Margaret Randall's "Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary"

Margaret Randall is the author of dozens of books of poetry and prose, including Che on My Mind, and the translator of When Rains Became Floods: A Child Soldier's Story.

Randall applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression, and reported the following:

Ford Madox Ford's statement "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you" is certainly true of Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression. On this page, Haydée finds herself in Miami when she receives word that the dictator Batista has fled and her movement has won the war:

Haydée's creative mind was now in overdrive. She immediately thought of the commercial Cuban planes parked at Miami International Airport. She knew all too well that the United States would waste no time in trying to put obstacles in the way of the revolutionary government, confiscate what it could... She sent comrades to the airport to occupy those planes and get them back to the island.

These lines and those that follow speak powerfully to Haydée's imagination, creativity, brilliance and leadership role, as one of the few women who--along with their male comrades--made the Cuban Revolution. The book is filled with scenes such as this one, but also with 63 photographs, some never before published. Page 99 might have been a photograph or chapter heading, so FMF was onto something with regard to my rendering of Haydée Santamaría.

Visit Margaret Randall's website.

My Book, The Movie: Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary.

Writers Read: Margaret Randall.

--Marshal Zeringue