Che Guevara in Cuba

*   On December 2 1956, Fidel Castro and 81 other combatants, including Che Guevara, landed in Cuba to begin the revolutionary war against the US-backed regime of Fulgencio Batista. Over the next two years, the Rebel Army conducted an ever-widening guerrilla struggle that won increasing popular support in the countryside and the cities, culminating in the revolution's victory on January 1, 1959.
    * On March 10, 1952, Batista led a bloodless coup on the island of Cuba. On July 26th, 1953, Fidel Castro led an attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba that marked the beginning of the revolutionary armed struggle against the Batista regime. After the attack's failure, Batista's forces massacred over 50 of the captured revolutionaries. Castro and others were taken prisoner, tried imprisoned. They were released in May 1955 after a public defence campaign forced the regime to issue an amnesty.
    * Che Guevara met Fidel Castro in Mexico. Fidel was sent in to exile and came to Mexico looking for neutral ground on which to prepare a group of men to begin a struggle to overthrow Batista. They began their training, fighting the Mexican government, agents of the FBI and of Batista. General Alberto Bayo gave classes in military tactics, Guevara became head of personnel. Fidel Castro was captured by a Mexican police unit on Batista's payroll, the ranch on the outskirts of Mexico City where military training took place was captured and all of the July 26th Movement as it had been called were imprisoned. On their release they worked clandestinely, hardly ever going out in to public places. After several months they learned that a traitor in their midst had sold the yacht and transmitter. The Granma was prepared at short notice with uniforms, rifles and two antitank guns and hardly any ammunition. On November 25, 1956 at two o'clock in the morning they left the port of Tuxpan with their lights out in very bad weather. 'We sang the Cuban national anthem and the...