New York Times

May 30, 1957. p. 10.

Cuban Army Reports the Slaying of Chief of Recent Rebel Invasion

Special to The New York Times

HAVANA, May 29 – Calixto Sanchez, leader of an insurgent group that landed on the north coast of eastern Cuba, has been killed, the Army said today.

Señor Sanchez was listed among sixteen reported killed by Government troops in a clash yesterday. The rebels landed from a yacht Friday. Until several weeks ago, Señor Sanchez headed the air workers’ union at Havana’s José Marti International Airport. He fled to Miami when accused of complicity in the March 13 attack on the Presidential Palace.

Also listed among the dead was Humberto de Blanc, a member of a prominent Havana family and a student leader during the revolutionary period of the Nineteen Thirties.

The battle, which took place in the Sierra del Cristal area on the north coast of Oriente Province, was the first clash between Government troops and this rebel group.

Downtown Havana underwent the second black-out tonight because of the dynamiting of a central power plant yesterday. The Cuban Electric Company, a subsidiary of American Foreign Light and Power of New York, announced it hoped to restore electric power tomorrow.

The bodies of eleven Government soldiers killed in a different skirmish were buried this morning in Santiago de Cuba. The fell yesterday in a battle with a rebel force at Uvero on the south coast of Oriente Province.

No information was available on the number of Government troops wounded or on the casualties of the insurgents, who presumably were fighting under Fidel Castro, the rebel leader operating in the Sierra Maestra. Announcements from military headquarters made no mention of Señor Castro.

Unrest continued today throughout the island. A rumor circulated in Havana that a new insurgent expeditionary force had landed on the south coast of Oriente Province, not far from the scene of yesterday’s fighting.

The bodies of two men were found hanging from trees this morning at San Miguel del Padron, just outside of Havana. One was identified as a Juan Batista of Santiago; the other had not been identified late today. [Batista is not an unusual family name in Cuba.]

A bomb exploded early this morning near the Rafael Conte Stadium in Vibora, a suburb of Havana. It damaged electric power lines. No one was reported injured.

A dispatch from Santiago reported later in the day that two insurgents had been killed and one wounded in new fighting at Uvero.

There were numerous reports of sabotage and terrorism.