Battle of Las Mercedes begins

Cuban opposition groups agreed to coordinate the struggle against Batista and support a provisional government after victory.

Major José Quevedo surrendered his surrounded force. The rebel victory became a turning point in the summer offensive.

The rebels treated prisoners and returned many through the Red Cross, using the victory to contrast their conduct with dictatorship violence.

Government troops again tried to penetrate the rebel zone as Operation Verano weakened.

Rebel resistance prevented the government army from recovering the initiative in the Sierra Maestra.

Rebel manoeuvres and negotiated pauses enabled the guerrillas to escape the attempted encirclement. Batista’s offensive ended in failure.

Fidel Castro ordered Cienfuegos’s Column 2 to advance westward, echoing Antonio Maceo’s nineteenth-century liberation campaign.

He argued that the failed summer offensive showed the revolution had spread beyond the Sierra Maestra and could not be destroyed militarily.

The order assigned Column 8 to carry the war from the Sierra Maestra into central Cuba and coordinate revolutionary forces there.

Che Guevara was instructed to cross Cuba, unite forces in Las Villas and disrupt the island’s main transport routes.