Trinidad, Cuba, 1960. Old and sick, Elpidio García lost his ranch to the new Agrarian Reform Law and died as a result. His youngest son and namesake decided enough was enough, armed himself, and fought back, but he made sure to always carry his grandfather's machete into battle. It was the beginning of a spontaneous uprising of farmers and small-town dwellers from a proud mountainous region steeped in libertarian traditions. They were all direct descendants of the men and women who had fought off Spain's colonialism in the late 1800's, and they also knew what had happened in Russia after Lenin's October Revolution and in Eastern Europe after WWII. Like minded people from all over the island also joined the rebellion: whites, blacks, Catholics, Jewish, Santeros, a gay young woman named Rosa who couldn't care less that women were supposed to stay home, and the usual smattering of adventurers and misfits, the sum total representing the human fabric of the nation.

And fight they did, men and women, shoulder to shoulder, oftentimes to the death.

On the other side of the struggle, men like Lieutenant Antonio De la Huerta and his comrades were as passionate as their opponents and no less inclined to make the ultimate sacrifice.

But soon the CIA heard about it and started recruiting and training young Cuban exiles. In Miami, Néstor Guttman and Luis Muriel, volunteer.

"We are German Jews, my son, you were born in Cuba by accident!" Néstor's father was desperate. "That's not your fight!"

"Luis, are you crazy?" Luis' wife can't stop crying." You forgot I'm twelve weeks pregnant?!"

This is a fact-based story, a combination of history, politics, military, action adventure, social context of the time, and about all those people and their loved ones, sucked into the maelstrom.