On September 27th, 1958, the Column number 11 Cándido González participated in one of the most disastrous actions of the Rebel Army’s path through Camagüey: the ambush of Pino III and the massacre of La Caobita.
The Column Cándido González, under the command of Jaime Vega, entered the territory of the former province of Camagüey on the morning of September 22th. When leaving Sierra Maestra it was composed of 65 men, but when it arrived in Camaguey it exceeded the 200 soldiers.
A short time before, the columns of Ernesto Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos had passed through Camagüey, which had fueled the revolutionary effervescence in the territory but also the number of troops of the tyranny in the southern region of the province.
In the middle of this situation, it was difficult to move so many men through an area as flat as Camaguey, so it was important to pass unnoticed. In the same way, Fidel from the Sierra Maestra, had prohibited the transportation of troops in trucks, an order that was disobeyed by Jaime Vega and paid for in blood.
The ambush
At dawn on the 27th, the Column # 11 moved in four trucks packed with soldiers, and Jaime Vega and other officers lead the route in a smaller car. When crossing the railroad line in Pino III, the vehicle leading the caravan turns on its lights to show the way and automatically a rain of shrapnel fell on the trucks.
The rebel troops managed to regroup, order a withdrawal, and retrieved some wounded. Others got caught under the enemy fire and stand up to support the retreat. At dawn, 19 soldiers from the column lay dead on the ground, three prisoners were captured and 11 wounded were taken to Macareño Hospital.
In the hamlet of Pino III, the three prisoners were executed after being sent to run towards the cane field as warning to the residents of the area.
The massacre of La Caobita
The 11 wounded were treated at Macareño Hospital by the doctors Bienvenido García Rivero and Pedro Forno. In the evening of the 27th itself, Commander Domingo Piñero arrived at the hospital and despite the refusal of the medical personnel of the facility, he took the rebels out on the pretext of transferring them to Santa Cruz hospital to receive a better treatment.
Just eight kilometers from the hospital, in a place known as La Caobita, wounded prisoners were killed. Batista’s soldiers simulated an ambush and began firing on the truck bed in which they were transporting the rebels; two grenades were even thrown killing the survivors.
Although the action was marked by the betrayal of Rolando Cantero (guide of the rebels in the area), Jaime Vega’s negligence in moving the column in trucks was decisive for these events to fail in such a fateful way.
Fidel, upon learning of what had happened, in an address by Radio Rebelde said: “… Perhaps among those rebels that were killed are some of the comrades who during the Battle of El Jigüe transferred enemies from the line of fire to the sites where they received first aid at night, climbing almost inaccessible cliffs … the lack of reciprocity could not be more disgusting and cowardly …
What happened in Camagüey is doubly outrageous and absurd, first because the hundreds of soldiers who were returned to the Red Cross by the rebels safe and sound are still present in the memory of the citizens, and secondly…. because they were losing the war …. what’s the point in … murdering rebels … charging at the armed forces, already discredited, a bloodstain that history will often remember as an infinite shame for any soldier who today wears the infamous and disgraceful uniform of the one that can never be called the Republic Army.”
Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García
