Jose Grave de Peralta recalls classmate Fidel Castro and his profound effect on the Grave de Peraltas' lives. The family moved from Cuba soon after Castro came to power.
By Nancy Simpson Hoke, The Associated Press. Myrtle Beach Online. Monday, March 06, 00 © 1999, Sun Publishing Co.
HENDERSON, N.C. - ``He was always ... different,'' Jose Grave de Peralta said of the boyhood friend, Fidel Castro, who would one day slash all Grave de Peralta's hopes for a happy future in his native Cuba.
Both men came from wealthy families, a similarity that put them together at Colegio BDelen in Havana, the Jesuit prep school that was the school of choice for upper-class Cubans in the 1940s.
``His parents were very rich, not educated, but naturally smart. I heard his father was barely literate,'' Grave de Peralta said. The son, Fidel, also was unusually intelligent.
``Fidel loved politics in high school. He was always reading about Stalin, Napoleon, Mussolini. Powerful men. He was very smart. He was called a `loco.' I can't say he was a bad person then. Because he was different, we idealized him.''
Grave de Peralta said that his classmates did not make an issue of Castro's plebeian background, but ``I think now that he knew he didn't belong to that class of people and he resented it.'' (After he came to power, Castro would have the school's chapel altar removed and replaced with a picture
of himself.)
After graduation from BDelen, Grave de Peralta studied engineering and organic chemistry at the University of Havana. Castro was there, too, studying law.
While a 22-year-old university student, Grave de Peralta met 15-year-old Ana C. Torralbas, the sister of a friend. Because of the age difference, initially the two were only permitted to see each other while chaperoned, but in 1953 they were married.
Castro did not have a particular reputation as a ladies man, Grave de Peralta said, but he had beautiful girlfriends and married a woman whose nephew is a Florida legislator. ``She was from a prominent family who opposed the match. They eloped and had one child, Fidelito.''
Grave de Peralta went to visit the young woman after the child was born and found her weeping because Castro had not come to see the child in days. The couple later divorced.
``After he came to power, he took the child away from his mother,'' Grave de Peralta said.
The Grave de Peralta family was initially pro-Castro, as were many wealthy Cubans who opposed the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
On July 26, 1953, Castro and more than 100 of his supporters attacked the Moncado Army barracks in Santiago, Cuba.
``I had just returned from my honeymoon,'' Grave de Peralta recalled. ``Most of the people were happy about what was happening. If people had known he was a Communist, they wouldn't have supported him.''
The assault, however, was a debacle, and Castro was captured and put on trial. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trying to overthrow the government but served less than two years.
In 1955, in an effort to improve his public image, Batista granted a general amnesty and many political prisoners, including Castro, were released.
After his release, Castro left Cuba for Mexico, where he planned a revolution.
By Jan. 1, 1959, when he was forced into exile, Batista had lost the support of the Cuban people as well as a longtime ally, the United States. Castro became commander of the armed forces, then, in February, prime minister.
Grave de Peralta realized Castro's true intentions several days after he took power, when he made a lengthy speech in Havana.
``He said things I knew weren't right. I said to myself, `He's going to be worse than Batista.'''
That day, he told Ana Torralbas de Grave de Peralta that they must plan to leave. For the first year, Jose Grave de Peralta said, Castro denied he was a Communist and made some pretense of being a faithful Catholic.
Meanwhile, his followers began a purge of the clergy and anyone rumored to have supported Batista. More than 500 people were executed.
Castro had promised a redistribution of wealth. Implementing this policy included the ruthless humiliation of propertied non-Communist families such as the Grave de Peraltas.
Friends of Grave de Peralta's father urged him to transfer his money out of Cuba, but he did not believe that the Americans would permit Castro to stay in power. For a while, the family was able to live on cash reserves. But its possessions were no longer its own.
One day a group of women came to Ana Torralbas' door, wanting to look through her closets. They were the wives of local Communist officials. After going through her clothes, taking what they wanted, even asking if she had accessories to go with the outfits, the women asked to see her shoes. She
showed them, only to have them criticize her taste in footwear.
``I had to pretend to be pleased with the visit. I could not show my disgust,'' she said. ``Every Communist had the power to control what non-Communists did.''
When educated professionals, such as the Grave de Peraltas, asked permission to leave Cuba, officials were sent to their homes to take inventory of everything they owned, ``down to the last pair of underwear,'' Torralbas said.
Over time, several of Grave de Peralta's bothers, sisters and cousins were able to leave Cuba, often with the help of American business associates.
For Jose and Ana Grave de Peralta, leaving became a matter of special urgency when, in 1964, they were ordered to send their two oldest children to the government-run elementary school.
The Grave de Peraltas had tried to keep their children at home after Castro converted all religious schools into public ones, to facilitate Communist indoctrination.
Torralbas recalled the children being given one homework assignment that consisted solely of writing 50 times, ``God does not exist.''
One day in May, Grave de Peralta got a call from the school principal, a woman Grave de Peralta had assumed was a Communist.
She told him that she had a ``delicate'' matter to discuss. Communist officials had met with school principals and told them to provide the names of the best students in each class.
Grave de Peralta's children were top students in their respective classes. Puzzled, he asked why the officials wanted that information. The principal told Grave de Peralta that the government planned to put the children in a three-month ``pilot program'' boarding school so they could adjust to
being separated from their parents. They would then be sent to Russia for the rest of their education.
Grave de Peralta remembered meeting a Russian who spoke perfect Spanish. Grave de Peralta had asked him where he learned to speak the language so well, and the man told him he'd been born in Spain, but after that country's civil war, he had been sent to Russia and never returned to his parents.
Grave de Peralta hurried home to Torralbas. Weeping, he told her to go to a friend who had a fishing boat and ask him to give them the boat so they could try to escape to the United States.
``I'd rather die at sea,'' Grave de Peralta cried, ``than have my children sent to Russia.''
Fortunately, on June 20, they got a telegram saying they had permission to leave, and on July 6 they would finally do so.
Grave de Peralta was offered a job in Mexico, but a brother in Miami insisted he go there. However, Miami ``was saturated with Cubans,'' Grave de Peralta said.
His first job was packing tomatoes for $1.10 an hour. He then found a job working as a manual laborer for a builder of Fiberglas boats. ``I made $1.45 an hour, and I considered myself lucky.''
In August 1965, he moved to Mississippi, where he had been offered a position teaching math. While there, Grave de Peralta earned a master's degree in Spanish.
After five years in Mississippi, his sons suggested the family move to North Carolina. Grave de Peralta sent his resume to Vance County and he was hired to teach math and Spanish. Torralbas was hired to teach Spanish.
During the 1970s, the Grave de Peraltas appealed to the Red Cross to arrange for their parents, then in ill health, to emigrate to Miami. Their efforts were ultimately successful.
Several years after moving to North Carolina, Torralbas came home from school to find a package in her mailbox. It contained her wedding ring, the one she had left in Cuba. A few days later, her husband's wedding ring arrived in a similarly mysterious fashion.
She has questioned relatives, but all say they do not know who sent the rings or where they have been during the intervening years. Torralbas suspects that someone who only pretended to be Communist but, in fact, was a friend, had found a way to get the rings to the Grave de Peraltas.
Grave de Peralta formally retired in 1990, but has taught Spanish part time at Northern Vance High School. He now teaches part time at Vance-Granville Community College. They once considered moving after they retired, but say they have been treated so kindly in Henderson, they now plan to stay.
Grave de Peralta is skeptical that Castro has improved the lot of most Cubans. He cautions that tourists are only allowed to see what the government wants them to see. But their dislike for Castro does not extend to their native land.
``I cannot erase what I feel. My heart is Cuban,'' Grave de Peralta said.
And if Castro were gone? ``I'd go back to visit, but not to stay,'' said Torralbas. ``Our children are here and they don't feel like we do about Cuba.'' She added, ``You don't know how much we appreciate all the opportunities we have had here.''
Copyright © 1999 Myrtle Beach Online.
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