The Sierra Maestra can be a jealous host. Just ask the men of the 22nd Battalion, 1st Division, Rural Guard “Antonio Maceo.” In a day and a half of combat against inexperienced, outmanned, and ill-equipped guerrillas, they had suffered some thirty killed, seen as many taken prisoner, and surrendered a trove of guns, mortars, ammunition, and radio equipment. By nightfall on the evening of June 29, 1958, about the only thing the soldiers could look forward to was a good night’s sleep, as the guerrillas were thought to lack the wherewithal for a frontal attack. By late June, most of Cuba is unbearably hot and humid. In the deep canyons of the high Sierra, nights remain comfortable well into July, and in their camp beside the garrulous Yara River, just outside the hamlet of Santo Domingo, the men of the 22nd Battalion had drifted off to sleep.1
Just after midnight their sleep was shattered by a hail of mortar and artillery fire discharged from weapons only recently their own. The guerrillas were on the front foot, and the hunters had become the hunted. In terror and disbelief, the soldiers grabbed their weapons and dashed for battle stations. If overconfident, the 22nd was not naive. It, too, had dug in on the steep slopes overlooking Santo Domingo, and taking aim not so much at human targets as at flashes of gunfire, the regulars repelled the guerrillas’ assault, eventually fighting the enemy to a standoff.
Then Castro unleashed his secret weapon. Over the cacophony of gunfire ricocheting off the valley walls rose the swell of live music, crackly at first, then crystal clear and ebullient: the Cuban national anthem, the “Marcha de 26 de Julio,” followed by a parade of Cuban favorites, all calculated to unnerve the young men who comprised the 22nd and make them pine for home. “The Revolution needs all the weapons at its command,” Castro had told the five teenage boys of the Medina family who approached him, days earlier, guns in hand, hoping to come to the defense of their neighborhood. Castro had discovered the musical Medinas the year before when one of his lieutenants happened by their hillside home. “We will defeat the enemy,” Castro told the eager boys, “but we will do so with guitars as well as guns.”
As the 22nd Battalion headed off to bed, Castro ordered the Medinas to the crest of a nearby hill named El Sabicú where rebel technicians had set up a portable sound studio, complete with microphone and loudspeakers placed several hundred yards apart. There the Medinas, hereafter Quinteto Rebelde, made their public debut, projecting the gospel of the 26th of July over the Yara River valley and into the minds of enemy troops: We are alive and well. We are here to stay. We will fulfill the unrequited dream of Cuba Libre. “We were told the rebel army was a bunch of savages, with no resources, no leadership, and no weapons,” a captured soldier marveled a few days later. “And yet here you were with your music, culture, and technology, blasting it over the valleys.”2