The battle for the capture of Maffo continued its uninterrupted course during the day December 23, 1958 dawned with the gunfire of the troops of the Tercer Frente (3rd Front) led by Commander Juan Almeida, for the conquest of Palma Soriano while Fidel Castro continued harassing the forces of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista cantoned in the BAFAIC of Maffo.
On this day, the rebel command called, for a few hours, a truce with the purpose of seeking a negotiated solution to the conflict. However, the failure of the besieged troops to comply with the agreement led to the fourth death of the revolutionaries. René Montes de Oca was hit by the bullets of an enemy sniper, while he was leaning out of a loophole and examining the warehouses.
That same day, at approximately 8:15 a.m., a P-47 aircraft of the tyranny’s air force dropped a 500 pound bomb in the area known as Cruce del Atajo, in the Felicidad farm, property of Pedro Fonseca, where three innocent children were killed, among them, José Manuel Cero Fonseca, 9 years old, son of the tyranny’s soldier Pitágoras Cero, a native of Maffo, who was serving in Manzanillo.
The children had taken refuge in their grandparents’ house trying to escape from the criminal attack of the Batista air force. When examining the remains of the 500 pound bomb, the inscription that proved its English origin was discovered.
The revolutionary fighter Antonio Llibre recalls the events of that day of mourning on December 23, 1958 in Contramaestre.
As I did almost every day, I had gone to Contramaestre to inform the Commander in Chief of the combat actions taking place in Maffo and on my return from one of those trips in which I was accompanied by comrade Julio Heredia, an officer of Captain Verdecia’s troops, we were surprised by the enemy air force, between Contramaestre and Maffo, throwing a few ” shots” from machine guns, accompanied by a few bombs (…)¨.
¨We immediately ran to protect ourselves in a nearby small hill, where we found a shelter with very good conditions, made by some neighboring peasants of the place who had abandoned their houses.
¨A little later we heard screams and cries and we went out to see what was happening and it was that about 50 meters from where we were, there was a hut from where the screaming and wailing was coming from, so we ran there, seeing the saddest picture one can imagine, because it turns out that one of the bombs had fallen, precisely, inside a shelter where three small children were tucked inside, while two little old men were protecting themselves in another place.¨
¨(…) They had come out to see that those children, their grandchildren, had been turned into pieces of flesh, which were being picked up by the children’s grandfather and grandmother, as they told us with tears in their eyes.¨
¨Julio and I started to help while we watched in horror those human remains destroyed by a bomb of English origin (…)¨.
These and other reprisals were adopted by Batista’s army, forced by the high command from Havana, in the last attempts to preserve a power that the people did not want. For the definitive freedom there were 7 days left.
