The failed strike ushered in a new phase of the war. Up to this point, the government’s only real success on the “battlefield” (as measured by body count) was in the cities, where the police shot (tortured, mutilated) first and asked questions later. Except for occasional forays into the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, the Cuban military had all but abandoned the territory to the rebels by March 1958, prompting Castro to declare the Liberated Territory of Cuba and the war all but won.
NOT. SO. FAST.
Inspired by the apparent disarray in rebel ranks, the Cuban Army announced Plan Fin-de-Fidel, prompting Castro to unleash the Medina boys, who soon made a name for themselves as Quinteto Rebelde. Besides targeting Castro’s command post atop the La Plata River valley, Plan Fin-de-Fidel included a campaign against Raúl Castro and his column in the Sierra Cristal, the countryside above Birán. Until this time, the army’s forays into the mountains seemed halfhearted and incompetent, costlier to local residents than to the guerrillas.1
Looking southeast from Miami after the failed strike, members of the opposition junta also sensed an opportunity. José Miró Cardona, former member of de la Torriente’s Society of Friends of the Republic, approached Haydée Santamaría to say that former president Carlos Prío would join forces with Castro in exchange for “equal participation in decision-making in wartime and power sharing in post-Batista government.” Too little too late, Santamaría replied. If Miró and Prío really expected Castro to hand over leadership of the insurrection at this time, they had not been paying attention.2
Washington’s response was measured. Addressing a meeting of the National Security Council on April 14, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said that in the aftermath of the failed strike he expected Castro to retreat to the Sierra to weigh his options. “It would be very difficult to dislodge him,” Dulles allowed. Still, with the rebels reeling, the Cuban Army appeared to have the advantage, forcing the enemy to adopt “a new tack.” In passing, Dulles noted that he had not seen any evidence connecting Castro to communism.3
Indeed, through much of the preceding winter and into that spring, Washington had worried more about the Cuban government’s use of U.S.-supplied weapons than about Castro. Congress continued to needle the Eisenhower administration about Batista using weapons furnished by the United States against a homegrown uprising.4 This, in turn, led to tension between the State Department and Ambassador Smith, who, despite his protestations to the contrary, served as apologist in chief for the Cuban dictator.5 In mid-March, Smith wrote to Washington about a recent meeting with Batista in which he had raised the subject of alleged brutalities perpetrated in Oriente Province by Colonel Jesús Sosa Blanco. Batista was “grieved and shocked to hear the allegations,” Smith reported, and promised to look into the matter. Smith then quickly changed the subject to the spread of communism in Cuba, which, in turn, led to a discussion of Batista’s plan to drive the civilian population from the Sierra to starve the rebels of support. Of course, Batista did not want to inconvenience those families, Smith said. The action was necessary strictly to eliminate Castro. The meeting concluded with the American ambassador feeling “gratified and impressed by [Batista’s] sincerity, his desire to be fair, and his willingness to cooperate.”6
On March 29, 1958, over the strenuous opposition of its ambassador, the U.S. government suspended arms shipments to Cuba. The U.S. government also insisted on the withdrawal of U.S.-trained military personnel (including Cuban Air Force pilots) from the battlefront.7 The U.S. Congress and the American public were not the only ones compelling this policy, with consular officials across Latin America reporting mounting discontent over the North Americans’ coddling of dictators.8 In the ensuing weeks and months, Smith campaigned tirelessly for weapons shipments to resume. When the State Department ignored his counsel, he played his trump card: military support for Batista was justified, Smith insisted, because the Cuban government was “combatting elements in league with communism.”
The more the State Department ignored Smith’s charges, the harder he pressed them, until his accusations became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Castro was communist therefore the U.S. government had to prevent his taking power; the U.S. government later tried to prevent his taking power, compelling Castro to seek support from the Soviet Union.9 Smith was hardly the only one making such claims. There were plenty of U.S. and Cuban businessmen around to confirm them.10 But Smith commanded a bully pulpit, and with a bit of training and an open mind, he might have forestalled the conflation of nationalism with communism so common at this stage of the Cold War.
On May 8, 1958, a Cuban expeditionary force disembarked at the coastal neighborhood of Macho, some eight miles west of where the La Plata River enters the sea. Plan F-F was in motion. A few days later, a second government offensive began in the Sierra Cristal, where Raúl Castro and his commanders were handing out bullets to their men a few at a time. From his perch in La Plata, Castro received reports of government forces massing in the towns at the base of the mountains. In anticipation of the onslaught, he summoned his commanders back toward his headquarters, which now included a radio station, a hospital, a commissary, a weapons depot, an airfield, workshops, and other operations essential to waging war.
Despite the modest successes of the previous fall and winter, the guerrillas were still desperate for arms and ammunition—and as dependent as ever on local residents for survival. The ad hoc, improvised nature of the recruitment, communication, and weapons dispersal that had so annoyed País and Ramos and hobbled guerrilla operations in the early stages of the war could now prove deadly, as the military concentrated its resources on an area not ten miles square. Castro marked this new stage in the war by ordering all commanders, platoon captains, and squadron lieutenants to pay scrupulous attention to weapon readiness, to the exact number and location of their troops, and to the meticulous maintenance of guard posts. Every single bullet was to be accounted for, any unnecessary discharge or misplacement of ammunition strictly avoided. Leaders were to put their troops through their paces “without discharging any weapons.” Commanders were to continue their instruction in “reading and writing to illiterate compañeros, along with other free lessons.” And they were to maintain cordial relations with their neighbors. “Teach good manners to the men,” he wrote, “so that they don’t bother the families without good reason.” Finally, there was to be no intoxication—“not a single sip of liquor”—in the theater of war.11
Having consolidated leadership in the Sierra, Castro found himself saddled with more responsibilities than an ordinary person could accomplish. He wanted the guerrillas to be able to keep the nation informed about the war’s progress, which meant establishing a radio station along with effective means of record keeping.12 Unusually observant as a child, he continued to focus on the details. Frustrated one minute by arguments about the distribution of bullets, the commander in chief cum quartermaster and commissary was delighted by a “café con leche” provided him in a nearby village the next. There were five families in the town, he told Sánchez. All had milk because two had cows, with one of the farmers providing milk to two neighbors. The town’s good fortune meant that it was attracting refugees, and he asked Sánchez to send along two more milk cows and six steers to the inhabitants, thereby leaving them with milk and meat for three months. Sánchez must not “leave any of the barrios without meat,” neither the farmers living in the settlements, nor the neighbors living along the roads. “No family should be forgotten by mistake,” he said.13