Word: escambray
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Reverses in the Hills. Castro has reason to sneer. For 14 months large groups of rebels have been fighting a desperate battle through the hills of Cuba. It is a battle that Castro is winning. He has poured 60,000 militiamen into the central Escambray hills alone and claims to have captured 80% of the 1,000 rebels operating there. Though the claims are undoubtedly exaggerated, the rebels have been scattered, disorganized and discouraged. Several leaders have been killed, others captured; a few have been smuggled out of Cuba to Miami, where they are trying to reorganize for another attempt...
Last week, two guerrilla leaders recently escaped from the Escambray told a TIME correspondent in Miami of the pres sure Castro was putting on the rebels. At first, arms could be smuggled in overland, but now Castro's militia blocks every road and path, and the supplies have been choked off. A radio transmitter was sent into the hills for use in arranging airdrops...
...Castro himself once did, the Escambray rebels generally rely on standard guerrilla tactics: present no solid front, hit where unexpected, and vanish. In response, Castro has resorted to tactics very like those Batista used against him. Castro gradually pulled his regular troops out of the Escambray because they can't be relied on to fight old comrades-in-arms. In place of the regulars, Castro sent in militiamen, who cautiously refrained from going into the brush, and at night retired from the hills for safety...
During the last three weeks, increasing the number of militia around the Escambray to 50,000, Castro has moved all peasants out of the area to deny the rebels a local food source. Establishing three concentric rings of militiamen around the rebel area, he has settled down to starve his enemies out. In an attempted diversionary move, some 200 rebels rose around Baracoa, in the eastern end of the island, but still Castro maintains his pressure on the Escambray...
Though they still have enough weapons and ammunition, the Escambray rebels are running low on food and clothing. The airdrops-now stepped up to two a week -have become the Escambray's last lifeline. But life is tough for the militia, too. Notoriously inept at logistics, Fidel was barely managing to provide his own men with one meal...