The first “deserter” from the Rebel Army was one of the 82 members of the Granma yacht expedition: Raúl Díaz Torres.
HAVANA, Cuba. – Raúl Díaz Torres went to Mexico to join the armed group led by Fidel Castro who returned to Cuba to fight the Cuban regime. Fulgencio Batista. After the Granma yacht disembarked on December 2, 1956, with the expedition members pursued by government forces, Díaz Torres managed to escape and hide for several weeks until he rejoined the Fidelist forces on February 17, 1957.
In the guerrilla struggle he participated, among other combats, in the attack on the La Plata barracks. He finished the war with the rank of captain, but was appointed commander on January 1, 1959.
Shortly after the rebels entered Havana, upon returning to Güines, the town where he was born in 1930, he had a beard that reached almost to his waist and his olive green uniform was little more than a rag.
According to the testimony of his friend and fellow Granma expedition member Ernesto Fernández, when his old companions came to greet him, Díaz Torres received them with affection and humility, but when they praised him for his attitude in the war he told them: “Why are you congratulating me? I only did the same as Fidel: nothing. I did very little since I realized that Fidel Castro spent most of his time lying in a hammock, smoking H Upmann cigars and reading books.”
According to Fernández, a friend told him: “If you went to prison to talk to General Eulogio Cantillo, I am sure that you would have received a more favorable opinion of Fidel Castro than the one Raúl Díaz has.”
A few months later, Díaz Torres astonished several people who heard him say: “Now we really have had woodworm, this is rubbish; Fidel is not only a communist, but he is a tremendous son of a bitch!”
He advised his friend Juan Domínguez: “Get your family out of here, I know that this guy is a million times worse than Batista.”
I learned about some of these events from my mother, who knew Raúl Díaz Torres and his brother Rubén, who lived in the Eléctrico District and worked as a barrier guard on the railroad track that is located under the Tallapiedra elevated.
The event that caused Raúl Díaz Torres’ definitive break with the Castro regime occurred in 1961, in Güines, when during a staging of the life and death of Jesus Christ, which was attended by thousands of people, Fidelist militiamen began to shoot at the attendees, making them run in terror. Díaz Torres, in front of those present, tore the stars of his rank of commander from his shoulders, threw them on the floor and shouted: “I did not come to Granma nor was I in the Sierra for this shit.”
Shortly after, he sought political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy. exiled in Miamibecame an active anti-Castro.
In that city he married and had three children: Raúl, Ricardo and Rubén. Sick with chronic diabetes, he suffered the amputation of both his legs. He died in the early 1980s.
