Alberto Bayo

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Alberto de Jesús Ruperto Bayo Giroud (born March 27, 1892 in Puerto Príncipe , Cuba , † August 4, 1967 in Havana ) was a Spanish officer , pilot and prominent participant in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. He became internationally known as the military instructor of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1955/56 in preparation for the Cuban Revolution in Mexico .

activity

Bayo was the son of the Spanish officer Pedro Bayo Guia and María de la Concepción Giraud y Varona from Puerto Príncipe (since 1929: Camagüey). After the Spanish defeat in the war against the USA in 1898 and the associated loss of the colony of Cuba, the family went to Spain, where Bayo grew up in the Canary Islands . He spent four years of his training in the USA. After his return to Spain he attended the military school for war orphans in Vitoria and then from 1912 the military academy of the infantry in Toledo , which he graduated as an officer in 1915, in order to then be admitted to the pilot training of the air force . In 1920 he founded Spain's first civil flight school in Madrid, which he left in the same year.

Reef war

As a soldier he received his first combat experience from the summer of 1919 in the North African colonial wars. Bayo was one of the first pilots in the world to use chemical weapons . Bayo was expelled from the Air Force in June 1923 because of the forbidden execution of a bloody duel with a sword fought with another captain of the Air Force, the later Air Force Minister Eduardo González Gallarza. He then switched to the Legión Española , an elite unit founded to fight the Moroccan guerrilla fighters , and was wounded in the Rif War in September 1924 and evacuated to Madrid, but after a year of recovery later volunteered to defend the Spanish colonies in North Africa. In Morocco he was partly under the direct command of Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Franco , who later became his main opponent in the Spanish Civil War . He was an attentive observer of the military tactics of the Moroccan partisans and gained numerous insights from this, which he would later use for his own instruction in guerrilla warfare, for example for breaking through siege rings.

Spanish Civil War

He remained loyal to the republic during the Spanish Civil War . In action against the Francoist troops, he initially succeeded in retaking the Balearic islands of Formentera , Cabrera and Ibiza . As a result, he was given command of the 6000-strong republican invasion troops in the Battle of Mallorca , which failed with great losses and represented a turning point in the war. Relieved of leadership duties, he then trained communist partisans in Castile . His last rank in the Spanish Armed Forces was a lieutenant colonel . In 1937 he published his first of several texts specifically devoted to guerrilla warfare. In view of Franco's troops, which were also superior due to the Italian and German support, Bayo campaigned for a change from conventional to unconventional warfare, but could not prevail in time with his proposals to the republican military leadership under Defense Minister Indalecio Prieto, despite initial successes with small guerrilla units.

Mexico

After the end of the civil war in 1939, Bayo was forced into exile and after a three-year stay in Havana finally settled in Mexico, where he taught mathematics , aerodynamics and navigation at the Air Force Academy in Guadalajara . At the same time, he continued to campaign unsuccessfully among Spanish exiles for the start of a guerrilla war against Franco. In 1948 he was a military advisor to the Caribbean Legion in Costa Rica , which was preparing the overthrow of the dictatorial president of Nicaragua , Anastasio Somoza . The company did not succeed and Bayo returned to Mexico.

In July 1955 he was visited by Fidel Castro and, at his urging, agreed to train him and his followers for guerrilla warfare in Cuba. The secret training took place in the Mexico City area. After Hugh Thomas , Ernesto Guevara was Bayo's model student. After discovery by the Mexican police, Bayo spent several months in custody together with Fidel and Raúl Castro , Guevara and other members of the group. Bayo's advisory role ended at the end of November 1956 with the departure of the guerrilla fighters around Castro on their expedition with the yacht Granma to Cuba. Shortly afterwards he trained another group of Cubans for guerrilla warfare: however, the majority of the 30 or so fighters of the Organización Auténtica of ex-President Carlos Prío were killed in combat with government troops immediately after their yacht Corinthia sailed from Miami to eastern Cuba in May 1957 Life.

Cuba

Bayo did not take an active part in the guerrilla warfare as part of the Cuban Revolution and only returned to the island of his birth after the flight of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista in early 1959. There he worked again as a military instructor and advisor and was appointed Comandante (Colonel) of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR), which was reorganized as the state armed forces from 1959 . In the last years of his life he was a member of the political leadership of the FAR and from this position he devoted himself primarily to the promotion of the chess sport he loved in Cuba. He died in Havana on August 4, 1967. He was married and had two sons. The chess training center in the Cotorro district is named after him.

Writing activity

In addition to contemporary historical works with an autobiographical character, Bayo also wrote poems . His practical manual 150 preguntas a un guerrillero , published in 1955, was first translated into English in 1963 and has seen numerous reprints. It is one of the classics of military literature on guerrilla warfare .

Works

  • Cualquier cosilla (Spain 1911)
  • Mis cantos de aspirante (Spain 1911)
  • Cadetadas (Spain 1912)
  • Canciones del Alkázar (Spain 1914)
  • Juan de Juanes (Spain 1926)
  • Uncida al yugo (Spain 1926)
  • Dos años en Gomara (Spain 1928)
  • La guerra será de los guerrilleros (Spain 1937)
  • El tenorio laico (Spain 1938)
  • Mi desembarco en Mallorca (Mexico 1944)
  • Tempestad en el Caribe (Mexico 1950)
  • Cámara (Mexico 1951)
  • El caballero de los tristes destinos (Mexico 1953)
  • Magallanes, el hombre más audaz de la tierra (Mexico 1953)
  • 150 preguntas a un guerrillero (Mexico 1955)
  • Fidel te espera en la Sierra (Mexico 1958)
  • Mis versos de rebeldía (Mexico 1958)
  • Sangre en Cuba (Mexico 1958)
  • Mi aporte a la revolución cubana, preface by Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Cuba 1960)
  • El tenorio cubano (Cuba 1960)
  • Versos revolucionarios (Cuba 1960)
  • Terminología militar (Cuba 1963)
  • Mis versos, foreword by Nicolás Guillén (Cuba 1965)
  • Diccionario militar (Cuba 1965)

Web links

literature

  • Luis Díez: Bayo. El general que adiestró a la guerrilla de Castro y el Che, Debate 2007. ISBN 978-8483067307 (Spanish)
  • Hugh Thomas : Castros Cuba , Siedler, Berlin 1984, pp. 74-78. ISBN 3-88680-035-0
  • Jay Mallin (ed.): Terror and Urban Guerrillas. A Study of Tactics and Documents , Coral Gables, FLA (University of Miami Press) 1971. ISBN 0-87024-223-7 (English)
  • Jorge Domingo Cuadriello: El exilio republicano en Cuba , Siglo XXI de España 2009. ISBN 978-8432315084 (Spanish)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Enrique Atiénzar Rivero: El gladiador  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ,@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.adelante.cu   in: Adelante o. D., accessed on July 11, 2013 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Cuadriello p. 374
  3. ↑ Díez p. 288
  4. ↑ a b Suero p. 19
  5. ↑ Suero p. 18
  6. ↑ a b c María Elena Vallés: Bayo, el hombre que quiso ganar la Guerra en Mallorca , in: Diario de Mallorca of October 24, 2010, accessed on July 11, 2013 (Spanish)
  7. ↑ Cuadriello p. 375
  8. ↑ a b c d Alberto Bayo Giroud, General Internacionalista , foreword and excerpts from Bayo's autobiographical book Mi aporte a la Revolución Cubana , in: Kaos en la Red of March 27, 2012, accessed on July 11, 2013 (Spanish)
  9. ^ Richard Gott: Cuba: A new history. P. 159, Yale University Press, New Haven 2004 (English)
  10. ↑ a b Luis Pavón : Alberto Bayo, vida que parece leyenda  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ,@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / old.cubahora.cu   in: CubAhora of December 22, 2011, accessed on July 11, 2013 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Bayo, Alberto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bayo Giroud, Alberto; Bayo Giroud, Alberto de Jesús Ruperto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hispanic-Cuban military and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Puerto Príncipe , Cuba
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1967
Place of death Havana