[Marxism] "If you don't fight, you lose [A reflection on Cuba - K.L.]"

[Kristian Lasslett]

***An old friend of mine in Australia is writing some vignettes on some of
his past adventures, I thought this one on Cuba might interest those on the
list. *

The narrative style is a little idiosyncratic but very enjoyable.

* *
*
If you don't fight, you lose (1)*

In those days (August, September, 1964) Cubans had guns.   Like Israelis,
Swiss.  Out openly.   Unfortunately I never got back to Cuba - other things
happened - other stories, - but I have been told that this - open
gun-carrying - is no longer so.  When I was there, then, weapons were much
in evidence.  Things which could, though they didn't for me, go Bang.

One early experience:  I was in a bus, was it still in (my first Cuban city?
) Santiago, or later in Havana ?  Memory fades (1)  What I do remember is a
big, middle-aged, male Cubano, in - what I (mis)pronounced a Wow-wow, an
urban bus.  He, the Cubano, had been shopping, had both his hands full with
a full shopping bag.  Groceries. Stuff.  He sat down, on the bus-bench
across from me.  Bored Reader:  So ? So what ?
Ah, on his left hip (what my memory brings up, 54 years later(1)!) was a
great big pistol.  A six-shooter revolver.  As in Cowboy movies.  It stuck
out. In my memory.  And the revolver's foresight stuck too.  Into the space
between the seat, the seat-frame.  When Cowboy tried to get up, he
couldn't. He was stuck, by his pistol barrel.  Don't know if he realised,
where, what.  I watched and wondered.  Would the pistol go off ?  It was
pointing downwards, towards our (collective ?) feet.   I didn't know the
local etiquette, how does one introduce the subject ?  Help with the
groceries ?  Reach over, for the pistol ?  Tell him - with my limited
Spanish ?  While I pondered, doing nothing, he did get free, groceries
undropped, gun unfired, and left the bus.  No one said nothing, but I
remember it, 54 years later...

I didn't.  Have a gun.  I was going to go boom, check out on reflection
seismic prospecting, explosions.  Not, with a gun, go bang.  Didn't, at
first connect the two.

This was a long, tiring, trip, from Havana to Caibaren? (2).  To visit, see,
go with, a platforma (3), a Cuban seagoing seismic team.  When we (my
driver/translator, and I) get there, I was tired, shook up (our soviet GAZ
jeep was tough, made for tough country and tough bottoms.  It's top road
speed was 70km/h, and at that speed it bounced all over the place.   I was
hungry, sore, and cross.  No less so when got to the platforma, a big raft,
in the harbor, and found all there had gone home.  Away.   "Manana!".   I
don't remember where we slept; oh, yes, did I eat lobster, caught locally
with a nail-on-a-broomstick.. Good.  But somehow was still cross manana,
next morning, when back to the platforma.   I was asked if wanted to go to
sea, with this, very "ad hoc", marine seismic team.   Make booms (3.1), see
if we could record reflections.  I said "That's the idea, why I'm here, I
think..."

Problemas:  The Observer (essential crew member) was absent.   I was looked
at, asked if I could do his job, run the seismic recorder.  I said:  I doubt
this.  I'd spent a couple of days in a United Geophysical seismic truck
sitting behind their observer, 8 years before.  The Cuban equipment looked
very different (home made ? from Soviet bits and pieces?).

My standing in Caibaren dropped.  I looked around the platforma, noted, very
obviously in sight, two fixed mounted 50 caliber (12.7 mms) heavy machine
guns.  Less obviously:  Any number of automatic rifles, light mgs.  One for
each member of the crew.  For reflection seismic geophysics ?  I asked.
Maybe too directly ?  In my limited Spanish (4).

All kinds of rapid (to me incomprehensible) cross-talk on the platforma.
(Which remained tied up at the quay).  "We need the guns for the gusanos,
the Yankees..."  For the reflections?  My attempts at sarcasm were
misunderstood. The conversation was getting away from me.  I drafted my
driver to interpret.  Explain.  After some time all became "clear", or at
least clearer.

I was told that when the seismic team on the platforma was towed out to sea
to (attempt to ?) do some marine reflection seismology (the platforma was
just a raft, tied onto many empty 50 gallon drums.  It had guns, but no
motor.  There was, or supposed to be, a now absent small tug). It was
sometimes attacked by yankees (5) and/or gusanos (6).

The Yankees came in F-84 fighter/bombers.   The Gusanos in light planes,
Cessnas or Pipers.  The Cuban geophysicists (I saw no Soviets or Rexsos
around there) said they had to be armed, to fight back.

I said:  What ?!?   You shoot it out with F-84s ?  (They have cannons,
rockets, bombs).  "With 50 cal machine guns ? From a oil-drum raft ?  Why
are you still alive ?"    Further discussion reveals that so far the F-84
has only buzzed them, very low, to scare them.  But they were not scared.

I - by now - was.   Scared.

I was learning things about Cuba, the Cuban (revolutionary !) mentality,
which also helped me understand about the Moncada (7).  Where Fidel Castro
had been caught, tried, imprisoned.  Amnestied. Freed.  He retired to Mexico
and announced that he would soon return (8) - shades of MacArthur !   He
did.  With one small motorboat, the Granma, which you can see in Havana,
it's a museum, and about 80 revolutionaries.  The Batista (9) troops were
waiting for them, at the landing spot.  However, the Granma was lost in a
storm and - probably luckily - couldn't find the intended land-fall,
arrived elsewhere.  By Chance.  Even so, a disaster.  Only some 12 survived
the initial landing (10).

And - later, in Cuba - I learned things about October 1962:  How close a
Cuban cow (11) and McNamarra's mis-information (12) had brought us to the
Third, Nuclear, World war.

I also learned that many Cubans, including some leaders of the then Cuban
Communist Party (PSP?) (13), had long called Fidel Castro "il loco", the
nutter.

When I attempted to explain (I think they thought I was speaking Italian (4)
but we did understand each other, somewhat) - that this kind of odds:  F-84
fighter plane against a towed platforma, with 50 cals, seemed unfavorable,
they replied:
a/ but Castro did win the revolution, he was right, the PSP people were
wrong, and
b/ we beat the gusanos and Yankees at Playa de Giron, the bay of pigs, and
c/ the Yankees backed down in October '62, they didn't invade as planned, and

d/ even if we can't really win against a modern jet fighter like the F-84,
we can scare it off and
e/ if the gusanos come, they'll be in a Cessna or Piper cub, and we can
certainly shoot that down...

I sighed deeply and said you are right.  I am an old coward.  In 1940
England I would have thought just like you (14).  If you don't fight, you
lose.

But did you get to do any marine seismic prospecting ?  Make some Boom
between the Bangs ?

Not on that platforma, I didn't.   Neither the observer nor the tug showed
up, that seismic prospection didn't happen, and I had a limited time in
Caibaren.  The trip had been for nought.  I was at the same time even
crosser, relieved, and  - ashamed.   They would, did, eventually, go out
with their 50 cals, and front the F-84s.  Without me. I think I would have
refused to go.   But I didn't have to.  I had got out of Caibaren without
showing my cowardice, or was it good sense (14)?

And I didn't even go back, uselessly, to Havana.  300+ ks ?   My driver told
me there was a land-based seismic team, with Soviet Equipment, working not
so far away.   I, with very confused thoughts (15), said goodbye to the
platforma team, and left Caibaren.   For the soviet-equipped terrestrial
Seismic Reflection Team (16) - that's another story.
And "Vietnam, estamos contigos (17)" the one after that.
==================================================================

(1)    If you don't fight you lose:  The more I write, now, in October
2008, about my time in Cuba in the summer of 1964 - the more I have
problems.  With myself.  With any eventual readers.  Apparently my
?excessive? emphasis on "geophysics" is accepted, at least by some.  Others:
bored, "you're navel-gazing, full of shit", or "we delete b4 reading.." are
not responding.  (They haven't asked to be taken off the round robin, so
far, either.)   But how do I continue this write ?   It - these "stories" -
started when one Paul Reti in Sydney said "the (majority?) of the
Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948" and I thought that that event,
Israel's creation, the Nakba, had been written about by thousands, many of
whom had been there.   I wasn't, then.  In '48.  So I wrote a story
about something I did see myself in Israel,  in early 1951 (1.1).  To my
surprise there were several favorable comments, requests for more (personal
stories).   I've written more.  Why not (1.2) ?  By now (this is story
"NY") ten more.  Several about my stay in Cuba.  Another, writing
problem, has arisen:  To what extent do I avoid the plethore, overwhelming
quantity, of available "other information" ? (I did that "on principle"
in my initial "NP" story).  I think it is best, almost essential, that I do
NOT ! *rpt NOT* *! *look into Wiki, Google or books before or during
writing.  And if I do "cheat", look and check afterwards, that I do *NOT
MODIFY *the original.  Though sometimes the temptation is great.  Added,
supplementary, info, corrections, go into the footnotes.     Question
marks? - in the  text - are when I feel unsure as to what I ever knew, or
what, if did, I have since then forgotten.  I have no notes here; there are,
no doubt, zillions in the "Soldaten Archiv" in (once West) Berlin (1.3), but
I will not consult them (before writing).  Maxist pride ?  Do me something.

These questions have become particularly problematic while writing this
story (NY) - Initially called: Boom or Bang.  "If you don't fight you lose!"
is a better title - but it does come from later "input" (1.4).  And I find
often asking myself:  What did I really think, know, then, in 1964; what is
"contaminated", learned since ?  The best I can do here is to try and
present my then thoughts in the text, and add subsequent (post 1964 Cuba)
(1.5) adds as "footnotes".   With the no doubt discouraging result that
there are footnotes of footnotes.  Do me something !  It is June, not I, who
is a professional English and writing teacher ! (1.6).
(1.1)     RN3280NP 0 ARAB REFUGEES, PALESTINIAN INFILTRATORS, AND WHAT I
SAW, BACK WHEN .A SOUVENIR:  Available on application from
rosiek at bigpond.com
(1.2)   Some criticism:  "because I should be doing, writing, about the here
and now".  Well, I'm old, and slow, and I do do a little. If interested ask
me about "Porgera", or Jethro Tulin.   Not about Obama (or the Greens, or
Nader).  I think Obi will carry New York state even without my canvassing
the 6th ED of the 8th AD.  Which I once did for the ALP, for Wallace.  I
won't be doing that this time round.  I'm not there, anyway.
(1.3)    Soldaten Archiv" in (once West) Berlin:  c/o Bruenn, Dieter c/o
harald.kater at goerl39.de -  HARALD KATER VERLAG; GOERLITZERSTR 39; BERLIN  D
10997,   GERMANY;  Phone: 49  30 618 2647
(1.4)     If you don't fight you lose:  From the (heard much later) song by
a long departed Australian group: Redgum
 (1.5)     post 1964 Cuba: I find it impossible to separate different Cuban
memories from each other.  I do my best to go by memory, and crosscut.  Was
I in Caibaren before Varadero ?  or before the well remembered but was it
on ? 8 August ? 1964 meeting in Havana:"Vietnam, estamos contigos !"(17).
I have no Spanish Dictionary, and would not check if had.  Maxist pride ? or
idiocy ?  Do me something !
(1.6)     June - not I,  a professional English and writing teacher !  Of
GI's.  But that was later, and is (who knows ?) another story
(2)    a long, tiring, trip, from Havana to Caibaren: I'd guess 300 kms, but
(1.5) I'm not checking on Wiki.
(3)    a Cuban seagoing seismic team, on a platforma:  that's what I
remember it called. A raft, on empty 50 gallon drums.
(3.1) Make booms:  Explosions, with maybe 10 kilo charges.    As distinct
from bangs, with shooting irons.
(4)   my limited Spanish:  based on some time living in Spanish Harlem, New
York, with Puerto Riquenos, some in Los Angeles, Chicanos, some months in
Sardinia, where the locals claimed they also spoke  a form of Catalan.  Some
time in Catalonia, Puerto Andraix, Majorca.  Many visits to Italy.  Now some
weeks in Cuba.  Well, I said my Spanish was limited !  And I did have four
years of Latin in Slough Grammar School.
(5)     yankees:  At that moment there was an uneasy truce between the
LBJ-governed  United States and the offical, but un-recognised Castro-led
Cuban government.  However, in Caibaren they obviously didn't trust that
truce, and preferred to have their guns with them.
(6)   and/or gusanos:   Gusanos were (and are) anti-Castro Cuban emigres,
holed up in Miami.  Whatever the official US Government policy was, they
pursued a private war against Cuba.  An often shooting war.
(7)   the Moncada:  a fortified Barracks in Santiago de Cuba where
Fidel Castro had led some 200, mostly students, very poorly armed, against
1200 Batista soldiers.  The (unsurprising?) result was an utter Castro
defeat.  Most of the 200 were soon either dead or captured.
(8)   he would soon return:  Castro did.  If interested, check,
complete, these notes with any good history of Cuba, of the Cuban
revolution.
(9)   The Batista troops were waiting for them:  I had not intended to
re-write (even a short) history of the Cuban revolution, but the "salad" of
what I had read previously, what I learned in situ in Cuba and later
elsewhere, is mixed up in my mind.   Perhaps my reactions to the Caibaren
Platforma discussions are hard to follow without touching on long forgotten
events in Cuba (10).  I hope to write about some in other stories (11,12).
(10)   a disaster.  Only some 12 survived the initial landing:  see (8) and
.. ff.
(11)   see also the story of the salt-loving, cable-munching Cuban cow(s):
(to be writen)
(12)   McNamarra's, Kennedy's, mis-information, and what I was beginning to
learn in Cuba about October 1962 - (other stories: Pedro Mirette).
(13)   Cuban Communist Party  (PSP?) - before 1959.  By 1964 Fidel Castro
had  become the head of (a different) CCP.
(14)    I wonder:   It takes more courage, sometimes, to admit cowardice.
But it is a different culture: I was no longer 15.
(15)    with very confused thoughts:  to this day I wonder: Would I have
gone with them ?
(16)    that's another story:  Next one, planned.
(17)    the one after that.  We hope !