Word: sierras
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...launch a drive for $300,000 to start an invasion. Only 155 miles away from Trujilloland, bearded members of Castro's 26th of July Movement are already gazing longingly at maps showing the Dominican Republic's Cordillera Central, a forest region much like Cuba's Sierra Maestra. As Dominican exiles plot and plan, Castro's soldiers talk knowingly of landing strips and beaches, of living off the land Trujillo has cut up into agricultural colonies...
...interesting as the history of the revolution itself. One young man in his early twenties wrote advertising copy in Chicago until several months ago, when, as he tells it, he "developed an intense dislike for Batista." He lost no time in joining Castro in the hills of the Sierra Maestra. When asked about his future plans, now that the struggle is over, the writer replied nonchalantly, "I think I may go to Israel. I don't like Nasser either...
...city at 500 ft. in a Super Constellation, Castro broadcast his excited impressions over a hookup linking the plane's transmitter to Radio Continente in Caracas: "I am speechless from the panorama. As we fly over the mountains I get the impression that I am in the Sierra Maestra." Venezuelans, who loyally supported the Castro cause during the long fight against the tyrant Batista, yelled their cheers...
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...