If the Americans were going to call him El Diablo, then why not show them what a real Devil can do?
“Ach!” he scolded himself for being emotional. Those four dupes in Morro Castle were nothing. But what about their reckless bosses back in Washington? He knew the Americans were up to something. They always were. Their bravado, their crude schemes, the arrogance and ignorance of los yanquis. How did such a country become so rich and powerful when they couldn’t even see through the lies of the traitors in Miami? How could they not see the dance of the exiles? How could such a country be so mighty yet unable to keep a simple secret? The United States was a lumbering beast, a giant shadow hanging over his beautiful island, his Cubita bella. The fools in his prison cell were just another insult!
Every four years, a new team of American politicians arrived with new ideas, some new gesture that was supposed to impress him, some new threat that was supposed to scare him. Now they were trying to lure Cuba into capitalism by pretending to be friends. The gringos called it normalization. None of it will work. He sipped his coffee.
Oswaldo Guerrero could see through it all because he had seen it all before. The gringos didn’t know their history. That had been his comfort in the past. But history was precisely what unsettled him about tonight.
Something was different. Was today a genuine opportunity? Or was this just another gringo trick? Was this latest incident real? Or just more scheming by scoundrels in Washington, D.C.?
Oswaldo sipped his coffee again. Deep down, he knew what had really changed was not the Americans. They were very much the same. Los yumas. Overconfident, inept, stupid.
What had changed, what he could never admit except within his own private thoughts, was Cuba. His Cuba. As certain as los yanquis were about themselves, Oswaldo was certain that the Cuban Revolution was coming to an end. Their allies in Moscow had abandoned them. Beijing had become a den of capitalists. And their last remaining friends in Caracas had lost their minds. Even at home, his great leaders were on the verge of death. One thing the Cuban Revolution could never defeat was mortality.
And the youth, the engine of the revolt, the fuel that burned the fire of revolution, was different today. They just weren’t like him and his peers. They were distracted. They were selfish. They were weak.
Oswaldo Guerrero, from the time he first joined the secret intelligence service at the age of sixteen, had been a loyal believer in the cause. His mother had thrown flowers on the rebel jeeps when they first arrived in Havana. Oswaldo attended special state schools to learn Cuban revolutionary values. By the time he was five years old, he had memorized El Jefe’s “Declaration of the Socialist Character of the Revolution.” At the age of seven, he joined the Union of Rebel Pioneers, then graduated to the Rebel Youth Association when he turned thirteen. He was working for the state before he even learned to shave.
Oswaldo Guerrero was raised on patria o muerte—nation or death! That was his motivation for continuing to fight the Americans. To always be on watch, to uncover their plots, to be ruthless with the enemies of the revolution. Above all, to protect Cuba’s independence. The Americans had occupied Cuba in 1898, 1906, and 1917. They tried to invade again in 1961. And los yanquis kept trying. But men like him had always fought back. Patriots like him had always defended Cuba’s total independence.
While Oswaldo was an idealist, a son of the revolution, he wasn’t blind. He saw what was happening to his own country. One of the benefits of being at the top of the national intelligence services was a unique window into what was really going on inside Cuba. He could see, underneath the peeling paint, the shiny new tourist hotels, the smiling faces, there was growing unhappiness. Under their breath, in the corners of the plazas and cafés, people complained about the revolution.
Dissent was in the air. It was getting louder. The hardships of life, the sacrifices, were all becoming too much for the masses. And, worst of all, the lure of the bright lights of American consumerism was too much for ordinary people to resist.
He knew that Cuba, despite men like him, was slowly losing its independence. It wasn’t los yumas who were taking it. No. Cuba was giving away its total independence by rotting from the inside out.