REBEL ACTION IN CUBA

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28435, 15 November 1957, Page 15

REBEL ACTION IN CUBA

Crops Fired And Strike Planned

(Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK. November 13. Fidel Castro’s rebels, with torches in their fists, were reported today to be launching a widespread campaign of burning sugar cane fields in an effort to upset President Fulgencio Batista, the American Associated Press said in a dispatch from Havana. The scorched crops policy apparently was part of an economic offensive that also included arson in the tobacco fields, appeals for a walk-out of rice plantation workers, and calls for a “general revolutionary strike” about December 15. Reports to sugar mill sources from Oriente, the eastern province where Castro and about 600 rebels were holding out in the mountains; said that the torch has been put to 6000 acres, destroying 126,000 tons of sugar, worth nearly 2m dollars. In the last 24 hours, fires were started around Niquero, Pilon, Campechuela and Calicito. all In the area of Castro’s Sirra Maestra hide-outs. In Pinar del Rio, the western province, more than 50 tobacco warehouses had been burned in the last month. Widely distributed bulletins, which appeared to have been printed in Miami, Florida, appealed to Cubans to burn sugar and tobaqco crops. “We will not have* a harvest with Batista, but there will be a harvest of liberty,’’ the bulletins said. About 3000 Cuban army, navy and air force men were concentrated in Oriente in an effort to assure harvesting of the sugar crop. Rebels were reported today to have fired on an army truck there, killing five soldiers. About 50 Batista supporters had been killed and nearly a score wounded in shootings in Santiago de Cuba, the provincial capital, in the last two weeks. Another 3500 soldiers and police were in Pinar del Rio in an effort to check the burnings and sporadic bombings of schools, stores and communication centres. In Havana, police today announced the arrest of 12 men accused of setting off 82 bombs in the capital last Friday night. Four persons were injured by the explosions.