War Against the Bandits
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The Escambray Revolt (called the War Against the Bandits by the Castro regime) was a rebellion against the Communist government of Fidel Castro, mainly by peasants and small farmers in the central provinces of Cuba and the Escambray Mountains.
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[edit] Causes
The uprising began almost immediately after Castro's rise to power in 1959. It was led by former Castro supporters disenchanted by his close ties to the Soviet Union and what they saw as his betrayal of the revolution's democratic ideals. The peasants violently resisted Castro's confiscation of their land in his Soviet-style collectivization. The guerrilla war lasted longer and involved far more rebels than had the original struggle against the Batista forces. The Escambray rebellion was finally crushed by Castro's overwhelming Soviet-backed forces in 1965.
The insurgents were mainly rural farmers, aided by some former Batista forces, but also included followers of anti-communist William Alexander Morgan, a Castro Comandante in the war against Batista. [1]. Morgan himself was executed in 1961 long before resistance ended [2]. The CIA also provided very limited and often ineffective (e.g. wrong caliber ammunition) aid to the insurgents, and finally withdrew all support, ensuring their ultimate defeat. Some of the failures could be attributed to Castro’s “roll up” of CIA operatives in Cuba (Volkman, 1995). However, after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, US and CIA interest waned significantly. Castro's forces, on the other hand, were strongly supported by massive Soviet assistance.
[edit] Tactics
The outnumbered rebels were tenacious and often fought to the death. Castro used tactics that consisted of sweeps by long columns of ill-trained militia, which caused heavy government losses but ultimately won the war. Castro employed overwhelming force, at times consisting of 250,000 troops [3] (see Puebla). The insurgents often defeated their opponents, but the attrition rate for the much smaller insurgent forces (at most 4,000 in total, Puebla) decided the war.
[edit] Defeat of the Insurgents
The insurgency was finally defeated by Castro's use of overwhelming force, mass arrests, executions, and internal deportations to “closed” towns (concentration camps) in the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio - an effective if brutal tactic used in South African in the Second Boer War, by the Spanish General Valeriano Weyeler during Cuba's War of Independence (where the term concentration camp first developed), and by the USSR in its battles with anti-communist guerillas.
In 1962, food rationing was introduced throughout the entire island. While some argue this was a response to the United States embargo against Cuba, the Cuban government stated this method of distribution control served to ensure each citizen a minimum intake of food, regardless of the person’s social and economical status, in line with standard socialist theory. Much of the rationed food was grown in Cuba in abundance prior to the revolution. In practice rationing provided state control over everyone's food supply allowing Castro's government to withhold food from its opponents. Without the new government food ration cards, the remaining insurgents starved. Some of them surrendered, only to be immediately executed. Others fought on to the death. A few managed to escape [4]. The losses by Castro's forces are believed to be staggering, but there is little documentation available to determine the actual numbers. The ruthlessness with this resistance was suppressed is well described in Franqui (1984, pp.111-115)
[edit] Sources
Pro-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
- Franqui, Carlos 1984 (foreword by G. Cabrera Infante and translated by Alfred MacAdam from Spanish 1981 version) Family portrait with Fidel. 985 edition Random House First Vintage Books, New York. ISBN 0394726200
- 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
