Searching for Celia

Chapter 1 provides an overview of key themes and events within the work as they related to both Sanchez’s biography and the Cuban revolution more broadly. It discusses the utility of feminist biography for understanding the experiences of revolutionary women while also exploring the challenges inherent in conducting research in Cuba.

Myth, Mother, Mujer

This chapter surveys commemorative sources that have emerged since Sánchez’s death. At times reflecting, and at other times refracting, the image of Sánchez cultivated since her official incorporation into the revolution, these sources all engage with the idea of Cuba’s “New Woman.” In an era when online auction venues allow for the distribution of stamps, coins, and artwork across geographic borders, Sánchez’s image is slowly circulating to new audiences who are ascribing their own (new) meanings onto her story.

Compañera of Ideals

This chapter examines the story of Sánchez’s early ideological influences and incorporation into national politics, emphasizing those moments when Sánchez played a decisive role in stabilizing the nucleus of the 26 July Movement (M-26-7). The chapter explores the relationships she developed with her fellow compatriots and with Cuban supporters in the eastern provinces. These relationships become critical pieces in the posthumous story of her status as a “woman of the people.”

Toward the Gates of Eternity

This chapter examines the events surrounding Sánchez’s declining health, disappearance from the public eye, and ultimate death from lung cancer in 1980. Sánchez’s lavish state funeral initiated a new phase in a myth-making process that began in the Sierra Maestra. Commemorative sources representing a wide spectrum of political, artistic, and poetic voices in Cuban society played a critical role in the creation of Sánchez as the official “New Woman.” Circulated both nationally and internationally, this version of her story was not without its critics who, like the revolutionary authorities who eulogized her, saw Sánchez’s death as an opportunity to reflect upon the revolutionary project more broadly.

Like the Invisible Salt

This chapter addresses Sánchez’s role within the post- revolutionary Cuban state. Sánchez served in several official positions in the Cuban government, including Secretary to the President and as a member of the Communist Party. She initiated and executed with almost complete autonomy a vast array of large-scale construction projects. She also traveled widely both nationally and internationally as an ambassador for the revolution. She attended to individual Cubans’ daily concerns in ways that shaped how Cubans understood her as an example of the New Woman.

Most Native Wildflower

Chapter 1 explores Sánchez’s early childhood, which are some of the least analyzed years of her life. The chapter reveals not only the critical influences in Sánchez’s childhood—namely her father, her siblings, and the harsh economic situation in her community—but also the ways in which Cubans refract the stories of her childhood through the lens of her later achievements.

First Female Guerrilla

This chapter draws upon letters sent between Sánchez and other members of the 26 July Movement (M-26-7) to reveal the ways in which an official narrative of Sánchez’s hero status began taking shape in the Sierra Maestra. Aside from her role in smuggling arms into the Sierra Maestra, maintaining rebel communications, bringing international media attention to the movement, she participated in direct combat, earning her the title “first guerrilla of the Sierra Maestra.”

Who Is Celia Sánchez?

This chapter surveys the way that Sánchez—as the most visible female revolutionary and the one most closely associated with its famous leader—was imagined within the U.S. press. U.S. newspapers initially offered an adulatory, even romanticized, portrait of Sánchez’s relationship with Fidel Castro and her strategic importance for the Cuban revolution. The U.S. press quickly refashioned this image when the tenor of U.S.-Cuban relations shifted in the early 1960s.