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Published in 1957 in the midst of the revolution, this article by New York Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews revealed that Castro was still alive and fighting despite Batista’s claims to the contrary. The article highlights the extreme censorship and abuses taking place under Batista’s regime while Castro fought from the wilderness. This U.S.-based publication surprisingly paints Castro in a positive light as a freedom fighter combatting a tyrannical government, an image that would soon change in the United States.
Matthews’ interview with Castro only makes up the last portion of the article, while the bulk of it details the reporter’s perilous journey to reach the rebel leader and the abuses learns of along the way. The sympathetic perspective of the article is in stark contrast with many later U.S. reports on the situation in Cuba, but at this point in the revolution Castro was an exciting figure even to U.S. readers, suggesting that U.S. had a largely positive, or at least not negative, view of him prior to his success.
“Fidel Castro, the rebel leader of Cuba’s youth, is alive and fighting hard and
successfully in the rugged, almost impenetrable fastnesses of the Sierra Maestra, at the southern tip of the island. President Fulgencio Batista has the cream of his army around the area, but the army men are fighting a thus-far losing battle to destroy the most dangerous enemy General Batista has yet faced in a long and adventurous career as a Cuban leader and dictator. This is the first sure news that Fidel Castro is still alive and still in Cuba. No one connected with the outside world, let alone with the press, has seen Señor Castro except this writer. No one in Havana, not even at the United States embassy with all its resources for getting information, will know until this report is published that Fidel Castro is really in the Sierra Maestra. This account, among other things, will break the tightest censorship in the history of the Cuban Republic. The Province of Oriente, with its two million inhabitants, its flourishing cities such as Santiago, Holguín, and Manzanillo, is shut off from Havana as surely as if it were another country. Havana does not and cannot know that thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro and the new deal for which they think he stands. It does not know that hundreds of highly respected citizens are helping Señor Castro, that bombs and sabotage are constant (eighteen bombs were exploded in Santiago on 15 February), that a fierce government counterterrorism has aroused the people even more against President Batista.”
Matthews, Herbert L. “The Cuban Story in the New York Times.” In The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Alfredo Prieto, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff, 303–8. Duke University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smxrz.69.