Operation Verano collapses

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.

Government forces attempted to trap Castro’s main force in the final major battle of the summer offensive.

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.

The columns of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos moved across difficult terrain while pursued by government forces.