" Monsignor Pérez Serantes, the man Castro had asked for help when the assault on the Moncada barracks failed in July 1953. Castro sought the monsignor’s protection and intercession with Batista to obtain certain guarantees if he voluntarily turned himself in to the authorities. (In the assault on the Moncada barracks, a group of Castro’s troops burst into the military hospital where wounded and sick soldiers were convalescing; several defenseless sick men were stabbed in the back as they lay in their beds. Some of them had just undergone surgery and were still under anesthesia.) "

― Armando Valladares , Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag