ABSTRACT
The growing confrontation between "The Mountains" and "The Plains" is reflected, on a small scale, in an epistolary skirmish between Guevara and Rene Ramos Latour, who had succeeded Frank Pais as head of the July 26th Movement in Santiago de Cuba. Ramos Latour sent a shipment of arms to the Sierra Maestra that Guevara pronounced defective. The enemy that Guevara and Cienfuegos confronted was very different. Batista's army was no army. Perhaps Dr. Guevara recalled his uninterrupted hike through the plains of Cuba as he saw his guerrilla forces in Bolivia battered, encircled and finally annihilated by a battalion of army rangers. Two columns commanded by Ernesto Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos crossed on foot the plains of Cauto and the flatlands of Camaguey, a total of more than 300 miles, until arriving at Las Villas. Guevara arrived in the Escambray Mountains and was received with cordiality by the Directorate and with cold hostility by Gutierrez Menoyo's men.
