Arroyo del Infierno, I, Fariña, Immense Fahrenheit, In-fidel

Granma, Nov. 25 1956

Drifting Rio Tuxpan, moon-meridianal, redlight in-growing, the treeline shifts, juts Eisenstein figures of death, skullic, engine penetrating deeperinto the dark regions, Antonio did good Fidel? dawnraids, confiscations, the deck and hulls are overloaded, only marginally seaworthy, he withholds judgement until the water is upon them, holding a VHF radio outof sighting, the rains gather closer to the Gulf, pounding the deck toward the gulf waves, large, telemeters, progress at seven knots toward. Che is downdeck coughing up asthmatic phlegm into the depths of the other Fidelistas throwing overboard their guts, Fidel stands with the captain plotting a route to land at Niquero in the western Oriente Province, coinciding with the revolt of Frank Pias and his boys in Santiago de Cuba, the enginesags, the boat, the revolucion sags, willing on into the storm light, dec 2, they shipwrek on Playa de las Coloradas beach in the Belic District, south of Niquero.
Fuk, no jeeps, tucks food weapons waiting at Niquero, Sao: Fidel I will go, rendezvous, up the beachhead, pigs, a cuban warship, an army a thousands fold, air force spotter planes, trace a grid searching them out, on Granma, the fidelistas hold a cache in the hold, Balagi asleepslumped drools ona anti-tank gun, que? 335 rifles with telescopic sites into black dark drink, 55 Mendoza rifles, three Thompson light machine guns, 40 lights hand machine gun pistols… leave the cache, under darkness, moving thru the beachhead, they move for three days thru jungle and brush, without food and water.
Dec5, in a sugarcane field at Alegria de Pio, exhaustion growing at rest in the open sugarcane, piper planes cirle overhead, the plot is working around lobes, spinning in on the Fidelistas, laurel-brested, brushfighting, strafed cane, screams, they split into countryside, two weeks pass like montage, moving thru the moonlit cubana, when they rach a safehaven at the farm of Ramon Perez, Crescencio greets them, peasant leader of Sierra Mastra, bandit, and they move out locating the scattered fidelistas in the brush, gaining supports of the locals, Castro and Che pay double for food and supplies, exchange smiles, a young woman, bright dark eyes moves thru the field to him, temporised against the smell of cane, skull-like chiarascuras, doppler into radiocurrent form, their kiss breaks open the sky, raindraws in off the gulf, where are you Che? Molded revolution by currents, conditions, a psychological plume of the years, he is back in Rosario in his warm mothers gaze, in Alta Gracia dry climate hiking thru the provinces, playing chess with his father, resolutely against Juan peron, moving thru the underground resistance, the pampas stretching as far as men could imagine, inexhaustible, fencless, labyrinths, where before there was open plain and sky. Look at Borges. Look at the suburbs of Buenos Aires. The tyrant Rosas has been dead a century, but his cult flourishes. Beneath the city streets, the warrens of rooms and corridors, the fences and the networks of steel track, the Argentine heart, in its perversity and guilt, longs for a return to that first unscribbled serenity . . . that anarchic oneness of pampas and sky… 1950, moving throught northern and central Argentina on motorbike, with Alberto setting out into that vast blood meridian of Latin America, Chile, the Peruvian frontier, the leprosarium on the Amazon river at San Pablo, Peru, ran out of Gomez’s corrupt Columbia, Alberto leaving in Cracas venezuela, Ernesto moving to miami, deported back to Argentina, 53 finishing his medical degree, and returning to find Alberto in Venezuela, stopping in La Paz, where the deep mines had been nationalized, where the peasants had taken possession of the feudal estates, where there was an atmosphere of revolutionary fervor and excitement.
In Peruvia, they sprayed the peasants with DDT, u know what DDT is senora? What is it Che, staring deep into his eyes, the movement of a jaguar thru the cane off-lens, the moon presses their eyes closer, falling in – chemical to rid the peasants, rid the peasants of lice, but the cause of the lice? Che, the cause of the lice is the social and economic conditions, reformist, this is not the revolution, flighting thru the canework, his passionate body falls into the grave of open sky, voice rising in the encampment of a bridge game, a just principle from the depth of a cave can do more than an army, that is what Fidel says, and it’s tru-shhh Che, comedown,
Of Fidel’s invading force of 82, they are drawn down to 30, 21 comrades killed in the brush, 30 captured, and have seven weapons, we will share bullets, they pack thru the day, smoke, night-filled, lungs regrouping the Granma fleet, breath of salt-lashed in from the Gulf, the thrub of the Rio Tuxpan in their soul-lattice th e army of the 26th of July movement will not be defeated defiant Castro, fills the lunar currents of their town-hold with the rising passion of the cuban night, moving high into the Sierra Maestra Mountains to regroup, to acquint with the surrounding territory and its spirits, and to avoid the planes, Bautistan spotters, moving in darkness, deletions grow in the jungle-line, walking a linewet underfoot, rain billowing off the shelf of canopies deep and cavernous, revolutions of sun-searing day and night, move in over the westward running spine of deep mineral Maestra, copper manganese chromium and iron, blood of the Tainos, the ten years war, the cuban war of independende, the race war of 1912, Antonio Guiteras, Fidel and Castro move by dark, the interface of thunder meeting faces in the brush, moving out to them, apocalyptan deep sall, building guerrilla columns, collaborators , Escopeteros, stoucs and pickets, a threaded web of messages, lost in the canopy work, dusklight, holding routes, intelligence, weapons caches bled from the Batista patrols, an Escambray scattering of whispers, sightings, deep, darknesses grow, animosan, returns,
Sierra Maestra, wild high pico turquino, rises, coarse cactus drops into drier slopes then rainforests ferns at altiues, bounded by the sea to the south, the coastal plain of Niquero-Campechuela-Manzanillo to the west, and the Cuban central highway to the north and east, , to the east they move into Sierra del Cobre, the Copper Mountains, before falling away into Santiago de Cuba bay, word gathers of Batista suspending civil rights, days later, the fidelistas attack an isolated army outpost at La Plata, an hour in total, fidel, posed as an army colonel, gathering information on the soldiers from Chicho Osorio, the drunk mayor over a candledrunk night, in the operation room, they divide the ifelistas into four, attacking in the dark, firing volleys from all sides, setting houses on fire, capturing a cache of rifles, a submachine gun, a thousand rounds of ammo, food medicine clothes,
On the radio next night the attack is disclosed to the Cuban people, gasps hidden at dinner tables, they exist, they exist it exists, the rebels somewhere out there moving in the dark blue mountainlight, a night of drunkrevelry at laplata, then they move north to Aroyyo del Infierno (IF) (https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1963/reminiscences/ch03.htm) , Dantean dipping souls in cold spurts of rain drawn in orographs over the night alive with insects, feeling something larger willing itself into shape under the streamwater, glazen eyes resonate on loved ones in the meridianal night, the tail is hot fidel, si splashing water, wang-asky Balata plummets into the stream, laughter rings out against the mountain-sides, Che moves back thru the jungledark wearing a batistiano uniform from la plata, and is nearly shot by another fidelista, fidel lays an mbush around two bohios in the centre ofthe glade, the ambush comes late morning light, bodies primed to movement of treework, the signals of the land, three are killed, each withdraw into pulsing skull-lines, always adding learning noting, sketching, the vanguards of patrols attacked late morning light,  they are known as the Barbudos (bearded one) for the unkempt hair dragging their faces into some biblical content, near Caracas they are almost liquidated from the sky, at altos de Espinosa by strafing bullets from unsightable sources surrounding, Che writes in his notepad, the situation is not a happy one. Our columns lacks cohesion. It has neither the ideological awareness nor the esprit de corps that can be attained only through hard, bitter struggle. Day after day, more comrades would ask to be released and to be assigned to missions in the cities — although this involved even greater danger — but it was evident that they simply could not stand the rough going…. Fidel is almost killed one night by a creeping assassin Eutimio Guerra, losing his nerve at the last moment, staring at one another thru a moon-crater of earth, dropping down into the cacti-brush, fidel sends a message to Havana for an interview with a foreign press correspondent.
February brings Herbert L Matthews, of the New York Times deep into the Sierra Maestra mountains, Matthews notes as he’s led deeper into the site of the interview, the code system of commands, soft whistles, bird chirps by which commanders lead the group through the jungle worldless, creolized speech of clandestine mountain, the gulf beats thru the night, codework learnt from Colonel Bayo in Mexico, Matthews takes photographs of Fidel, his plan is to crush batistas censorship and credibility, to put the spot light on their revolution, they are the centre the revolutionary pulse of a hemisphere fighting the feudal horizon with fire and whispers and bird song in the mountain… march falls on a rival group to Fiedl’s guerrillas attempting an overthrow of Batista, sotrming the presidential palace in Havana, failing but drawing up a wave of support from high cuban public and commercial life, calling out against the repression, the metallic sky, the iron, brutealism, deep in the haven of Sierra Maestra, magnets grow, drawing young men into the night, midmarch, reinforcements from Snatiago Joge Sotus, [Fidel] Che, we have to make our presence felt immediately, hit the enemy hard, so hard that they can’tk keep telling the people of Cuba that we don’t exist in the Sierra, especially now when the tyranny is denying the fact that we had an interview with Matthews [Che] I agree with you, Fidel, but we have to make sure of a successful attack, capturing arms from the enermy and producing many casualties so that it will be hard for them to hide the truth.
They circle in the garrison at El Uvero Oriente, aside the sea, at darbreak May 28 1957, attacking the 53man army garrison, bordered by the sea, they squeeze from the other three angles, Che noticing a flank with no cover moves several men to an immobilised flank, becomes Comandante Che under fidel, batistas has 2000 families evacuated from Oriente and placed in concentration camps, condemned by the nation, the aircurrents, he retreats, the garrisons located on the edge of major troop concentrations are sealed into the orbit of the Maestran night, the magnetic pulse of Fidel’s cave, a message from the deep, the gulf beats in the night, joining the tide drawn in over the fidelistan pig roasted on the beachhead, the woman of El Uvero, uterinequiescent dance against the deepening spray of the gulf on rocks, rip current pulling out their minds to a future wave, revolutions of moonlight draw the meats against a table of wines, factions growing
Liano versues the sierra, the urban underground in Havana Santiago, send fidel coded messages, over VHF channel, frank pias, the failure of the Granma landing leads in santiago, fide- we need a new tactic a new line, we need a revolutionary general strike to drive Batista out, a directorate of 13, fiel bites back, liano should support his rebel army, complement, guerrilla warfare is what ousts the iron chains of batista, we are the vanguard of July 26th, security is strong in the mountains, the underground is open sky, height, we can see out here Pias, friend we are the magnet, we must attack at the magnetic rio lines the perimeters of Sierrra Maestra, fidel aligns his units with the old generation, raul chibax and the ortodoxos, Felipe pazos, to write up the Sierra Maestra Manifesto.
Fidel learns in July that Frank is captured, killed in Santiago de Cuba, with Pias’s death the llano centres shifting to Havana, Earl E.T. Smith U.S. ambassador attendes Oriente during Pias’s funeral witnessing the brual police beatings of 200 demonstrating woman, returning to the U.S. he reports abhorrence…
The net closes, messages growing inward, on paranoiac Bautista, moving back and forth in his study cursing throwing maps, busts, against the walls,
September 57, Naval Lieutenant Dionisio San Roman draws together a military revolt at the Southern Naval District at Cienfuegos on the souther coast of Las Villas Province, storming the barracks in isolation, police and military intelligence men move in to torture and murder suspected revolutionaries, bombing the City of Cienfugos, turned to tinder, a Dresden on the gulf beating away, word murmurs reach the inter-sferic currents radiolight on burials alive, Batista driving deeper into a cave, saunavisits extend, curses ingrow, his military officers resent the brutality, the tide turning, USAF Major General Truman Landon flies into Havana, presenting the medal of the Legion of Merit to Colonel Carlos Tabernilla, director of the Cienfugon massacre, resenment patois, burnt bodies scarred by salt water, ran into the sea, we will drive them into the sea, fidel effulminating, screaming into the mountainous night,
December, passes a year since they left Granma broken on a reef, controlling now 2000 sq. miles of Sierra Maestra, safety leads to semi-permanent camp, bivuouacking, training is conducted small scale manufactures of explosives boots uniforms, miners hulk the mountain into the stream of the nighttime song, revolutionary songs, Che opens the hospital, build outsposts connected by telephones, a small nespwper El Cubano Libre, by February HQ in La plata, Castro begins broadcasting on the airwaves from a small transmitter, that frows into Radio Rebelde (Rebel Radio), expadning, growing the magentic core of the mountain spine, drawing the east, Havanan into the radiolit night, they talk deep cavelik of the Infierno, the circles of hell that top the mountain in lightbreak each morning, march 1958, raul fidels brother takes a colunmn of 82 drawing closer to fidel on the mountains, Juan ameida draws 70 men to a base at El Cobre, west of Santiago de Cuba, a triangle is formed between them in the region, solidigying, when midmarch the U.S. suspent arm shipments to Batista, under claims that he had used grant-in aid equipment marked for hemirspheric defense for internal security, the effects of the suspention devastate Batista, the sphere tightens his airways in the sauna of great leaders, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, philandering late, shock comes ascream face
Non-kinetic operations, that it were time, time and the air currents, the lair closing in sonorous on his palace, psychological operations of guerrilla warfare are to let the mountains speak, let the mountains whisper deep into the subconscious fear of your oppressor, we must let the inter-ferences grow, the metallic sheet of larval messages, volcanise down off the mountain, let Havana know that we exist, that we will not yield, no more than the gulf beats,
Barometric, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000303490005-9.pdf
Weapons move in from Miami to the base, guillot with a development of 2000 homes near Barranquilla, boats seized off Virginia coastline with entrails of marijuana, weapons sinking into the deep gulf, Monracha vessel rendezovousing with Karina, drawing in weapons, gunrunning to Fidel, some of the men chew coca leafs talking deep into the night, the llano faction draw together the pulse of a ntional strike, Faustino Petez in Havana speaks with Castro late one night in a telephone post, and coordinate the strike with a step up of rebel action on the fring, April 9, failure poor communications short notice activation, a lack of support from the July 26 urban groups, paranoia drives the late signals, fidel draws in messages, the real power of Batista lies with the urban police not the army, the failed coup obliterates the llano cadre, ensabling castro to consolitate his political leadership of the reolution
Opercion Verano
After the crush of the llanos on April 9, basitas decides to rid himself of the rebels, in may ordering 10,000 soldeirs with air and naval support to Oriente under Eulogio Cantillo, the army move dorwn from the north and north east, they are ambushed and harassed by Camilo Cienfuegos, landmines, blowing plumes in the distance,fidel positions the magnet west of Turquino peak along a 15 mile front and covers all natural entrances to the Sierra Maestra. By June 15, army closing in, pushing the collumn into the more rugged edges of the Sierra, he fights on in tighterning perimeter. Raul Elswehre signs on with Major Pino Aquilo a non-agression pact, kidnapping 45 Americans and 3 Cansdians technicians from the Moa Bay Mining Company, the Nicaro Nickel Plant, United Fruit Company, sugar mills, and United States marines and sailors, deamdning the US stop all shipments of military equipment to Batista, cease allowing cuban aircraft to refuel at Guantanamo naval base, force Batists to promise not to use US weapons against them, in Washington strruggling with the demands pressured Batista to save the hostages and discontinue bombing runs on the Second Front, Raul release the hostages, but gains the presite of negotiating with American consult grant wollam in Santiago de Cuba. During the three weeks of negotating cease fire, raul prepares ambuscades for the army’s offensive, in Sierra Castro is verging on victories, June 28, Colonel Sanchez Mosquera with 1000 men arest in a valley at Santo Domingo are surrounded crept up on sporadic fighting decimates Mosquera, fidel captures short-wave radio equipment and the army’s code manual, they set about decoding, learning the combat intelligence, Batista cannot move a yard without a perspiring runner arriving a few minutes later to tell fidel of it…. Fidel is inside his man, climbed in, closing ranks on his cerebellum athrob with infidelities from Maria, the currents aturneing, the highcommand falls into a gaggle of demoralised corrupt creul lazy offiers, fat on fear of total extinction from the dark forcefield in the mountain, they know not of the numbers or the whereabouts of this force, this invading field, (if) that grows ith the invective night, sleepless, turning, screaming at his low command, falling into, July 11 fidel surrounds major Jose quevedo at el jigue, learning tha Jose is a former classmate from universite, he requests a case fire and sends a truce letter, the men meet, ambrace share food dropped from government planes, quevedo tells his men their obligation first is to the fatherland, they must join the magentic current, the men surrends gie their arms and ammunition to the fidelistas, queveo later draws more rebels into army, batiastas forces demoralised retrated to garrisons on te edge of Oriente, Opercion Verano ends 76 days later, the fidelistas rout the retreating tide, drawing in weapons tanks, a tank mortars, bazookas, machine guns, tropiods, rifles, more machine guns, the cuban air force napalm the sky of batistianos in the confusion, the salt flazed cienfugon ghost fleet draws out chasing the air currents fiel fakes the army codework misleads orders of friendly fire, prisoners were helf with care, this is a psychological war for freedom of the fatherland against that soft underbelly and hard rain of the United States, fracturing light, prisoners held up against the darkness of Batista,
counter-offensive…fidel moves in from the countryside to the retreating tide on the cities, surrounding, isolating areas of communications, stepping up urban terror, drawing in the provinces aside Orient, the inter-zone gorws, fidel and raul bed into Sierra Maestra, la plata, Celia Sanchez, fiels secretary controls time and access to his commandante, a female group led by Olga Gueva serve fiedl, radio rebelde is fully operational, drawing broadcasts out over the gulf, registered by navy ships patrolling, a chaplain father Guillermo Sardinas holds sermons in La Plata, fiel sends Che and 148 men to Las Villas, Major Cienfugos and another 82 on parallel with Che to Pinar del Rio in a pincer movement, Che and Cienfuego march for 25 days to reach las villas, and take position for the offensive, nov 3 1958, in fading light Batista holds a nervous national election, the fidelistas threaten people not to vote, disorders, bombings terrori in Havana and the eastern cities, by November, a systemic war on transporation and staling army barracks, Bayamo, Holquin, Manzanillo, fidel moves oout of Sierra Maestra starts an attack on the plains of Oriente with Santiago de Cuba as his ultimate desintation…November 20, casto meets the cuban army at guisa, 2 weeks the battle rages, fire heavy armor, air force bombings, night attacks, counters, terror fleeing an army of thousands, the flank has moved from informidable shape to formidable, endangered, in Las Villas, Che and Cienfugos cut the island in two, Cabaiguan falls, rebels controlling the artery highway, Yaguajay, Placestas, Remedios, Caibarien, Sancti Spiritus, forcing retreatof the army into Santa Clara, isolate divide consquer, capture the centre, Che moves in basitas sents a train with tanks soldiers, Che meets the train before arrival, tearing up the tacks around it, blown dynamite, fire burning petroluam long into the night, locals, staring in rapture surrenderous soldiers, on dec 31, the battle is won, control. Batista, powerfless over a force of 40,000, through an emissary the U.S. tells him capitulate, conspiracies drive fidel to meet gENERAL eULOGIO Cantillo, dec 24 at the Oriente Sugar Mill in Palma Soriano agree to a military revolt, canillo joins with baista to create a military junta, doublecrossing castro for a delay on the revolt ntil January 6, fIDEL KNOWS THE DECEPTION
January 1 1959, Fulgencio Batista flees to the Dominican Republic, cntillo attempts a civilian-military junta, castro denounces them over radio rebelde, pledges his rebe. Army to keep fighting, revolution yes; military coup, no!, calls for a general strike, calls Camila and Che to advance on Havana, the strike brings Cuba to standstill, the junta disintegrates, casto appoints Manuel Urrutia Provisional Preisdent, moves the capital from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, the war is over.