1. Author's translation. The last sentence has been paraphrased. The original in Spanish reads: “Claro, él no sabía que estaba hablando con un dirigente del Partido Socialista Popular de esa zona.” See, Juan B. Chongo, “Los recuerdos del congreso campesino en armas,” Revista ANAP [Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños (Cuba)] (August 1973): 10.

2. Suárez, Reinaldo Suárez, “Apuntes para una periodización de la justicia penal en el Ejército Rebelde,” in Los tribunales en Cuba: pasado y actualidad (Havana: Organización Nacional de Bufetes Colectivos y Oficina del Historiador de La Habana, 2013), 176Google Scholar.

3. Limited access to archival documentation has constrained historians’ ability to work on this topic. For the first published attempt at sorting out the evolution of legal frameworks during the insurgency, see Suárez, “Apuntes para una periodización.”

4. The summer offensive began on May 24th. Despite being outnumbered by Batista's forces and lacking its weaponry, the rebels continued to take towns across eastern Cuba. Faustino Pérez to Armando Hart, October 3, 1958, Fondo ACTL, Reinaldo Suárez Private Collection [hereafter RSPC]. Historian Lillian Guerra has used the archives of journalist Andrew St. George to make a similar claim. See Guerra, Lillian, Heroes, Martyrs, and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba: 1946-58 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 263CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. See Draper, Theodore, Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities (New York: Praeger, 1962)Google Scholar; AlRoy, Gil, “The Peasantry in the Cuban Revolution,” Review of Politics 19 (1967): 87–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolf, Eric, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1969)Google Scholar; Useem, Bert, “Peasant Involvement in the Cuban Revolution,” Journal of Peasant Studies 5:1 (1977): 99–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Huberman, Leo and Sweezy, Paul, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

6. See for example Chase, Michelle, Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952–1962 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press: 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cushion, Steve, A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Sweig, Julia, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Bonachea, Ramón and Martín, Marta San, The Cuban Insurrection, 1952–1959 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1974)Google Scholar.

7. The categories of peasant and campesino are problematic. Both terms assume a cohesive and static socioeconomic category or political identity that was not clearly delineated in Cuba at the time. In Cuba, ‘campesino’ has been used as an umbrella term that refers without distinction to squatters, sharecroppers, tenants, and small and medium landowners. My use of the two terms as interchangeable most closely resembles the Cuban use of campesino and refers to people who cultivated and lived on small or medium-size plots of land, regardless of their class status or ownership of that land. Like other Latin Americanists, I have opted to use these terms despite the inherent complications. For more treatment of this issue, see Boyer, Christopher, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacan, 1920–1935 (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Swanger, Joanna, Rebel Lands of Cuba: The Campesino Struggles of Oriente and Escambray, 1934–1974 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015)Google Scholar; and Martínez-Alier, Juan, Haciendas, Plantations, and Collective Farms: Agrarian Class Societies, Cuba and Peru (London: Frank Cass, 1977)Google Scholar. Adding to the lack of clarity is the additional blurring between rural class categories that occurred when, in following the rhythms of the sugar industry, “agricultural proletariats” traveled to their rural homes and families to live off the land during the eight months of tiempo muerto (dead season) that they were unemployed. In other words, many sugarcane cutters and coffee pickers subsisted from peasant farming for much of the year. While differentiation between rural proletariat and peasant certainly existed in the way that Sidney Mintz argued in his foreword to Guerra, Ramiro y Sánchez, , Sugar and Society in the Caribbean: An Economic History of Cuban Agriculture (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1964), xi–xlivGoogle Scholar, in Cuba the category of rural wage-worker nonetheless often overlapped with the category of peasant. Nelson Lowry attempted a sociological survey of Cuba's rural areas in Rural Cuba (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1950), but as Brian Pollit in “Some Problems in Enumerating the ‘Peasantry’ in Cuba,” Journal of Peasant Studies, 4:2 (1977): 162–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mintz, Sidney in “A Note on Useem's ‘Peasant Involvement in the Revolution,’” Journal of Peasant Studies 5:4 (1978): 482–484Google Scholar, have argued, the data used in this and similar studies are unreliable, and thus questions remain about the racial and class makeup of the Cuban countryside.

8. Humberto Sorí Marín, a leading lawyer and member of the 26JM, wrote much of the legal language for the orders, laws, and decrees passed in the liberated territories. He calculated that around 60,000 people living in the mountainous regions had never lived under a judicial regimen. See Masetti, Jorge Ricardo, Los que luchan y los que lloran (Buenos Aires: Editorial Jorge Álvarez, 1969), 74Google Scholar.

9. The extent of poverty in prerevolutionary Cuba has been a matter of debate. The descriptions and memoirs I collected from campesinos and former rebels coincide with claims of extreme economic and social rural underdevelopment, as well as widespread hunger and poverty.

10. The Rural Guard was created in 1901 to ensure the continuity of US military rule following its departure from the island, discipline labor, and block dissent. They would, for example, burn down the homes of peasants to assist landowners in their eviction.

11. Despite evidence that eviction rates were falling in the 1950s, my interviews with rural folk in eastern and western Cuba show that the experience and memory of expulsion endured as a galvanizing force and that threats of eviction by the Rural Guard remained.

12. Guerra, Heroes, Martyrs, 263.

13. The ACTL documents held in RSPC contain numerous documents, letters, and memos sent between leaders of the 26JM that give a vivid sense of how the 26JM's rule materialized in 1958. Fondo ACTL and Colección Armando Pérez Ruíz (Auditorías folders), RSPC.

14. Faustino Pérez to Armando Hart Dávalos, September 1958, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

15. Guevara, Ernesto, Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria (Editorial Ocean Sur, 2007)Google Scholar, available at oceansur.com/quienes-somos, accessed July 5, 2019; Anderson, Jon Lee, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Franqui, Carlos, Diario de la Revolución Cubana (Paris: Ediciones Ruedo Ibérico, 1976)Google Scholar.

16. Ángel Verdecia Moreno died in combat in 1958. He joined the guerrillas in 1957 along with a large group from his family. See Captain Fernando Vecino Alegret's testimony and reconstruction of his diary during combat: Rebeldes hasta la victoria (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2013): 102–104.

17. Author interview with Michel Reyes-Trejo, Santiago, March 2017.

18. The question of the peasant makeup of the Rebel Army has been fiercely debated. See Useem, “Peasant Involvement,” 102; García, Gladys Marel, Insurrection and Revolution: Armed Struggle in Cuba, 1952–1959 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998)Google Scholar; Blackburn, Robin, “Prologue to the Cuban Revolution,” New Left Review 1:21 (October 1963): 76Google Scholar; and Huberman, Leo and Sweezy, Paul, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1960), 78Google Scholar. On the murder of Chico Osorio and the Desalojo Campesino group, see. Swanger, Rebel Lands, 155–156., On the peasants in Yaguajay, see Bonachea, Ramón and Martin, Marta San, The Cuban Insurrection, 1952–1959 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1974), 254Google Scholar.

19. According to one anecdote, Cresencio Pérez volunteered to send 100 men to fight, but the shortage of weapons allowed only 15 of them to join the battle. See Thomas, Hugh, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 901–903Google Scholar. Such encounters of willing fighters with a lack of weapons happened throughout the remainder of the war, although men who made it to rebel encampments bearing their own arms were often accepted into the Ejército Rebelde.

20. Rojas, Marta, “Misael, el campesino ciego que se alzó en la Sierra Oriental,” Bohemia 51:13 (March 29, 1959), 42–44Google Scholar.

21. My work builds on the meticulously researched comparative study Rebel Lands of Cuba by Joanna Swanger, on rural land struggles in Oriente and Escambray during the 1930s and continuing through the 1950s. Like mine, her research supports the contention that the long history of land struggles among peasants in Oriente led them to connect to the goals and tactics of the rebels, with whom they formed a dialogic relationship.

22. Formed in 1926, the Cuban Communist Party went through name changes. In 1939, the party was legalized and renamed the Communist Revolutionary Union. In 1944, the name was changed to Popular Socialist Party and was used until its incorporation into the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) in 1961.

23. Agrarian reform is to be understood as a set of policies that includes, but is not limited to, the specific goal of land reform. The two are not synonymous, as agrarian reform denotes policy meant to address the overall social, political, economic, and structural marginalization of rural peoples. In Cuba, the building of new schools, clinics, hospitals, and roads and the “modernizing” of rural areas were taken together as important elements of agrarian reform.

24. In 2017, Gámbara described a lifetime of work within the local organizations of the Cuban Communist Party. Author interview with Esther Gámbara Batista, El Cobre, April 2017.

25. Author interviews with Michel Reyes-Trejo, Santiago, April, 2017; Esther Cámbara Batista, El Cobre, April 2017; Berenice Acosta, Santiago, February 2015; and Benjamín Reyes, Santiago, May 2017.

26. Wolf, Peasant Wars, 267; Regalado, Antero, Las luchas campesinas en Cuba (Havana: Comisión de Educación Interna, Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba, 1973), 79–85Google Scholar.

27. Swanger, Rebel Lands, 99.

28. Wealthy landowners gave donations, paid taxes, and bought 26JM bonds. Ballester, Alfredo Parra, Nació guerrillera: La Policía Rebelde del Segundo Frente Oriental Frank País (Havana: Editorial Capitán San Luis, 2009), 38Google Scholar. See also Wolf, Peasant Wars, 272; and Guevara, Che, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1968), 28Google Scholar. Melanio Ramírez's father, a small farmer from Brazo de Buey in the Sierra Maestra, allowed Che Guevara's Column No. 4 to set up an encampment on his small plot of land. Author interview with Melanio Ramírez, Brazo de Buey, April 2017. Ernesto Soler, from a large, wealthy landowning family in Buey Arriba, collaborated in many ways with the rebels and even joined the insurgency. Mario Fontaine's family, also from Buey Arriba, owned a plot of land and starting in mid 1957 helped the rebels gather food and survival goods. See Artigas, Antonio Llibre, Memorias de un clandestino y guerrillero (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2014), 111Google Scholar. Julio and Senén Casas Regueiro, sons of wealthy landowners, joined the Segundo Frente Oriental and later became prominent politicians in Cuba.

29. For example, Cresencio Pérez, a well-known leader of squatters in the Sierra Maestra with a large peasant following, was wanted by Batista's government for being a “notorious outlaw” and “bandit.” He sent several of his sons and employees to fight in the war. Another example: in a 2018 interview with the author, Lena Rodríguez described her father's medium-size farm and his financial and in-kind collaboration with the rebels. Toward the end of the insurgency, his daughters also volunteered in Raúl Castro's front in the Sierra Cristal.

30. Memorandum, “Asociación de caficultores Manzanillo y Niquero,” May 25, 1958, in Orlando Valdés García, Historia de la reforma agraria en Cuba (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 36.

31. Valdés García, Historia de la reforma agraria, 36.

32. For a similar approach that uses Gramscian notions of consent and coercion in revolutionary Cuba, see Swanger, Rebel Lands.

33. Ley Número 1 de la Sierra Maestra, Fondo Leyes, RSPC. On February 11, 1958, a first “regulation” was signed in the Sierra. This regulation is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the Sierra Maestra's first law.

34. Memo from Fidel Castro to Faustino Pérez appointing him to the ACTL department, no date, Creación Folder, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

35. Faustino Pérez to Armando Hart Dávalos, October 3, 1958, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

36. Pérez would continue to collaborate with the rebels, taking on crucial roles in organizing the peasantry during and after the war.

37. Constitución de la Asociación Campesina Santo Domingo, Fondo Asociaciones Campesinas, RSPC.

38. Auditorías Folder (El Guayabo, La Estrella, La Plata, Las Peñas, Las Vegas), Fondo ACTL, RSPC. Since there were no government offices in the mountainous areas, poor families often went without registering new births. Registering a child was culturally important, as formal recognition of the child's parental status guaranteed that they would be considered “legitimate” offspring. On Saturdays, ACTL officials gathered to attend to matters related to marriage and divorce, disputes overland boundaries, loose or stolen farm animals, and family quarrels or threats among neighbors, for example. Sundays were reserved for work with the campesino associations in their effort to obtain material improvements of the agricultural land, roads, and agrarian reform. See also Swanger, Rebel Lands, 157.

39. Disposition 11, Decemeber 21, 1958, Dispositions Folder, Fondo ACTL, RSPC. For recent work addressing moral authority in the Cuban Revolution, see chapt. 3, “Maternalism and Moral Authority in the Revolution,” in Chase, Revolution within the Revolution; and Hynson, Rachel, Laboring for the State: Women, Family, and Work in the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1971 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

40. Auditioría Las Vegas report filed by Emilio Bernal del Riesgo, September 20, 1958, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

41. Faustino Pérez, speaking at the headquarters of the Administración Civil en La Plata (date illegible, but likely in the 1980s), Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

42. Faustino Pérez at the Administración Civil en La Plata, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

43. Masetti, Los que luchan, 205. Humberto Sorí Marín served as the revolution's Minister of Agriculture until mid 1959, but broke with its leaders after having major differences with approaches to private property and agrarian reform. He defected to Miami in late 1960 to organize Fidel Castro's overthrow and returned to Cuba in March 1961 with support from the US Central Intelligence Agency and an arms shipment. He was caught days later, and executed shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. His opposition to the direction taken by the Revolution after 1959 did not preclude him from expressing satisfaction with a state that had begun by extending civil rights to overlooked populations in rural areas. For more discussion on Sorí Marín and the agrarian conflict, see Sara Kozameh, “Harvest of Revolution: Agrarian Reform and the Making of Revolutionary Cuba, 1958–1970” (PhD diss.: New York University, 2020); and Buch, Luis, Gobierno revolucionario: génesis y primeros pasos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1999), 100–119Google Scholar.

44. Series of short handwritten memos ordering or authorizing cattle tranfers, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

45. Franqui, Diario de la revolución cubana, 383.

46. Franqui, Diario de la revolución cubana, 383.

47. Author interviews with Fernando Vecino-Alegret, Havana, May 2017; and Alfredo Ballester, Holguín, April 2017.

48. In February 1958, Fidel estimated that 10,000 families were suffering from hunger as a result of the siege. Upon their receiving a cow, families signed a mimeographed contract promising not to kill or eat it and agreeing to the rules for preferential cattle distribution among families in a neighborhood. For text of the usufruct cattle contract, see Masetti, Los que luchan, 132, 134.

49. Fidel Castro to Manolo Arcas, in Franqui, Diario de la revolución cubana, 425.

50. de los Santos Tamayo, Asela, Con visión de futuro: testimonio de la Campaña Educativa, 1958 (Havana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1998), xiiiGoogle Scholar.

51. The administration included departments for justice, sanitation, propaganda, education, construction, finance, and industry.

52. The Segundo Frente Oriental, nearly three million acres in size, included several areas well-known for peasant organizing: Mayarí, Sagua de Tánamo, Baracoa, Yateras, Guantánamo, Alto Songo, and San Luis. Toward the end of the war, it added Banes and Antilla.

53. Santos Tamayo, Con visión, 8.

54. Santos Tamayo, Con visión, 91.

55. Comisión de Historia del Buró Agrario del Segundo Frente Oriental “Frank País,” Semilla insurgente (Havana: Casa Editorial Verde Olivo, 2007), 26–27; Ballester, Nació guerrillera, 38–36.

56. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 26-27.

57. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 36.

58. This idea was not new. During the struggles for independence, soldiers often learned to read and write at war camps. See Morales, Vidal y Morales, , Hombres del 68: Rafael Morales y González, maestro del Ejército Mambí (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1972), 241Google Scholar. In this context, this link was constructed as providing continuity with the Independence Movement and further legitimizing its mission.

59. Recent scholarship on the role of women during the insurgency and early years of the Cuban Revolution has pointed to the crucial role they played in urban settings. Among those works are Michelle Chase's Revolution within the Revolution. However, details of what their role in the rural struggle looked like remain elusive. As Asela de los Santos Tamayo explains, women often joined the rebels to perform educational tasks. Santos Tamayo, Con visión, 27.

60. Santos Tamayo, Con visión, 44.

61. The nearby communally held lands of Realengo 18, for example, were the center of drawn-out armed struggles for land by campesinos, many of whom had fought for national liberation against Spain. Some of Cuba's most prominent battles for land occurred in areas taken over by the Segundo Frente Oriental.

62. For example, an October 1958 issue of Sierra Maestra, one of its intermittent bulletins, titled “Hombre de Campo,” explained agrarian reform goals and called peasant men and women to join the movement. Hombre de Campo Manuscript, Fondo ACTL, RSPC. Raúl's front published Surco, a similar clandestine bulletin addressing peasant supporters.

63. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 95.

64. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 28. Campesino associations had existed across the region since the 1934 campesino struggles. Pepe Ramírez headed the ANAP from its inception in 1961 until 1987.

65. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 95.

66. On August 3, Raúl Castro signed Military Order No. 40, establishing the Agrarian Bureau. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 29.

67. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 31.

68. Acta de Constitución de la Asociación de Campesinos de Santo Domingo and Asociación de Campesinos Santo Domingo Reglamento, November 1, 1958, Fondo ACTL, RSPC; Memo from Asociación Campesino to ACTL, December 16, 1958. Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

69. The source does not indicate an exact date for this resolution, but it most likely fell between July and October of 1958. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 31. Because the date of this resolution is unclear, it is difficult to determine whether it was passed as a precursor to Law No. 1, or as a follow-up.

70. According to the memoir on the Agrarian Bureau, the bureau intervened in matters such as wages and salaries. It also intervened to see that employers paid the established minimum prices and wages for agricultural workers. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 32.

71. Ballester, Nació guerrillera, 39.

72. Valdés García, Historia de la reforma agraria, 44.

73. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 37.

74. Valdés García, Historia de la reforma agraria, 45; Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 37.

75. Valdés García, Historia de la reforma agraria, 44.

76. Juan B. Chongo, “Los recuerdos del congreso campesino en armas,” Revista ANAP, (August 1973): 8–13. Caujerí and Las Cuchillas were, along with Realengo 18, the center of violent battles for land in the 1930s.

77. Swanger, Rebel Lands, 78.

78. Kelley, Robin, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Stevens, Margaret, Red International and Black Caribbean Communists in New York City, Mexico, and the West Indies, 1919–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79. For a timeline of PSP positions on armed struggle, see Sena, Caridad Massón, “El Partido Socialista Popular y la Revolución Cubana,” Revista Caliban 7 (April–June 2010)Google Scholar. See also Swanger, Rebel Lands, 163, for details on PSP leader Juan Marinello's letters to opposition parties. Mario Fontaine, coffee grower and founder of the first Communist Party cell in Buey Arriba (Sierra Maestra), for example, joined the insurgency in 1957. Once the PSP had formally announced its support, he became an auditor for Che Guevara's Column No. 4 in the region, later participating in meetings to organize the peasantry in the Escambray. See the Colección de Historia, Museo Municipal de Buey Arriba.

80. See also, Cuban Communist Party pamphlet “Campesinos,” dated March 28, 1943, Insitituto de Historia de Cuba, 1/2:1/14.3, p. 67-69, Fondo Primer Partido Comunista. I wish to thank Tony Wood for sharing this document with me.

81. Pablo de la Torriente Brau, Realengo 18, (Havana: Editorial Gente Nueva, 1979); and Josephine Herbst, “A Passport for the Realengo,” New Masses, July 16, 1935. For more on these reporters, see de la Fuente, Alejandro and de los Ángeles Merino, María, “Vigilar las tierras del Estado: El Realengo 18 y la cuestión agraria en la República,” in Cuba: de colonia a república, Rodrigo, Martín y Alharilla, , ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2006), 209-224Google Scholar; and Stevens, Red International.

82. Swanger, Rebel Lands, 100–107.

83. Paz, Juan Valdés, “La cuestión agrarian en la Constitución del 40,” in Retrospección crítica de la Asamblea Constituyente de 1940, Suárez, Ana, ed. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011), 211–215Google Scholar. See also Diario de Sesiones de la Convención Constituyente, vol. 2, no. 69 (Havana, May 1940), available through the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC).

84. See Barry Carr, “Mill Occupations and Soviets: The Mobilisation of Sugar Workers in Cuba 1917-1933,” The Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 28, No.1 (Feb 1996),.140, for more on the collaboration between labor organizations and the Peasant Leagues in the 1930s mill occupations and soviets. For more on Communist and labor leader Jesus Menéndez and peasant organizing in the 1940s, see Spence-Benson, Devyn, Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the author interviews with Esther Gámbara Batista, El Cobre, April 2017, and Alicia Cruz Silva, June 2017. For a description of ongoing land struggles and cross-class collaboration from 1952 to 1958, see Regalado, Las luchas campesinas, 129–141. For example, in 1958, peasants from Las Maboas protested Batista's land grant to US companies, with the support and help of sugar mill, agricultural, and port workers.

85. My use of the phrase “socialism from below” refers to the organic and local development of a communist following and politics, rather than one emanating from Moscow or Havana.

86. Article 3, September 21, 1958, Reglamento del Comité Campesino Regional, Fondo Segundo Frente Oriental “Frank País,” tomo 20, Cuban Institute of History, Havana. See also the credentials of Antonio Calderón, who came from Puriales de Caujerí (Guantánamo) to attend the Congreso Campesino en Armas. Comisión de Historia del Buró Agrario, Graphic Archive.

87. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 56.

88. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, 125.

89. Valdés, Historia de la reforma agraria, 48.

90. Juan B. Chongo, “Los recuerdos del congreso campesino en armas,” Revista ANAP, (August 1973): 11. The term ‘reactionaries’ appears to refer to landowners, intermediaries, and coffee buyers who used red-baiting tactics to stop peasants from attending the congress or otherwise organizing collectively. According to Antero Regalado, another longtime Communist and peasant leader from Pinar del Río who joined Guevara's front in the Escambray, their efforts amounted to a broad regional campaign to discredit the work being done by peasants and organizers. See Regalado, Las luchas campesinas, 149.

91. Raúl Castro, speech, September 21, 1958, reproduced in Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, Annex 8.

92. Valdés García, Historia de la reforma agraria, 49.

93. Valdés García, Historia de la reforma agraria, 49.

94. It is, of course, likely a combination of the three. For a summary of these debates and a similar contention that peasant pressure pushed the 26JM leftward, see Swanger, Rebel Lands, 161–164.

95. Radio Report by Carlos Franqui, October 20, 1958, Sierra Maestra Headquarters, Fondo ACTL, RSPC. Franqui later became a fierce critic of Fidel Castro.

96. Law No. 2 on Fraudulent Elections outlawed any form participation in the national elections of November 3, 1958. The law was meant to weaken election results and project the illegitimacy of Batista's blatantly farcical election. “Ley No. 2,” Revolución, October 20, 1958, Leyes Folder, Fondo Derecho Guerillero, RSPC. Law No. 4, dated October 18, 1958, placed sanctions on the British for selling arms to Batista's government. See Fidel Castro, La contraofensiva estratégica (Havana: Editorial Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado, 2010).

97. Franqui, Diario de la revolución cubana, 619.

98. Since farm owners often supported the revolutionary effort, expropriating their land would have been a politically risky move. Distributing state-owned lands was a less incendiary notion and allowed the rebels to build their reputation while performing duties exclusive to a sovereign state.

99. Faustino Pérez to Fidel Castro, November 24, 1958, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

100. Ballester, Nació guerrillera, 37.

101. Comisión de Historia, Semilla insurgente, Graphic Archive.

102. Masetti, Los que luchan, 131.

103. Masetti, Los que luchan,132.

104. Military Order No. 1, November 6, 1958, issued by Ernesto Guevara, commander-in-chief of the 26JM in Las Villas, “Ciro Redondo” Column. For a facsimile of this document, see Guevara, Diary of a Combatant, appendix.

105. Guevara, Diary of a Combatant, appendix.

106. Andrés García Suárez, El Escambray en Ascenso (Imprenta Federico Engels. Departamento de Orientación Revolucionaria del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba, 1973), 50.

107. Cited in Juan and Martínez-Alier, Verena, Cuba: economía y sociedad (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1972), 143Google Scholar.

108. These were the Second National Escambray Front and the March 13th Revolutionary Directorate.

109. Faustino Pérez to Fidel Castro, November 24, 1958, Fondo ACTL, RSPC (my translation).

110. Armando Pérez Ruíz to Fidel Castro, November 18, 1958; José Regueiro, report to Faustino Pérez, October 2, 1958; Orlando Benítez, report to Fidel Castro, November 2, 1958; Faustino Pérez to Orlando Benítez, November 5, 1958, Fondo ACTL, RSPC.

111. US National Archives and Records Administration, Foreign Relations of the United States, Record Group 58, shows that all departments of the US government were concerned with the possible infiltration of communists and closely watching to see which way Fidel and his forces would lean. For a thorough and impressive analysis of this effort, see Schultz, Lars, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011)Google Scholar. Cuban civic resistance organizations based in Miami also objected to the decision to allow the PSP into the coalition. Morray, Joseph P., The Second Revolution in Cuba (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1962), 61Google Scholar.