Alberto Bayo y Giroud was a Cuban-born officer who fought in the civil war in Spain and the revolution in Cuba.
He was responsible for training the small cadre that would land on the island in 1956 and which included Ernesto Guevara and the Castro brothers. This volume is drawn from his experience gained over the years of fighting that would topple the Batista regime, as well as lessons he learned during his famous marine assault on Majorca in 1936. It is a culmination of a lifetime of combat leadership. This book is a product of the post-revolutionary period in Cuba, during which the fledgling state attempted to export their uprising to the rest of Latin America. It was intended as a practical guide for those interested in starting their own guerrilla units, detailing the organization of such a group and the first offensive actions that should be taken against the state. We believe books that exist only for “historical interest” are bourgeois trivialities, and so we’ve taken the liberty of re-writing certain sections of this work in order to provide an updated picture. We hope to preserve its practical function as a guerrilla guidebook, as well as to present an accessible version free of the typos and translation errors that characterize other free copies.
