New York Times
July 27, 1957. p. 6.
By R. Hart Phillips
Special to The New York
Times
HAVANA, July 26 – Rebel flags flying from various points greeted residents of Havana this morning. This was the date on which Fidel Castro and his supporters had threatened to start open revolt throughout the island to overthrow the Government of President Fulgencio Batista.
The red and black flag bearing the white number 26 appeared among other places on the radio tower of the Pan American Airways Building, on top of the nearly completed Hilton Hotel, at the Government’s Mercedes Hospital and elsewhere in the heart of the city.
Surprisingly, the walls of the University of Havana, a center of Castro support were decorated with pro-Government placards. Also the flag of the sergeants’ revolt led by Señor Batista Sept. 4, 1933, and now the flag of the armed forces, was pinned across the breast of the alma mater statue in front of the university.
The placards, signed by “Juventud Batistiano,” youth organization of the Government coalition parties, read: “In the face of the rebellion of the opposition Batista is the guarantee of the people.”
The university, which has been for many years of the focal point of rebellion against various Cuban administrations, was closed last year to prevent student disorders when Fidel Castro and his revolutionary expedition landed on the south coast of Oriente Province.
In the town of Ciego de Avila in Camaguey Province hundreds of Sept. 4 flags appeared this morning, according to report from there. And a huge picture of President Batista was erected.
For several weeks underground publications of Castro supporters had threatened a revolt in all parts of the island today. The populace has been warned to stay indoors. These publications predicted the insurgent leader and his followers would drink champagne in the Presidential Palace today.
4th
Anniversary of Fight
Today is the fourth anniversary of the attack by a group of youths led by Castro on the Moncada military post in Santiago de Cuba. More than a hundred lives were lost in savage fighting there.
Señor Castro surrendered later through the intervention of Archbishop Enrique Perez Serantes of Santiago and was sentenced to thirty years in prison. After several months he was released under a political amnesty and fled the island. He returned from Mexico with a revolutionary expedition of eighty-two men and landed last Dec. 2 in Oriente Province.
Most of the expedition has been killed or captured, but Señor Castro reached the almost impenetrable Sierra Maestro and has collected a force of 150 to 200 men. His revolutionary movement is called the Twenty-sixth of July in memory of the Moncada attack.
Pedro Barrera, chief of the Army operations in Oriente against Castro announced today he was moving his headquarters from the Estrada Palma sugar mill near Manzanillo to outside the village of Maffo, nearer both Santiago and the mountains where Señor Castro is holed up.