Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto Che Guevara

Author:Ernesto Che Guevara [Guevara, Aleida]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781921700828
Publisher: Ocean Press

AN UNPLEASANT EPISODE

October 1957

After the battle of Pino del Agua, we set about improving the organizational structure of our guerrilla force—strengthened at that point by several of Fidel’s units—to increase our usefulness and effectiveness in combat.

Lieutenant López, who had distinguished himself at Pino del Agua, and his squadron, whose members were all very responsible, were chosen to staff a disciplinary commission. Its tasks would be surveillance and overseeing established norms of vigilance, general discipline, camp cleaning, and revolutionary morality. But its life was ephemeral, and it was dissolved in tragic circumstances a few days after its creation.

About this time, near La Botella hill, in a little camp we regularly used as a way station, we brought to justice an earlier deserter, named Cuervo, who two months earlier had fled with his rifle. What became of his gun we never found out; we were, however, well informed of his activities. Under the pretext of fighting for the revolutionary cause and executing informers, he was simply victimizing an entire section of the Sierra Maestra population, perhaps in collusion with the army.

The trial process was speedy, in view of his desertion, and progressed to his physical elimination. The execution of antisocial individuals, who took advantage of the prevailing atmosphere in the area to commit crimes was, unfortunately, not infrequent in the Sierra Maestra.

We learned that Fidel had completed his tour of the Sonador region, after going to Chivirico, and was returning through our zone. We decided to march toward Peladero, trying to connect with him as fast as we could.

There was a merchant in the coastal region, Juan Balansa, whose ties with the dictatorship and the big landowners were known, but he had never shown any active hostility toward our guerrillas. Juan Balansa had a mule, famous in the region for its stamina, and as a kind of war tax, we took it.

With the mule we made it to a region named Pinalito, near the Peladero River. We had to descend steep cliffs to reach its banks. We had to choose between sacrificing the mule and carting its meat down in pieces; abandoning it in hostile territory; or trying to get the animal to continue as far as possible. We decided to try, since carrying the meat would have been difficult.

The surefooted mule descended without hesitation through parts we ourselves had to slide down, clinging to vines or hanging on to rocky outcrops, where even our little mascot—a puppy—had to be picked up and carried in the arms of combatants. The mule put on an extraordinarily acrobatic display.

He repeated his exploits by crossing the Peladero River at a point full of boulders, by a sequence of hair-raising leaps from rock to rock. This is what saved his life. Later, he was mine to ride, my first regular mount, until the day he fell into the hands of Sánchez Mosquera, during one of our numerous clashes in the Sierra Maestra.

It was on the banks of the Peladero that the unpleasant incident occurred that led to the abolition of the disciplinary commission.

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