by Tad Szulc
Castro proclaimed that "first of all and most of all, we are fighting to do away with dictatorship in Cuba and to establish the foundations of genuine representative government." He felt a "personal reluctance" to seek Cuba's presidency after Batista, apart from the fact that under the constitutional age-requirement clause, "I am, at 31, far too young to be eligible for the presidency, and will remain so for another ten years" (actually, Castro would assume the presidential title seventeen years later, in 1976, but in terms of real power this was a technicality). He said truthfully that "we want to wipe out corruption in Cuban public life" and "we want to sponsor an intensive campaign against illiteracy." Misleadingly, he declared that "we will support no land reform bill . . . which does not provide for the just compensation of expropriated owners" and that "we have no plans for the expropriation or nationalization of foreign investments here." He acknowledged that government ownership of American-owned utilities "was a point of our earliest programs, but we have currently suspended all planning on this matter." He urged industrialization, saying that "a million unemployed in a nation of six million bespeaks a terrible economic sickness which must be cured without delay, lest it fester and become a breeding ground for communism." He explained that he had to take the "terrible decision" to burn Cuba's entire sugarcane crop in order to paralyze the regime and force Batista to "capitulate," adding that "my family has sizable cane holdings here in Oriente, and my instructions to our clandestine action groups state clearly that our crop must be the first one to burn, as an example to the rest of the nation." He repeated the same points in a February interview with Look magazine, violently denying his Movement was Communist inspired.
In any event, in the opening months of 1958, Castro still believed that he was facing a protracted war against Batista. He acted accordingly in the military field by establishing three new battlefronts in the Sierra Maestra. Politically, he made it clear that he welcomed a longer war because it would give him more time to prepare the Rebel Army and the country for the wide revolution he had in mind. (In a letter to Celia in July 1957, Castro wrote that "I feel that the fall of the regime in a week's time would be far less fruitful than four months from now. . . . Here, as a joke, I usually assure the comrades that we don't want to give birth to a seven-month revolution.")
The Rebel Army, in particular, was being turned into the cutting edge of the revolutionary process, to become later the ideological and operational center in implementing the great changes. Whereas the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions were directed by pre-existing Communist parties, Castro vested this role in the new Rebel Army, thus assuring his control of the entire Cuban political picture then and in the future.
For the Rebel Army to play such a political role successfully, a myth had to be built around it, and to Fidel Castro this was a high priority. This myth, preserved thirty years later in the Revolutionary Armed Forces, was based on its function as a social revolutionary force as much as on its military prowess. Because rebel soldiers increasingly concerned themselves with awarding land to peasants who worked it in the "Free Territory" of the Sierra—it was a "mini land reform" carried out in place—as well as helping farms (as in the 1957 coffee harvest), protecting peasant families from the landowners' overseers and the Rural Guard, applying "revolutionary justice" to rapists and exploiters, and opening a few schools and clinics, they loomed as friends of the population. This was the real myth. Guevara, who ran his own zone fairly independently since autumn of 1957, remarked that "we became revolutionaries in the revolution . . . we came to overthrow a tyrant, but we discovered that this immense peasant zone, where our struggle is being prolonged, is the area of Cuba that needs liberation the most." To a greater extent than Castro, the Commander in Chief always on the move, Guevara soon engaged in the political education of his own troops as well as of the peasants; he was not yet preaching Marxism but land reform and other structural changes required by Cuba. His newspaper, El Cubano Libre, printed the comment that Communists "are all those who take up arms because they are fed up with poverty . . ."
As self-appointed social revolutionaries, the Rebel Army evoked a peasant response far beyond the initial support that made it possible for Castro to survive during his first months in Cuba. At first, the peasants helped him from instinct, then out of admiration for the rebels' attitudes. Again, this support was crucial as the guerrilla war entered a new phase in 1958. The guajiros brought food for the rebels, helped them obtain weapons, provided free labor for the construction of armories and warehouses (they would not accept payment), served as an early-warning system when Batista army forces penetrated the mountains, and acted as couriers among rebel groups and between Castro and the llano Movement leaders; some of the best couriers were women. And the peasants remained the principal source of recruitment for the Rebel Army; they knew their way around, they were tough, they were believers in Fidelismo, and it was easier to integrate them in the guerrillas than the urban volunteers. And now Castro needed the best fighters available to expand the war.
On March 10, 1958, the sixth anniversary of the Batista coup, Raúl Castro left with sixty-five men from Fidel's camp to establish a new "front," or rebel war theater, in the Sierra Cristal along the north coast of Oriente province. It was directly east of the Castro brothers' birthplace at Birán, and northeast of Fidel's principal operational area. The idea was to create a second "liberated zone" in Oriente that would bring the war to the north and increase the strain on the Batista forces. Always myth-conscious, Fidel named this "Second Front" after Frank País. Raúl's force was designated as "Column 6," to create the impression that the Rebel Army was composed of many units. About the same time, Juan Almeida was dispatched with another column to set up the "Third Front" in the eastern range of the Sierra Maestra, immediately northwest of Santiago. In April, Camilo Cienfuegos moved north toward Bayamo to harass the Batista army there. Guevara and his "Column 4" had been operating in the central Sierra Maestra around El Hombrito since August 1957. By mid-spring 1958, therefore, the Rebel Army occupied or controlled most of the mountain regions in Oriente. Fidel's strategy became one of breaking out of the Sierra strongholds among which the rebels had been moving for a year, and denying the enemy more and more territory. However, Fidel also believed in prudence; in a note sent Guevara in February, he recommended that a planned attack be canceled if support was not available from other rebel units. "I do not believe anything suicidal should be done as we shall be risking too many casualties and fail to reach the objective," Castro wrote. "I strongly recommend that you be careful. As a final order, you should not fight. Take charge of leading the men well . . ."
Gradually, the guerrilla army was being transformed into a more conventional and better-equipped force. In April Fidel acquired a brand-new Toyota jeep, and the rebels held enough territory in the area for him to be able to drive rather than walk within a radius of ten to fifteen miles; most of the mountain paths were passable for the jeep, and even a few roads were now under Castro control. Colonel Arturo Aguilera, who served as Fidel's first driver and aide-de-camp, recounts that they moved from place to place every two or three days for security reasons; Castro still exercised enormous caution. Because of possible detection by aircraft, they drove at night without lights, "with Celia or Fidel carrying a lantern along for use when necessary." Aguilera says that they always traveled alone without an escort because they were in rebel-held areas. In late April and early May, Castro spent time inspecting his forces in preparation for what he was certain would soon be a large-scale enemy offensive. He ordered fortifications to be built at the approaches to the spine of the Sierra Maestra, believing that he would lose part of his territory, but that he would triumph in the end so long as he continued to dominate the main crest of the mountain chain.
Morale was high everywhere. A hospital for the seriously wounded was established in the mountains in Guevara's territory, well concealed by vegetation from aerial observation, but hard on the patients because of extreme humidit
y. Another hospital was set up on the western slopes of the Sierra Maestra, and small medical installations were strung out throughout the rebel territory. Medicine arrived regularly from the lowlands, if not always in desired volume or type. A low-power radio transmitter was installed in Alto de Conrado in Guevara's territory in February, but it could be heard only by a few patrols and peasant families in the immediate vicinity. Guevara also began manufacturing explosive devices known as M-26s; he also set up a slaughterhouse for captured cattle and a small cigar-making plant.
The high morale stemmed in part from the rigid discipline imposed by the commanders, but also from their personal example. Fidel, Raúl, Che, and the others were always in the vanguard, never asking the men to take risks they would not accept themselves. When a peasant officer accidentally shot dead a soldier who was being subject to disciplinary action, the troops demanded that the officer be executed. After Fidel and Che argued for hours that he did not deserve the death penalty, the men agreed grudgingly—but mainly out of personal respect for the commanders. Guevara never sat down at a meal until he was satisfied that all his soldiers had the same quantity and quality of food. Universo Sánchez remembers sharing a chicken-and-rice meal with Fidel on the same metal plate; after each had consumed exactly one half, a single piece of meat was, left, but neither of them would eat it. As Guevara recalls, the only thing almost never in shortage was coffee: One could always get a cup at a peasant's hut. Little escaped Che's sharp eye; he was the most complete, if sharp-penned, chronicler of the Sierra war—as one can appreciate from his campaign diary and subsequent writings. Much of these writings touch bitterly and violently on the political dissensions tearing asunder the 26th of July Movement.
It was the question of a general strike that brought the Movement's political crisis to a head, forcing a fundamental confrontation among its leaders. This, in turn, had a critical impact on the course the Cuban revolution would ultimately take. A general strike in support of a national rebellion against Batista certainly was not a new idea; Castro had originally planned one to be timed with his landing in Cuba. In July 1957, Frank País informed Fidel that a National Workers' Front (FON) had been established throughout the country, to be followed by the creation of strike committees so that a general strike could succeed. In his December communication to the Cuban Liberation Junta rejecting the Miami Pact, Castro singled out a general strike among "concrete acts . . . useful in the overthrow of the tyranny" to be carried out through "the effective coordination of the efforts of civic organizations in conjunction with the 26th of July Movement."
Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that in Castro's mind support for his Sierra war was far more important at this point than anything the Movement could and would do in the llano—the lowlands and their cities. His stream of complaints about not receiving enough arms, ammunition, supplies, and money from the llano finally led Armando Hart, a cofounder of the Movement, to write him from Santiago in October that "all our comrades here have always considered the Movement there and here as one single entity . . . supplying you up there is so vital for us that we consider it our foremost and fundamental revolutionary obligation." By early December Hart wrote in desperation to Celia in the Sierra Maestra that if the Movement's work in the cities was regarded as unnecessary, "then that raises the question of whether we should consider ourselves members of the present Directorate solely as the instruments for supplying the Sierra. . . . We think we have a duty to organize the workers, to strengthen the civilian resistance, to build provincial and municipal cadres with real revolutionaries, who, together with the revolutionary army of the Sierra Maestra, will guarantee the accomplishment of our program. We must also help the militia, which, outside the Sierra Maestra, without resources or arms (all that we had were sent to you) have heroically succeeded in extending the Revolution beyond the frontiers of the Sierra Maestra and have created an organization that you, as much as ourselves, are duty-bound to protect." René Ramos Latour, who replaced Frank País as coordinator in Oriente (and whose underground name was "Daniel"), wrote Castro to express surprise "by the note signed by you, which essentially was an expression of mistrust toward us, tacitly accusing us of responsibility for the state of neglect in which our forces in the Sierra found themselves, as well as of holding back for the cities the supposed newly arrived weapons destined for you. . . . No, we have never belittled the Sierra. We think the battle ought not to be limited solely and exclusively to the mountains; we must fight the regime on all fronts."
Against this background of rising tensions between Fidel Castro in the mountains and the Movement's Directorate below, the problem of the general strike returned to the fore in March. Neither side would admit that a political power contest was developing, but it was evident that Castro did not care for rivals. When the Students' Revolutionary Directorate established a guerrilla front in the Escambray Mountains in central Cuba late in 1957, Castro acknowledged it begrudgingly and belatedly in February 1958, remarking in a message that "regardless of the revolutionary militancy of the group, we have given instructions to the Movement to give you all possible help." As for the DR, they had even less use for the Rebel Army, and soon the two groups would be embroiled in bitter disputes. Then, a "Second Front of the Escambray" was set up by a rival university group and political opportunists from Havana. And Castro had to face the issue of a general strike in the context of his overall relationship with the llano revolutionaries. It was inevitable that other anti-Batista groups would engage in operations of their own. The creation of the two guerrilla organizations in the Escambray Mountains was one example; another was the murder in Holguín, a garrison city in northern Oriente, of Colonel Fermín Cowley Gallegos, one of the most hated and brutal Batista army chiefs, by a Civic Resistance action commando at the end of 1957.
For Castro the general strike thus became—even if grudgingly—one way of imposing revolutionary unity. In his capacity as delegate from the Movement's National Directorate in Havana, Faustino Pérez had returned to the Sierra early in March, and after conferences with Castro and other members, he joined him in signing a manifesto titled "Total War Against Tyranny," calling for the general strike. Pérez pushed for holding the strike as soon as possible, believing that Castro simply lacked "first-hand information on the existing conditions in Havana," and that it was his duty to provide it. After all, he saw himself as one of Castro's closest associates—he had been aboard the Granma, one of Fidel's two companions during the desperate days and nights after Alegría de Pío, and the first emissary from the Sierra to Santiago and Havana. He was certain that Castro would listen to his assessments.
The twenty-two-point Manifesto, from "the Camp of Column 1, General Headquarters of the Rebel Forces," started out by proclaiming that "the struggle against Batista has entered its final stage" and that "the strategy of the final blow is based on the general revolutionary strike, to be seconded by military action." The strike, it said, "will be ordered at the proper time," and it will continue along with the armed struggle "if a military junta should try to take over the government." Again, Castro was determined to prevent any deal behind his back by the military and the civilian opposition in the llano. In a further step to guarantee Castro's control, the new Manifesto reaffirmed the Movement's choice of Manuel Urrutia Lleó as the head of a provisional government, which would be formed after Batista's fall with the mission of preparing national elections. Castro had first proposed Urrutia in his December letter to the Cuban Liberation Junta, but now he and Faustino Pérez felt that the designation should be formalized as soon as possible.
Urrutia was the fifty-eight-year-old presiding judge of the Court of Appeals of Oriente province who had cast the dissenting vote when his two colleagues on the bench found guilty numerous Granma expeditionaries and Movement activists who had been arrested during an abortive uprising in Santiago on November 30, 1956. The verdict condemned the rebels to eight-year prison terms. Urrutia wrote later that to him the defendants were "mode
ls of dignity and patriotism" and that the basis for his dissent was "the 'sacred right of resistance against oppression' consecrated by Article 40 of the Cuban Constitution of 1940." He added that "I held that armed action by the accused men was legitimate because it was an attempt to end oppression in Cuba." Four years earlier, Urrutia was the investigating judge in Santiago who certified the deaths of Castro's rebels in the Moncada attack on July 26, and his sympathies with the Movement dated back to that bloody Sunday.
When Castro first conceived the notion of a provisional government, Raúl Chibás and Felipe Pazos, cosigners with him of the Sierra Maestra Manifesto in July 1957, were his prime candidates for president. But Chibás refused, and Castro concluded that Pazos was too much involved in traditional politics. He then thought of Urrutia as the perfect apolitical candidate, and in November sent emissaries to the judge in Santiago to offer him the presidency on behalf of the Movement. Urrutia agreed, resigned from the judiciary, and left for the United States at the end of December to await the call to serve when Batista fell. His mandate was "to lead our country to democracy, freedom, and a regime of law."
Urrutia, a liberal and an anti-Communist jurist, added prestige to the Castro cause—another of Fidel's immediate needs—and he was received in Washington by senior State Department officials dealing with Latin America. His concern at that point was to persuade the United States to halt arms deliveries to Batista, and he may have played a role in the Eisenhower administration's decision on March 14, 1958, to suspend such deliveries on the grounds that the weapons were being used for internal security and not for hemispheric defense as provided by law. In terms of winning the gratitude of the rebels in Cuba, however, the suspension was a belated gesture. American-supplied bombs continued to be deployed against them, and on June 5, Fidel sent his famous note to Celia stating that it was his "true destiny" to fight against the North Americans to make them "pay dearly for what they are doing." Arms shipments were stopped, but Batista's bombers were allowed to refuel at the Guantánamo naval base between strikes at the rebels.