Chronology (May 1961 – December 1965)

1961

May 11: Guillermo Hernández Niebla, his mother Adela Niebla Santos, and his brother René and sister Bertila, both children of peasant Francisco Hernández Rodríguez, left wounded after his house in Sancti Spíritus was assaulted by a terrorist squad.

May: Changes introduced by forces of the LCB determined the beginning of the third stage of that crusade.

June: CIA Agents and counterrevolutionary organizations contacted repeatedly Osvaldo Ramírez, head of all anti-Revolution groups in the Escambray.

July 15-16: Osvaldo Ramírez directed the denominated Reunión de Cicatero (Meeting of Cicatero), in which all forces of the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army in the Escambray were restructured.

September 22: Margarito Lanza Flores’ band tortured and hanged peasant Tomás Hormiga García.

October 3: Teacher Delfín Sen Cedré was murdered by Margarito Lanza Flores’ squad in Novoa Ranch, Quemados de Güines, Las Villas.

November 25: Jesus Real Ramón” Realito”, along with his group of bandits, murdered peasant  Ricardo Díaz Rodríguez in Mil Flores property, Sancti Spíritus municipality of Trinidad.

November 26: Manuel Ascunce Domenech and Pedro Lantigua Ortega were both murdered by bandits Julio Emilio Carretero, Pedro González Sánchez and Braulio Amador Quesada, in Palmarito property, Rio Ay, Trinidad.

November 30: The U.S government officially unleashed Mongoose Operation. Specialists in irregular war at the Pentagon sustained the idea of well-trained commandos could create the conditions to form focuses of anti-Revolution squads. General Edward Lansdale was designated as Chief of Operations.

December 12: Margarito Lanza Flores, Tondique and half of his band were finally captured by the Cuban Revolution’s Rebel Army.

1962

January 15: The Realito’s  band attacked militiaman Valentine Alonso Borreda ‘s rural house. Alonso was murdered in front of it , along with his son Valentine Alonso Barrera.

January 18: The “Cuba Project ” document was presented before the U.S Top officials and the Enlarged Special Group of Council of National Security by Brigade General Edward Lansdale. Such file contained a list of 32 undercover missions that should be executed by departments and agencies involved in the so-called Mongoose Operation.

February 25: Revolutionary militiaman Pedro Carpio Cruz was assassinated by individuals in service of the counterrevolution in Sopimpa, Sancti Spíritus municipality of Fomento.

March 13: A bunch of bandits seized revolutionary Manuel Solís Díaz’s household in Las Llanadas, Sancti Spíritus municipality of Yaguajay. He and José María Padrón, both members of the PSP and founders of the MNR left murdered.

April 14: Realito joined to another band boss Rigoberto Tartabull Chacón killed Emenegildo Rodríguez Salas in the area of Charco Azul, Trinidad.

April 17: Osvaldo Ramírez, chief of the entire network of anti-Revolution military squads in the Escambray, was captured in Aromas de Velázquez property, where he held his headquarters

April: Congo Pacheco, head of a bandit group and author of several slaughters  in the Escambray was captured .

May:  Ideal Rodríguez Lasval, the Gunner, a bandit first lieutenant and second chief of Tomás San Gil’s band  left captured.

May 11: Guillermo Hernández Niebla, his mother Adela Niebla Santos and his brother René Hernández Niebla and sister Bertila Hernández Niebla, all children of peasant Francisco Hernández Rodríguez were wounded by terrorist bands in their own house in Sancti Spíritus.

June 11: Terrorist anti-Revolution squads took the lives of cartography technicians Bienvenido Pardillo Quintero and Rodrigo Quintero Castro.

July 2: Well-known bandits Leonel Martínez and Julio Emilio Carretero penetrated in the very household of Romero family in Méyer property, Monacal de Linea. Harming women and girls and murdering José Pio Romero Rojas, Eustaquio Polo Romero and Ana Rojas Romero.

July 3: By means of the 00023 Directive that stated the formation of the LCB troops nationwide, which paved the way for the creation of special section in the Central Army Division under Commandant Raúl Menéndez Tomassevich’s orders. War methods were perfected since, on the basis of a more adequate use of all military resources and a great coordination among all forces in operations as the voluteer Militias as well as the Organs of the State Security.

July: Tomás San Gill was appointed head of the entire anti-Cuba bandit net and Julio Emilio Carretero as head of the Staff. They both directed 14 paramilitary squads made up by approximately 300 bandits.

July 15: Anti-Revolution groups ambushed and killed Lucas Castellano Rodríguez in the Escambray mountains.

August 4: Legions of the LCB captured Gilberto Rodríguez’s band near Las Cuevas area, in Güinía de Miranda after they were located by Cuban State Security agents.

September 27: During a fencing-type military action against some bandits in Pelayo area,  militiaman Ventura Guerra Utrera fell in combat.

November 4: Comrades Santiago Cruz Salabarría and Estanislao Gutiérrez Fleites were kidnapped and murdered by these U.S.-sponsored groups.

November: The so-denominated general coordinator of the anti-Cuban Revolution organization Movement for Revolutionary Recovery, Luis David Rodríguez González met with the terrorist Major Staff in the Escambray, with the purpose of increasing actions to create uprising inside Cuba to justify a U.S. intervention. Tomás San Gil received a big amount of money and clear indications to strEngthen actions.

November: The LCB Staff formed a subsection under Commandant Victor Dreke’s command, as part of a strategy of restructuring troops operating in the Escambray after the new composition of forces and the territorial division.

December 18: Tomás San Gil’s band aggressed a passEnger railroad between rural communities of Méyer and Monacal in Trinidad. Young student Félix Carredera Delgado left wounded during that action.

December 28: Several members of Gustavo A. Sargent Pérez’s band murdered Flores Colina Díaz and rural José Tristá, in Ranchuelo, Las Villas

1963

January 4: Porfirio Guillén’s band is captured, initiating what was denominated ” the beginning of the end of anti-Revolution bandits in the Escambray.”

January 8: Bandits cruely assassinated rural Ernesto Ramos Palacios in his own house in El Corojal, Trinidad.

January 10: In Arenal, neighborhood of Casilda, province of Las Villas,  counterrevolutionary individuals murdered local resident Oliverio Marín Valdivia, peasant and militiaman.

January 16: A group of terrorists headed by Nilo Armando Saavedra Gil (Mandy Florencia), Major auditor of the self-proclaimed “National Liberation Army”, killed José González Basso, Joseíto, and Fermín Israel Alonso Perera, El Negro, administrators of the Wilfredo Cabrera Farm, Sierra Alta, Fomento.

January 20:  Realito’s armed force set on fire main store in Charco Azul town and shot Luis Lara Yera.

January 22: Mandy Florencia murdered three peasants in Guayos property, Fomento, as a desperate response after a sucessfull action by forces of the LCB that caught part of his band.

January 22: Celestino Rojas’ band was captured.

January 25: A squad of 40 bandits gathering cold-blood murderers Blas Ortega, Ramón del Sol,  Charro de Placetas and Julio Emilio Carretero, seized a batey near Polo Viejo farm, slaughtering peasants Fermín Lubín Vizcaya and Eustaquio Calzada Ponce and burning the houses of seven peasants and a local school. Two young people, an old man, a woman and a boy defended local Militia barrack for more than two hours and shot bandit lieutenant Rafael Lemus. They were finally backed up by other three militiamen who opened fire against the bandit group through their flank and rear, forcing them to move back.

February 1: Forces of the LCB captured bandit Captain Osiris Borges Rojas dead, along with other five armed men. Among his several crime are recorded the attack to the agricultural cooperative facility in Magua on July 21, 1961,  murdering rural spouses Fidel Claro and María Luisa Perera; a machine-gunning  against a jeep on December 5, 1961, which costed Héctor Ruiz Pérez’s life; the firing against a civil truck on March 23, 1962,  in which the driver Julio Rodríguez Utria and his co-pilot Sabino Hernández Romero ended dead.

February 5: Pedro González, one of the most brutal mercenary hidden in the Escambray mountains, and his band opened fire against a jeep full of off-duty and unarmed soldiers and shot two civil busses with workers on board. The outcome was five soldiers and one worker dead and 16 deadly wounded.

February 24: Gustavo Adolfo Sargent’s group hit a farm in Jicotea neighborhood, San Diego del Valle, where they stole six arms.

February 28:  After an effective action which denoted the consolidation of a tactical strategy of the  LCB Army, a bandit group with Tomás David Pérez Días, San Gil, at the forefront was finally annihilated. San Gil ended dead during this operation. Same luck had an important number of his henchmen, among those appeared to be Mandy  Florencia, known as the bandits’ Major auditor. San Gil was third in occupying the position of Major Commander of all forces of the denominated National Liberation Army in the Escambray after Evelio Duke and Osvaldo Ramírez. Among his more notorious crime are recorded  the massacre of teacher Conrado Benítez and rural Eliodoro Rodríguez Linares. Julio Emilio Carretero assumed the bandit headquarters.

March: An official LCB Staff is instituted at the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed forces. This one was in charge of controlling further military operations  nationwide.

March 19-22:  LCB forces captured a portion of Gustavo Sargent’s band that operated in nothern fields of the province of Villa Clara.

March 24: In a continuing operation by the LCB Army captured bandit squad of Manuel Vázquez Vera “El Gallego” and Ramón Galindo Almeida, “La Pelúa”. This band operated through a vast territory, stretching out on Hanabanilla, Manicaragua, Cumanayagua, Potrerillo, San Juan de las Yeras and Ranchuelos.

March 27- 29: In Santa Clara city, Agents of the Cuban State Security Department arrested bandit individuals Ramón Cárdenas Paret “El Pirata” along with Alfredo Bernal Sánchez ” Freddy”, this latter head of personnel resources, both could elude a LCB operation in the Casimbas.

March:  Bandit Juan L. Sosa Morales is detained. Who once functioned as an envoy in Havana by December 26, 1962, to contact the RCA and to leave secretly towards the United States in a support-seeking mission.

April 3: Filiberto González García’s [El Asturiano] squad was captured by joint forces of the LCB and the State Security Department in a five-stage campaign that took place in Aguada de Pasajeros, Havana and Camagüey.

April 11: Farmer-turned-militiaman Germán Arteaga Contreras was killed in a fencing-type ambush carried out by bandits.

April 18: The Cuban State Security Department in Havana arrested bandit leader Gustavo Adolfo Sargent, Chief of the Second Northern Column of Las Villas. He was firstly part of the Congo Pacheco’s band. This way the entire band was annihilated, which was directly supported by the CIA through the paramilitary anti-Cuba group Alpha 66 in Miami, led by some of the Sargent family.

April 20: Sancti Spíritus-born Celestino Pérez Quesada fell in a combat while fighting against anti-Revolution bandits.

April 27: Legions of the LCB caught Orestes Castillo and Los Airados’ band. It was an incomplete squad, which was characterized by a constant movement and occasionally took underground refuge near the houses of its collaborators. Although it was beat in the  Guinía de Miranda, its members operated, mainly, in areas of Falcon, Placetas and to northern Fomento.

May 16: The offensive of the LCB continued and Jesus Real Ramón “Realito” and all men under his command are captured. On his record sheet laid crime as  rapes and slaughters that placed him within the selected group of most wanted bandits in the Escambray mountains.

May 23: Miguel Jerez Besú, known as the “Oriental” and his band were haunted. Besú   had been sent from Havana for a counterrevolutionary organization.

May 26: In Raisúa property,  Paso Real neighborhood, municipality of Encrucijada, Domingo González García, “Mingo Melena”, along with his troopers were captured . This bandit column operated to deeper eastern and his last crime, committed two days before, consisted on the assault, robbery of $ 2 000 pesos and later set on fire of the main store in a town located at Floridano neighborhood, municipality of Zulueta,  where they also thefted two rifles and opened fire against a passEnger train . Mingo Melena became notorious in northern Las Villas, due to several misdeeds and his skill to dodge  columns of the LCB.

May 28:  Julián Amaro Marín and Félix Celso García Pérez both fell in combat heroically fighting against bandits. They participated haunting the band of first lieutenant Esteban Moreira Acosta who commanded other eight men and made foothold in Aguada de Pasajeros municipality. In that same action, militiaman Olegario Alvarez Martin also ended dead.

June 1-2: Forces of the LCB captured Manuel Otero Echevarría’s band near La Sortija  property of Jibacoa neighborhood. The outlaw lieutenant was caught wounded next to other two men dead.

June 2: In Carolina property, Barajagua neighborhood, peasant  Aracelio Rodríguez Castellón was murdered . The next day, local militia of Potrerillo, in San Juan de las Yeras, caught bandit Elio Méndez Gutiérrez, “El Muerto”  who blamed Eusebio Capote, “Pati Blanca”, and Celestino Alarcón Rivero, “Quimbo” to have murdered Castellón.

June 4:  in San Pedro, Trinidad, peasants Manuel Acosta Mederos and Manuel Rodríguez , were assassinated by Pedro González’s band .

June 11: The bandit squads of Celestino Alarcón Rivero “Quimbo” and Eusebio Capote “Patiblanca” were finally captured. Quimbo was one of the band chiefs, well-known by his  atrocities in the Escambray mountains since 1960. Friend of Realito, Nolingo Vera and Tartabull, and linked to them for identical background.

July 8: After a semester, evidencing the emminent end of all terrorist anti-Cuba groups, when the third part of all those squads that held clout in the central Cuban highlands were captured over the past three years of military operations by the LCB; Pedro León Hernández’s “Perico” band was caught, one of the chiefs, who escaped from an operation carried out against Tomás San Gil on February of 1963. “Perico” murdered indiscriminately Romero family, a repugnant slaughter directed by Emilio Carretero.   Bandit Captain Luis Díaz Duke occured to be dead during that same operation.

July 11:Bandit Rigoberto Ojeda and his group is hunted by forces of the LCB in an area of Aguada de Pasajeros in an action, where the revolutionary combatants’ intelligence and bravery defeated a perverse heavy-armed enemy, well-acquainted with this hard-to-get-through territory after two years of activity around.

July 12: Assassins of the voluntary teacher Conrado Benítez were judged and sentenced to death penalty. the two counterrevolutionary murderers were both executed in central Las Villas province.

August 15: LCB combatant Euclides Pentón Napoles perished in a combative action in Melones farm, Guasimal.

August 16: Three CIA spies were captured and executed in Las Villas.Their mission: to infiltrate the island nation, and to plan terrorist plots.

August 18: Mercenary aircrafts bombarded oil deposits on the Casilda harbour, in southern coast of the province of Las Villas. They fired several bomb rockets, one of those impacted and set on fire a railroad wagon-turned-tank.

September 5: Airplanes coming from the USA, flew over the territory of the province Las Villas. After being repelled by the constant firing of the Cuban artillery, they fled dropping  explosives. One of those fell upon the teacher of the FAR, Fabric Aguilar’s home, in Santa Clara city, leaving him dead, and  three of his children wounded.

September 11: The Cuban anti-aircraft batteries, forced to land in Cienfuegos airport of , , Las Villas,  an airplane piloted by Teodoro Picado Lora, former captain and assistant of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.

September 17: The militiamen  Humberto Carmenate Meneses and Miguel Ruiz Rodríguez died in combat against bandits backed by the CIA.

September 20: After the recently-captured airplane navegated by Teodoro Lora Picota was proved to be linked to Anastasio Somoza, Cuban officials seized it as indemnity for damages caused by the Nicaraguan president to Cuba during the U.S invasion to Bay of Pigs, in which Somoza was one of the staunch collaborators of the U.S administration.

1964

March 28: Thanks to an effective work of the Cuban State Security Agent Alberto Delgado, bandits Julio Emilio Carretero and Zoila Aguila “la Niña de Placetas” (The   Placetas girl) were both captured.

April 29: Combatant of the MININT, Alberto Delgado Delgado, was murdered by bandits in in Maisinicú property, Trinidad.

May 2: Rubén’s band is captured Cordovés, one of the participants in Thin Alberto’s murder.

May 6:  Three political leaders of base ended dead after a terrorist band machine gunned their vehicle in Sancti Spíritus.

May 6: Revolutionaries Abel Roig and Santos Caraballé, both members of the Cuba’s Communist Party and the Communist young league, respectively, fell in combant defending themselves in the middle of an ambush staged by anti-Cuba bandit squads in the area The Ramones, Yaguajay.

June 19: the Cuban anti-aircraft defense shot down an pirate airplane that dropped a bomb on sugar industry Marcelo Salado in Caibarién, province of las Villas.

October 17: Sancti Spiritus-born sanitary militiaman Giraldo Manuel Mencías perished during the LCB.

Late December: Notorious counterrevolutionary Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo and 29 of his mercenaries were captured.

1965

July 26: Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro in his speech during the commemoration of the 12th anniversary of the Assault to the Moncada Garrison in Santa Clara, avowed the defeat of all anti-Cuba squads in Cuba.

December 1º:Infamous bandit Luis Vargas was finally detained by Cuban State Security agents.

December: Bandit José Rebozo was captured, what made possible the success of all operations of the Fight Against Bandits (LCB) in the Escambray

The anti-Cuba paramilitary squads were definitively exterminated in Cuba, when the last standing bandit band, headed by Juan Alberto Martínez Andrade was located and defeated.