Jesús Carreras Zayas paced back and forth, his eyes glazed. Even his men knew to stay away from him. For months, the farmers in the eastern Escambray had been picking up faint radio signals from Sierra Maestra that delivered tidbits about the latest skirmishes. But this was different.
The announcer was talking about the Escambray, and the rebels hadn’t expected the message. The broadcast was urging people to sever their alliances with other rebel units and join the 26th of July Movement.
“La verdadera revolución está en la Sierra Maestra,” the voice proclaimed. The real revolution is in the Sierra Maestra. Then the announcement that caught everyone by surprise: The movement was coming to the Escambray. Get ready.
Carreras and the others reeled. This was their territory. They had spent the last year fighting for every inch of ground, every deer trail, every road. But it was more than that. The Second Front was making a name for itself. Who was Castro to take over another unit that was holding its own?
The column leader of the Second Front wanted to know more. If the 26th of July Movement was sending men into the Escambray, they had to pass through the North Zone, his operations area between Fomento and Sancti Spiritus. There was no other way.
To Carreras, it was also personal. He had lost men over the past few months while sticking and running on the soldiers. He had just discovered that one of the new recruits who came in July was a Batista spy responsible for the deaths of six rebels in Havana. To carry out justice, Carreras took the spy to the back of the camp and shot him in the head.
Carreras meant business, and if the barbudos from the Sierra Maestra were coming, he needed to alert his men in the field to keep watch. He also had another plan. He would leave a stern warning at the camp: No one—not even the leaders of the Sierra Maestra revolutionaries—was going to pass through the territory and call it their own. The blood of the men of the Second Front had soaked into the soil of the Escambray. Not even Castro himself, the most recognized leader of the rebel forces, was going to diminish their position.
After he finished writing, he stood up, walked over, and tacked a message to the side of a wall for all to see. The words were clear: “No troops could pass through this territory,” under any circumstances. If they did, “they would be warned a first time,” but if it happened again, they would be “expelled or exterminated.”
Menoyo had to scramble. The soldiers were coming, some in Jeeps and others on foot. Because of the airstrikes, it was getting tougher for the Second Front to move, but the biggest problem was that the rebels were running low on ammo. If they had to take on a battalion, it would be disastrous—especially a head-on attack. The government wasn’t just sending raw recruits. These men came from the 11th Battalion, a unit already bloodied from fighting Castro.
Unlike most of the military cronies who served under Batista, the 11th was led by Ángel Sánchez Mosquera, a tough commander who led search-and-destroy missions in the Sierra Maestra. During his sweep through the mountains, he burned the bohíos of peasants suspected of helping the rebels and executed the rebels he captured.
The Second Front needed a plan. It wouldn’t be easy, especially with a shortage of ammunition. Menoyo had to gamble. He would set up his attacks through small, mobile units. If each man could fire three rounds and then fade into the brush, they could make good use of their limited ammo. Then, by sending in another team and repeating the strategy, they could also lead the enemy to believe the attacks would keep coming. The idea was to inflict as many casualties as they could.
It was a risky strategy, but Menoyo didn’t have a choice. He was in danger of losing his mountain stronghold.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara stood in the open field, a bend of the Jatibonico River rushing behind him. With his long hair and ragged fatigues, no one would have taken him for the leader of the column. He and his men were exhausted, their feet covered with blisters and blood from trudging across difficult terrain. This land was strange and unfamiliar to the rebels, but they had finally made it.
For Guevara—Fidel Castro’s trusted lieutenant—the river was the starting point into the Escambray. He and his men had dodged the Rural Guard not once but four times during their trek. They had gone without food for days. With the rising foothills before him, Guevara knew they stood just days away from reaching their destination.
If anyone had doubted he would make it, he had just proved they were dead wrong. If anyone thought he couldn’t cross the swamps in Camagüey, he had disproved them. He showed them all, even Castro himself. Now he’d show them again. From the map, it was now a straight, westward jaunt to the camp near Banao. It was time to unite the other factions. It was time to take the Escambray.
A trained doctor from Argentina, Guevara was rising in the revolutionary movement and just as eager as Fidel to make his mark. He had first met Castro in Mexico City, where Fidel and Raúl Castro had fled to avoid being arrested by Batista’s secret police in 1955.
Guevara hit it off with the brothers in the Mexican capital. A hotbed of revolutionary intellectualism, the Latin bohemia of the Distrito Federal had become a cauldron of bitter anti-Americanism. The Castros talked about their long struggle in Cuba, while Guevara recounted a life-changing motorcycle trip he took through South America—a trip that opened his eyes to the ugly sides of the continent.
Guevara volunteered to join Castro and other guerrillas when they boarded the Granma, a rickety cabin cruiser, for a clandestine journey from Mexico to Cuba to launch their efforts. When the wooden craft ran ashore, the rebels waded through a treacherous swamp before government soldiers ambushed them. Guevara, the Castro brothers, and nine others survived the attack, escaping into the Sierra Maestra. In time, the small group grew into a formidable force, launching attack after attack on government soldiers. Guevara impressed the other rebels during those battles by refusing to back down.
When Castro decided to expand his base into the Escambray, he turned to Guevara, warning the Argentine that he would face opposition from Menoyo’s rebels.
By the time Guevara arrived at the Second Front outpost, he was ready for confrontation. At first glance, there wasn’t much to it: a few huts and what looked like the remains of a campfire. Guevara inched closer, running into the sentries. The guards knew he was moving into the mountains, but they didn’t know where. Guevara didn’t waste any time. He walked right past them to a parked Jeep at the edge of camp.
Hoisting himself up on the vehicle, his back against the autumn sky, he faced the men gathering curiously around him. In a clear and steady voice, Guevara told them that he had come to deliver a message from the Sierra Maestra. He needed to make this clear: This was going to be their land. It didn’t matter what had happened before now. The 26th of July Movement was about to make some of the biggest moves of the war. Everyone—including the rebels surrounding the Jeep—either had to join or be left out. It was their choice.
From across the camp, Carreras spotted the men crowded around the Jeep. He rushed over and broke through the line. “Para ahora mismo! ” Carreras shouted. Right now!
Guevara looked down. The rebels on both sides grabbed their guns. As the men later recalled, the Argentine said he represented the forces of the revolution. He had a right to be there and didn’t need anyone’s permission.
Carreras glared at his counterpart. “You have to talk to me before you talk to these people,” he said.
For Guevara to pass through this region, especially in crossing the Hagabama River, he needed permission that could come from one man only: Menoyo.
Guevara jumped down from the Jeep.
Everyone watched the two men to see what was going to happen next. Either man could have killed the other right there, a shooting that would have triggered internecine combat.
Guevara didn’t expect such a test of his authority. No one had talked to him this way. But he knew that Castro would disapprove of any bloodshed—at least now. Guevara had to stand down if he wanted to accomplish Castro’s mission.
He stepped back and began talking to the others present. If the rebels of the Escambray wanted to join him, they should do so. They could come over to the 26th of July.
He then spun around and walked away. No blood was spilled that day, but the feud between Carreras and Guevara was far from over.