The Sierra Escambray, Cuba’s second-highest mountain range, lies mostly within Cienfuegos Province, descending gradually into Villa Clara Province to the north, edging into Sancti Spíritus Province to the east, and dropping steeply to the southern coast. The Escambray’s highest peaks and densest forests are protected in Parque Nacional Topes de Collantes, in the chain’s southeast corner. The mountains reach 1,140 meters atop Pico San Juan.

In the late 1950s, these mountains were the site of a revolutionary front against Fulgencio Batista, led by Che Guevara. After the revolutionaries triumphed in 1959, the Escambray hid another band of olive green–clad rebels, this time counterrevolutionaries who opposed Castro. The CIA helped finance and arm these resistance fighters, whom the Castro regime tagged “bandits.”

They were split into various rival groups, however, and had no philosophical program other than to resist Castro. Castro formed counterinsurgency units called Battalions of Struggle Against Bandits, and forcibly evacuated campesinos to deny the anti-Castroites local support. The bandidos weren’t eradicated until 1966. The Museo de la Lucha Los Bandidos in Trinidad tells the Communist government’s version of la lucha contra los bandidos.

Getting to Sierra Escambray

Access from Cienfuegos is from the Circuito Sur, via the valley of the Río Mataguá and the community of La Sierrita, about 30 kilometers east of Cienfuegos (the road continues to Topes de Collantes, but was badly washed out at last visit and was suitable for 4WD only).

It’s a stupendously scenic route that rises past sheer-walled, cave-riddled limestone mogotes, at their most impressive near the town of San Blas, eight kilometers east of La Sierrita. San Blas sits in the lee of great cliffs where huge stalactites and stalagmites are exposed in an open cave high atop the mountains.