Women of the Rebellion

Spotted proudly among the bearded troopers as the main rebel army moved into Havana last week were handfuls of gun-toting girls. They were the women of the revolution, who rarely fired rifles but in day-to-day operations kept the hidden rebellion alive. Fidel Castro had a word of grateful praise for "the valor of the Cuban women in the waiting and praying and smuggling of guns, ammunition and messages."

For two years a slim, changing line of girls--about 800 in all--moved ceaselessly through government lines with the intelligence and supplies that were oxygen for the Sierra Maestra fire. The jump-off point for most was underground headquarters in a medical laboratory in eastern Santiago, less than a mile from the government fortress. It was operated as a cover by Mrs. Herminia Santos Bush, a handsome, steely matron whose rebel doctor-husband had been forced to flee. There, under flaring skirts, the rebellion's girls donned canvas harnesses equipped with pockets, loaded themselves with messages, gun parts, radios. One day four girls, chattering gaily, drove into rebel territory with an entire disassembled .30-cal. machine gun.

As guides, rebel girls escorted visiting politicians, correspondents, money couriers. One 30-year-old mother, ordered to take a visitor through the lines quickly, loaded her two daughters, aged 9 and 13, into her Chevrolet and using them as camouflage, got speedily through. For those caught, the penalties were beatings, head shavings, sometimes rape, and death by torture.

A few women stayed in the hills, bringing to Castro's disorganized camp a touch of petticoat efficiency. Most important girl rebel was Celia Sanchez, an olive-skinned brunette of about 30. Castro's secretary and money handler, she was a key personage in the headquarters after Castro; captains and lieutenants moved on her orders as though the "commandante" had personally given them. Haydee Santamaria, 31, now the wife of Education Minister Armando Hart, joined the uprising after Batista's jailers killed her rebel fiance and brother. In Castro's casual headquarters she was a cook one moment, an adviser the next, finally went to the U.S. as contact and fund raiser. Dr. Isabel Rojas, 32, commanded the only organized women fighters--a headquarters guard company that participated in a few easy ambushes in the war's final days. Protected closely by strike forces of guerrillas, her girls suffered only a few flesh wounds.

In the primitive setting of the Sierra Maestra, women ate dried codfish and roots, tried to cling to femininity and spent odd moments applying treasured nail polish or borrowing some peasant's iron to put a crease in their riding pants. In keeping with the rebel camp's notable strictness, born of the rebels' single-minded attention to the tasks of war, the women lived apart from the men.

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