On 7th December 1958 at Che's initiative, Patria, a clandestine newsletter, was published as the official organ of the Rebel Army in Las Villas. During the last days of the year 1958, the rebel fighters under Che intensified actions against military objectives of the dictatorship and occupied several villages in the province of Las Villas.
"As of December 16, regular destruction of bridges and all kinds of communications had placed the dictatorship in a difficult position to defend their advanced posts and even those on the central highway. In the early morning hours the bridge over the Falcon River on the central highway was destroyed and communications between Havana and towns east of Santa Clara, the capital of Las Villas, interrupted; a number of them, the southernmost of which was Fomento, were besieged and attacked by our troops ..."
On 28th December 1958 as part of the final rebel offensive drive in Las Villas, the guerrilla fighters stormed Santa Clara under the command of Ernesto Che Guevara. First, the rebels had to subdue the resistance put up by soldiers entrenched in a armored train, sent by the government to reinforce the city's defense. The guerrilla fighters derailed the military convoy and then proceed to storm Santa Clara.
"At this time the links between downtown Santa Clara and the armored train had been cut off. When the reinforcements found themselves ambushed in the Capiro hills, they tried to flee, but with their magnificient weapon load they fell on the railway we had previously destroyed. The engine and several wagons derailed. Then, a quite interesting clash took place. We forced the soldiers out of the armored wagons with 'Molotov cocktails' where they were well protected. The army forces were only willing to fight from distant, easy positions and against a practically helpless enemy, just like the colonizers against the Indians in the west of the US."
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New Year?s Day of 1959 saw the final fall of Batista regime. On 2nd January 1959 comandante Che Guevara went from Santa Clara to Havana, where he occupied the military fortress of La Cabaña, acting on an order issued by Fidel Castro. In addition to calling a general strike, Fidel Castro also ordered that Che and Camilo Cienfuegos control the situation in Havana and counter the actions by reactionary elements that might try to prevent the consolidation of the victory of the Revolution after the escape of dictator Fulgencio Batista.
"We have demonstrated that a small group of men who are determined, supported by the people, and without fear of dying? can overcome a regular army? There is another lesson for our brothers in America, economically in the same agrarian category as ourselves, which is that we must make agrarian revolutions, fight in the fields, in the mountains, and from here take revolution to the cities, not try to make it in the latter without a comprehensive social content."
Che spoke at a social gathering offered by the Colegio Médico de Cuba in his honor.
"I confess to you that I never felt like a foreigner in Cuba or in any other of the countries I have visited. My life has been rather adventuresome. I felt like a Guatemalan in Guatemala, Mexican in Mexico, Peruvian in Peru, and now I feel like a Cuban in Cuba and, of course, I feel like an Argentine here and everywhere. This is the stratum of my personality."
On 9th February 1959 for his contribution to national liberation, Che was declared a Cuban citizen by birth and Cuban revolution has entered into the more peaceful phase.
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A
detailed chronology of Che's life you can find
in this book "A Brave Man" on Cuba
Directo website |
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