By the time of the Great Panic, when the world finally woke up to the nightmare breaking down their doors, Cuba had already prepared itself for war.
The simple fact of geography spared us the danger of large-scale, overland swarms. Our invaders came from the sea, specifically from an armada of boat people. Not only did they bring the contagion, as we have seen throughout the world, there were also those who believed in ruling their new homes as modern-day conquistadors.
Look at what happened in Iceland, a prewar paradise, so safe and secure they never found the need to maintain a standing army. What could they do when the American military withdrew? How could they stop the torrent of refugees from Europe and western Russia? Is it no mystery how that once idyllic arctic haven became a cauldron of frozen blood, and why, to this day, it is still the most heavily infested White Zone on the planet? That could have been us, easily, had it not been for the example set by our brothers in the smaller Windward and Leeward Islands.
Those men and women, from Anguilla to Trinidad, can proudly take their place as some of the greatest heroes of the war. They first eradicated multiple outbreaks along their archipelago, then, with barely a moment to catch their collective breaths, repelled not only seaborne zombies, but an endless flood of human invaders, too. They spilled their blood so that we did not have to. They forced our would-be latifundista to reconsider their plans for conquest, and realize that if a few civilians armed with nothing but small arms and machetes could defend their homelands so tenaciously, what would they find on the shores of a country armed with everything from main battle tanks to radar-guided antiship missiles?
Naturally, the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles were not fighting for the best interests of the Cuban people, but their sacrifices did allow us the luxury of setting our own terms. Any seeking sanctuary would find themselves greeted with the saying so common among Norteamericano parents, “While under my roof, you will obey my rules.”
Not all of the refugees were Yankees; we had our share from mainland Latin America, from Africa, and western Europe, Spain especially—many Spaniards and Canadians had visited Cuba either on business or holiday. I had gotten to know a few of them before the war, nice people, polite, so different from the East Germans of my youth who used to toss handfuls of candy in the air and laugh while we children scrambled for it like rats.
The majority of our boat people, however, originated from the United States. Every day more would arrive, by large ship or private craft, even on homemade rafts that brought an ironic smile to our faces. So many of them, a total of five million, equal to almost half of our indigenous population, and along with all the other nationalities, they were placed under the jurisdiction of the government’s “Quarantine Resettlement Program.”
I would not go so far as to call the Resettlement Centers prison camps. They could not compare to the lives suffered by our political dissidents; the writers and teachers…I had a “friend” who was accused of being a homosexual. His stories from prison cannot compare to even the harshest Resettlement Center.
It was not easy living, however. These people, no matter what their prewar occupation or status, were initially put to work as field hands, twelve to fourteen hours a day, growing vegetables in what had once been our state-run sugar plantations. At least the climate was on their side. The temperature was dropping, the skies were darkening. Mother Nature was kind to them. The guards, however, were not. “Be glad you’re alive,” they’d shout after each slap or kick. “Keep complaining and we’ll throw you to the zombies!”
Every camp had a rumor about the dreaded “zombie pits,” the hole in which they’d throw the “troublemakers.” The DGI [the General Intelligence Directorate] had even planted prisoners in the general population to spread stories about how they personally witnessed men being lowered, headfirst, into the boiling lake of ghouls. This was all just to keep everyone in line, you see, none of it was actually true…though…there were stories about the “Miami whites.” The majority of American Cubanos were welcomed home with open arms. I myself had several relatives living in Daytona who just barely escaped with their lives. The tears of so many reunion s in those early, frantic days could have filled the Caribbean Sea. But that first wave of postrevolution immigrants—the affluent elite who had flourished under the old regime and who spent the rest of their lives trying to topple everything we’d worked so hard to build—as far as those aristos were concerned…I am not saying there is any proof that they were thrown to the ghouls by their fat, reactionary, Bacardi blanka drinking asses…But if they were, they can suck Batista’s balls in hell.