Celia:

(…) Seeing the rockets they threw on Mario’s house, I swore that the Americans would pay through the nose for what they are doing.  When this war ends, a much longer and greater war will begin for me: the war I am going to wage against them.  I realize that is going to be my true destiny.

Fidel

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A Letter that Left its Mark on History

That day, Batista’s air force bombed Minas de Frío and emptied their munitions on a peasant shack (bohio) located in the coffee plantation.  Some of the bombs fell on the shack that exploded in pieces, including all its old furniture and the little food and medicine that was being kept there.

This was the home of the peasant Mario Sariol.  Just moments earlier, his wife and five children had sought refuge in the vicinity.

Mario was in the coffee drying shed and when he returned to his home, he found it destroyed and his family gone.  In his despair, he didn’t see that they were coming out of the old magnesium mine.  He only managed to collect some of the pieces of the bombs and rockets that had fallen there.  He ran to the encampment nearby.  When he got there, he showed Fidel the bits of the munitions where it was easy to read the inscription: USAF (United States Air Force).

That same day, June 5, 1958, the leader of the Revolution wrote a letter to Celia Sánchez who was at the Las Mercedes encampment, expressing his outrage about Yankee support for Batista’s dictatorship.  That message has remained as an imprint confirmed by history.  We reproduce it as it was written in the Commander in Chief’s own handwriting.  We also include a transcript so that it is easier to read.