 To implement a portion of this plan , Castro named Guevara commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison , for a five @-@ month tenure ( January 2 through June 12 , 1959 ) . Guevara was charged with purging the Batista army and consolidating victory by exacting " revolutionary justice " against those considered to be traitors , chivatos ( informants ) or war criminals . Serving in the post as commander of La Cabaña , Guevara reviewed the appeals of those convicted during the revolutionary tribunal process . The tribunals were conducted by 2 – 3 army officers , an assessor , and a respected local citizen . On some occasions the penalty delivered by the tribunal was death by firing squad . Raúl Gómez Treto , senior legal advisor to the Cuban Ministry of Justice , has argued that the death penalty was justified in order to prevent citizens themselves from taking justice into their own hands , as happened twenty years earlier in the anti @-@ Machado rebellion . Biographers note that in January 1959 , the Cuban public was in a " lynching mood " , and point to a survey at the time showing 93 % public approval for the tribunal process . Moreover , a January 22 , 1959 , Universal Newsreel broadcast in the United States and narrated by Ed Herlihy , featured Fidel Castro asking an estimated one million Cubans whether they approved of the executions , and was met with a roaring " ¡ Si ! " ( yes ) . With thousands of Cubans estimated to have been killed at the hands of Batista 's collaborators , and many of the war criminals sentenced to death accused of torture and physical atrocities , the newly empowered government carried out executions , punctuated by cries from the crowds of " ¡ paredón ! " ( [ to the ] wall ! ) , which biographer Jorge Castañeda describes as " without respect for due process " . 
