Cuba developments bring back memories for Foothills resident

With great interest, Mary Ann Trendle-Tanner has watched history unfold in Cuba, from the time its government was taken over by Fidel Castro 50 years ago to the present, as Fidel's brother Raul succeeds him.

The Indiana-born Foothills resident has experienced the transformation of a country and its people, firsthand. Trendle-Tanner called Cuba her home for nearly a decade.

"I have beautiful memories of a gorgeous country and beautiful Cuban people."

In 1947, Trendle-Tanner's husband was hired by the United Fruit Company to take care of the Caterpillar tractors that helped pull the sugar cane out of the fields and into the mills for processing.

"So with our one and a half-year-old daughter, we boarded a 12-passenger sugar freighter to move to our adopted country, Cuba."

The company owned 1,000 acres that included a golf course in the center of the housing community. "We were placed in one of the lovely homes in the American colony."

She remembers going to cocktail parties at the homes there. "You were expected to entertain at least once a year. I would have 25 for dinner and bridge," she said.

"We just partied together a lot; we were like one big family. We had fun together - made our own fun. The company tried to keep us happy. We'd all go to the clubhouse in our long dresses and dance to the music outdoors and they'd have a 20-piece orchestra inside and a 15-piece orchestra outside."

But they adapted to the culture and local residents as well, she said. Although it was harder for men to build friendships with Cuban men because of some resentment among them about U.S. involvement in their economy, women didn't have that problem, she said. "We women really developed friendships with the Cuban women. We were all friends."

While living in Cuba, the couple had a second daughter and she remembers that the girls loved to go down to the mill to see the sugar being processed. She even learned to speak a little Spanish so she could go to town and buy vegetables, but she would sometimes bring her daughters with her to translate because they picked up the language very quickly.

She said she felt safe traveling by herself because, "The people were so nice. Music was everywhere. You'd go to the native town and they'd be dancing and yelling hello to everybody, just such happy people and good people."

Then the revolution came.

"It was so sad that it all had to change and people were getting killed. He (Castro) changed my life but he changed more people's lives." Trendle-Tanner remembers when the overall mood of the country changed, "just that quick."

"I had many experiences of the 'hunt' President Batista was doing to find Fidel," Trendle-Tanner said. "We lived on a huge bay off the Atlantic Ocean where the sugar ship came in to load. One night, a warship came cruising right past the front of our sea wall, with flood lights through our yard, looking for Castro."

Another time a man dressed as a farmer came to her door with a gun hidden on his hip. It was clear that he was hunting for him as well, she said.

Tension among the locals was increasing and there were signs that things were getting dangerous by this time, she said. "When traveling on the train these young kids would have their guns and stuff, they'd talk to me and they were militia. They were just kids."

She also remembers riding a bus past the hospital where she had read that Castro was trapped and had gotten out. She saw the bullet holes on the side of the building.

What happened next caused her and her husband to heed the warnings and leave Cuba, she said, "Finally Castro kidnapped all the department managers just to make a statement of his increasing power. He did not harm them - released them in a few days. When my husband came home, we decided we must get our 10- and 5-year-old children back to the states.

"We left and then everything blew up. He (Castro) took over the mill and everybody had to scatter."

Today, Trendle-Tanner reflects on the changes that followed by saying, "To see the country be destroyed like that and to see his beginning and now he has fifty years, has outlived ten (U.S.) presidents, it's hard to believe." Commenting on Castro's recent successor, his brother Raul, she doesn't have much hope for Cuban reform, "He'll do what his brother tells him. Castro is a fox. He will keep his thumbs on him."