Word: batista
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Twenty days' march from the beach, the few remaining rebels reached blessed refuge in the Sierra Maestra, a wilderness of sheer cliffs, snarled liana vines and pockets of thick, orange mud. Batista, in a fatal mistake, overconfidently withdrew his troops. Castro and his men lived on plantains and mangos-and waited. The first break came from Jose ("Pepe") Figueres, President of Costa Rica, 800 miles to the southwest. To a hastily cleared Sierra airstrip, Socialist Figueres sent a twin-engined Beechcraft loaded with rifles, Tommy guns, ammunition and grenades. "I felt sorry for that man," Pepe explained...
Again and again Batista's army announced that "the campaign is almost won." But his 1,000 barracks-fat soldiers around the Sierra Maestra showed less and less hunger for the fight. In the long stalemate the rebel army grew in size and fervor. Castro talked and talked of his dreams for Cuba, sitting up until dawn in the huts of the guajíros-the squatters who farm the rugged mountains. "It is not right," he said, "that a man should go to prison for robbery when he is able to work, wants to work and cannot find...
...Underground. The new hope nourished a deadly and dedicated underground in and out of Cuba, devoted to terror, arms smuggling, espionage, fund raising. The rebels planted bombs in Havana, sometimes 100 in a night, in gambling joints, movie houses. The police and Batista's dreaded Military Intelligence Service counter-terrorized Cuba by killing suspected underground members, leaving their bodies on busy sidewalks to be seen by stenographers going to work. In reprisal a Santiago mother placed a wreath at night on the exact spot where her son was slain. An arrogant cop kicked the flowers away next morning...
...rebels began moving west. Ex-Dishwasher Camilo Cienfuegos marched a column into the hills of Camagŭey. In December the rebels launched a "battle for Santa Clara"-a city of 150,000 in Las Villas. A column led by Che Guevara quickly took the streets, the Batista army as quickly retreated to its fortress post, and in five days of shooting 60 died...
...Faustíno Pérez, a bearded Gramma survivor, traded his uniform for natty civilian clothes and the title of Minister for Recovering Stolen Government Property. As a start he took inventory at Batista's estate outside Havana-mansion, movie house, museum, library, $4,000 lamps...