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Hitmen belonging to the "knights templar" cell executing a member of the "whites of Troy" in the state of Michoacán.
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Che Guevara, after the battle of Santa Clara, January 1, 1959.
The Battle of Santa Clara was a series of events in late December 1958 that led to the capture of the Cuban city of Santa Clara by revolutionaries under the command of Che Guevara. The battle was a decisive victory for the rebels fighting against the regime of General Fulgencio Batista.
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as a military dictator from 1952 to 1958, until he was overthrown in the Cuban Revolution.
Within 12 hours of the city's capture, Batista fled Cuba, and Fidel Castro's forces claimed overall victory. On Jan 7, 1959, in the city of Santa Clara lately captured by Cuban revolutionaries, Col. Cornelio Rojas Fernández, commander of the city's defeated government garrison, was shot without trial by the order of Che Guevara.
It was just one among hundreds of vengeful executions being visited in those weeks upon authorities of the deposed Batista regime.
Viewers of the televised public shooting saw the stocky commander walk unafraid to his death in an armed escort, where he exhorted his onlookers until the firing detail sent his fedora flying. A kinsman named Pedro Rojas among those killed in the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle when anti-Castro exiles mounted a failed invasion of Cuba.