Looking for a murdered child

By Aurelio Pedroso
apedrosop@yahoo.es

More than half a century after the sudden death of 6-year-old Orestes, the children of the village of Cayo Espino, Manzanillo, in the former Oriente province, still pretend they pull a yoke of oxen after setting four to six cans of soft drink or beer in rows of two, tying them together and dragging them with a rope. In the 1950s they did it with glass bottles and yelled at the imaginary beasts the same shouts, the same commands and similar reproaches.

The few villagers who survived the war between the followers of Fidel Castro and Fulgencio Batista say that Cayo Espino was an ideal place from which to take men and supplies to the rebels who were becoming strong in the intricate mountain. Nearby, a makeshift runway was laid down to fly arms to Sierra.

Hearing them and their descendants tell it, I could not help but reach the conclusion, fair and impartial, that things in such a dry site, choked with marabú trees, have not changed much in the past five decades. Asked when the region was more prosperous, some merely said “before.”

Perhaps the blunt “before” is a note of rebuke to the current difficulties, among which stands out – in the words of a former government delegate in the area – the lack of transportation. So much so, that the driver of the old ambulance now devotes his time to building kilns to make charcoal.

Cayo Espino then had three small stores, a medical practitioner named Gandarilla, a midwife, a primary school where the teacher from time to time didn’t show up because her amorous husband kept her home mornings to make love, a “club” built by the neighbors where on holidays you could listen to the famous organ of Manzanillo or watch a film, a small bar with a jukebox filled with boleros and Mexican rancheras, a Protestant church and a Catholic altar in a private house where Manzanillo’s priest officiated. Contact with the city was provided by a bus that left in the morning and returned in the afternoon over an embankment.

The main source of income and reason to live was the cultivation of rice and even today the green of the fields can be appreciated from the road.

To reach the site today one travels on a road that has needed maintenance for a long time. The children have a comfortable school, a doctor round the clock, a pharmacy, a social circle and a hard-currency store (TRD). The Protestant church is still active, and the most noticeable building in town is a small Catholic church recently built with contributions from the neighbors.

One of the largest contributors and a source of inspiration is named Virgen Escalona Remón, a woman who never misses a Sunday Mass or the meetings of the local cell of the Communist Party of Cuba. Virgin is the mother of the child Orestes, killed in April 1958 when, frustrated by the effectiveness of a rebel ambush in the area, Batista’s air force pounced on the defenseless town.

Gandarilla, the practitioner, was hiding in Manzanillo because he collaborated with the guerrillas and was sought by the Military Intelligence Service (SIM). There was very little he could do to treat the lethal effects of a 30-caliber bullet that pierced the femoral artery of Orestes, who, to his dying breath, professed heartbreaking words to his grandmother: “I’m going to die and I will not love you anymore.” On the road to a guerrilla hospital, the boy bled to death.

An Argentine journalist and revolutionary visiting the Sierra, Jorge Ricardo Masseti, witnessed the criminal incident, which moments later was broadcast over the rebel radio.

The child’s name, Orestes Gutiérrez Escalona, is well known in many parts of Cayo Espino and Manzanillo itself. His is a little-told story, sometimes distorted by the passage of time. Even so, on each anniversary of his death, the children gather at the obelisk and park built to perpetuate his memory. Standing near huge bottles made with cement in the likeness of oxen, the children tell the story of a life cut short at the age of six.

To his elderly mother, Virgen Escalona, it seems that time has not elapsed even five seconds. To the official historiography, Orestes is the first child martyr of the Sierra Maestra. To her, he was a child snatched by the arrogance that characterizes any war.