My Brigadista Year

“But —” I hesitated.

“You’re worried?”

“I can read well and write reasonably well, but I have no idea how to teach anyone else. I’m afraid . . .”

“No, no, you don’t have to be afraid, Lorita. That’s why we’re all here. We can read and write, but we don’t know how to teach someone else how to do what seems so natural to us.”

“That’s exactly why I’m afraid,” I said, not minding at all that she had used the diminutive of my name. She already felt like my older sister.

“Believe me, Lorita, the master teachers won’t let you go out into the countryside until they’ve crammed the how-tos of teaching literacy into that beautiful little head of yours.”

Marissa was so wise and kind in a way that none of the real teachers were, but she had told me to pay close attention, and so I did. After all, my life as a brigadista depended on it.

The master teacher of our group had to cram a lot in my “little head.” On that first day he gave each of us two books. One was a teachers’ manual called Alfabeticemos, or Let’s Be Literate. In this book were passages we brigadistas would read aloud to encourage our students. The second was the book for the students called Venceremos, or We Shall Prevail. The students’ primer had been carefully researched, he told us, so that the first words the student would learn to read would be words that mattered to him or her and to the building of our new nation.

There was a picture before each lesson. One was of three farmers taking a break to chat about their work. Another showed young people planting trees in a deforested area. Then there was one of a fisherman showing off his day’s catch. We were told to begin each lesson by using the pictures to encourage a discussion among the students. And we were never to act like arrogant authorities, no matter how our own teachers at home had behaved. The textbook was called We Shall Prevail for a reason, he said. We, as teachers, would be working together in a common cause with those who were our students. “You will be learning, too,” the master teacher said. “Never forget that. You must be courteous, and, above all, respectful and open to all the things your students will teach you.”

“Suppose someone doesn’t want to learn to read?” a young man asked.

“Then you must not be impatient. You must slowly win him over.”

A girl near me asked, “What if a man doesn’t want a young girl for a teacher?” That was my question, too, but I felt then as I did during those first months of secondary school: too shy to ask any questions for fear I’d betray my ignorance.

“That may be a real problem for some of you,” he said, looking around at the large room full of young people, more than half of us girls. “You girls will have to win them over as friends first. As you work beside them in the fields and in their homes, learning what they can teach you, I believe they will come to realize that you have something valuable to teach them as well. You have been taught in your own homes to respect the authority of your fathers. Respect these men as though they are your fathers; never use a voice of authority with them. Work hard, be cheerful. Teach their children, their wives, whoever in the household is willing to learn. I think the fathers will come to see that they do not want to be left behind.”

I felt a pang, remembering once more how I had flaunted my papi’s authority — how reluctantly he had signed his name to the permission sheet.

The master teacher explained every page of the students’ manual to us so that we could explain it clearly to our students. Other authorities gave lectures on agriculture — most of us had never seen sugar cane growing in a field or oxen pulling a plow. Now we were to be working beside the farmers who cultivated the land and provided the food that we had always taken for granted when it appeared each day on our dining-room tables. At our home in Havana, as poor as we felt we were, my mother paid an even poorer neighbor to wash our clothes. In the country, we would be the washerwomen and, to my horror, the doctors, too! A nurse taught us basic first aid, because the nearest real doctor might be many hours away.

“I hope I’m never called to administer first aid,” I said to Marissa. “I’ve never even put a plaster on one of my little brothers when he skinned his knees. Suppose something dreadful happens.”

“There you go, Lorita, imagining all sorts of catastrophes. Something may indeed happen, but I’m wagering that if or when it does, you’ll be up to the challenge.”

She saw the doubt in my eyes and laughed her wonderful laugh. “First of all, you must take that look of gloom off your face. Stand up straight and confront head-on whatever it is. Just standing taller will make you feel more confident.”

“Really?”

“Try it!”

I straightened up. I did feel more confident.

“And that smile of yours is the greatest asset you have. Don’t forget to include that.”

I had been in Varadero less than a week when the disastrous news came like the roaring of a hurricane wind on a cloudless day. Three of our airfields had been attacked by planes with insignia painted on them to make it seem they were part of our own air force.

As soon as I had a free moment, I raced to find Marissa.

“What’s going on?” I asked her. I needed someone to make sense of the bombing. Bombs belonged in huge world wars in Europe and Asia, not on our island.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But Batista no longer has an air force. Those must have been planes from the United States.”

“But they had our national insignia painted on them. That’s what the news said. That’s why our forces didn’t shoot them down before they attacked.”

“Even at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese flew planes with the rising sun on their wings,” she said quietly.

“What?” I didn’t understand her meaning then, but later I realized that she thought that it was a cowardly act to make people think the airplanes about to kill them were friendly ones.

The bombings were frightening enough, but two days later, on April 17, we learned that early in the morning a large rebel force had landed less than a three-hour journey south of Varadero along the Girón shore at a place known as the Bay of Pigs.