In refusing authorization to the Cuban press to visit the field of operations and know the stand of the 26th of July Movement, dictator Batista has shown not only moral cowardice and military impotence but has said the last word on the final outcome of this struggle.

He could have rendered an invaluable service to the country in this final moment, in the midst of all the harm he had done, namely, by resigning in order to save the coming bloodshed, for he has irremediably lost this contest.

If it is unjustifiable to rule the country by brute force and sacrifice human lives in the selfish desire to remain in power, as he been doing for the last six years, it is a thousand times more unjustifiable to sacrifice those lives when the unbreakable will of the nation, expressed in all social, political, cultural, and religious sectors, against which it is impossible to govern. has decreed the immediate and inexorable end of this regime.

Those of us who know intimately the values the fatherland is sacrificing in its fight for freedom; those of us who know the lives it costs to take every position and to carry out every action; those of us who always hold before us the memory of Frank País and José Antonio Echevarría as symbols of hundreds of other equally courageous young men who have died to fulfill their duty, and who know how much the fatherland will need them in the creative moment which is close at hand, with deep sorrow, with uncontainable indignation, we understand and suffer as no one else the monstrous and futile crime being committed against Cuba.

If the right to know the truth is denied the people, how can one expect the slightest respect for physical integrity, personal freedom, and the right of meeting, organizing, and electing rulers?

The tyranny could not grant anything without the danger of disintegrating; the tyranny has no other possible alternative than its immediate disappearance.

If the rebels are vanquished, if the troops of the regime dominate the mountains and the valleys, if our forces do not fight and are impossible to locate, if what exists are small groups engaged in misdeeds, and if against us there stands a strong, invincible, disciplined, and combative army, as the General Staff in its cynical reports states, why were newspapermen not permitted to come to the Sierra Maestra? Why, if they once ostentatiously sent them in a plane to see that no one was here, why do they not allow newspapermen now to even come close to the southern zone of Oriente? Why do they not remedy this insult among the many they have conferred on the Cuban press?

The explanation to the denial of authorization to the newspapermen lies in the shameful defeats that the dictatorship has suffered in the military offensives that, over and over again, we have destroyed; in the unprecedented acts of barbarism that their henchmen have committed against the defenseless civilian population; in the real and true fact that their troops have been expelled from the Sierra Maestra and the 26th of July army is now on the offensive in the north of the province; in the demoralization and cowardice that have reached such a degree in their ranks that women and children are used as shields to prevent the action of our detachments; and in the ever more numerous cases of soldiers and officers coming to our side with their weapons, sickened by the corrupt and criminal regime they have been defending.

The dictatorship did not want the newspapermen to know on the spot, directly and irrefutably, that more than boo peasants were murdered during the six months of suspended guarantees and press censorship; that in Oro de Guisa in Oriente Province alone fifty-three peasants were killed in one day; that a mother lost her nine children and husband in a single blow. It did not want the newspapermen to see the hundreds of humble homes, built through sacrifice, reduced to ashes in brutal reprisal, children mutilated by the bombing and machine-gunning of defenseless hamlets. It did not want them to know the lies that the General Staff reported after each combat, trying to deceive not only the people but the army itself. We were going to take the newspapermen to the scenes of the defeats and the crimes of the tyranny; we were going to show them the prisoners we have taken and the soldiers that have joined our side. If all the truth of the Sierra Maestra were to reach the Cuban newspapermen, the regime would fall by the frightening discredit it would have suffered in the eyes of the members of the armed forces.

No other reason could exist for refusing to grant them permission. In our territory, the newspapermen can move around and report freely what they see. There is no censorship here, which demonstrates that freedom of information is not incompatible with military security and that restrictions on the freedom of the press are not justified in the midst of war.

We were sure of the negative reply because we knew the deep reasons for it, but we wanted to unmask the dictatorship, unmask its moral bankruptcy and military weakness, show the Cuban people that they must have faith in our victory, that faith our men have acquired fighting under the most adverse circumstances, that invincible faith always held by representatives of just causes, because what matters, as Martí said, is not the number of weapons at hand but the number of stars on one's forehead. Now we can fight with the power of our reason and the power of our numbers, with the power of justice as well as the power of arms. The promise that we made one day to the nation will soon be a beautiful reality. The dictatorship has just suspended guarantees and reestablished the hated censorship. This demonstrates its tremendous weakness. It was enough to announce that the chains were about to be broken and the rapid advance of Column 6 toward the heart of Oriente Province would soon precipitate the measure in the midst of an atmosphere of general strike. The ministers are resigning, the ship is sinking, and the people are rising.

Meeting at the camp of Column 1, general headquarters of the rebel forces, the national directorate of the 26th of July Movement unanimously agreed on the following:

1. To consider that due to the visible disintegration of the dictatorship, the growth of the national consciousness, and the belligerent participation of all social, political, cultural, and religious sectors of the country, the struggle against Batista has entered its final stage.

2. That the strategy of the final blow is based on the general revolutionary strike, to be seconded by military action.

3. That revolutionary actions should be progressively intensified from this moment on, until they end in the strike which will be ordered at the proper time.

4. The citizenry should be alerted and warned against any false order. Therefore, contacts and communications should be defined and ensured.

5. The general strike and the armed struggle will continue resolutely if a military junta should try to take over the government. The position of the Pith of July Movement on this point is unchangeable.

6. To ratify the appointment of Dr. Urrutia to preside over the provisional government, to invite him to select freely and in the shortest possible time his aides, and to determine the governmental measures to be taken when the tyranny falls in accordance with the minimum program set forth in the Sierra Maestra Manifesto and in the Letter to the Cuban Liberation Junta.

7. The organization and direction of the strike in the labor sector will be charged to the National Labor Front, which will assume in turn the representation of the proletariat before the provisional revolutionary government.

8. The organization and direction of the strike in the professional, commercial, and industrial sectors will be charged to the Civic Resistance Movement.

9. The organization and direction of the student strike will he charged to the National Student Front.

l0. Armed action will be charged to the rebel forces, the militias of the 26th of July Movement, and all the revolutionary organizations that support the Movement.

1 l. The underground papers, Revolución, Vanguardia Obrera, Sierra Maestra, El Cubano Libre, and Resistencia, will orient and inform the people, and they will be distributed through underground channels in order to prevent faked issues.

12. To exhort all newspapermen, radio announcers, graphic arts workers, and all newspaper, radio, and television enterprises to rapidly organize in order to strongly answer the new censorship, so that they become, as in Venezuela, the leaders of the people in the final struggle for liberation.

13. To exhort the students of the country to maintain now more than ever the indefinite strike already started, so that the valiant student youth, who have fought heroically for freedom, will be the vanguard of the general revolutionary strike. No student should return to class until the dictatorship falls.

14. From April 1, for military reasons, all highway or railway traffic is prohibited throughout Oriente Province. Any vehicle passing through those routes by day or by night may be fired on without warning.

15. From April 1, the payment of any type of tax to the state, province, or municipality in the entire national territory is prohibited. All payments made after that date to the state treasurer of the dictatorship will be declared null and will have to be paid again to the new provisional government, aside from the fact that noncompliance with this measure will be considered an unpatriotic and counterrevolutionary act.

16. The continuance of any person in an office of trust in the executive branch from the presidency of government councils to para-governmental agencies subsequent to April 5 will be considered treason to the fatherland.

17. Due to the state of war existing between the people of Cuba and the Batista tyranny, any officer, noncommissioned officer, or enlisted man in the armor; navy or police who continues to render service against the oppressed people after April 5 will lose his right to continue service in the armed forces. There is no valid pretext to use weapons against the people under circumstances such as those of today. Every enlisted man has the duty to abandon the army, rebel, or join the revolutionary forces. All those who come with their weapons will be received in our ranks, their rights respected, and they will be promoted to the rank immediately above and will be exempt from the obligation to fight against their former comrades.

18. The 26th of July Movement will reject only the collaboration of those military men who have been directly responsible for inhuman acts or theft. Having fought against us does not prohibit any military man from serving his fatherland in this decisive hour.

19. In view of the news that seven thousand more men will be drafted into the army to fight the Revolution, the 26th of July Movement declares that any citizen enlisting in the armed forces subsequent to the date hereof will be subject to court martial and judged as a criminal.

20. Likewise, after April 5, any judicial functionary, magistrate, or district attorney who wishes to preserve his right to continue in office must resign from his post, because the absolute lack of guarantees and of respect for legal procedure has converted the judiciary into a useless body.

21. To communicate to the country that Column 6 of the rebel forces, under the command of Major Raúl Castro Ruz, having left the Sierra Maestra has invaded the northern part of Oriente Province; that Column 3 of the rebel forces, under the command of Juan Almeida, has invaded the eastern part of the same province; that rebel patrols are moving in all directions through the entire province and that the action of armed patrols will intensify throughout the nation.

22. From this moment, the country should consider itself in total war against the tyranny. The weapons of the army, navy, and police belong to the people. They should serve the people. No one has the right to use them against the people, and anyone doing so should not expect the least consideration. In order to give the leaders of the revolutionary movement time to act, the campaign of extermination against all those who serve the tyranny with weapons will not begin until April 5. From that date, the war on the military will be relentless in order to recover those weapons which belong to the nation and not to the dictator. The people will find it necessary to annihilate them wherever they may be, as the worst enemies of their freedom and happiness. The entire nation is determined to be free or to perish.