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"Well," said Fidel one day, "you are telling us tactics for cowards." "No," said Bayo, "for intelligent people. You cannot go in there and face 21,000 well-equipped troops in open battle. You are going to be there like mosquitoes. Your attack on Moncada was & big mistake." Castro, who had already named his movement "26th of July'' for the date of the Moncada attack, was hurt. But he force-marched his rebels through the mountains 15 hours a day, learned mapmaking, bomb making and marksmanship. On Nov. 26, 1956, Castro and 81 revolutionaries set to sea from Tuxpam on the Gulf of Mexico aboard their Prío-bought 62-ft. yacht Gramma.
Decimation. Six days later Castro landed on the southern shore of Oriente province, to be met by Batista's 1st Regiment. Only a dozen rebels escaped the slaughter. Among them were Cuba's future leaders: Fidel and Raul Castro, an Argentine surgeon named Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, a onetime New York dishwasher named Camilo Cienfuegos, a Havana rebel named Faustino Perez.
Twenty days' march from the beach, the few remaining rebels reached blessed refuge in the Sierra Maestra, a wilderness of sheer cliffs, snarled liana vines and pockets of thick, orange mud. Batista, in a fatal mistake, overconfidently withdrew his troops. Castro and his men lived on plantains and mangos—and waited. The first break came from Jose ("Pepe") Figueres, President of Costa Rica, 800 miles to the southwest. To a hastily cleared Sierra airstrip, Socialist Figueres sent a twin-engined Beechcraft loaded with rifles, Tommy guns, ammunition and grenades. "I felt sorry for that man," Pepe explained.
Again and again Batista's army announced that "the campaign is almost won." But his 1,000 barracks-fat soldiers around the Sierra Maestra showed less and less hunger for the fight. In the long stalemate the rebel army grew in size and fervor. Castro talked and talked of his dreams for Cuba, sitting up until dawn in the huts of the guajíros—the squatters who farm the rugged mountains. "It is not right," he said, "that a man should go to prison for robbery when he is able to work, wants to work and cannot find a job." The guajíros nodded gravely and joined up.
Pressagentry. Castro showed a natural flair for publicity. Rebel beards, originally grown for lack of shaving gear, gave the revolt a trademark. Astigmatic from birth, Castro was seldom caught with his spectacles on. "A leader does not wear glasses," he said.
Newsmen from all over the world rated top priority with rebel couriers, who escorted them into the hills. For his 1957 interview with New York Timesman Herbert Matthews, Castro made a dangerous trip to the foothills, got invaluable publicity from the U.S.'s most prestigious paper. Other reporters, getting past army checkpoints as "engineer" or "sugar planter," had to make an arduous climb, but they were rewarded with long, friendly chats. To oblige CBS, the rebels took in 160 lbs. of television equipment. One big-paper correspondent on his way up was crestfallen to discover a reporter from Boy's Life on his way down.