Written by Eddie LeShure – Imagine meeting a family that included not only somebody who was kidnapped during a civil war, but also the person who literally “wrote the book on” training guerrillas?
How about a family including an individual whose godfather is Fidel Castro, plus someone else who married an El Salvadoran president?
Or a family whose aristocratic ancestors were hunted by peasant revolutionaries in the 1930s, but which also has a woman who regularly visited Che Guevara when he was in jail in the 1950s?
While in El Salvador I had the rare opportunity of meeting such a remarkable family – one whose past is virtually a prism through which one can view many sides and aspects of Central America’s turbulent and fascinating past. There’s a historical dichotomy in this lineage that defies both logic and probability. It is the Bayo family.
On my way back to Xela during six weeks of traveling through several Central American countries, I stopped in the small city of Juayua in mountainous western El Salvador. I’d heard it was a lovely area and it certainly is all of that. Arriving by bus, I came across a rather pretentious sounding pensión named El Parador de los Nobles that I opted to stay at. Little did I know whom I was about to meet, nor the captivating story I which was about to hear.
The centerpiece of our tale is a certain General Alberto Bayo, someone I doubt you’ve ever heard of, but who nevertheless had a major impact on the history and politics of this hemisphere. For example, it’s highly unlikely that without having met Bayo a band of guerrillas under the direction of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara would have ever succeeded in the Cuban revolution of 1959. It’s also very unlikely that without knowing Bayo that Che would’ve ever become the worldwide legendary figure he was and still is today. My narrators were Beto (short for Alberto) and Charlie Bayo – two grandsons of the General.
It all started when Cuban born Bayo, a pilot and officer in the Spanish Foreign Legion in the early 1930s, was involved in a colonial campaign in Morocco against local forces led by Abd-El-Krim. As Beto told me, what appeared to be a vastly inferior enemy – smaller and more poorly equipped – was continually defeating the Spaniards. Captain Bayo was determined to find out how this was happening, so he did what he could to secretly observe the Moroccans in action. On one occasion he spotted movement by a handful of them in a remote part of the desert. The men were repeatedly walking back and forth on a trail between some hills, seemingly for no reason. Then they separated and dug holes in the top of a few hills and hid themselves…waiting.
Their grandfather had explained how he then understood the rebel’s plan – to make it appear as though a large force of soldiers had passed through that area and to lie hidden in ambush for an unsuspecting enemy. A large contingent of Spanish fighters could be virtually annihilated in this manner. Brilliant! It was then that Bayo decided to become an expert on these tactics and, according to my sources, actually coined the phrase, “guerrilla warfare”. He later wrote the first text specifically dedicated to this topic, 150 Questions to a Guerrilla, which has since been translated into English (and is available on Amazon).
Bayo later returned to Spain and once the Spanish Civil War began in 1936 he found himself opposing fascist General Francisco Franco, who would eventually emerge victoriously and dictatorially rule Spain for decades. Since Bayo was on the losing side, he fled to France where he was imprisoned for some time before eventually fleeing to politically-friendly Mexico. While there, Bayo advised and trained revolutionary fighters in many conflicts throughout Central America and the Caribbean, making a name for himself as the pre-eminent expert on guerrilla warfare. He subsequently wrote another book entitled, “Storms in the Caribbean”.
Meanwhile Fidel and Raúl Castro and about thirty fellow insurgents had also found themselves in Mexico. After failing to overthrow Batista’s autocratic regime with a disastrous 1953 attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba and being jailed for two years as a result, they’d been exiled and decided they needed Bayo’s expertise for their future plans. It was at this time that Dr. Ernesto Guevara was in Mexico as well, transformed through his travels northward from his native Argentina into a committed fighter against the “evils of imperialism”. (He’d been in Guatemala in 1954 when President Arbenz had been forced out of office by a CIA led “liberation army”.) He’d met Fidel and had quickly decided to join forces with him.
In 1955, Fidel made arrangements with “the Master”, as Che later referred to Bayo, to train his collection of rag tag soldiers. My hosts Beto and Charlie were then ages 6 and 5 and living with their parents and grandfather in Mexico City, though born in El Salvador. As their training began, the group of guerrillas were split up among three houses, some of them staying at the General’s home. Despite their youth at the time, they vividly recall Che and Fidel, as no doubt these peculiar foreigners made quite an impression on the young lads. Beto commented, “I remember grandpa playing chess with Che and Fidel and he said that Che was the better of the two. Neither had beards then as they grew them later when they were in the mountains of Cuba.”
In May 1956, Bayo made arrangements for weapons and the use of a sizable farm in Chalco, about 50 km east of Mexico City where training could be expanded and intensified. The General named Che “chief of personnel” and later described him as “the best guerrilla of them all.” Charlie claimed the family had photos of them sitting with Che and Fidel, guns in their laps. “I was kind of a favorite of my grandfather and he’d sometimes take me along to the farm.” (I should mention that I’ve verified most of what I was told by the Bayo brothers, either through internet research on General Bayo, or while reading Jon Lee Anderson’s excellent biography of Guevara entitled simply “Che”. I’ve found no contradictions.)
Beto and Charlie retold stories from their grandfather about the rigorous training. Apparently the General, who was then in his mid 60s, led them on long grueling marches for days on end without eating. “If I can do this at my age, you should be able to do it for twice this long!” he reportedly told the young trainees. “And if you wish to survive and succeed, you’ll need to do just that!” General Bayo had known the worst of times in battle. They told me that once a bomb exploded near their grandfather and the pressure from impact literally blew his eyes out of his head. He pushed them back in himself, but permanently lost his sight in one eye.
In late June, Mexican police agents got wind of what was going on at the farm, arrested the whole lot of them (aside from Bayo and Raúl) and threw them in jail – accused of plotting the assassination of Batista in collusion with Mexican communists. Havana unsuccessfully demanded their extradition. Fidel later stated that the most dedicated and supportive visitor to him and his men while they were imprisoned had been the daughter-in-law of General Bayo, Charlie and Beto’s mother. Eventually the only charge against them was violation of immigration laws and by August, Fidel, Che, and all their cohorts had been released.
They immediately returned to their preparations for a marine “invasion” of Cuba to initiate a guerrilla war and topple the Batista regime. Finally on December 2, 1956 they landed the Granma, a battered thirty-eight-foot yacht, on the Cuban coast at Las Coloradas. The men were instantly attacked. By the time they’d reached the high hills and safety of the Sierra Maestra, only 12 of the 82 men who’d come ashore had not been killed or captured, but that included the core of Fidel and Raúl Castro, plus Che. They had merely seven weapons among all of them. But in January 1959, after a prolonged and bloody effort and amid euphoric popular demonstrations, Castro and his ‘barbudos’ (bearded ones) swept heroically into Havana. A new era in Latin American history had begun and Che later said it never could have happened without Bayo’s tutelage! “We have the General to thank!”
After Batista’s ouster and the onset of control by Castro’s forces, General Bayo moved to Havana and brought along his son’s family. Charlie and Beto went to military school and hung out and played with Fidel’s son. They were constantly surrounded by bodyguards and enjoyed sneaking out at night, just as most young kids are keen on defying authority. When a baby sister named Lupe (short for Lupita) came along, Fidel himself became the godfather and claimed he did it to honor the family.
Although the Cuban armed forces were put under Raúl’s control, the topped ranked officer was General Bayo with a rank even surpassing Fidel’s, who was a Brigadier Colonel. He engendered that much respect. When Bayo eventually died in 1967 (ironically the same year Che was killed in Bolivia), a mausoleum was constructed in his honor, adorned by a letter previously written by Che honoring the General’s immense contributions. There’s also a boulevard named after Bayo in the capital.
So…what we have here is a family firmly steeped in revolutionary history, right? A family with roots deeply entrenched in the subversive and anti-establishment path, correct? Not entirely! What makes the story even more intriguing is the “other side” of this remarkable family.
During the late 60s, the mother of Charlie, Beto and Lupe decided she no longer cared for either her husband or Fidel’s continually more autocratic politics and moved her children to El Salvador, where she was originally from. In fact, her ancestors were one of “The 14 Families” of European descent that’d controlled most of the land in El Salvador and basically enslaved the indigenous people for centuries. Over time their massive landholdings developed into immense coffee plantations that extended throughout the region I was in.
The pensión I was in overlooked what, at one time, had mostly been the family’s. In front of me was a spectacular sweeping valley, dotted with nine (!) volcanoes, including Volcán de Santa Ana (2365m) and the still smoking Volcán Izalco (1910m). This is prime growing country and the coffee that comes out of these mountains is among the world’s finest. In 1932 Augustín Farabundo Martí led an uprising of peasants and indigenous people against the feudal style landowners and their ancestors narrowly escaped capture and death. Someone tipped them off and they hid until the military responded with La Matanza (The Massacre), killing about 30,000 locals. Martí was captured and executed, forever becoming a hero of the people.
Lupe (Fidel’s god-daughter) eventually married a man named Johnny and I met both of them (as well as their six-year-old daughter Natalie) when they came up to Juayua from San Salvador during the weekend I was there. Everyone crashed here and there inside the house, which is apparently of joint ownership. I discovered while talking with them that guerrillas had kidnapped Johnny’s father in the 1980s during the civil war that waged at that time. He was held underground for over six months before a ransom of over $1,000,000 was paid for his release. Unfortunately his health was so poor that he died soon thereafter.
Beto told me that his aunt (mother’s sister) had once been married to José Napolean Duarte, who was elected president of El Salvador in 1984. “When I got married, President Duarte came to my wedding and offered his presidential palace for our honeymoon.” This was not said in bragging, just as fact. Over time the family has lost much of its land and now has but a fraction of its previous holdings, so it’s a modest business – one that merely supplements the income of each family. Charlie, Beto, Lupe, and two other brothers now share what had been their mother’s land and I went out to see part of it. In addition to coffee, they also grow oranges, limes and macadamia nuts.
At the finca, I helped Charlie and Beto load heavy bags of freshly picked coffee beans on to their beat up old pickup truck so that we could then deliver them to the nearby mill for processing. Their primary customer is Starbucks. It’s now a far cry from the old days, but there’re no complaints. As Charlie and I walked past his coffee plants (he has about 25 hectares) he pointed at the view, “Isn’t it beautiful?” Smiling, he patted his chest and added, “Here is where I’m now rich!”
I found the family to be extremely warm and down-to-earth and I got the impression that the approximately thirty employees they had at their plantation were well treated. “I’m teaching the kids English,” Charlie claimed and later proved when I went with him. They were extraordinarily kind and gracious to me and when I left I was given robust hugs and a promise of enduring friendship.
When I spoke to the Bayo family about history, politics, and life in Central America I felt as though they were well qualified to comment. More than most people they fully understand that politics is never black and white, but has many shades of truth. When I put questions to them regarding various issues and events about the past and present I got carefully thought out answers. More than anything, they’re realists. “Batista was a son-of-a-bitch!” commented Beto. He then shrugged his shoulders and added, “But now Fidel is a son-of-a-bitch! Yet the Cuban people have had something special there, so who is right and who is wrong?”
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Eddie LeShure is an insight meditation teacher and substance abuse counselor whose primary passion is bringing mindfulness practice into the realms of addiction recovery, trauma relief, and self-care. He teaches and leads groups in various treatment and recovery settings, as well as in series classes, workshops, retreats, conferences and conventions. Eddie began meditating in the early ‘80s, regularly teaches at Asheville Insight Meditation, is a NAMI Family Support Group Facilitator, and is co-founder of A Mindful Emergence, LLC (amindfulemergence.com).
These days, Eddie’s writing centers around his teaching and presentations, but in the past it was quite different. He chronicled and displayed his adventures around the world for several years under the banner, “On the Road With Fast Eddie”, and in more recent times numerous articles on the local jazz scene were published in Rapid River Arts & Culture as “WNC Jazz Profiles”. Eddie is now co-authoring a manual for treatment centers which focuses on integrating mindfulness practices with stages of addiction recovery.