By Jim Garringer. The
Star Press. July 4, 2001.
NEW CASTLE - Herland and Agnes Tabares will join thousands of fellow
citizens across East Central Indiana today in celebrating 225 years of American
freedom.
But their celebration is tempered by a frustrated dream of freedom for their
Cuban homeland. It is a dream that nearly cost them their lives 40 years ago.
That dream died on the day of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, the day
Fidel Castro's militia came looking for Herland.
It was 7:30 a.m. April 17, 1961, and Herland and Agnes were preparing to
leave their comfortable home in the port town of Cardenas, Cuba, for their
respective jobs at La Progresiva Junior College. Herland was a gymnastics
instructor, and Agnes was a professor in the language department.
But the Tabareses were more than educators; they were
contra-revolutionaries. In Herland's gymnasium, stashed in bags of rice that had
been used for tumbling mats, were enough guns, food and medicine to equip a
small army.
Herland was a "cell" leader. Throughout the Cuban countryside,
citizens hoping for the ouster of Fidel Castro had banded into cell groups of
three or four in preparation for a soon-to-come invasion by their expatriated
countrymen who had fled to Florida upon Castro's rise to power 2 years before.
Herland's ragtag cell included a Spanish priest and a demolitions expert who
had blown off an arm in an accident.
Herland and Agnes had both had encounters with Castro before. In his role as
dean of students at La Progresiva, Herland had expelled Castro's nephew, Waldo
Balart, from the school after an incident in which Balart had run naked from the
men's dormitory. Castro himself came to pick up Balart.
Agnes had been in graduate school with Castro at the University of Havana,
and while she had never known Castro personally, she heard plenty about him from
disgruntled co-eds who did. "He was a troublemaker," she said.
They had been living on pins and needles for 2 years, worried that a member
of the Neighborhood Vigilance Committee (government-sponsored neighborhood
spies) might report them. Many throughout the country had been arrested.
The timing seemed right to Herland, who along with his compatriots, was
buoyed by the promise of U.S. air cover to support an assault by Cuban
expatriates.
Along with the organization of the cell groups and procurement of weapons,
food and medicine, strategic maps of Cuba's infrastructure had been secured and
forwarded to the American military. All that remained was to wait.
Herland and Agnes had their 18-month-old daughter, Maria, stay with Agnes's
parents near Havana, just in case something went wrong.
At 7:30 that morning, someone knocked on the door. Herland answered and was
greeted by a member of another cell. "The invasion came," the man said
breathlessly, and the American air support had not materialized. "The
militia is looking for you; you've got to leave town immediately."
Much later, the Tabareses would find out that the American planes had been
ordered back to their carriers without firing a shot, and that a member of the
Vigilance Committee had recognized the one-armed man as he left the Tabares
house one day, and reported Herland to the authorities.
"It was such a confusing moment," Agnes said. "We didn't have
time for anything. I ran inside, grabbed our diplomas [proof they had been
educated would be useful if they made it to another country], threw them in the
car, and told Herland, 'Now go!' "
Agnes decided to stay behind. If the militia captured one of them, perhaps
the other could get to Maria somehow and escape the country. By 7:45, Herland
had stuffed 250 pesos into one pocket and a .38-caliber revolver in the other.
Then, not knowing when he would see Agnes or Maria again, he jumped into one of
their cars and sped off.
Agnes's head was swimming. It seemed at that moment, the only thing she
could do was go on to La Progresiva, where two groups of students were awaiting
mid-term exams in her classrooms. If she failed to show up, she decided, it
would look suspicious.
Upon arrival just after 8 a.m., she was called to the lobby. Waiting there
were the government-appointed mayor and five soldiers with machine guns.
"We are looking for your husband," the mayor said.
"I haven't seen him in 10 days," Agnes stammered. "Some
people told me that he got on a small boat to Florida."
"You are a liar! I saw him in town last night," the mayor snapped.
"Come with us."
It was then that the school's vice president stepped from a growing crowd of
students and administrators. "You can't take her with you," he
insisted. "She's got two classes of students waiting for her to give them a
test."
Astonishingly, that was all it took to dispatch the soldiers.
"We will be back!" the mayor snarled as they turned to leave.
Agnes trudged up the stairs to her classroom. She mechanically gave the
tests, gathered the papers and went home.
Meanwhile, Herland was trying to reach the home of his Aunt Mercedes in
Havana. He was taking a chance going there. She and her family were Communists.
"[Aunt Mercedes] was pro-Castro," Herland said, "but she was
also pro-Herland."
The road from Cardenas to Havana, normally a 2-hour drive, was jammed with
tanks and soldiers, all headed for Cardenas to stave off a possible invasion
there.
Herland was never stopped or asked for identification. Confusion reigned,
and the army was looking for enemy soldiers. The roads did close later that day,
but not before Herland made it safely to his aunt's house.
When Agnes got home, she found a ransacked house and a hysterical
housekeeper and cook. Nine militia groups had searched the house while Agnes had
been at La Progresiva, taking valuables, breaking china and overturning
furniture.
As yet another band arrived, Agnes recognized a young soldier named Mario, a
former student. The anger and darkness in Mario's eyes convinced Agnes for the
first time that she was about to die.
"God, if this is the last time I can speak to these students, give me
the right words," Agnes prayed silently.
After several moments of uneasy silence, Mario spoke up. "Hey guys, let
her go."
After the roads reopened, she reached her parents' home in Havana. She was
stopped several times on the way but was never detained.
The waiting game
From late April until mid-June, Agnes made the trek from her parents' home
to the Havana airport every other day, trying to buy tickets for her and Maria
to get out of the country - anywhere out of the country. But it seemed that
everyone else was trying to get out, too.
Besides, it was one thing to buy the tickets, but another to get on one of
the outbound planes. Travelers had to clear the government's G-2 list - a list
of names of people airport officials were to apprehend. She would worry about
that later. On June 17, she bought two tickets to Kingston, Jamaica, for her and
Maria. Her flight was set to depart on July 17 - 3 months to the day after the
ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.
Several miles away, Herland had his own set of problems. Aunt Mercedes
agreed to hide him, but she was enraged by his role in the invasion attempt.
"You are a worm!" she shouted, over and over.
But when family members were in the house, she dutifully hid Herland under
beds and in closets. His 17-day stay at Mercedes's home ended abruptly after a
friend saw him in the back alley.
"Herland!" he gasped. "What are you doing here? They are
looking for you everywhere!"
Mercedes's home was actually one of 10 places he hid from April to July.
A couple of weeks before Agnes's flight was to leave, a young man appeared
at her parents' home asking for her. He said he was Herland's cousin and that
Herland had sent him.
Agnes had never seen him before and didn't know how to respond. What if this
person was from the government? But what if he was telling the truth? He could
represent her last hope of seeing Herland again.
She tested the young man with questions about the family. Once satisfied
that he really had been sent by her husband, she told him to go back to Herland
with a message to be at the Havana airport early July 17.
The final 2 weeks before July 17 were spent much the same way as the
previous 10, avoiding the militia and trying not to act suspicious.
When Herland and Agnes finally saw each other, their reunion was very
nonchalant, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the guards and soldiers
swarming the airport. But they hadn't counted on Maria's reaction upon seeing
Herland for the first time in months. She squealed, "Daddy!" and ran,
first to him, then back to Agnes. It seemed as if the entire airport was
watching the toddler as her parents tried in vain to pick her up and calm her
down.
Suddenly, Maria ran headlong into the legs of a machine gun-toting soldier.
There was a moment of stunned silence before the soldier smiled, picked Maria up
and handed her to Herland.
Then, the Tabareses caught another break: Inexplicably, neither Herland nor
Agnes was on the G-2 list.
One final hurdle remained. The two tickets Agnes had bought would have to
get the three of them onto the plane. At the counter, Herland, Agnes and Maria
presented their tickets to the ticket agent.
"You only have two tickets," he said curtly. "You are going
to have to leave your daughter here."
When she heard that, Agnes, who had previously maintained a relative state
of calm, erupted.
"Are you crazy?" she shouted. "Do you think I'm going to
leave my daughter here?"
At that point, a female agent stepped in and scolded Agnes for the way she
had spoken to an "important person" and told her to calm down.
As Herland sat in one corner of the terminal with Maria, Agnes retreated to
another corner and prayed. Then she went back to the ticket agent and begged.
"Please, let us take her," Agnes cried. "She can sit on our
laps; she won't be any problem."
After enduring a few minutes of this, the agent angrily said, "All
right! You can take her. But it will cost you 100 American dollars."
Agnes's heart sank. Before Castro's rise to power, American and Cuban
currency intermingled in the Cuban economy. But after the revolution, it became
a crime to even possess American money.
On a telephone from the airport, Agnes called one friend after another.
Finally, she reached the president of the seminary at La Progresiva. He was able
to collect the $100, make the trip from Cardenas to Havana, and then spirit the
money to them in an envelope just 2 hours before the plane's departure.
As they boarded the plane, several soldiers moved quickly toward them.
Rather than apprehending the Tabareses, the soldiers intercepted the man in
front of them in line, grabbing him by the arm and whisking him into an office.
After the passengers were seated on the plane, the soldiers boarded it and
took the man's traveling companion off as well.
"We were so horrified, we didn't dare even look up," said Agnes.
As their homeland dropped away beneath them, it all seemed surreal. Had they
actually escaped Castro and Cuba? What was waiting when they landed in Jamaica?
They would deal with that the way they had dealt with everything else: one
crisis at a time.
This is Part I of a two-part series. | 
