Battle of Alegría de Pío

In 1953, beginning their first attack against the Batista government, Fidel Castro gathered 160 fighters and planned a multi-pronged attack on two military installations. On July 26, 1953, the rebels attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago and the barracks in Bayamo, only to be defeated decisively by the far more numerous government soldiers.^[3] Numerous important revolutionaries, including the Castro brothers, were captured soon afterwards. Fidel was sentenced to 15 years in the prison Presidio Modelo, located on the Isla de la Juventud, while Raúl was sentenced to 13 years.^[4] However, in 1955, yielding to political considerations, the Batista government freed all political prisoners in Cuba, including the Moncada attackers, after which Fidel and Raul left for Mexico in exile.^[5]

From Mexico, Fidel began to formulate a plan to return to Cuba to start a guerilla revolution on the island. After meeting the Argentine doctor Ernesto Guevara in Mexico City, Castro travelled to the United States, raising money from Cuban Americans and also from the toppled President of Cuba Carlos Prío Socarrás, who helped pay for the yacht Granma, which would be used to transfer the rebels to Cuba.^[6] After training members of the M-26 who had been sent to Mexico to assist in the coming landing, they set off from Tuxpan, Mexico in the night on November 25, 1956.^[7] To assist the landing, a rebellion organized by the 26th of July movement and planned by Haydée Santamaría, Celia Sánchez, and Frank País occurred in Santiago de Cuba. The rebellion happened on November 30 and was meant to take place in conjunction with the landing of the Granma, which was expected to land in Cuba five days after departing from Mexico. A reception party was assigned to wait for the rebels during the uprising at the lighthouse at Cabo Cruz, with trucks and 100 men. After this, the plan was that they would raid the towns of Niquero and Manzanillo together, after which they would escape into the Sierra Maestra to conduct guerilla warfare. However, due to choppy weather, the Granma had landed two days late on December 2, and as a result, the supporting uprising was left isolated and was quickly destroyed. As a result of this, the rebels had lost the element of surprise, and the military was put on high alert in the region.^[8]

The Granma had approached the Playa las Coloradas in the early morning of December 2, 1956. Trying to spot the Cabo Cruz lighthouse, the navigator fell overboard, after which he had to be rescued. With the night quickly departing, Fidel ordered for the ship to land at the nearest point of land. However, they had crashed into a sandbar, a mile short of the intended point of rendezvous, in a mangrove swamp. The reception party had departed from the lighthouse the night prior after waiting for two days. As the morning approached, they departed the boat and were forced to leave much of their food, ammunition and medicine behind, landing on shore in the mid-morning. During the landing, they had been spotted by the Cuban coast guard, after which news of the landing was relayed to the armed forces.^[9]

After splitting into two groups upon reaching dry land, the rebels were forced to gradually abandon more equipment as they navigated the bush. During this period, Batista predicted correctly that the landing would occur, and his troops were ready. Consequentially, the landing party was harassed by planes firing sporadically into the forests, however they were unable to accurately pinpoint their location. After two days on December 4, the separate groups had found each other and trekked further inland in the direction of the Sierra Maestra with the help of a local peasant guide.^[10]