collecting the consecrated Holy Eucharist hosts from the many churches and chapels in Camaguey and as many in the countryside as they could reach before the end of the day. He asked Antonio if he could keep the Consecrated hosts safe until again priests returned to Camaguey. It would be an honor and my duty, replied the Knight of Columbus. 

Main Altar
Church of our Lady of Solitude

Antonio hurried home and signaled to his brother and sister-in-law to keep quiet and accompany him to his study, which was reasonably soundproof. He needed privacy for his psychiatric practice. Houses in the Caribbean, in the days before air conditioning, were open to the elements. Larger houses were built around a central courtyard surrounded by a shaded breezeway with all rooms opening to it. If you raised your voice anywhere in your house neighbors on either side or behind your house, and passersby on the street could easily hear you. And even if you did not raise your voice, a neighbor who wanted to eavesdrop could climb to their roof to listen in. Antonio’s study was an inside room. He had closed up the window to the patio, lined all four walls of the room with sound-absorbing blue-gray pleated satin fabric, and added a false ceiling. His study had one of the few air conditioners in the city, a window unit modified so its compressor could be mounted on the roof, as his study had no outside walls.

A Sanctuary Lamp Candle Holder

In his study he told his brother Ventura and sister-in-law Elia what the bishop had told him and what he had promised to do. Where could they safely hide the Sacred hosts?  They were interrupted by a knock on the study door. Their cook, their last remaining servant in these days of austerity, said there was a messenger at the zaguán—the carriageway entrance—with a large package. He told her he could only leave it in the hands of Dr. Antonio Martínez. Antonio stepped out and recognized the porter from the diocesan offices. He showed him to his study where they cut open the package to find a red sanctuary lamp globe, its wrought iron floor stand, and the big pillar candle that fit it.

A Cast Iron Lockbox

They thanked the porter, who promptly left, and continued their discussion. Ventura had a large cast iron lockbox in his office from his days as a contracts lawyer. He had stored tax stamps, seals and papers in it. He could empty it and it could be used to store the hosts. But Ventura’s office faced the courtyard; it was not private. They should move it here to Antonio’s study. They went to get it.

The lockbox was bulky and heavy. They grabbed a large white rattan armchair from one of the conversation seating areas of the breezeway, heaved the lockbox onto the seat, and pulled and pushed the chair down the left breezeway, across the portico, through the saleta and the library, and into the study.

The Makeshift Tabernacle
A rattan chair with a cast iron lockbox on it,
covered with a white embroidered table runner,
and a vestment-green embroidered cloth over three
books used to elevate the crucifix.
The red sanctuary lamp is in its stand on the left.
Notice the pleated satin fabric on the wall.

Elia took over, ordering that the men move the office furniture here and there. They centered the lockbox-on-a-chair on one of the walls, right under the air conditioner. She draped a white embroidered table runner on the lockbox and over the chair arms, front-to-back so it could be raised to access the lock and door. Antonio arrived from his bedroom with an ornate bronze crucifix and put it on top. Elia grabbed three or four books from a nearby bookshelf and placed them under the crucifix to elevate it a bit higher and draped a smaller vestment-green embroidered cloth with corner tassels trimmed in gold-colored bullion fringe over the books. And voila! — a tabernacle, ready to house and protect the body of Jesus Christ in the form of consecrated unleavened bread.

Photo Collage of 208 Republica Street Façade, Taken in 29 years later, in 1989
It would have been well maintained in 1961. The street is too narrow to be able to photograph the entire façade at once. The boy seated on at the door gives you the scale of it. On the left  under the balcony are the doors to the zaguán, the former carriage entrance. The library's window is on the right. Antonio, Ventura and Elia left the country in 1966 and in order to obtain exit permits, had to sign over the house and its contents to the government.

It was Antonio Martínez who kept watch at the library window and ushered the priests into his house that dark evening. They had walked over from the last church they had stopped at, the nearby Church of the Sacred Heart, having left their car there. It was less than a four minute walk, and parking on narrow Republica was limited.

Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
Camaguey
Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón de Jesus
Staffed by priests of the Jesuit Order

That last church was not a diocesan church, it was a Jesuit temple, but when the diocesan priests explained the urgency, the rector took them to the sanctuary, climbed to the altar with them, opened the tabernacle, genuflected, and added his consecrated hosts to the others in their gold-lined ciborium—a large chalice-looking covered container they had removed from one of the burlap sacks and set on the altar. After sealing the lid, they all again genuflected towards it, then reverently rewrapped it in altar linens and returned it to the sack. 

After extinguishing the red sanctuary light—the Body of Christ would no longer be present in the sanctuary—the rector showed them out into the dark night via a side door. The priests hugged their sacks to their chests as they briskly walked north across the small paved park in front of the church and up Avellaneda then west on General Gomez, to a right on Republica.

A Ciborium

Once the priests were in Antonio’s study, they carefully put their sacks on the desk. Elia and Ventura entered while Antonio was apologizing for the makeshift tabernacle and they closed the door behind them. The priests dismissed the protestations and once more thanked him for agreeing to protect the Sacred hosts.

Antonio lifted the embroidered cloth and unlocked the metal cabinet with a key he had put on a ribbon around his neck and hidden under his shirt. One of the priests reached into a sack and took out and unwrapped the ciborium, placing it on the desk. First the priests and then the others genuflected—dropped to one knee and then rose—in reverence to the presence of Jesus Christ within it. Then the same priest carefully lifted it, took it to the open rattan-and-iron tabernacle, and placed it inside. Antonio locked it and lowered the embroidered cover. All present genuflected once again, made the sign of the cross, and whispered Amen. Ventura lit a taper with his cigarette lighter and handed it to one of the priests, who used it to light the red sanctuary lamp, a reminder of Christ’s physical presence, prompting reverence and genuflection on first sight.  

A Modern Host Baking Machine

Back at the desk the other priest took out the contents of the other sack. It looked like an electric waffle iron. He opened the halves and showed them the plates with outlines for maybe two dozen small round wafers and one large one. It was a eucharistic host maker. Finally, he produced a scrap of paper with a handwritten recipe for making the unleavened batter. He explained it was from the Discalced Carmelite Sisters’ convent. The priests were collecting consecrated hosts from their chapel earlier that day when Mother Superior had given them the heavy parcel. She was also aware of troops enroute and was worried they would destroy their host-making irons, so she was taking the opportunity to send this one into hiding.

One final genuflection towards the tabernacle and the priests made their way to the door and after a final goodbye stepped out into the dark for the quick walk back to their car and then home to their parish rectories.  Antonio, Ventura and Elia went to bed to await the morning.

A side note: While Catholics in Camaguey were acting on intelligence to protect the Body of Christ, the Rabbis at the city’s two Jewish synagogues, Shevet Ajim (Ashkenazi) and Tiferet Israel (Sephardic), were also acting on their intelligence. They spent that night wrapping, boxing, and burying their Toroth and other holy books in the Gabbais’ back yards underneath freshly mixed cement, then more dirt to hide the cement. We can safely assume that the Baptist and Episcopalian clergy also had a busy and anxious night.

—————

Militia Troops of that Era

The bishop’s intelligence had been correct. The authorities were going to make an example of Camaguey in response to its bishop’s audacity in showing the recent desecration of his churches to the public and in response to his priests’ scathing homilies from the pulpit.

In addition, the new government in the capital wanted to stifle secular dissent in Camaguey. Historically for many centuries and until the arrival of the railroad only 60 years earlier, Camaguey had been physically isolated from the capital and often went its own way politically. The revolutionary government against colonial Spain had operated for decades in tent cities in the province’s endless savannahs, and Camaguey gave uncontested passage to Fidel Castro’s band of revolutionaries on their way west to take the capital two years earlier. That political independent streak was now fomenting dissent and needed to be broken. Hegemony or death! seems to have been the capital’s new battle cry. 

And I suspect they also wanted to see how the population would respond to the destruction and replacement of the city’s social safety net. In Camaguey, religious orders—not the government—had always provided the safety net. They staffed not only schools, but orphanages, hospitals, and chronic care asylums. They coordinated free medical and dental clinics, provided in-home elder care and hospice service, and marshalled significant charity for the poor and homeless by aggressively seeking donations from the rich and well off.  (In the 20th century the Brotherhood of Railroad Workers had also stepped up to assist with the city’s social safety net, but the State had already captured that venue.)

Logistically, the island’s third largest city was perfectly situated for a quick strike. It had a compact city center of approximately one square kilometer (less than half of a square mile) with a dozen churches, two synagogues and maybe nine convents and monasteries—five with large Catholic schools. The Cuba Railroad—the recently nationalized company that operated the railroads on the eastern side of the island—was headquartered there and had a large marshalling yard next to the city center from where arriving troops could detrain and be deployed. By rapidly transporting troops from east and west of Camaguey, the operation could be begun and concluded in just a few hours, and by not using troops from the local barracks they could be sure local sympathies would not cause hesitation. 

The Cuba Railroad’s Marshalling Yard in Camaguey

The commanders had planned well. They knew were every church, rectory, convent, monastery and school was and how far from the railroad yard each were.  Squads were armed and dispatched before dawn to each location, staggered so that they would all arrive at approximately the same time. Armed squads marched down dark streets before dawn to their assigned locations to shouted commands, awaking the population—who knew better than to step out into the street.

Church of our Lady of Mercy, Camaguey
Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Merced
To the left of the church is the convent of the Carmelite Fathers.
The Teresian School for Girls and the Teresian Sisters’
convent is around the corner and across the street to the left.

The Teresians Sisters, who had their own intelligence, had also planned well.

“There was a fear in some older Sisters that had lived in Spain in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War that the same thing that had happened in Spain would happen in Cuba. The Sisters had all prepared civilian clothes, styled their hair, etc., to try to escape discreetly if necessary. [A few weeks earlier] Mother Eva María Cuscó had been arrested at the train station when she was about to catch a train to Havana, dressed in civilian clothes. [Militiamen] had realized that she was a nun, and they treated her very rudely. In response some Sisters [who were also leaving the country] were taken to Havana by car by [students’] families from Camagüey.

On May 2nd, the day after Fidel's speech announcing the confiscation, between one and two in the morning, the militiamen broke down a door of the school, not the main entrance on Calle Popular, but a side door on Calle Padre Valencia, and burst into the courtyard.

A Teresian Sister and Student

When the Sisters realized the situation, Mother Carmen Erro, who was the superior, went down to the courtyard and confronted the militiamen with great serenity and no less fortitude. They told her that they had come to take over the school and that first they had to search it.

Meanwhile, one of the Sisters had telephoned several former students, alerting them to what was happening. I was one of them, and immediately went to the school to find three militiamen on guard at the door, preventing me from entering; with great sarcasm and malice, they asked where the tunnel was that connected the school with the nearby Church of Our Lady of Mercy, run by the Carmelite Fathers. Finally, they let me in.

Camaguey’s Railroad Station

The militiamen acted with great insolence and disrespect. I found the Sisters in the hallway with the black and white tiles, where they usually had their recreation time. They were all pale, trembling, and with great sorrow in their eyes. They were standing, waiting for orders from the militiamen, who finally told them that they could sit down or go to sleep. Mother Carmen Erro told them that they wanted to go to the chapel to pray. We stayed there [in the chapel], they and I, until dawn.

—excerpt translated from "LA Intervención del Colegio Teresiano de Camagüey en 1961” M. Guaty Marrero in 2010 in CJaronu’s Blog where she condenses the 2007 testimony of María Eugenia Fernández, an old alumni of Camaguey’s Teresian school, and others.

At dawn the Teresian Sisters were marched at gunpoint for six blocks to the train station, first east on Popular Street to Republica Street, then north on Republica to the station, where a special train was ready and waiting for them and for all the religious orders and clergy in Camaguey. The sisters marched proudly and quietly in their freshly laundered and starched habits as their armed captors shouted and gestured rudely.  

Champagnat School of the Marist Brothers, Camaguey

My grandmother Elia, the same Elia that decorated the makeshift tabernacle in the clandestine chapel, decades later described to me what she had been told about that morning’s military operation at the Marist Brothers’ Champagnat School for boys in the northern part of the city. The troops marched up Martyrs Avenue to the three-story main building, broke open a side gate, and proceeded to the dormitories. They woke up the brothers, and ordered them at gunpoint to the street in their nightclothes. Once they had emptied the building they posted a few troops to guard the deserted building and marched the brothers three blocks south to the train station.

The Piarists’ Schools, Camaguey

A forced march of religious teaching orders in their nightclothes to the train station was repeated with the Piarists Friars from their school for boys a few blocks from where Antonio lived. They were marched north on Republica past Antonio’s house to the train station. 

Photo Day at Our Lady of Charity School, Camaguey
The school was operated by the Oblate Sisters
of Providence

The Oblate Sisters of Providence, the sisterhood founded by women of African descent in Baltimore Maryland in 1829 (one of their founders, Mother Mary Lange, had been born in Camaguey) operated a school for the poor in Camaguey. They were rounded up and marched to the train station that morning.

The Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco were a relatively new order in Camaguey. In 1936 they opened the Dolores Betancourt School for girls in a brand-new two-story building a block south of Antonio’s house that took up an entire city block. They suffered the same fate as the Teresian and Oblate sisters—Antonio, Elia, and Ventura watched from a window as they were marched up Republica Street to the train station that morning. 

The Salesian Sisters’ School, Camaguey

Father Lucien de Wulf, a Belgian priest who reopened one of Camaguey’s parish churches in 1967, recounts in his memoir Un Cura en Cuba Roja (1971) what he heard of the 1961 raids from his fellow clergy.

“After the U.S. backed invasion of the Bay of Pigs, all priests—considered possible C.I.A. agents—were picked up from their parishes and locked up in a large school building. Every so often a militiaman would show up and amiably announce, “It would be best for you to prepare your souls before we send you to heaven.” They gave each other their last confessions, but no, they were not sent to heaven. Some 500 to 800 [religious] from Camaguey were taken to Havana to be deported to Spain.

Of course, the Cuban citizens among them could not be deported, so instead most were imprisoned until they could make arrangements to leave the country, or their orders reassigned them. But others were forcibly put onto freight ships heading out of the country without their passports to fend for themselves when they arrived at the next port of call. In September a Spanish Line passenger ship enroute from Mexico to Spain—the MS Covadonga—diverted to Havana to take 118 Spanish nationals to Spain, reaching their berth capacity.  The government forced 131 imprisoned clergy onto the already full ship in order to obtain permission leave port. The Covadonga voyage was the most globally visible episode of religious repression in Cuba, the culmination of what the government started a few months earlier in Camaguey.

Cloistered Poor Clare Nuns Arrive in Miami
“Half a century has been spent in the cloister by
Mother Bruna, age 83, left, and Mother San
Antonio, 76 years old, two of eight Poor Clare
nuns forced to leave their monastery by orders
from the Red government of Fidel Castro. They
came to Miami last week.”

—The Voice

Camaguey’s cloistered convents were not spared that Tuesday morning in May. Cloistered nuns separate themselves from the outside world and live in seclusion, dedicating themselves to a life of prayer, contemplation and work. One such convent housed the Discalced Carmelite Sisters, the nuns that had sent the electric host-making iron to Antonio. Discalced meant that they wore no shoes, just sandals. They were turned out of their convent at dawn and marched to the train station. This was the first time they had been outside of their convent since they entered in their youth.

Marist Brothers Arrive in Miami
“Cassock-clad Marist Brothers who staffed more
schools in Cuba than any other religious order were
greeted by large crowds of former students and Cuban
friends as they deplaned in Miami.”

—The Voice

The Voice, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Miami, reported the following on the front-page lead article by Marjorie L. Fillyaw in their June 23, 1961 edition. It was headlined “Reds Seizing Churches in Cuba, Order ‘All Priests Must Leave’.”

“… In the Province of Camaguey, where all priests were expelled, churches have been closed and Bishop Carlos Riu Angles is reported to have sought refuge in Havana, [a priest recently arrived in Miami] said. He emphasized that anti-Castro activities were greater in Camaguey than in any other Cuban province.

Militia which ordered Camaguey priests to leave told them “Catholic priests must go,” he said. A protest from Archbishop Luis Centoz, papal nuncio [(the Vatican ambassador to Cuba)], reportedly brought a retort from the Red regime that the government had to seize the churches because the priests had deserted them. …

The sandaled Poor Clare nuns, [were] accused by Castro forces of “making bombs” within their monastery. … One 83-year-old Poor Clare who spent 55 years in the cloister had to be lifted from the plane in her wheelchair. Another, aged 76, with a record of 50 cloistered years, was placed in a wheelchair after she deplaned.

Although they had never seen [Franciscan priest] Father Angel Villarona, O.F.M., their former confessor who had sought refuge in Miami last month, the nuns recognized his voice as he greeted them at Miami International Airport….

A Cuba Railroad Passenger Train

The special train to Havana departed early in the morning of May 2nd, a Tuesday. The authorities were in possession of churches, schools, monasteries and convents, but no Consecrated hosts. They promptly repaired doors they had broken and assigned secular uses for their new acquisitions.

—————

Camaguey’s Clandestine Chapel, 1961
The makeshift rattan chair and iron lockbox tabernacle is under the
air conditioning unit, and the red sanctuary lamp is on the left.
Click on the image to enlarge and examine it.

Slowly at first—and always in ones and twos—the faithful of Camaguey risked scrutiny or arrest when they stepped through the manway into Antonio’s carriageway on Republica Street, asking the Eucharistic Minister if he knew where they could receive Holy Communion. Without fear that he might be inviting a government plant into the clandestine chapel, he invariably nodded his head yes and quietly said one word: siganme—follow me. 

In the clandestine chapel his study, he would bend down to open the rattan-and-iron tabernacle, genuflect reverently and take out the ciborium while the communicant knelt to receive Holy Communion. Antonio had no way of knowing when priests would return to Camaguey to consecrate more Sacramental hosts, so he broke each host into small pieces to conserve what precious sacrament he had.

Organized religion may have left Camaguey at gunpoint on a morning train, but faith, hope, and charity remained. 

—————

Cathedral of our Lady of Candelaria
Camaguey, Cuba
Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria
Our Lady of Candelaria—La Morenita—is the
patroness of the Canary Islands, where many of
the original settlers of Camaguey came from.

It was more than a month before priests returned to Camaguey. In fact, only two were allowed to return by the government. This after intense lobbying by the country’s bishops, the Holy See, and international pressure and condemnation. No deacons, no nuns, no monks, no Jesuits—just two priests. They dusted out the Cathedral of Our Lady of Candelaria, and paid a call to Antonio Martínez to collect the ciborium, still holding the Body of Christ in its remaining hosts.

Those two priests toiled for four years alone in the ten thousand square miles that was Diocese Camaguey before the government allowed more Roman Catholic priests to return to Camaguey, and allowed the Church to hire lay people again. 

Adolfo Rodríguez
4th Bishop of Camaguey
1st Archbishop of Camaguey
(b. 1924 – d. 2003)
Archdiocese photo taken in
1964. That fabric backdrop
looks very similar to the one
covering Antonio's study’s walls.

One of those two priests was the young Adolfo Rodriguez Herrera, who in 1964 was named the Bishop of the Diocese of Camaguey by Pope Paul VI at 39 years old—the youngest Roman Catholic bishop in recent history. Antonio had to urgently study heraldry to design Adolfo’s office’s coat of arms. What I don’t know is if Monseñor Adolfo—as everyone called him—had been one of the priests tasked with collecting the Holy Eucharist from all of Camaguey’s tabernacles that May 1st, 1961.

Elia Rodríguez
My grandmother
(No relation to the
bishop)

And for those four years, Elia Rodríguez made hosts of unleavened bread for the Diocese of Camaguey at her home at 208 Republica Street, using the special waffle iron that the Discalced Carmelite Sisters had put into her care. 

And we her many grandchildren visiting that old mansion on Republica Street, snacked on the edges of wafer left when the hosts were punched out of the sheet, plated with a bit of simple syrup, before our parents took or sent us out of Cuba—and out of harm’s way.

 ###

I took the date of the two days in 1961 recounted in this story from the testimony given by María Eugenia Fernández in Barcelona 46 years later.  It’s understandable if after 46 years she was off by a few weeks. The expulsion might have occurred a few weeks later—or in June—rather than May 1st and 2nd. None of the other sources I found online give specific dates at all for Camaguey. They instead report dates of expulsions from Havana and other cities. 

I say this because I don’t recall summer recess starting early. I was there, all of nine years old, living in Camaguey's first U.S.-style suburb away from the action—and a student at the Champagnat School  (they sent a school bus). I was shielded from all I recount here by my parents, first learning of it from them in Maryland many years later. That September two of my sisters, one brother and I were sent to the U.S. into the care of Catholic Charities.

Catholic priests may not have been CIA Agents as the authorities accused, but a few months after this episode of totalitarianism, some of them in effect became agents of the U.S. State Department, supplying visa waivers to more than 14,000 children—some as young as six years old—so they could be sent unaccompanied to Catholic Charities in the United States on regularly scheduled flights—the secret Peter Pan Airlift. Look that one up; it’s an interesting story that has been well documented. 

Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Camaguey
Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Carmen

Saint Joseph Church, Camaguey
Iglesia de San José

                                                        

Our Lady of Charity Church, Camaguey
La Ermita de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad
Patron Saint of Cuba

Church of Saint Anne, Camaguey
Iglesia de Santa Ana

Saint John of God Church, Camaguey
Iglesia de San Juan de Dios
Attached convent of the Brothers Hospitallers 

Church of the Holy Christ of the Good Journey, Camaguey
Iglesia del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje

Mariana’s Legacy of Names and Faces

 

“Mariana, Benito, Carlos Santayana
en Songorrongo”
Songorrongo was the name of her parent's ranch.
She often wrote the names so when you pinched the name
and turned the photo over, your finger would be over the face.

Mariana Martinez Prats (her Americanized name, she was Mariana Martinez Rodriguez de Prats in Cuba) left a legacy that at first look seems trivial, but becomes more and more of a treasure with each passing year. It’s a legacy of names and other information written lightly on the back of countless photographs.

It was just before the turn of the century, around 1995 that, when you visited the condominium at Mayfair Manor, you would see boxes and boxes of photographs on the floor in the living room around the sofa. They had been secreted out of Communist Cuba in the 1960s. Her mother and her sisters—still in Cuba then—would include a few in each letter they wrote to Mariana and to their and Mariana’s many friends now in the U.S. who would then forward them to Mariana in Maryland. In twos and threes per envelope, over time Mariana collected more than a thousand photographs she and Benito had originally pasted into albums over the years before and after they were married, while they lived in Camaguey. Now they were in disordered piles jumbled into different sized boxes.

“Flor de María Alvarez, prima de Dulce María”
Flor de Maria Alvarez, Dulce Maria’s cousin

Those Kinney shoe boxes and Garfinkel’s department store boxes, and one Woodward & Lothrop hat box—maybe a dozen in total—lived forgotten on the top shelf of closets and moved house to house until they got to Mayfair Manor. Now they were stacked on the floor surrounding the sofa and under the round glass-and-chrome coffee table.

She must have sensed that something was not quite right with her mind—that she might have inherited the slow but relentlessly progressive dementia that plagued the majority of the paternal side of her family in their last years—that it was now her turn. If so, she was right—it would progress and she would die of it much later, in 2014. But in 1995 the signs were not evident to anyone except herself.

“Mariana y Josefina (Fina) en el tejado
de la casa de Republica”
Mariana and her cousin Fina on the roof tiles
of the Republica Street house

I believe that she must have wanted to do something to preserve a little bit of what she excelled at: her surprisingly sharp memory, and her surprisingly large circle of extended family and friends that she kept up with by letter and phone calls—before it was too late. When you asked her why she was doing this, she would say that it had to be done and this was a fine time as any to do it.

It was a way for her to preserve her connections to family and friends, living and dead, while she still could. So she picked up a box of photos and sat down on the sofa with it, took the lid off, took up a pencil, picked up the first photograph, turned it over, and began to pencil in the names of the people it depicted. When she finished, she put it aside, picked up the next one and did the same.

She spent a few minutes here, an hour there, between tasks and between visitors and for more than a year—examining, remembering, reminiscing, and annotating each and every photo in her neat, elegant, and very readable handwriting. She would engage whoever was in the room—Benito mostly, but also with visitors—announcing the people she was seeing anew, and what she and they had been doing with them then. Often very brief bits of this reminiscing would be added to the names she was writing on the back in the form of wheres and whens.   

“Joaquín V, Martínez, KKC 4th Grade
Caballero de Colón”
Joaquin Ventura Martínez,
KofC 4th Degree
Knights of Columbus

When she was looking at photos Benito took before they were married, and those he took on business trips out of town, she would quiz him. He was very bad with names, so his photos got a lot of “Benito and two friends from university” annotations, and “Benito and a girl he knew before me,” but she tried to pencil something on each one.

Day after day, photo after photo, they all got annotated. She did not always name all of the faces, but she named the lion’s share. As she finished each box it went back on the closet shelf. The boxes around the sofa got fewer and fewer until one day there were all gone. It took her months to finish, but finish she did.

I first came across her annotations early in 2001 when some of my siblings and I were working on a collage for their 50^th wedding anniversary. Still no clue that she was losing her memory. It was a wonderful celebration, complete with the collage, a poster-sized family tree, their large extended family, and many of her and Benito’s friends.

“Angelita en San Calletano con José Joaquín,
Margarita, Benitico y Lola”
Angela Rodríguez de las Casas at her San
Calletano Ranch holding Lola with
(right to left) José Joaquín,
Benitico and Margarita Prats

And then in their move to assisted living, the photos—and boxes and boxes of Benito’s 35mm Kodachrome and Ektachrome transparencies—went to their son Benny’s house, where I went to mine them to illustrate many of the stories I’ve written for this archive. And now you know how I was able caption the many photographs you find here!

Names and Faces! What a wonderful legacy Mariana left us! 

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Take a lesson from her. You might get run over by a bus next week, for all you know! Before that happens, pull down those boxes of film-era snapshots from your closet and pile them around your sofa. Spend just a few minutes each day scribbling names. Don’t put them back—even if you have company coming—until you’ve scribbled names on the back of each one.

Don’t stop there. Get all your digital photos off your phones and camera cards in one place and annotate them too. Do it on the file name. That way it will never get separated.  Rename the file from “IMG-1232” to “Lola and Fred in the kitchen.” Rename each and every one. Then copy them out on thumb drives. Don’t delay! Your children and their children will be forever grateful.

Torta de Santiago Spanish Almond Cake

Torta de Santiago
Santiago is a contraction of
the Galician name for
St. James—Sant Iago

Natalia Salces, Mariana M. Prats' youngest sister, makes this delicious and simple to prepare four-ingredient almond cake. It's like a marzipan that gets baked, making for a crispy crust with a soft center. 

Torta de Santiago is not only deliciously rich, but it has lineage. It is a version of a traditional Galician pastry also known as Tarta de Compostela, or outside of Spain as Spanish Almond Cake. To take it from just almond cake to an official Torta de Santiago, you must decorate it with the Cross of St. James using a stencil and powdered sugar. 

Once upon a time you would have to start with raw almonds, blanch them to soften their the brown skin, and rub it off each almond. Then you would need to grind the white almond meat into a grainy flour. Today you just buy a bag of blanched almond flour and save yourself a lot of time and trouble.

A stand mixer makes mixing much easier because the end result is a thick, sticky dough.

3 egg whites

1 tsp almond extract

3 cups powdered sugar

3 cups almond flour

Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease one 8 or 9 inch layer-cake pan with butter, then line the bottom with waxed paper, and finally, generously grease the waxed paper with more butter. Be thorough, or you’ll have trouble peeling it off later.

Start with the wire-whip beater to beat the egg whites to a soft peak. Reduce speed and add the almond extract, then slowly add the powdered sugar, mixing and scraping the sides of the bowl until it is all incorporated.

Change to the flat beater and slowly add the almond flour, scraping the sides of the bowl until you have a sticky wet dough.

If you want to be authentic, drop four to six raw almonds into the bottom of the cake pan, and turn out the batter on top of them. Cover with plastic wrap and use your fingers to press the dough evenly into the pan, then peel it off carefully.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool until you can handle the pan. Run a knife around the edge of the pan and invert onto a plate, bottom-side up. Peel off the wax paper. Place the stencil on the cake, dust with powdered sugar, and carefully remove the stencil.

Cut very small wedges when serving as it is very rich and sweet. Serves 8 to 12 people. It keeps for a week on the counter, covered, but it so tasty it will disappear before then.

###

Click here to download a St. James Cross stencil.  Print it and cut out the outline.

Dr. Prats Disarms a Hijacker

Sometime in 1962 or 1963 Dr. Benito H. Prats boarded a flight from Havana to Camaguey that was hijacked to the U.S. Except it never got there. The exact date is no longer known, but the story and its surprise ending is now family lore.

Passengers Boarding a DC-3
Through A Real Gate in the Fence

Once upon a time airline travelers could stroll from the ticket counter to the tarmac and up the stairs to their airplane without getting in line to be frisked by dour and suspicious security agents like what happens at all airports today. Then in the 1960s the hijacking of airliners by criminals who wanted to fly to another country to evade arrest became popular and by the end of the decade airport security checkpoints prior to boarding were de rigeur.

Hijackers were treated harshly when they landed — as they should. Even if there were no casualties the ordeal terrorized passengers and crew and endangered lives on board and on the ground. However, U.S. hijackers that successfully reached Cuba were treated as heroes and given asylum and plenty of press there, and, surprisingly, Cuban hijackers that reached the U.S. were likewise given asylum here and released without charge. This was a perfectly normal aspect of the cruel tit-for-tat dance that was the Cold War.

Cuban Exit Permit

By 1962 the Cuban middle class was desperate to leave (the rich had already fled) and the authoritarian government of Cuba was equally desperate to save face. Why would anyone want to leave the utopia they had created and heavily promoted to the rest of the world?  So Cuba followed the Soviet Union’s lead and imposed exit controls on its citizens, and permission to leave the island was severely curtailed. Even if you could afford the ticket and had permission to enter another country, without an exit permit you could no longer board an international airplane, ship or ferry.

All airworthy private aircraft and seaworthy watercraft had been appropriated without compensation by the government and carefully accounted for, and the coastline and air space was heavily patrolled. To escape the prison that Cuba had become, the only choice left was to find a leaky boat, or lash together a raft, and set off at night to evade the Coast Guard and brave the dangerous and wide Straits of Florida. Many did and many died.

There was one other choice. Hijack a domestic flight and order the pilot to fly to the U.S.

Cubana DC-3 At Havana Airport

Benito had flown to Havana earlier and was now on his way home. The trip may have been for a professional meeting as he was associated with a number of hospitals and clinics in Camaguey, or he could have needed to get to an embassy in his quest for visas or to a government agency for permission to take himself and the rest of his family out of the country. By this time his four older children were already in the U.S.

It was another gorgeous Caribbean day: beautiful blue skies with fluffy white clouds — perfect for flying.  The flight was probably Cubana de Aviación’s flight 482, the 342-mile two-hour nonstop flight to Camaguey that departed Havana at half past noon.  (Today this flight is just an hour by jet.)

Cubana had used 28-passenger American-built Douglas DC-3 twin-engine aircraft for their domestic flights since the 1950s. Seat configuration was two seats on each side of the aisle. There was plenty of leg room and recline pitch compared to today’s coach seats. But the U.S. embargo had made spare parts difficult to procure, so late in 1961 Cubana added two Soviet-built Ilyushin-14 twin engine airplanes to their domestic fleet. They had capacity, speed and range similar to the DC-3. Benito’s flight could have used one or the other. So for this story, because I cannot find a good photo of an Ilyushin-14 in Cubana livery, lets put him in a DC-3.

Benito said that the flight was half-full: maybe 12 to 15 passengers. Like they did back then all over the world, everyone was dressed for travel. Suits and ties and fedora hats on the men, smart dresses and pinned hats on the ladies. The overhead rack on airplanes of that era was just a narrow open rack designed to hold men’s hats and not much more. It made the cabin look just a tad less cramped. The ladies kept their hats on.

Model of a DC-3 in Cubana Livery

It was an uneventful takeoff and flight 482 quickly reached cruising altitude.  The Fasten Seat Belt sign and the No Smoking sign had just been turned off and the azafata — the flight attendant — began walking the aisle collecting drink orders. She returned with the drinks balanced on a tray, handing them out one by one. The airline was still attempting to maintain the service it was known for when it was a private concern 42% owned by Pan American Airways.

Later in the flight she passes out box lunches — a waxed pasteboard box with perhaps a couple of pieces of cold fried chicken, cheese and crackers, a small piece of fruit of some sort, and perhaps a slice of guava paste on a cracker.  For some reason, the passenger across the aisle from Benito did not touch his drink and refused lunch.

“Miss, here’s your Coca-Cola”

The flight attendant was collecting the empty boxes when the passenger across the aisle, a young man in a suit and tie, jumps up and pulls the pin of a hand grenade he was holding. He was sweating profusely and looking quite agitated.

“This plane is going to Cayo Hueso!” he shouted, waving the grenade with one hand and the pin with the other.  Cayo Hueso is the Spanish name for Key West.

The door to the cockpit was open — they usually were to improve circulation — and the crew of three — the captain, copilot and navigator — heard the commotion. The navigator steps out.

“Young man! Young man!  What are you carrying on about?”

“I’m commandeering this airplane and you are taking me to Key West!”

“We can’t!” says the navigator.

“Why not?  Are you the pilot?” asks the hijacker.

“I’m the navigator. The captain is flying the plane.”

World War II Hand Grenade
Pin with pull-ring secures safety
lever. To use: hold lever against
grenade, pull pin, throw as far
as you can, and take cover.

By then the copilot is in the narrow aisle of the cabin behind the navigator.  Benito’s eyes, and all the other eyes in the cabin, are riveted to the hijacker’s left hand and more particularly the fingers that hold the grenade’s safety lever tightly against the grenade. He’s got a tight grip, but his arm is spastic, waving the grenade every which way. In his right hand is the pin he pulled, the only path to salvation.

If he lets go of the spring-loaded lever, even if just for a second, the grenade is going to blow. You can’t squeeze it back closed to stop the explosion. The delay element lights when the lever is released and when the burn reaches the detonator the explosion will occur. If he lets go, no heroic quick action is going to save the day because there is no quick way to throw it out of the aircraft.

“We can’t fly to Key West, “ says the copilot. “We only have enough fuel to get to Camaguey.”

“¡Mentira!” — “you lie!” spits the hijacker. “It’s 90 miles to Key West and 300 miles to Camaguey!”

“We’re almost halfway to Camaguey and we have been flying further away from Key West. We spent a lot of fuel taking off and reaching this altitude. We can’t get to Key West with the fuel we have.”

DC-3 Banking into a Turn

The pilot, in radio contact with the ground, had quietly announced a mayday and began to slowly and carefully turn the eastbound airplane around and return to Havana, hoping the hijacker would not notice.

The hijacker noticed the change in the sunlight entering through the windows and screamed, “Where are you going now!  We’re changing course! I need to get to the U.S. or die.  I’m going to release this lever!”

“No! no! Don’t worry! We’re returning to Havana so we can refuel and get you to Key West. Stay calm!”

The hijacker is anything but calm. He started hyperventilating.

Dr. Prats

Benito stands up — there was enough room to stand up straight at the aisle seat — and says to the hijacker, “I’m a doctor, and you, young man, you are suffering from a panic attack. You don’t want to kill us all, do you?  Let me give you something to calm you so you can hold that grenade safely.”

Benito went everywhere with his doctor’s bag, a small black hard-leather satchel with his initials BHP in gold leaf above the latch. He rummaged around inside and came up with small white glass bottle with a yellow label: a sample bottle of meprobamate. He unscrewed the lid, shook out a tablet, and offered it to the hijacker.

A Doctor’s Bag

Launched in 1955 by Wallace Laboratories, Miltown (the generic name was meprobamate) was the first blockbuster psychotropic drug in U.S. (and therefore in Cuban) history. It was the Valium of its day. Celebrities from Hollywood to Manhattan were popping it to calm their nerves. And the characters they played on screen and stage took it, typically chased down with whiskey, to calm their hysterics. Pharmaceutical salesmen handed out samples as they made their rounds of doctors’ offices, and Benito had a sample bottle in his bag.

“That’s going to knock me out! I’m not taking it!” cried the hijacker.

So Benito popped the pill in his own mouth and swallowed it with an audible gulp.

The Valium of its Day

The situation remained tense, the copilot and navigator continued negotiations, and the flight landed back in Havana and taxied to a distant part of the airport well away from the terminal and shut down its engines. Soldiers surrounded the airplane, guns drawn. It did not look good for the hijacker.

There is another thing to note about airplanes of that era. If they were not moving there was no air circulating in the cabin. The hijacker refused to allow the door to be opened and the temperature inside the aircraft was becoming unbearable.

The hijacker had been holding the grenade for more than an hour now, gripping it with all his might. His hands were sweaty. It was evident he would not be able to keep hold of it for much longer.  And the airplane was surrounded by soldiers.

Suddenly, without a word, the hijacker looked into Benito’s eyes and reached across the aisle with the grenade. Benito carefully took it in both hands and worked his fingers around over the lever. The hijacker offered him the pin. Benito took the pin and carefully put it back in the grenade, locking the lever. He then gingerly put the grenade down gently on his seat and let it go.

The hijacker was slumped in his seat, sobbing, as the crew opened the door and soldiers entered and roughly took the man away.

Fidel Shaking Hands at the Airport
No, that's not Benito

Passengers and crew were bused to the terminal where they were greeted by Fidel Castro, the supreme Cuban leader himself. He shook everyone’s hand, declaring them all brave heroes, patriots, and fighters for the revolution. Ice water and saltines were offered. The airplane was fueled, repositioned at the terminal, and passengers and the same crew boarded to restart their interrupted voyage to Camaguey. I wonder if they were served supper.

What a story he got to tell Mariana when he finally got home!  He checked radio and TV newscasts that evening and the newspaper the next day for news on the hijacking.

Not a word! And no words of congratulations from Communist Party and government functionaries were forthcoming. After all, who in the world would be so desperate to leave the sun-drenched egalitarian utopia that the second revolution had brought to Cuba.

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Want to read a first-hand account of how daily life was for Cubans in those years?  Check out a Belgian priest’s wry account of what he saw and experienced in Camaguey in the 1960s:  A Priest in Red Cuba