(The following is from the book, “The Cuban Revolution,” written by Robert Goldston.)
The route mapped out for the Granma was a wide sweep south of Cuba and around Jamaica to arrive at the town of Niquero in Oriente Province not far from Santiago de Cuba. It was planned that the Granma would arrive on November 30 and that Fidelista Frank País would organize an uprising in Santiago to coincide with the landing. But so heavily laden was the Granma (her twin engines laboring, failing, and laboring again) that the revolutionaries were still at sea when over the radio they heard of riots at Santiago on the 30th. It was until the early morning of December 2, 1956, that the Granma reached a tiny little town called Belic on Las Colorado Beach south of Niquero. Because she was so overloaded, the Granma could not get close enough to shore, and the men had to unload her in water up to their chests. While they were doing this, disaster struck.
Batista’s secret agents in Mexico had kept the dictator fairly well informed of the rebels’ plans and capabilities (Ché Guevara later claimed there was a spy among the men at Bayo’s training camp). So in a general sense the Batista forces were prepared for the invasion. The uprising in Santiago had further alerted them and brought about a regular army concentration in Oriente Province. Now, while Castro’s men struggled through the water with loads of arms and ammunition, a Cuban coast guard cutter had spotted them and immediately radioed the news of their arrival to the Batista headquarters. The Granma was instantly abandoned (still heavily laden with much needed supplies) as the rebels took to their heels, making their way into a large swamp behind the beach. No sooner had they reached it than Batista’s air force appeared overhead, fighters peeling off to strafe and bomb everything in sight. Fortunately, by this time Fidel and his men were plodding through dense mangrove-covered marshes and so were invisible from the air. There were no casualties from the air attack – but the Batista forces were now on their trail.
Progress through the swamp was slow, delayed by one of the rebels who had falsely claimed to know the way. Ché later wrote off this episode: “We were…disoriented and walking in circles, an army of shadows, of phantoms, walking as if moved by some obscure psychic mechanism.” There had been seven days of sickness and hunger aboard the Granma; now followed three dreadful days in a swamp. Finally, on December 5, after a night march marked by exhaustion and near-hysteria, the rebel band reached the little town of Alegría de Pío. By this time they had lost all their medical supplies, most of their packs and all of their guns except a few rifles and pistols and a small amount of ammunition. A halt was ordered and the men crawled into thickets on the edge of a dense wood, where they slept through the morning. They paid little attention to a Piper Cub aircraft which circled aimlessly high above them.
Then suddenly the day exploded in a hurricane of bullets that seemed to come from all directions. Rebels began to fall, gunned down by an unseen enemy as they rushed towards the poor cover of the nearby cane field (the heaviest fire seemed to be coming from the woods they’ve been sleeping in). Some were killed outright; many others, including Ché, were wounded. In the cane field Fidel desperately tried to organize his men, but it was too late.
Under this baptism of fire many abandoned their weapons and fled; others were too badly wounded to respond to orders; all were scattered into tiny groups of three or four men throughout the cane field. Amid the uproar and the scream of the dying, Camilo Cienfuegos’ voice could be heard shouting: “Here no one surrenders!” Then low flying planes joined the attack and set the cane fields afire with tracer bullets. Fidel had already ordered a retreat, but now it became a rout, with small groups of men heading out of the infierno on their own. One such group of thirteen, headed by Manuel Márquez, surrendered to the army patrols who were now emerging from the woods, on the promise that their lives would be spared. But no sooner had they thrown down their weapons than they were all gunned down.
Up and forward with the “Citizens Organized for Liberty thru Action.”
Arriba y adelante con la “Organización de Ciudadanos para la Libertad a través de la Acción.” Siglas en Ingles – “COLA.”
Any comments, feel free to write at my email address – [email protected].
27th March 2009
Finca Solana
Corozal Town