Last spring I traveled to Cuba on a cultural tour whose itinerary was largely set by the Cuban government. We visited schools, art museums, and many places of crucial importance to the revolution. One day, on a walking tour of Santa Clara, our guide led us around a corner and there was . . . a yellow bulldozer on a pedestal. Curious choice for park art, I thought. I hadn’t read enough history to know its significance. Our guide explained: at the tail end of the revolution, Che and his soldiers, greatly outnumbered, took the town of Santa Clara, and Batista, in response, sent several hundred soldiers and weapons on an armored train from Havana to Santa Clara to wipe out the enemy once and for all. But, learning of the plan, Che’s barbudos—bearded revolutionaries—fired up a D-6 Caterpillar, this very one, and tore apart the railroad tracks, which resulted in a great derailing. It proved to be the decisive move of the revolution. Batista fled the country the next day (though not before cleaning out the banks), and soon thereafter Castro became president. Sometimes you just don’t know what’s going to save the day. On December 29, 1958, in Santa Clara, Cuba, it turned out to be a homely yellow bulldozer.
Key to understanding how a train derailment could make such a difference in the political fortunes of a nation is to know that many of Batista’s soldiers were already covertly in support of the revolution. Others joined as soon as the train crashed. The revolution had already failed once. Fidel had already been jailed, then (surprisingly) released. The Batista regime ground on, starving the people, serving the desires of the regime and its mobbed-up investors from America. By the time the bulldozer was deployed the revolutionaries had pretty much already won the hearts and minds of everyone else.
Poet Larry Levis has written that “every revolution ends, or it begins, in memory,” a thought I kept returning to during the week I was in Cuba. It turned out to be the same week Obama came, also right before the Stones gave a free concert in Havana, and people there were excited that more opportunities might finally be opening up for them. Here in the US, meanwhile, almost twenty candidates were running for president. Most people I know never thought Trump would be the one to run against, let alone defeat, Hillary, but now we’re reeling from the shock, wondering how in hell we’re going to preserve a semblance of the democracy he and his Caligarish cabinet seem bent on doing away with. How ironic that the “brutal dictator” next door managed despite our country’s fifty-year-plus embargo to ensure free housing, education, and health care for Cuban citizens, whereas our PEOTUS is practically guaranteed to dismantle the same institutions. Say what you will about Fidel, and there is plenty to say that does not put him in a good light, people in Cuba are not homeless, illiterate, or without access to decent healthcare. Old-timers there remember what life was like under Batista. When Castro died there was genuine mourning for the man.
But here we have a bunch of homegrown Nazis steering a Trump train toward every principle this country was founded on. Can it too be derailed? What’s it going to take? Will enough electors go faithless to change the outcome of the election? Will the Democrats, including Obama, be able to actually get full disclosure of Putin’s meddling? Will there be enough evidence to find Trump (and McConnell) guilty of treason? Might the old Wobbly idea of a general strike prove to the money men that they can no longer conduct business as usual? Will we pull off something we haven’t yet thought of?
The victory over DAPL at Standing Rock, even if Trump later undoes it, reminded me of a line from a Doors song: “They got the guns, but we got the numbers.” If anything is our bulldozer in this struggle it’s that: our numbers. Around three million more of us voted for ‘her’ than for ‘him.’ Everyone I know is calling, writing, signing, donating, marching, you name it, even though we’re filled with dread that what we’re doing is not enough. We’ll find out soon enough.
I’m setting my thoughts down now in case we lose. I want to hold in my mind images of victory to keep me going through the darker times ahead, because even if we can prevent a Trump/Pence/Putin presidency we still have the effects of climate change to contend with, and a zillion other wrongs that need to be righted. But at least there was this: a coalition of tribes, veterans, and ordinary citizens managed to shut down DAPL. I will remember the photos of the people there and of the fireworks above their snowy campground when their victory was announced.
And I will also remember the bulldozer.
