The standoff at Santo Domingo was the first significant clash between Castro’s guerrillas and government forces in Plan Fin-de-Fidel (Plan F-F, as it became known), a massive Cuban military offensive launched in May 1958, whose title concisely conveys its aim. In fact, thanks to the sort of improvisation that Castro displayed in harnessing the young Medinas, the rebels proved impossible to dislodge, and this battle marked the beginning of the end not of Castro but of Batista, an outcome unimaginable a year and a half earlier when eighty-two weak and demoralized men clawed their way through the mangrove at Playa Las Coloradas.
It is hard to imagine a less auspicious beginning to Castro’s campaign to oust Batista than that botched landing. Arriving two days late, the rebels were met not by sympathetic locals but by the Cuban military. Flushed out of the home of Ángel Pérez, the rebels took cover in a nearby wood, where Che Guevara remembered a sense of doom descending on the group. With no one to greet them, the rebels did not know whom to trust or where to seek shelter. “We had lost almost all our equipment,” Guevara recalled, “and wearing new boots had trudged endlessly through saltwater swamps. Almost the entire group was suffering open blisters on their feet.”3
Over the course of the next three days, the rebels more or less marched in circles, hunted by air force spotters, tracked by government forces, getting by on little more than sugarcane pulp. On the afternoon of December 4, the rebels pitched camp in the neighborhood of Alegría de Pío, not five miles from where they had disembarked. The next morning, betrayed by a local guide, they were ambushed by government soldiers and forced to disperse. A few rebels died in the ambush, many more were seized, most of those summarily executed. The survivors fled in three separate groups led by Castro, his brother Raúl, and Guevara. Over the course of the next two weeks, the groups made their way east toward the Sierra, narrowly avoiding capture thanks to a network of local residents organized by a farmer named Crescencio Pérez. Rumors of executed captives and a few survivors punctuated the rebels’ footsteps east. Passed from one peasant to another, the three groups united on December 21 at the home of Pérez’s brother, Ramón, outside the town of Purial de Vicana. Purial sits at the western margin of the Sierra Maestra, twenty-five miles from where Granma ran aground nineteen days before.
Legend has it that upon reuniting with his brother and the others, Castro exclaimed, “Now we will definitely win the war!”—a paraphrase of Cuba’s founding father, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. Knowing Castro, he just might have. But only a fool would have put his money on the rebels at the time. The survivors numbered fourteen men in all: Castro himself, Faustino Pérez, and Universo Sánchez; Rául Castro, Armando Rodríguez, Efigenio Ameijeiras, René Rodríguez, and Ciro Redondo; Che Guevara, Almeida, Benítez, Camilo Cienfuegos, Ramiro Valdéz, and Pancho González. Between them, they had fifteen rifles and a pistol, not the stuff of which revolutions are made.4
And yet appearances can be deceiving. Guevara kept a diary of the Revolution. On December 21, he reported that the fourteen survivors possessed ten weapons in total. The next day, “a day of almost complete inactivity,” he noted the arrival of new arms. Suddenly “everyone” had a weapon. The following day, December 23, the guerrillas were engaging in combat exercise. “People arrive from Manzanillo,” he wrote, “bringing 3000 .45-caliber bullets,” along with “nine dynamite cartridges.” Now the rebels were “almost completely equipped,” with “sufficient medicines for small ailments.” Two days later, Christmas Day, the rebels conducted a training exercise, but only after enjoying “a sumptuous pork banquet.” In short, just days after their cataclysmic landing, the tiny rebel band was being amply provided for by a network of peasants and July 26 Movement members who remained behind the lines and out of sight. Early the next year, Castro would inflate the size of his guerrilla band to fool visiting journalists. But it was never as small as some would make it, and only seems that way if one ignores the countless organizers, gunrunners, couriers, farmers, teamsters, guardians, guides, and cooks organized by Crescencio Pérez, Frank País, and Celia Sánchez, among others, who, doubling as commissary and quartermaster, made the guerrilla war possible.5
Once safe in the fastness of the high Sierra, the rebels turned to making their presence known. On the eve of Granma’s departure from Mexico, Castro had warned del Conde not to believe it when the Batista government announced that the rebels had been wiped out. Sure enough, on the afternoon of the rebels’ landing, the government announced that the expeditionaries had been annihilated. “Cuban planes and ground troops wiped out a force of forty exiled revolutionaries who landed on the coat of Oriente Province tonight,” the Associated Press reported on December 2. “Government military leaders said Fidel Castro, leader of the revolt against President Fulgencio Batista, was among the dead.”6
On January 17, the rebels launched their first attack, surprising a small garrison of soldiers and capturing weapons, ammunition, sausages, and rum (the last of which was strictly off limits to the rebels but made attractive gifts). The Battle of La Plata, as this became known after a local river, was a modest success, but success it was, and the rebels took heart. Guevara noted wryly that with twenty-two rifles on hand, the guerrillas had more guns than soldiers, a luxury that would not be repeated until the end of the war. A few days later, the rebels scored another modest victory, surprising a company of soldiers on the move in an adjacent river valley.7
However gratifying these small victories, the calamitous landing had left the insurrection on life support, and Castro knew it. In late December, he dispatched Faustino Pérez, a trusted lieutenant, to Santiago de Cuba to strategize with Frank País and other members of the urban underground about replenishing his guerrilla force. He knew there would be no more money, guns, or new combatants unless he could prove that he and the Revolution were indeed alive. In early February, Pérez and País went to Havana to round up an influential foreign journalist willing to come to the Sierra Maestra to interview Castro in person. At mid-month, the two returned to Oriente for a meeting between leaders of the guerrilla army (hereafter to be referred to as “the Sierra”) and leaders of the urban underground (“the Llano”), the first such get-together since Castro’s return the previous December. The meeting took place on the weekend of February 16–17 at a farm in the foothills of the Sierra, halfway between La Plata and the city of Manzanillo. It coincided with the arrival in the region of New York Times journalist Herbert Matthews, editor of the paper’s Latin America desk, whom Pérez had arranged to interview Castro.
The meeting between the Sierra and the Llano came at a pivotal moment in the insurrection, with the Movement leadership at loggerheads. Practical and cautious, País thought it ridiculous to proceed with plans to overthrow a military dictatorship with a force of two dozen men. Castro was absolutely essential to the success of the Revolution, País argued. It was senseless to risk his life in an impractical venture that could not be won. País urged Castro to abandon the country yet again and rebuild his army from a position of safety. Meanwhile, he, País, would do for Cuba as a whole what he had done in Oriente, namely, organize students, workers, and professionals into a disciplined, legitimate underground, complete with labor union and local militia support.
Castro would not hear it. Never one to doubt his ability to triumph in the face of insurmountable odds, he worried about ceding the initiative to rival opposition groups like Echeverría’s Revolutionary Directory or Prío’s Auténticos. He had promised to return to Cuba to defeat the dictator by the end of 1956. He had made the down payment on that promise. To go into exile again would jeopardize both his reputation and the Revolution itself. As Herbert Matthews made his way toward the rendezvous, Castro convinced País to send him a contingent of new recruits to replace those lost at Alegría de Pío.8
Castro and Matthews came together at mid-morning on the 17th. They talked for three hours interrupted occasionally by stage-managed visits from Castro’s men, who returned repeatedly—in changes of clothes and with different men reporting—to fool Matthews into believing that the guerrilla force was larger than it really was. The ruse worked. Castro told Matthews what he thought Matthews wanted to hear. Matthews dutifully reported what Castro said. The result was a public relations coup for Castro and the Revolution that rankles Castro critics to this day.9
One week later, on Sunday, February 24, 1957, The New York Times published the first of three articles by Matthews. The veteran journalist began by touting his own accomplishment in penetrating Batista’s censorship. Until now, Matthews boasted, “no one connected with the outside world, let alone with the press, has seen Señor Castro except this writer. No one in Havana, not even at the United States Embassy with its resources for getting information, will know until this report is published that Fidel Castro is really in the Sierra Maestra.” Though fooled by Castro’s misdirection about the size of the guerrilla force, Matthews captured the insurrection’s character up to that time. He described Castro’s program as nationalistic, socialistic, and anti-American, and said that it promised “a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist.” Like many before and after him, Matthews fell head over heels for Castro. “Castro was quite a man,” Matthews wrote, “a powerful six-footer, olive-skinned, full-faced, with a straggly beard. He was dressed in an olive gray fatigue uniform and carried a rifle with a telescopic sight, of which he was very proud.” His personality was “overpowering.” Like Casuso, Matthews sensed that Castro was adored by his men. “He has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.”10
Regarded in terms of Castro’s eventual embrace of communism, Matthews appears naive. But regarded in terms of what Castro had been saying for years, there was little that was new here. Castro’s was “a political mind rather than a military one,” Matthews wrote. “He has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution, to hold elections.” Where Castro was vague, Matthews acknowledged it. “He has strong ideas on economy, too, but an economist would consider them weak.” Castro told Matthews that the July 26 Movement harbored no ill will toward the United States or its people, though he did complain about Batista turning U.S. weapons intended to promote hemispheric security on Cuban citizens (a violation of the 1952 Military Assistance Program, also known as MAP). Nor did he begrudge the Cuban Army in general, the rebel leader insisted; it was only Batista and his treasonous cronies that he promised to depose.
The publication of Matthews’s piece caused a sensation, providing not only irrefutable proof that Castro was alive, but a rare sympathetic account of the rebel leader. Up to this point, the little outsiders knew of Castro came from Batista propaganda, which branded Castro and the Movement “communist.” When, a few days prior to its publication, news of the interview leaked to the government, Batista’s defense minister challenged Matthews to produce a photograph. Matthews happily complied, the Times emblazoning an image of Castro, signed and dated, on its front page. Despite the photograph (and in contradiction of its own evidence from the battle zone), the government continued to plead ignorance of Castro’s whereabouts—and about whether he was even alive.11
Before returning to the States to compose his articles, Matthews also interviewed Antonio Echeverría and other members of the Revolutionary Directory. Those who knew Echeverría believed him to be Castro’s equal in terms of charisma, intelligence, and organizational ability. Matthews was not impressed, taking Echeverría’s word that his group was in “no position to start” a revolution (though it was ready to join one). In fact, less than three weeks after Matthews’s articles appeared, and doubtless partly because of them, the Revolutionary Directory fulfilled its promise to strike at the head of the dictatorship, launching a calamitous attack on the Presidential Palace, home to President Batista. Castro was not the only Quixote around.12
With Castro safe in the mountains, Batista’s military and police treated Oriente Province to scorched-earth reprisals meant to dissuade the local community from joining the rebels. The violence had precisely the opposite effect. On January 2, 1957, the people of Santiago de Cuba awoke to news that a fifteen-year-old boy had been found dead in the street, his body grossly disfigured. The murder inspired a spontaneous demonstration the following day in which an estimated three thousand women marched through the main boulevards of the city in complete silence, while the men of Santiago lined the sidewalks. The scene moved many to tears, Armando Hart wrote his family. “Stores closed their doors, and I saw an officer of the U.S. Army, eyes wide open, overcome with emotion.” Soldiers dispatched to break up the crowd were immobilized by grief. “Many of them were as young as us,” Hart observed, and “their souls were shaken in the face of right and justice.”13
The city’s support for the guerrillas comes as no surprise. Like much of Oriente, Santiago was less developed than the rest of Cuba, more independent, more set in its ways. Grateful for the region’s support, Castro and his fellow rebels would come to equate the Revolution with the world of Oriente—and to project that world onto Cuba as a whole. This would complicate things down the road as these two regions faced very different challenges. “The civic quality of the people of Oriente is exceptional,” Hart noted. “The wealthy classes, certainly the most reluctant, will understand us. Here they are practically linked to the fight for freedom.” In Oriente, Hart discovered “the essence of what it means to be Cuban.” In Havana, opposition toward the current regime tended to target individuals rather than social conditions. In Santiago, by contrast, popular indignation created psychological conditions indispensable for “revolutionary upheaval.”14
Their first months in the mountains proved trying for a group of city slickers adjusting to the hardship of guerrilla life while being targeted by a modern military. In two separate incidents in January and February 1957, the rebels very narrowly escaped strafing by government air and ground forces, facilitated by a traitor in their midst. In typical understatement, Guevara described these days as “not particularly happy.” New recruits continued to come and go, every departure increasing the risk of more betrayals and more attacks. The rebels were in no condition to take the offensive. Hunger, exposure, and lack of sleep made things difficult, Guevara observed, but that was nothing compared to the psychological toll of living “constantly under siege.” Some of Guevara’s descriptions are almost comical. One new recruit “began to shriek, there in the solitude of mountains and guerillas, that he had been promised a camp with abundant food and antiaircraft defenses.” Such episodes inspired Castro to declare “defeatism” punishable by death.15
Things looked up a bit in mid-March, when the contingent of new men promised by País showed up in the Sierra one week late. The group included three boys from the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Charles Ryan, Victor Buehlman, and Michael Garvey, nineteen, seventeen, and fifteen years old, respectively. The arrival of País’s men raised the possibility of launching a third attack. Castro insisted the men were not ready, and the guerrillas spent the rest of March and most of April marching and developing ideological discipline. It was not just war they were preparing for, Guevara reported, but “the life after it.”16
Ryan remembered being astounded by what he and his two friends found there. Castro’s band comprised a “strange little group,” he said. They were very disciplined, never raising their voices above a whisper. “They didn’t curse. They didn’t drink. They ate little. They smoked cigars.” Castro’s men thought of themselves as guerrillas more than rebels, the word rebel suggesting a casualness that their professionalism belied. Ryan confirmed that Castro had a way with people. He got along as naturally with campesinos as he did with intellectuals, professionals, and students. He did not condescend to or bully the peasants. As a result, they trusted him implicitly. It was a good thing, too, as the guerrillas depended on a network of primitive stores supplied by mules from nearby towns bearing rice, beans, butter, sardines, milk, lantern oil, among other necessities. The peasants and the mules were Castro’s lifeline. Ryan could never understand why Batista did not think to isolate those mule trains. The peasants also taught the outsiders how to light fires in the rain, to make fires that did not smoke, and to preserve and transport embers—fire, along with water, the sine qua non of outdoor survival. In short, Ryan said, the peasants “turned the rebels into Boy Scouts.”17
On May 19, 1957, a vessel named Corinthia loaded with weapons procured by Prío’s group departed Florida’s Biscayne Bay bound for Cuba’s northeast coast. The aim of the expedition was to open a second front against the dictator in the Sierra Cristal mountains, thereby ensuring that Castro and his guerrillas were not the only fighting force. Four days later, on May 23, the expedition was intercepted by the Cuban military, with sixteen of its twenty-seven members captured and assassinated.18 The twin disasters of the Corinthia and the Revolutionary Directory’s failed assault on the Presidential Palace created an opportunity for Castro and his group to prove their mettle. By mid-May, the number of guerrillas exceeded 130. The anxiety bred by the occasional desertions was mitigated by the arrival of weapons, ammunition, and food. The swelling numbers, new weapons, and ample nourishment hardened the guerrillas’ resolve, and Castro set his sights on the coastal military barracks at El Uvero, thirty-five kilometers east of La Plata.
On the evening of May 27, eighty rebels grouped in the hills above El Uvero, home to a large sawmill and the site of a garrison some fifty men strong. The garrison sat on a coastal plain, its front to the sea, its rear and flanks vulnerable from the mountains. Six guardhouses, little more than felled trees, protected the periphery, as if the garrison expected to be invaded from the sea. Beyond the guardhouses were residences belonging to the mill owners and local townsfolk. Castro had intended to launch the attack in the dark of night, but dawn was breaking by the time the report from his rifle stirred the guerrillas into action. Over the course of the next three hours, the sides exchanged heavy gunfire, with the guerrillas ultimately outlasting their adversary. By the time the last shot was fired, the army suffered eleven dead and nineteen wounded, the rebels seven dead and eight wounded. Among the army prisoners was the garrison doctor, an elderly man recently graduated from medical school. The man confessed to Guevara that he knew little or nothing about medicine. That never stopped him, Guevara quipped, before stepping into the breach to nurse the wounded. To secure their safety the rebels departed the battlefield with over thirty captives along with forty-five new rifles, six thousand rounds of ammunition, clothing, and other essentials.19
The rebel victory sealed the fate of the remaining isolated government outposts. It also introduced the army prisoners of war to a novel way of treating enemy captives, namely, with dignity and respect. In the years since Moncada, Castro emphasized that the Movement had nothing against ordinary soldiers. He consciously targeted the rank and file with propaganda promising them better treatment and a happier life upon the triumph of the Revolution. There was no surer vehicle of propaganda, Castro knew, than the soldiers themselves. The rebels released their prisoners on the condition that they return home and spread the word about the professionalism of their adversary.20
The string of modest victories in the first six months of the year provided the guerrillas some breathing room, compelling them to impose law and order, while raising questions about who best to lead a rebel government and other complicated issues. It was a natural time for opposition groups to feel out one another again. Besides resulting in untold murders, the government dragnet that followed the Revolutionary Directory’s attack on the Presidential Palace landed hundreds of opposition figures in jail, including Carlos Franqui, arrested for violating the censorship regulations. Ecumenical in its repression, Batista’s police succeeded in doing what no one else had been able to do, namely, bringing the members of Cuba’s diverse opposition into extended conversation at Havana’s El Príncipe prison. There Franqui was able to glean the sentiment of the opposition as a whole, which he shared with Frank País. “There are two hundred of us in prison,” Franqui wrote. “Over a hundred from the 26th of July, about forty from the RD [Revolutionary Directory], about twenty from the Auténtico groups, about ten Communists.”
Franqui informed Hart that the communists did not endorse the tactics of the July 26 Movement or the Revolutionary Directory, both of which they regarded as “putschist, adventurist, and petit bourgeois.” Though claiming with their emphasis on mass mobilization to be the only adults in the room, the communists came off as disengaged; they did not “understand the nature of tyranny and do not believe in the possibility of revolution.” Meanwhile, the Auténticos comprised a “mixed” group, Franqui remarked cryptically, before expressing sympathy for the Revolutionary Directory, only recently decimated. The Revolutionary Directory shared his concern about Castro’s “bossism” (evidenced by his unilateral decision to return to Cuba the previous December despite what everybody knew to be unfavorable conditions). Franqui counseled Hart to make common cause with the Revolutionary Directory, the only other “serious fighting, revolutionary group in the country.”21
While Franqui patched things up with the hard-liners, País worked to manage Castro’s image among groups whose endorsement was indispensable for the Revolution to succeed. These included diplomats at the U.S. consulate in Santiago de Cuba (more sympathetic than their colleagues in Havana) and members of the country’s professional and political classes untainted by corruption or proximity to the dictator. In early July, País sent Haydée Santamaría and Javier Pazos, son of Felipe Pazos, former president of the National Bank of Cuba, to Havana to see if respected members of civil society, increasingly alarmed by the government’s heavy-handedness, would be interested in allying with the July 26 Movement. On July 5, without any warning, País brought Raúl Chibás, Roberto Agramonte Jr. (son of the former Ortodoxo presidential candidate), and Enrique Barroso (leader of the Ortodoxo Youth) to meet with Castro, forcing them into discussion. Felipe Pazos himself arrived a few days later. País believed that the presence of these moderates within the Movement would assuage U.S. concerns about Castro. Anticipating Castro’s opposition to such a meeting, País did not give Castro the chance to say no. A clever strategist, País also sent along a team of journalists from Bohemia, knowing Castro could never resist a little attention from the press.22
If surprised by País’s initiative, Castro did not let on. The very day Chibás and the others arrived, he wrote Celia Sánchez that the newcomers were already well acclimated and that it was essential that news of the alliance be broadcast in Havana. He sent along some rolls of film depicting visitors and hosts united in amicable conversation. He noted that it “would be highly positive to form a Revolutionary Government presided over by Raúl Chibás,” brother of the late Ortodoxo founder, though he worried that Chibás was too scrupulous to accept the offer.23
Castro’s future tilt to the left makes it tempting to exaggerate the differences between the Sierra and the Llano at this stage of the revolutionary struggle.24 But except for the timing of Castro’s return to Cuba, there does not seem to be much daylight between him and País as reflected in their correspondence from the period. If Castro evinces frustration at times, it is directed not at País but at the Gods of War for sending him poor recruits and for turning him into a bullet counter. Consumed by the challenge of simply staying alive, he was dependent on País for provisions and organization, and he appeared fully aware of that. Castro trusted País (and País alone) to gauge the cost and benefits of striking new alliances. “I have absolute confidence that he is clearly focused on the possible implications,” Castro told Sánchez; “he understands our duty, and I delegate full authority in him, without consultation, and in everything related to this matter.”25
At this point in the struggle, Castro believed that the combined efforts of the Sierra and Llano were paying off. Thanks to Sánchez, País, and their network, the guerrillas were “marvelously well.” Through discipline and selectivity, they were “becoming a real army.” Nor was the hard work and risk borne by comrades in the Llano lost on the guerrillas, he said. This letter to Sánchez coincided with the death of País’s brother, Josué, who was murdered by Batista’s police. That tragic event provided yet another reminder of “the heroism displayed by our brothers in the underground,” Castro wrote. The relative safety of the mountains made him feel “ashamed.” At this stage of the war, the Llano was where the most critical work was being carried out. “To be there has much more merit than to be here.”26
Evidence suggests that País’s cultivation of the moderates and U.S. consular officials was paying off. After the victory at El Uvero, Castro sent Lester Rodríguez, one of his trusted lieutenants, to País, in the hope that he could help Rodríguez get to Miami in order to whip the exile Movement into shape. País delivered thanks to the assistance of the U.S. consul in Santiago. “The consul took him personally,” País reported triumphantly, “and the papers, letters, maps that he needed were taken out in a diplomatic pouch. Good service.” Castro did not respond to this delightful tidbit, but he had to have been impressed. País was proving as invaluable as everybody said he was. Good service, indeed.27
In early July, País informed Castro that he and Armando Hart had taken it upon themselves to streamline the Movement leadership. There were simply too many cooks, he said. The Llano’s role was expanding. Besides providing the guerrillas with food, arms, and new men, it was organizing and training workers and militias across the island. A National Workers Directorate had been established to bring industrial and agricultural laborers into the fold. He and his colleagues had established another new office called the National Directorate of Civilian Resistance comprised of professionals, businessmen, and industrialists. He was reaching out to other opposition groups, as Castro knew, and he was thinking of establishing a strike committee comprised of diverse elements, which, if not “an organ of 26th of July,” might nevertheless help launch a strike “at the time we consider propitious.” This was never a pleasant process, País allowed. He and Hart had “had to work a little highhandedly,” doling out orders “and becoming rather strict.”28
País also suggested it was time to put some meat on the bones of the Movement’s ideological skeleton. Despite Castro’s stream of manifestos over the years, the Movement still lacked a feasible, “clear and precisely outlined program,” País said. Without that, the Movement would not gain traction among establishment figures essential to its success. Thanks to Castro’s persistence and the groundswell of anti-Batista sentiment, Batista’s days were numbered. What concerned potential allies was “the quality of the engineers that the 26th can mobilize to construct the new edifice.”29
If Castro was upset by País’s initiatives, he did not show it. In letters to Conchita Fernández, an old friend from Ortodoxo days, and Celia Sánchez, he reported that all was good in the Sierra. The rebels lacked for nothing, were content, and were better manned and equipped than “ever before.” Moreover, the guerrillas enjoyed “the complete respect of the peasants.” Meanwhile, Chibás and Pazos were thriving in the mountains. Castro suggested Conchita Fernández pay them a visit. It was much safer there than in the Llano.30
On July 12, 1957, Castro, Pazos, and Chibás published the Sierra Maestra Manifesto, announcing the creation of a “civic-revolutionary front” committed to constitutionalism, the rule of law, civil rights and liberties, and social justice, including educational and agricultural reform. Promising to name a provisional president independent of political party affiliation, the manifesto repudiated outside meddling in Cuban affairs and rule by military junta. Hereafter, the military would be kept strictly separate from and under civilian control. Vague and formulaic, the manifesto could not have slaked País’s appetite for specifics. But it succeeded in associating the Movement with the moderates Pazos and Chibás while getting the attention of the Civic Resistance. U.S. officials also noticed. If true, the embassy observed, a coalition between Castro and Chibás “would be quite significant, as both men have large followings.”31
Though fond of Chibás and Pazos, Castro found the act of reaching out to former adversaries distasteful. The publicity made it worth it in the short run, which seems to have been what he and País had counted on. The conflicting interests could be addressed later. Still, amid the document’s bland verbiage came a clarion call in Castro’s voice confirming the rebels’ success in the mountains. “No one should be deceived by the government propaganda concerning the situation in the mountains,” the manifesto concluded. “The Sierra Maestra is already an indestructible bulwark of liberty which has taken root in the hearts of our compatriots, and here we know how to honor the faith and confidence of our people.”32
A few weeks later, Castro took time to respond to País’s recent letters. He began by acknowledging the death of País’s brother. Everybody admired the grace with which he had handled the grievous loss. Referring to País as a beloved friend, Castro assured him of his “pride and contentment” at having him at the helm of the Movement, “directing all the work.” When it came time to write the history of the war in the Sierra, Castro remarked, two names would stand out: Frank País and Celia Sánchez.33
In one of his letters, País had suggested that Cuba was still not yet ripe for a general strike. By this time, Castro had come to agree completely. He himself had always emphasized the need to raise public consciousness. That is why he never endorsed the coup attempts of Rafael García Bárcena and Ramón Barquín, and why he consistently opposed the Revolutionary Directory’s attempt to assassinate Batista. All these initiatives seemed to assume that the country would simply fall in line. The population had to be educated and brought to consciousness. Organization was essential to this process, so, too, propaganda, as he had been preaching since prison. Overwhelmed and overstretched by the challenge of raising an expeditionary force from Mexico, Castro now conceded that the Movement had not achieved the level of organization and consciousness raising that a successful revolution demanded. The guerrillas would continue the war of attrition in the mountains, while País and company proceeded with the political organizing. Indeed, “so clearly” did Castro understand the need for time, he told País, “that if I were asked to choose between a victory on November 30 and victory a year from now, I would prefer without doubt the victory that is brewing by means of this formidable awakening of the Cuban people.”34
Coming from someone who always seemed to be in a hurry, this statement is remarkable, and reflects Castro’s evolving sense of the peasants’ role in the Revolution. Upon landing on the coast in December 1956, Castro regarded his peasant hosts as saviors of his revolutionary project. Six months later, he had come to associate the Revolution with the peasants themselves. What had changed? The answer is that the peasants embodied the revolutionary consciousness that orthodox Marxists believed could only emerge from the industrial proletariat. Unlike the rest of Cuba, the peasants did not need to be woken up. They were awake and alert and had joined the revolutionary struggle with barely a nudge on his or anybody else’s part. Old abstractions like “revolutionary consciousness” and “the people” vanished in the face of the peasants’ resolve to keep the guerrillas supplied, Castro told País. The Revolution inhered in “the invisible force that surrounds us, in those caravans of thirty or forty men, illuminated by torches, descending those slippery slopes, at two or three in the morning, with seventy-pound sacks on the shoulders, delivering our supplies.”35
What was the source of that willpower and sacrifice? Castro marveled. Who organized those trains? “Where did they acquire such ability, such shrewdness, such valor, such sacrifice?” Not from books, not from party membership, not from cajoling by activists. The peasants organized themselves “spontaneously,” he observed. Such was the dedication of those men that when the animals collapsed under the weight of those loads, the men stepped in to complete the job. Nothing could stop the peasants now, he said. Batista’s army would have to kill them all, which was impossible, as “the people are awakening to that fact and become day by day more conscious of their immense power.”36
It was from witnessing such sacrifice firsthand that Castro came to speak of the Cuban Revolution as a revolution of peasants. Critics accused him of mistaking a part of Cuba for the whole, of misreading the nature and needs of less isolated, less rural municipalities and provinces. Rightly or wrongly, living in the Sierra, surviving thanks to the peasants’ ingenuity and support, Castro came to regard the local population as the true revolutionaries and the real rebel army. “Our armed force is nothing, insignificant, compared to the immense and terrible army that is the people,” he told País, “men, women, old and young who admire the revolutionaries like characters in a fable.” The respect was mutual, the trust building and social interaction reciprocal. The peasants taught the guerrillas the meaning of “true revolution.” That was the news from the Sierra. If País could do for the rest of Cuba what the guerrilla struggle was accomplishing in the mountains, then Castro and his fellow fighters were happy to wait. País was right. The Revolution could not be rushed.37
Before signing off, Castro took up País news that U.S. vice consul Robert Wiecha wanted to talk to the rebel leader. Castro had no objection to speaking to a U.S. or any other diplomat, he said. Such a visit would constitute U.S. recognition that a state of belligerence existed in Cuba and be “one more victory against the tyranny.” Contact with the Americans was not in and of itself compromising, Castro observed, so long as Movement representatives remained steadfast on the issues of “DIGNITY AND NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY.” Control was everything. If the Americans made demands, they would be rejected. If they wanted to know what the Revolution stood for, Castro would be happy to explain. If they were ready to befriend a “triumphant Cuban democracy? Magnificent.” On the other hand, given the history of U.S. intervention in Cuba, there could be no U.S. mediation in the current conflict, no matter how well-meaning. There was no need to repeat this, Castro said; it was all there in the Sierra Maestra Manifesto.38
That was the last recorded exchange between the two young mavericks. On the afternoon of July 30, 1957, País was gunned down by Batista’s henchmen on the streets of Santiago de Cuba. Vilma Espín, a friend and fellow dissident, had spoken to País by telephone not ten minutes before he died. “He spoke rapidly,” she told Franquí. “I realized he was in a hurry.” In fact, País was trapped in a house with no escape. The noose had tightened, and he seemed to know the end was near. Espín heard the shots that killed her friend, the perpetrators confirmed by a conversation that rebel agents had taped between police chief Rafael Salas Cañizares and his assassins. “It’s done,” Laureano Ibarra told his boss. “We put a bullet through him,” at which point another voice cut in to claim his 3,000 pesos.39
The murder of Frank País robbed the Revolution of the only person of comparable stature to Castro, if boasting different skills. País was irreplaceable, and Castro knew it. He greeted news of País’s death with outrage. “I can’t even begin to express my bitterness, my indignation, the endless sorrow that overwhelms us,” he wrote Celia Sánchez. País’s killers had “no idea of the intelligence, character, or integrity of the man they murdered.” Vitriolic toward the murderers, Castro was equally unsparing of the political passivity that made such events possible. It was time for “every decent and dignified human being, no matter what institution he or she represents, or what party or organization he or she belongs to,” to unite to depose Batista and his government.40
On August 31, the day after País’s assassination, Santiago erupted in peaceful protest, completely shutting the city down. René Ramos Latour, País’s colleague in the Llano (and the person pegged to fill his role), described the “general strike” in a letter to Celia Sánchez. “There were no conservatives or radicals, rich or poor, blacks or whites,” Ramos wrote. The people came together in a show of unity and defiance. “All businesses, movies, cafés, banks, factories, professionals, in a word, all of Santiago shut its doors, and came together in one of the greatest outpourings of sorrow in memory.” The city was “ours.” Citizens did not hesitate to declare their solidarity with the Movement. Santiago remained paralyzed the following day, with “employers as well as workers . . . ready to prolong the stoppage as long as necessary.”41
Movement leaders hoped that the Santiago strike would precipitate similar stoppages in other cities. It did not, leading to finger-pointing that did not bode well for life after País. Within hours of his death, the Directorate took up the task of divvying up the innumerable tasks that País had somehow managed to do himself. The immensity of the challenge was not lost on them. Formally, País’s burden was divided among Sánchez, Hart, and Ramos, with the Sierra and Llano retaining their separate roles. “Ultimately,” Castro wrote Sánchez, he and she would have to shoulder the responsibility. And not for a want of “valiant comrades,” but because País’s “authority, initiative, and experience” could not be acquired on the run.42
Just a few weeks earlier, at País’s suggestion, Castro divided his forces, creating what would become known as Column 4, under the leadership of Che Guevara, recently promoted to commander. Numbering roughly a hundred strong, Guevara’s column left the La Plata area for the territory east of Pico Turquino, in the municipality of Buey Arriba. The idea behind the split was to make it harder for the army to concentrate its forces on a single target. Meanwhile, Castro stayed put atop the La Plata River valley, writing letters, conducting business, and raiding isolated garrisons. Through summer 1957, the army’s effort to take the battle to the guerrillas can only be called halfhearted. Instead of avenging the rebel victory at El Uvero, it avoided the Sierra Maestra, allowing the rebels to consolidate their positions, recruit new men, and acquire new weapons. In late July, Castro and Guevara grew restless, scanning the exposed army outposts at the base of the foothills for ripe targets. Castro raided the garrison at Estrada Palma, taking it without firing a shot. Bohemia took advantage of a short window without censorship to chronicle the event, converting a trivial skirmish into a major rebel victory won by over two hundred men. The number in Castro’s band was far smaller. Delighted by the publicity, Castro did not quibble about the numbers.43
In mid-August, Guevara’s command received its initiation, descending the hills for an early morning raid on the army garrison at Bueycito, where the greenhorns out-battled the garrison’s twelve men. “My debut as a major was a success from the point of view of victory and a failure as far as the organizational part was concerned,” Guevara informed Castro. His column continued to succeed despite itself. A few days later, a company of Cuban soldiers under the leadership of Colonel Merob Sosa snaked its way up the El Hombrito valley and into the mountains where Guevara set an ambush. The guerrillas opened fire just as one of the regulars was overheard describing the advance as “a picnic.” Inexperience converted what might have been a smashing rebel victory into something close to a draw, demonstrating in Guevara’s words, “how ill-prepared for combat our troop was, unable to fire accurately at a moving enemy line from close range.”44
In the end, Sosa and his men retreated, allowing the rebels to count this a success. An important, if obvious, new tactic was coming into view. “This battle showed us how easy it was, in certain conditions, to attack columns on the march,” Guevara remarked. Amid the mountain fasts, if you aimed at the head of an approaching column, you could bring it to a halt. “Little by little, this tactic crystalized and finally it became so systematic that the enemy stopped entering the Sierra Maestra.”45
These little triumphs forced the rebels to confront the challenge of governing a liberated territory just as the coming and going of untested recruits raised tension between the Sierra and the Llano about vetting practices. Moreover, despite Castro’s glowing account of peasant consciousness, the local inhabitants of the Sierra Maestra had no political experience whatsoever and could not be counted on to help build a political movement. “The political development of its inhabitants was still superficial,” Guevara conceded, “and the presence of a threatening army made it difficult for us to overcome these weaknesses.” Looking back on this period after the triumph of the Revolution, Guevara also noted the intriguing relationship between strength and mercy. Crimes committed that first year of war were dealt with severely, he said. With the rebels untested and enemy aggression on the rise, it was simply “not possible to tolerate even the suspicion of treason.” Early in a war, when an army is very weak, or late in a war, when it is confident and strong, perpetrators might expect a degree of leniency. Guevara told the story of one poor devil whose crime “coincided precisely with the point at which we were strong enough to mete out drastic punishment, but not strong enough to sanction him in another way, since we had no jail or any other type of confinement.”46
Castro told an interviewer that the rebels executed very few people during the war (“not more than ten guys in twenty-five months”). Guevara suggests otherwise. There was this one for treason, that one for murder, another for rape, two more for spying, all in the span of a month or so. Those for whom capital punishment was deemed extreme could be treated to “mock execution,” among other measures. “In retrospect, this method . . . might seem barbaric,” Guevara allowed. In real time, there were no other options, such were the challenges of stamping out “the seeds of anarchy” in areas outside the rule of law.47
These were temporary exigencies. After the Cuban Army withdrew from El Hombrito, Guevara set up camp there, creating a press, a radio station, a small hydroelectric plant, a bakery, a hospital, and a school, with farms and other industries to come in the next year. The seeding of institutions meant that the guerrillas had more to protect, and so Guevara and his troops dug in on the roads and rivers leading up the valley, in the manner of a true army. The Cuban Army did not stay away for long. It returned to the mountains that fall, launching a scorched-earth campaign not so much against the guerrillas, but against their peasant hosts, with the aim of robbing the rebels of subsistence.48
With the rebels consolidating their dominion over the Sierra, rival opposition leaders convened in Miami in mid-October 1957 to discuss a post-Batista government. The Cuban Liberation Junta, as the rebels referred to it derisively, consisted of representatives of the old Auténtico and Ortodoxo parties, including Carlos Prío and Roberto Agramonte, members of the Revolutionary Directory, among them Faure Chomón and Alberto Mora, along with delegates from the Cuban Labor Confederation (CTC) and Independent Democrats. Felipe Pazos, signatory to the recent Sierra Maestra Manifesto, was present, too, though by whose authority it was not exactly clear, as was Lester Rodríguez, the July 26 Movement’s representative in the United States, who attended without Castro’s authorization. The conference was closely watched by the U.S. State Department. Its unstated purpose was to limit Castro’s role in a post-Batista government.49
On the face of it, the resulting document, known as the Miami Pact, was not groundbreaking. Signatories committed themselves to oust Batista, reestablish constitutional democracy and the rule of law, and restore civil rights and liberties. There was talk of a provisional government, free and fair elections, curbing corruption, monetary stability, and civil service, agrarian, industrial, and educational reform. The pact called for the United States to end its military support of the Batista government and to recognize the signatories, who now referred to themselves as the Liberation Council. It also promised to curb the influence of the military in civilian life, while inviting the armed forces to “unite with us [in] the common objective of obtaining freedom.”50
Though not officially signed until November 1, the pact was leaked to the U.S. press in late October. The July 26 Movement Directorate got word of the Miami meeting when Luis Buch, a member of the Civic Resistance, hand-delivered a draft of the agreement to the Llano leaders later that month. Anyone could see that the Junta hoped to capitalize on the work being done by the rebels, and Armando Hart and the others vociferously denounced it, as did Faustino Pérez in Havana. Hart and Pérez instructed Buch to return to Miami to make the Movement’s opposition clear, and to inform Pazos that his role must be as an observer only. They would leave it to Castro to provide the public condemnation.
Condemn it Castro did in mid-December, after six furious weeks dodging Batista’s military, which had increased its pressure on the guerillas. In principle, Castro explained, the rebels were not opposed to an alliance with the opposition. He reminded the Junta of how it was that they could now entertain the thought of a post-Batista Cuba. He said that news of the accord had reached him on a day in which his command engaged in three pitched battles in a mere matter of hours.51 He noted the irony of receiving a document from Miami when what he desperately needed was arms. The Junta’s tactlessness in sidelining the Movement was galling in the face of its passivity. But the thing that rankled most was its suggestion that the revolutionary army would simply dissolve into the Cuban armed forces at the end of the war. The lack of an independent revolutionary army able to stand up to Batista in January 1934 had doomed the 1933 Revolution, Castro pointedly observed. The rebels were not about to repeat that mistake. Moreover, he demanded, just whom did the Junta expect to include among the armed forces once Batista had been deposed? Former police and military people now desperate to distance themselves from their past? Individuals who had stood by with their arms crossed while the rebels put their lives on the line? In short, what was to prevent the corruption, gangsterism, and abuse that had made a revolution necessary from raising its head anew?
Castro’s denunciation arrived in Miami at the end of the month. Junta leaders pleaded with Movement representatives not to publish the document. The Junta was willing to concede all points, it said, insisting that Castro’s criticism would only help Batista. But the Junta was in no position to bargain, and their plea fell on deaf ears. Castro’s repudiation was published for all to see.52
It did not take publication of the Miami Pact for Castro to recognize that he had competition and that that competition was working with some in the U.S. government to ensure he never came to power. The pact was more significant for revealing the growing division between the Sierra and the Llano in the aftermath of País’s death. Helpless to vanquish the Junta or restore País to life, Movement leaders turned on one another, competing to see who could condemn the pact the fiercest. Busy defending himself from the government’s reinvigorated military campaign, Castro remained aloof from most of the rancor. But he surely knew about it and, one thinks, might have done more to nip it in the bud. Castro possessed many traits of a successful leader—charisma, idealism, daring, self-sacrifice, and attention to detail, to name a few. But his ability to hold together a team of talented and devoted subordinates remained to be seen.
Dependent on the Llano for men, money, and arms, the Sierra bristled about the timing, quantity, and quality of everything that came its way. Meanwhile the Llano chafed at what it perceived as the guerrillas’ lack of discipline and refusal to uphold a chain of command. There was a reason for the betrayals and desertions hampering the Sierra, the Llano pointed out; the guerrillas were too casual about welcoming unknown entities into their ranks and about allowing just about anyone to serve as couriers. Well and good, the Sierra shot back. They were simply trying to make the best of a near impossible situation.
Both groups endured tremendous risk and saw many of their members fall. In early November, for example, Armando García, captain of one of the action groups in the Llano, was removed from his house in the middle of the night and tortured—“his testicles crushed, his ears burned with cigars, his body and feet stabbed”—before being finished off by a bullet in the street.53 While País was alive, the tensions between the Sierra and the Llano seemed manageable, as he and Castro respected one another’s contributions and distinct gifts. Once País was gone, the tensions came out in the open, with Castro himself occasionally succumbing to pettiness.
Many examples come to mind. Guevara dismissed his colleagues as incompetent. Castro complained about the Llano. Ramos accused Castro of a lack of sympathy. Hart charged Sánchez with bad faith. Hart, Ramos, and Guevara bickered about who was more radical, and so on.54 An exchange between Guevara and Ramos conveys the substance and tone of these aspersions. On December 9, Guevara wrote Castro with an update from the battle front that included a forceful indictment of the Llano. He refused to accept any more notes about whom to accept weapons from, and whom not, with the lives of his men in jeopardy (he wrote with a bullet lodged in his instep, he noted). Back in Mexico, Guevara’s elevation to a position of leadership caused resentment among the rebel rank and file. Guevara suspected something similar at work in Hart’s and Ramos’s reprimands for not abiding by the Directorate’s protocols. “My suspicions have reached the point that I think there is direct sabotage against this column or, more directly, against me,” Guevara wrote Castro. Either he would strenuously fight back or surrender his column. As evidence, he pointed to instances in which his “urgent requests” were met by “three-page letters that latch onto one paragraph of mine, in which I did nothing but carry out orders given to me by passing visitors.”55
Not about to quit, Guevara lashed out at Ramos the next week, just as Ramos was writing a conciliatory letter explaining that he was doing his best to meet Guevara’s needs (“200 coats, 75 pairs of woolen underpants, 150 pairs of socks, the new mimeograph, and some other things” were on the way). The inconveniences of the postal service. The reason he engaged strangers peddling ammunition, Guevara explained, was because, um, he needed ammunition! The Miami Pact was unforgivable, he noted, as if Ramos had had anything to do with it. “I belong to those who believe that the solution to the world’s problems lies behind the so-called iron curtain,” he went on, seemingly off subject, “and I see this Movement as one of the many inspired by the bourgeoisie’s desire to free themselves from the economic chains of imperialism.” Guevara said that he had once regarded Castro as the epitome of a “leftist bourgeoisie,” before realizing the “extraordinary brilliance that set him above his class.” Guevara arrived in Cuba expecting to do no more than assist the nation in its liberation, expecting to depart when the Revolution veered to the right, that is, “toward what all of you represent.” He was dumbstruck that Castro could sign on to the Miami Pact, before learning that it was not Castro’s work but that of the Movement leaders in the Llano, whose responsibility amounted to betrayal. “If this letter pains you,” Guevara continued, a tad presumptuously, “because you consider it unfair or because you consider yourself innocent of the crime and you want to tell me so, terrific. And if it hurts so much that you cut off relations with this part of the revolutionary forces, so much the worse. One way or the other, we’ll go forward since the people can’t be defeated.”56
Ramos was every bit Guevara’s match.57 When Guevara suggested the Sierra let the Llano go, Castro said that he was not ready to go that far. He conceded that some in the leadership had behaved naively. The Directorate’s ambiguous role in the pact had caused a breach. He had chosen not to emphasize the breach, he told Guevara, so as not to make the situation worse. He said that the events surrounding the formulation and publicizing of the pact had led him to cut off communication with the leadership (which was not quite true, as Armando Hart was at that very moment in the middle of a month-long stay in the Sierra). However bitter it was to see his name exploited fraudulently, Castro said, it was worse to see the Movement looking so “chaotic and undisciplined” at the moment when the Revolution was “half-way home.” The Llano was already reversing direction and realizing its blunder. In the end, there would be no Revolution without the money, food, and weapons it supplied, however inadequate, and equally important, no political organization. The Llano still had an important role to play.58
Viewed from a distance, 1957 had not been a bad year, all things considered, despite País’s death and subsequent bickering. Castro’s band of fifteen men had not only survived, it had expanded and was beginning to thrive, even extending the rule of law over what would soon be declared the Liberated Territory of Cuba. One could even regard the machinations of the Miami Junta as a sign of the Movement’s strength. If Castro and his fellow rebels had not proved they were for real, the Cuban opposition (and the U.S. government) would not have been so eager to find an alternative to Batista. The intrigue across the Florida Straits had not caught Castro off guard. “I am terrified by these conspirators,” he wrote Celia Sánchez earlier that year. “It exasperates me to think of these supposed comrades one thousand miles away, putting useless plans into effect.”59 A few days later, having wearied of expecting others to come to the rebels’ assistance, he allowed that maybe “destiny has insisted on making this a tough and difficult fight, in making us undergo this test without the help of anyone.”60 Ever and always alone.
In fact, others were stepping up. The July 26 Movement had expanded its reach. With an injection of energy provided by País, Hart, Pérez, and others, the Movement had established labor, student, and civic associations across the country, and was recruiting and training local militias. Although the impromptu strike that erupted in Santiago de Cuba after País’s murder had not caught on, citizens of Santiago and elsewhere had witnessed firsthand the power of collective action. “Everyone has begun to think about strikes,” Castro wrote Sánchez, “and have seen in them a terrific weapon of the people.”61
Meanwhile, Castro had learned lessons and carried out policies that would extend into the new year. Since first arriving in the Sierra, he took pains to explain his actions and policies to the local residents. When, for example, in November 1957, the rebels launched a cane-burning campaign to rob the government of profits and distract the army, Castro reached out to growers, acknowledging the inconvenience and promising to compensate their losses. “I implore you to forgive us for the sacrifice that we have caused for the benefit of the motherland,” he wrote one plantation owner. “Before the tyranny can put these riches at its disposal to assassinate and oppress our brothers, it is preferable to burn them.” He promised to return and repay the damage with interest. Producers could be sure that the product of their “sweat would not be used to pay assassins or purchase homicidal weapons.”62
By late autumn 1957, Castro was using the liberated territory as a hothouse for future revolutionary projects. In mid-November, he sent money to a woman named Nancy Reyes, who had come to the Sierra to help educate children. Castro had long prized education and regarded educational reform as a top priority. “Tomorrow’s teachers will be the best soldiers of freedom,” he said. “In our schools, we must cultivate the land that we liberate from oppression, and the work must begin now.” A pencil and pen could go a long way not only in defeating the tyranny, but in vanquishing “the conditions that made tyranny possible.”63
Castro had begun to reach out to enemy soldiers. After the rebels’ first battle at La Plata at the beginning of the year, Castro regarded prisoners of war as ready-made propaganda. By treating them well and then sending them home, he delivered a message to soldiers, friends, and family alike: “the rebels admired the soldiers’ valor; this wasn’t a battle against them, but against those who took advantage of them to enrich themselves at the soldiers’ and civilians’ cost.”64 The rebels also provided medical care for wounded adversaries. Those whose wounds were too grievous were provided with passes to facilitate their transport to hospitals in Santiago de Cuba. In exchange, the prisoners were expected to testify that “in no moment had they been maltreated by their hosts in words or deeds.”65
Finally, Castro spent as much time as possible cultivating his relationship with the peasants. Of all the offenses that beset the guerrilla army, he tolerated exploiting peasants the least. In early September, he received word that some of his men were “commandeering arms” from the farmers of the Sierra. In a letter to one of the victims, he insisted that the “the Rebel High Command” had “never authorized, nor will it ever authorize” such appropriations. Measures were being taken to ensure it never happened again. The guerrillas had made it a point to distribute land seized from the government. When the government responded with its own promises of land, Castro warned his neighbors not to be fooled. That was too little too late, he said. The land already belonged to the peasants “thanks to our arms, which have never permitted nor ever would permit the despoiling of peasant farms.”66