The plan did not meet with universal approbation. Victor Escalona, leader of the Almendares cell, shuffled forward. “We don’t want to take part,” Escalona announced. “We?” Castro replied. “My group and I,” he said. Why, Castro demanded. Because the “arms are inadequate,” Escalona replied. Then come with me, Castro said, leading the opt-outers to the kitchen, where he posted an armed guard. The Almendares men were not the only naysayers. Returning to the main room, Castro met Abel Santamaría, who informed him that another group was passing. “Which one?” Castro demanded. “The student group,” Santamaría replied. “They said they wouldn’t fight with those arms.” The students were put in a different room with yet another guard.46
Amid mounting tension, another person stepped forward, the telegraph operator whose job it would be to announce the good news to city and the country. What was his objection? Castro asked. “I don’t want to do anything illegal,” the man replied, before being hauled off to join the students. Castro’s voice rose. “Is there anyone else who wants to pull out?” he bellowed. When no one else stepped forward, he repeated his command to “be humane with the enemy.” The group then boarded the sixteen cars bound for Santiago, Castro in the lead.47
Just after 5 a.m. on the morning of July 26, 1953, the caravan entered Santiago de Cuba along the Siboney road, approaching the traffic circle at Parque Ferreiro. Instructions were to take the fourth exit out of the circle onto Avenida Victoriano Garzón. Most of the cars did so. The car driven by Ernesto Tizol, the chicken farmer, did not. Instead, it veered off onto Avenida de las Americas, eventually ending up on Quintero Heights, overlooking the city. Some of the cars behind Tizol followed him, depriving Castro of between 20 to 30 percent of the combatants. Tizol later claimed that his diversion had been a mistake. His brother-in-law, Raúl Martínez, reported that Tizol had diverted from the course intentionally, believing the plan to be unworkable. Tizol was one of the few attackers who knew the route intimately, having traveled repeatedly to Santiago to arrange the rental of Villa Blanca. The idea that his diversion was a mistake seems unlikely, though it is not clear that his and the others’ presence would have made much difference in the end. Tizol was not the only person in the caravan with misgivings. According to some reports, Dr. Muñoz’s elation scarcely outlasted the conga line. Hearing what seemed to him a suicidal plan, Muñoz withdrew his support, telling Hector de Armas that this was not what he had signed on for.48
The Moncada Barracks is shaped like a comb, its terraced front facing a parade ground, with six radiating wings reaching back toward a shooting range, located to the rear. Each wing is accessed by staircases descending from the front terrace. The first wing (or east end) of the barracks housed the arsenal and administrative offices. The remaining five wings consisted of sleeping quarters. The main entrance to the fortress is a grand staircase that marks the midpoint of the terrace and parade ground. Reconnaissance suggested that this entrance was covered by fixed weaponry from at least two guard posts. Castro planned to access the barracks from the south, along Avenida Moncada, which continued down the front of the terrace, impeded only by a chain at Guard Post No. 3. Masquerading as a caravan of high military officials (in beat-up cars—don’t ask), the men would then silently disarm the guards, lower the chain, and proceed to the barracks proper. In the event that some unexpected glitch spoiled the element of surprise, the attackers would be ready. Abel Santamaría’s group would cover the attackers from atop the Civil Hospital. Meanwhile, to one side and slightly behind the barracks stood the Palace of Justice, the city’s main courthouse. Raúl Castro and a few others would occupy the courthouse, head to the roof, and act as snipers, neutralizing the barracks’ mounted guns.
Things went immediately awry. Just before turning off Avenida Victoriano Garzón onto Avenida Moncada, Castro allowed the car driven by Pedro Marrero to pass him. Marrero’s mission was to surprise the guards and lower the chain that barred access to the terrace stairways. As Marrero advanced down Avenida Moncada, his car was surprised by two soldiers out on foot patrol, armed with Thompson machine guns. The patrol ordered Marrero to halt. “Open the way, here comes the general!” shouted Renato Guitart, as Marrero continued on. Seeing the attackers’ uniforms, the patrol did not immediately open fire, allowing Marrero to proceed to Post 3, disarm the sentries, and lower the chain. So far so good.
At this point, the plan called for Marrero to proceed into the parade ground (or move his car out of the way), thus allowing the following five cars to clear the guard post. But in the excitement of disarming the sentries, Marrero and his men simply charged up the stairs and into the administration building, leaving their car sprawled across the entrance, thereby stranding their comrades in the cars behind. Meanwhile, the two machine-gun-wielding foot soldiers were not fooled for long. They took off after Marrero’s car, before, sensing danger from behind, wheeling to confront Castro’s car as it approached the guard post. The soldiers raised their weapons. Castro hit the gas, his car lurching forward with some of his men half in and half out. The sound of gunfire rang out as Castro swerved sharply up onto the curb, where his car stalled. Amid whizzing bullets and the wail of sirens, he and the passengers of the other cars tumbled out and ran for cover in nearby officers’ quarters, adjacent buildings, and military hospital.
Only five of the ninety or so insurgents who departed Villa Blanca ever penetrated the barracks gate—Marrero, José Luis Tasende, Carmelo Noa, Flores Betancourt, and Rigoberto Corcho. Rather than joining them in the building, according to plan, Castro was forced to waste his time extricating his men from the military hospital. With most of the men back on Avenida Moncada, he urged them toward Post 3. Finally, he commandeered one of the other cars and headed toward the barracks. At this point, everything that could have gone wrong did. Castro’s car was smashed into by another rebel car speeding in reverse as its occupants tried to escape what had become a shooting gallery. Now out of the car and back on the street, Castro was fully exposed. He paused for a moment, as if weighing his options.
“I did not see Fidel shooting,” said Gerardo Granado, “but I assume he did. Fidel stayed in the street the whole time, giving instructions to someone, but I did not see who it was.” Carlos Bustillo remembered Castro advancing as far as Post 3. “Fidel was behind the left sentry box and Héctor de Armas and I were in back of the opposite one.” There, the three men’s progress was stalled by machine gun fire pouring from the building. “The only thing we could do was stick close to the wall,” Armas reported, “until Fidel ordered the retreat.”49
Predictably, the two other groups had better luck against civilian targets. As Castro and company turned onto Avenida Moncada, the others continued down Avenida Victoriano Garzón to Avenida Los Libertadores, where Raúl Castro’s group turned right into the Palace of Justice, which sat on the corner, entered the building, disarmed the guards, and mounted the stairs onto the roof, before opening fire on the fortress. Santamaría’s group drove past the courthouse and turned left onto Calle Trinidad, where they abandoned their vehicles, entered the Civil Hospital, and disarmed the guard. They then took up positions at the rear of the building overlooking the back of the barracks, their effectiveness marred by an imposing wall. Santamaría and his men were later joined by his sister, Haydée, Melba Hernández, Dr. Mario Muñoz, and Raúl Gómez García, delayed by Tizol’s detour onto Avenida de las Americas.
Once in place, there was not much for Raúl Castro’s and Santamaría’s groups to do. The hospital roof proved less useful than supposed, and the men on the courthouse roof were thoroughly outgunned. The attack was over before it really started. Witnesses differ about how long the shooting lasted. Some said two hours, some said a matter of minutes. It was likely closer to the latter. In the brief exchange, fifteen soldiers and three policemen died, twenty-three soldiers and five policemen were injured. The rebels suffered nine deaths and eleven wounded. Sporadic gunfire continued to echo through the neighborhood long after Castro retreated and the attackers were disarmed. By this time the shooting was one-sided, the work of professional soldiers executing captives at point-blank—eighteen that morning, thirty-four more over the ensuing three days.
Critics accuse Castro of abandoning his comrades as he retreated. In truth, he confronted the unpalatable decision familiar to any commander in chief in the face of insurmountable odds: withdraw immediately, thus saving many lives, or hold tight in an effort to rescue captured and fallen comrades. The first exchange of gunfire brought the barracks immediately to life, with the situation becoming riskier by the minute. That said, Castro’s decision to pull out looks callous given the fate of the captives swept up in his wake.
The retreat left four groups behind: a few attackers holed up in the officers’ housing on Avenida Moncada; the five occupants of the first car who breached the administrative wing of the barracks; the six men (including Raúl Castro) who occupied the Palace of Justice; and the twenty men and two women who commandeered the Civil Hospital. Each group had to decide on its own whether to surrender or flee. A few of the men in the military housing gave themselves up. Others were discovered hiding under beds, some changed into stolen civilian clothes. Approaching the soldiers, hands in the air, one of this group, Pedro Miret, was kicked in the groin and brutally beaten by apparently leaderless soldiers. Others received similar treatment before being rescued by a few doctors from the military hospital.
The five rebels who penetrated the barracks had to fend for themselves. Pedro Marrero tried to surrender. He was dragged onto the terrace and beaten to death with the butt of a gun. Two of the others met the same fate. One witness recalled soldiers pummeling the captives with rifle butts while an officer ordered them (futilely) to stop. José Luis Tasende tried to escape this fate by leaping out of a window onto an adjacent street. He hurt his leg in the process and was taken to a local emergency room before being discovered by a policemen and turned over to regimental intelligence. An iconic photograph shows Tasende cowering in a prison cell with bound wrists, bare feet, and a desolate expression on his face. Sometime later, he was removed from the cell, taken to the shooting range, and executed. One witness confessed to being “bothered” by Tasende’s execution on account of his leg wound. He “did not care about the fate of the other prisoners,” he said.50
Meanwhile, with their exit cut off, the rebels occupying the Civil Hospital tried to disguise themselves as nurses and patients. Nineteen of the twenty-two (not including Haydée Santamaría and Melba Hernández) were apprehended and led to the back of the hospital. On the way, the physician Dr. Muñoz was shot in the side at close range before being finished off in the temple, a harbinger of things to come. The captives were placed in a holding cell around 8:30 a.m., before being taken to regimental headquarters, interrogated by the Regimental Intelligence Service, and tested for paraffin. A few of the rebels, Abel Santamaría and Boris Luis Santa Coloma, among them, were placed in a prison cell. The rest were led straightaway to the shooting range where they were executed.
Raúl Castro’s group at the Palace of Justice had better luck, with all six of the men escaping initially to the countryside. Initial success at disappearing into the city or escaping into the countryside was no guarantee of making it out alive. By the end of the fourth day after the attack, sixty-one rebels suffered the fate of Mario Muñoz. Most were dispatched at the shooting range behind the barracks, now converted into a killing field. Santamaría, among others, was shot at Villa Blanca, after the citizens of Santiago wearied of the sound of rebels being executed without trial. Others were felled where they were found, on hillsides outside Santiago, on farms near Bayamo, in the woods of Damajayabo, and elsewhere, as a lethal dragnet tightened across Oriente.
By mid-morning government forces were closing in on dissidents all over Cuba, not just in Oriente Province. In Havana, Ortodoxo leadership was swept up, Auténtico, too, presumably for being associated with the alleged mastermind of the attack—not Fidel Castro, but former president Carlos Prío and, still more incoherently, the communists. Closer to the scene of the attack, rebels discovered in flight were brought to Moncada, where they received the same treatment of those apprehended in the Civil Hospital. By mid-afternoon, thirty-three executed rebels lay in underclothes in the shooting range at the back of the barracks, their military uniforms stripped from them by vengeful soldiers. When Colonel Chaviano came upon the scene, he ordered the rebel cadavers to be distributed around the grounds, where Marta Rojas and Panchito Cano and their fellow journalists encountered them. The dead had to be dressed before being dropped, which accounts for the over-hasty staging Rojas described, including unlaced boots, suspiciously clean uniforms, and gunshot-riddled bodies with no entry marks on their clothes.51
Leaving the Palace of Justice, Raúl Castro headed out of the city along the railroad tracks toward the village of Dos Caminos, fifteen miles north of Santiago, where the tracks turn sharply east. He hoped to find shelter in Birán. The following morning, he was spotted walking the rails in the direction of the town of San Luis and picked up by three policemen. In San Luis, he was interrogated and his alibi quickly exposed. But he passed a paraffin test (suggesting he had not fired a shot at the Palace of Justice), which likely accounts for his survival. The next day, Tuesday, July 28, he was transferred to the town of Palma Soriano, held for three days, then transferred again, this time to Santiago city jail on Thursday afternoon, July 30. By that time, the slaughter of rebels and innocents had halted thanks to the intervention of two like-minded civic groups from Santiago de Cuba, one appealing through the Masonic grand master, Carlos Piñeiro del Cueto, resident of Havana, directly to Batista, the other through the archbishop of Santiago, Enrique Pérez Serantes, to Colonel Chaviano.
As Raúl Castro and his group of commandos departed the Palace of Justice, his brother was on his way to Siboney in a Buick Studebaker overloaded with nine men. They arrived at Villa Blanca around 6:30 a.m. There they joined a group numbering between forty-five and fifty men in total, all confronting the question of what to do. Should they disperse into the hills? Regroup for an attack on a smaller garrison, say, at El Caney? Return to Santiago? Amid the chaos and recrimination, the group split up into smaller cells and walked into the hills. Within a half hour, Castro and eighteen others crossed the Siboney road and headed north into the Gran Piedra Mountains. For two days, the eighteen men stayed together, relying for sustenance on the generosity of local peasants with little to share. Around midday Monday, July, 27, Castro received the first inkling of the developments at the Moncada barracks in the wake of his retreat. A local peasant had a shortwave radio, allowing the fugitives to hear Fulgencio Batista giving his version of the previous day’s attack. The government’s report listed thirty-three dead insurgents. The fugitives could think of only nine casualties at the time they withdrew. Moreover, one of the people counted among the dead was Emilio Hernández, who had not even made the trip to Moncada, having pulled out of the attack back at Villa Blanca.52 There was no word on whether Raúl Castro was alive.
Avoiding capture while scavenging for food amid a destitute population in a steep, wet, and unforgiving climate is like trying to rob a house with a football team which has had too much to drink. On Tuesday morning, July 28, Castro ordered the group to break up, before continuing on with Juan Almeida, Oscar Alcalde, José “Pepe” Suárez, Mario Chanes, Pancho Gonzáles, Armando Maestre, and Eduardo Montano. Over the course of the next several days, Castro’s band advanced little, moving in circles, which seems surprising given their leader’s experience in the mountains. The group spent three nights in caves and cow pastures before arriving at the farm of Luis Piña, a few miles up the road from Villa Blanca, on the evening of Friday, July 31. Frustrated by their lack of progress and doubtful the group could elude capture much longer, Castro convinced Almeida, Chanes, Gonzáles, Maestre, and Montano to surrender the next day. At 7 a.m. the next morning, the five departed for the Siboney road and a rendezvous with Archbishop Serantes, who had stepped in to prevent further massacre.
As the archbishop made his way to the rendezvous point, Lieutenant Pedro Sarría Tartabull led a party of fifteen soldiers into the hills above the hamlet of Sevilla, where a local peasant steered them in the direction of Luis Piña’s home. After their fellow fugitives departed, Castro, Alcalde, and Suárez dozed off in a lean-to. They awoke with the gun barrels of Sarría’s men in their ribs, a few of the soldiers bent on avenging fallen comrades. A bit of indirection on Castro’s part saved his and the other two men’s lives. Asked for his name, Castro replied, “My name is Francisco González Calderín,” while simultaneously communicating to Sarría his real identity. Thanks to Sarría’s professionalism, the three were delivered not to the Moncada Barracks, which would have been the end of them, but to the city jail, where the press and the archbishop were waiting, thus ensuring that Castro lived to fight another day.53
The scale of the massacre is not debated by serious historians. But the nature and degree of atrocity has remained a bone of contention since both the rebels and the government first attempted to spin events in their favor nearly seventy years ago. Castro and his companions accused the government of torturing captives before executing them. Abel Santamaría is said to have had his eyes gouged out before he was executed, Boris Luis said to have been castrated. Santamaría’s case testifies to the difficulty of resolving the dispute. The supposed eyewitness accounts of his sister Haydée and Melba Hernández evolved over time, both admitting years later to exaggerating their story.54 In testimony provided in Miami, the funeral director who recovered the dead, Manuel Bartolomé, reported seeing no sign of mutilation on Santamaría’s corpse. Meanwhile, the very fact of Bartolomé having gone into exile disqualifies him in the eyes of Castro defenders.
Lieutenant Jesús Yánez Pelletier, who later saved Castro’s life in prison and became his bodyguard upon the triumph of the Revolution (before being dismissed and going into exile himself ), reported seeing Santamaría alive on his way to execution at Villa Blanca. Yánez Pelletier, too, reports that Santamaría’s face was not disfigured. Moreover, photographs of the Siboney dead, purportedly suppressed by the Cuban government, are said to show no evidence of disfigurement, according to those who have seen them. All of which suggests that people will believe what they want (and need) to believe.
Castro accused Batista of authorizing the summary executions. According to received opinion in Cuba, Batista dispatched Inspector General Martín Díaz Tamayo to Santiago that afternoon with orders to “kill ten rebels for every fallen soldier.” Former Oriente governor Waldo Pérez Almaguer refutes this account, blaming the massacre on a rogue officer, Colonel Chaviano. Likewise, Adolfo Nieto Piñeiro-Osorio, one of the judges who would preside over Castro’s trial, insisted that the “savagery could not be blamed on Batista.” Not directly, that is. Nieto attributed the violence to vengeance on the part of soldiers who lost friends and family. But that raises the question of why soldiers from the lowliest private to the barracks commander himself believed they could get away with it.
In the aftermath of Batista’s March 1952 coup d’état, even a skeptical Castro was surprised by the passivity of Cuba’s leading politicians and opposition groups. Surely, in the face of so grave a threat to the country’s political institutions, its leading lights would forget their self-interest for a moment and step up. Then nothing. In the wake of their paralysis, Castro and many of his young peers decided a response was up to them. But Castro did not immediately choose violence as the way to oppose a dictator. He first appealed to Cuba’s highest court to uphold the Constitution of 1940, which laid out explicit directions in confronting a criminal who would try to set aside the Constitution. Castro’s suit was thrown out. Left with no civil remedy, Castro decided to take up arms. This remedy to Batista required, at once, reaching out to like-minded men and women he could trust, articulating his revolutionary vision, consolidating an action group, and raising money to buy weapons and other supplies. All the while he continued to defend the cause of justice, which only deepened the commitment to him of an increasingly tight circle of activists.
Cuba has a long history of patriots and martyrs undertaking what seem to an outsider like harebrained schemes to overthrow illegitimate authority. Succeed or fail, Castro’s aim in attacking Moncada was to set an example of duty and self-sacrifice worthy of the heroes of Cuban Independence and thereby awaken a slumbering public. Even by this modest standard, the attack was not terribly successful, as the mainstream political resistance still clung to the idea that Batista could be deposed by means of a civil opposition.
Still, the younger generation noticed, Rosa Mier says. She remembers feeling “very strange” upon first learning of the attack. Fidel Castro just had to be behind it, she thought. “And yet how did he do it without our knowing?” Three days after the attack, from his hideout above the village of Sevilla, Castro contacted Mier’s friend Carmen Castro via shortwave radio. After briefly describing his predicament, he asked her to get money to Santiago de Cuba to provide for the young men already imprisoned there. Impressed by Castro’s daring and by his concern for the well-being of his men while his own life remained in mortal jeopardy, Carmen Castro promised to do what he asked and hung up. She then looked solemnly up at her friend Mier and said, “I think we finally have a leader.”55