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At that point, Cuban Prime Minister Gonzalo Guell dropped in secretly on Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, got ready promises of a refuge for Batista and his cohorts. In fierce street fighting that killed 60, Guevara whipped a dispirited army garrison of 3,000 men and took Santa Clara (pop. 150,000), the rebels' first big city. A trainload of 150 troops sent by Batista refused even to get out of the railroad cars. Batista was through.
The Scramble. In the dictator's final scramble for safety, ferries, yachts, airliners and private planes were jammed. One Cubana Airlines pilot, at gunpoint, flew 92 refugees to New York just before armed civilians seized the Havana airport. To the Dominican Republic, besides Batista, went Andrés Rivero Aguero, Batista's puppet President-elect, who was supposed to take office Feb. 24. (Another Ciudad Trujillo resident: Argentina's exiled Dictator Juan Perón.) The Jacksonville club included national Police Chief Pilar Garcia, worst of the terrorists, and Army Chief of Staff Francisco Tabernilla, whose unseemly wealth from import privileges led Cubans to dub Scotch whisky "Old Tabernilla." U.S. Gambler Meyer Lansky, who ran the casinos in several big resort hotels in a deal with Batista, caught a chartered plane to Florida with a clutch of his top mobsters. Wherever the Batista supporters descended in the U.S., Cuban exiles turned out to hoot and jeer. Other exiles hired planes for the happy trip back home.
Seldom had a government been so thoroughly housecleaned between midnight and dawn. But to Castro, flushed with victory, the exodus was a bitter cheat. Arriving in Santiago, he took the big (5,000-man) Moncada fortress from the surrendering army without firing a shot, declared Santiago the provisional capital of Cuba as reward for its support. In Las Villas, ruthless, Red-loving Che Guevara executed the last Batista holdouts.
In Havana, the celebration was on. Thousands of girls paraded about dressed in red and black, the rebel colors; cheering students roamed through Havana University; rioters wrecked two newspaper offices, sacked gambling casinos and dozens of homes of Batista supporters.
Holdouts. Batista's lesser cops, in no position to flee, fought on. Radio and television stations chattered out the prowl-car numbers of known killer cops, and the rebels tracked them down. By the next dawn, rebel blockaders had trapped at least four police cars and gunned the occupants dead. Rebels besieged police snipers, fought confused night battles among themselves. For three days and nights, bullets whined in Central Park, in downtown office buildings, in suburban Vedado. An estimated 40 persons died.
Gradually, order returned. Surviving policemen joined forces with the rebels, and rebel guards took over at Camp Columbia. Prisons in Havana and on the Isle of Pines were emptied of hundreds of political prisoners. Some 500 U.S. vacationers made their way out safely aboard the ferry, City of Havana, with rebels carrying their luggage. Other tourists slept in hotel lobbies, guarded by armed bellhops wearing July 26 arm bands. Che Guevara led 600 of his bearded mountain warriors into Havana and bedded them down on the parquet floors of the ballroom of the Havana Hilton Hotel.