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Triumphal Sweep. A week later Batista ignominiously fled to Dominican Republic exile, and his army surrendered. Rebel Commanders Guevara and Cienfuegos sped into Havana in captured tanks and took over the key garrisons, Cabana Fortress and Camp Columbia. For the next week Fidel Castro received the ovation of his islanders in a triumphal westward sweep. Even before he reached Havana, the record shops were selling a new guaracha:
Fidel has arrived,
Fidel has arrived.
Now we Cubans are freed
From the claws of the tyrant.
Fidel Castro had won by following Colonel Bayo's instructions almost to the letter. In a much publicized war, his small attacks and quick withdrawals held rebel casualties to a mere 250 men—less than the U.S. traffic toll over the New Year weekend—and he had taken only about 400 enemy lives at the front.
In his first post-victory action, Castro distributed the top army commands to Gramma veterans: Raul Castro in Santiago, Cienfuegos at Havana's Camp Columbia, Che Guevara at Cabana Fortress.
Preaching the Dream. Castro himself took to balconies and street corners for a marathon of three-hour orations, endlessly repeating his visionary plans to "purify" Cuba. "I want to go back to the Sierra Maestra," he said, "and build roads and hospitals and a school-city for 20,000 children. We must have teachers—a heroine in every classroom." He promised a homestead law to give the guajiro squatters title to the poor mountain plots they farm. The army would be a "people's army" built around los barbudos, the bearded veterans from the hills. He even had ideas on diet: "The silliest thing I know is that Cubans eat so much meat and so little fish."
Purification will give way slightly to the demands of U.S. tourists. Castro promised that he would allow the big casinos to reopen—but for tourists only, and without the U.S. mobsters who ran them for Batista. He said he would turn the national lottery into a kind of savings-and-loan association to cure the "improvidence" of the Cuban people. The Mambo Club is still open, but the prettiest girls have fled. At Madame Cuca's, a blondined, buxom wench hoped that "Fidel will never close us, but if he does, we will take to the streets. We could form a new underground." The theaters that used to specialize in wide-screen Technicolor pornographic movies closed up.
The most encouraging signpost in three turbulent weeks was the Cabinet appointed by Provisional President Manuel Urrutia. They were mostly responsible, moderate men, ready to get to work: ¶ José MirÓ Cardona, 56, dean of the Havana Bar Association, became Urrutia's Prime Minister and right-hand man. ¶ Rufo LÓpez Fresquet, respected economist and a top rebel moneyman in Havana, took over the national treasury. He found it considerably diminished by the $210 million that Batista spent on the war, but backed by a sound economy. To help meet bills, a group of U.S. companies paid taxes of $3,000,000 in advance. ¶ Roberto Agramonte, 54, a former ambassador to Mexico and a favored candidate in the 1952 elections canceled by Batista, became Minister of State.