Damian Valdez
Cuba in 1959 was both festive and sombre. Jubilation greeted the flight of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who left the island as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro were poised to enter the capital, Havana. Soon after this, special tribunals in an old colonial fortress ran the juicios sumarios, short trials of former regime officials, which often ended with a death sentence and a firing squad. That year, my Mexican grandfather went to Cuba with a skilled cameraman to make a documentary about the Cuban Revolution.
He met Raúl Castro, the leader’s brother and hardliner, among others. One day, he was on an internal flight over the island, which happened to be transporting batistianos, or members of the old regime, whose fate, no doubt, was not going to be merciful. Suddenly, they overpowered their revolutionary guards, known as barbudos (bearded ones), and grabbed their weapons. They then ordered the pilot to fly to the Dominican Republic, hoping that the country’s friendly dictator, Rafael Trujillo, might welcome them with open arms. The barbudo pilot told the batistianos: ‘I will land wherever you like on the island but not beyond.’ When the gun-wielding batistiano insisted, the pilot lifted his hands from the controls and said, llévatelo tú! (you fly it!). As the plane began to dive, the old regime hijackers had no answer and were check-mated. They landed in Cuba, to my grandfather’s relief.
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