The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(13)
It’s not just the land—they have slaughtered every animal they can find.
In the few letters Mateo was able to send me, he spoke of subsisting on a diet of lizards, and eating fruits like mangos for all of his meals. How can you fight one of the greatest armies in the world with so little to sustain you? How will we survive with nothing available to us?
I squeeze Luz’s hand, begging her for silence. The sights surrounding us are as horrible as any I could have imagined, but at seven, Isabella hears everything, and she’s already been through enough having to leave her home behind for a city she’s never visited, a life in one of Weyler’s reconcentration camps.
“How much longer, Mami?” Isabella asks me.
“Just a little farther.”
This will be her first time seeing Havana. Her childhood has been our little farm, the animals she cared for, our family, and now everything is changing. I’ve tried to prepare her for what it will be like in the city, but then again, I left in very different circumstances than the ones in which I’m returning.
“Will Papi come visit us?”
“Shh,” I whisper, hating that I must deny her this, the link to the man we love. “Remember what we said? Your father has to be a secret for now. He’s off doing something important. We can’t speak of him until he’s back safely with us.”
Rumor has it that the Spanish are denying provisions to those with ties to the revolutionaries.
“Will you leave, too?” Isabella asks.
“No, I’ll never leave you.”
It is a complicated thing to love the man you send off to war, to be filled with an immense pride at his loyalty and his love for his country, the lengths to which he will go to defend what he believes is right. And at the same time, I envy Mateo the ability to take up arms, to leave his family behind to follow his principles. We’re forging a new identity for our country, one where we are all united under the banner of Cuba. I want to fight for that, too.
There are those who say a war camp is no place for a woman, but there are women in those camps. Women spilling blood for Cuba’s future, taking up machetes with the revolutionaries. Perhaps this revolution will finally give us the independence we desire, show men that we can be their equals and are worthy of their respect.
I wish I were beside Mateo.
The cry of “Viva Cuba Libre” sustains me, even if I’m unable to utter it aloud.
“We should have joined the impedimenta,” I say to Luz one morning in the camp when there is once again no food to be had.
The Spanish herded more than seventy thousand of us—mainly women and children—into a camp on the outskirts of Havana a few weeks ago at the beginning of January. For the most part, it seems that the men have chosen to join the revolutionary army over suffering this fate. All around Cuba, this same horrible tableau has played out in other towns and cities for many months as they secured us on barren tracts of land inside the fortified cities. There were promises of housing, but that has turned into little more than tents or cots on the ground for the vast majority of us, our bodies crammed together with no care for hygiene or privacy.
We huddle together on our makeshift beds on the muddy ground, while Isabella sleeps beside us.
“Were it not for Isabella, I would have agreed with you,” Luz murmurs. “But war is no place for a child.”
“I thought that once. But look around us. We don’t have the luxury of pretending that is the case anymore. War has come for Cuba’s children whether we wish it to or not. What shall we do if we cannot feed Isabella? They’ve destroyed the countryside and imprisoned all who worked the land. How do they aim to feed the hundreds of thousands in their reconcentration camps? Not to mention the disease that will likely spread when you keep people in such horrible conditions. The Spanish have no plan for us. They do not care whether we are healthy or safe. Perhaps it will be easier for them if we all die from hunger and disease. Maybe that is their plan.”
“I’m sure it would be easier for them,” Luz replies. “But we can’t make it too easy for them, now can we? I know how you feel, how frustrating it can be to watch your country embroiled in a seemingly impossible battle, to watch your loved ones go to war, and not be able to do anything about it. I’ve been through this twice before, and it is hard to feel like this time will be different. But you shouldn’t feel helpless. There are things you can do.”
I grimace. “And how do you propose we do something about it, stuffed in here like chattel?”
We have a degree of autonomy in Havana now that we have been cut off from the revolutionaries. They tell us we’re not prisoners, that this is necessary, even that this is for our own safety, but really the camps are their own kind of prison. We may not be in jail cells, but reconcentration offers an illusory freedom.
If we left the city, where would we go?
The Spanish military patrols outside of the cities, restricting our movements, and even if we could sneak through their lines, what awaits us when the countryside has been utterly destroyed?
A gleam enters Luz’s gaze. “I still have some friends back when we fought for independence before. We weren’t content to let the men do all the fighting then, either, and women did their part. Look at all the revolutionary clubs that have sprung up, the fundraisers that have been organized by Cuban women in the United States to raise money for weapons. Look at how women are staffing hospitals and supply centers in the countryside. We are not powerless. I know you wanted to be on the front lines with Mateo, but there are other ways that you can be useful, Marina. I was like you once, and I possessed that same anger that sustains you.”