Word: maestra
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...popular support to bounce Batista, but Reporter Mallin saw surprising military strength in the mountains. Ammunition, once scarce, is now plentiful enough to be wasted on potshots at coconuts. The armed, uniformed men in the Sierra del Cristal (where Raúl Castro holds out) and the neighboring Sierra Maestra (Fidel Castro's headquarters) total at least 2,000. The rebels have a pool of stolen trucks and jeeps, operate an airstrip into which arms are flown from some mysterious supplier...
...five days last week the Cuban government kept officially mum while high-ranking members of the regime leaked to the press that 11,000 army troops, with artillery, mortars and bombing planes, were in an all-out drive to flush Fidel Castro from his mountain fastness in the Sierra Maestra. "This is the real thing," they said...
...clandestine rebel radio seemed to confirm that some hard fighting was in progress, because it appealed: "Come to the Sierra Maestra, Cuban doctors. We need surgeons urgently. The enemy offensive has begun violently along a 200-kilometer front...
Talk of a "big drive" involving 11,000 army troops is undoubtedly exaggerated, but there is evidence that Batista is beefing up his operations against the rebels. The army is now establishing fortified posts deep in the Sierra Maestra. Men and arms for these posts are supplied by a new weapon in Batista's arsenal-British-made, armored helicopters, each reportedly carrying 14 men with full equipment...
There was no doubt that the rebels were hurt, and they showed it. From the chief himself came a summons to his six top provincial lieutenants to head back to the Sierra Maestra, presumably for an agonizing reappraisal. The total failure of Castro's touted "total war" had highlighted 1) his weakness in practical organizing ability, and 2) the movement's lack of a social program to attract Cuba's labor and its Negroes (25% of the total population, some 40% of Oriente's). Said a wealthy, aging Havana rebel last week: "From...