Attack on Moncada Barracks, Light for Cuba’s Liberation
On July 26, 1953 a group of young people, given the name of the Centennial Generation, due to the 100th anniversary of José Martí’s birth, attacked Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, under the orders of Fidel Castro, with the objective of initiating the armed struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
At the same time another group of revolutionaries assaulted the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Barracks in Bayamo. In spite of their waste of courage and dignity, the attackers – lower in number and arms – could not take the fortresses. The dictator’s order was to eliminate ten revolutionaries per each soldier of the regime killed in combat. The massacre became widespread and most of the attackers were killed. The survivors were arrested after fierce hunting, prosecuted and sentenced to prison.
From the military point of view, the plan of attack to the barracks of Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo consisted in occupying the arms of both garrisons and calling for a general strike of all the people. If the country was not paralyzed, guerrilla warfare would begin in the mountains. In other words, the plan had two variants. One, to try to provoke the uprising of the most important province, and at the same time the most distant from the capital in order to overthrow Batista.
However, the assault on the Moncada barracks in fact forged the new revolutionary leadership that opposed action to quietism and reformism prevailing until then in the country’s political life, and it especially highlighted the figure of comrade Fidel Castro as the leader and organizer of the armed struggle and radical political action.
When Fidel Castro, in his plea of self-defense in the trial, said before his judges that the intellectual author of the Moncada was José Martí, due to the great influence of the person who was the most outstanding and universal figure in our anti-colonial and independence struggles of the 19th century.
After the Moncada and the prison, “Granma” Yacht landing would come, which demonstrated the use of the experiences already accumulated by the leading nucleus of the Revolution. The idea of the assault on the Moncada barracks returned in Granma and spread to the Sierra Maestra, to make the dream come true with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959.
Five years, five months and five days after the Moncada action, the tyranny was overthrown after a rough road in which the experiences obtained from the first revolutionary action were of capital use. That action did not mean the triumph of the Revolution at that moment, but it pointed the way and provided the program of national liberation that would open the doors of socialism to our Homeland.
Written by Jorge Lora
