War Against the Bandits
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The War Against the Bandits (Escambray Revolt) was a rebellion against the Revolutionary Government of Fidel Castro, mostly, but not exclusively (e.g. Castro Army Captain Alcibíades Bermúdez Morales was killed in the Sierra Maestra, on May 24, 1964. [1]), in the middle provinces of Cuba (Priestland, 2003), starting in 1959 and continuing until about 1965.
This war lasted longer and involved far more insurgents and Castro militia than the original Castro forces and Batista soldiers in the war against Batista.
The insurgents were mainly country folk, including former Batista forces, or followers of the anti-communist William Alexander Morgan, a former Comandante in the war against Batista [2]. Morgan himself was executed in 1961 long before resistance ended [3]. The CIA also provided limited and often ineffective (e.g. wrong caliber ammunition) aid to the insurgents during much of the revolt, and finally withheld all support. Some of these failures could be attributed to Castro’s “roll up” of CIA operatives in Cuba (Volkman, 1995).
Castro forces tactics consisted of sweeps of several very long lines of militia, a circumstance that caused heavy government losses, but ultimately won the war. Castro employed over 250,000 troops at one time [4] (see Puebla). Often the insurgents broke through but the attrition of this unequal combat for the much smaller insurgent forces (at most 4,000 in total, Puebla) decided the war.
The insurgency was finally suppressed by massive use of militia, numerous executions, arrests and internal deportations to “closed” towns in the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio, a common tactic used in the Second Boer War and by the USSR among governments being attacked by insurgents. After the Bay of Pigs Castro started de facto (Priestland, 2003) and later formalized food rationing throughout the whole country. Thus the remaining insurgents were left starving, and as a result some of them surrendered only to be executed, while others fought to the death. A few escaped [5].
[edit] Sources
Castro sources include:
- Puebla, Teté (Brigadier General of the Cuban Armed Forces) 2003 Marianas in Combat: the Mariana Grajales Women's Platoon in Cuba's Revolutionary War 1956–58, New York Pathfinder (Paperback) ISBN 0-87348-957-8
Anti-Castro sources include the books of Enrique Ros.
- Encinosa, Enrique G. l989 El Escopetero Chapter in Escambray: La Guerra Olvidada Un Libro Historico De Los Combatientes Anticastristas En Cuba (1960–1966). Editorial SIBI, Miami
- Fermoselle, Rafael 1992 Cuban leadership after Castro: Biographies of Cuba's top commanders North-South Center, University of Miami, Research Institute for Cuban Studies; 2nd ed (paperback) ISBN 0-935501-35-5
- Priestland, Jane (editor) 2003 British Archives on Cuba: Cuba under Castro 1959–1962. Archival Publications International Limited, 2003, London ISBN 1-903008-20-4
- Volkman, Ernest 1995 Our man in Havana. Cuban double agents 1961–1987 in: Espionage: The Greatest Spy Operations of the Twentieth Century Wiley, New York ISBN 0-471-16157-8
