by Granma International
Thursday, Jul. 26, 2001 at 6:35 PM
JULY 26, 1953 saw a singular event in 51 years of the island’s republican history. The country was shaken by rumors of an armed assault on the garrisons of Moncada in Santiago de Cuba and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in the city of Bayamo. There was talk of a group of around 120 youths, approximately 60 of whom were massacred during or after the event.
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July 23, 2001
26TH of JULY, 1953
The only way
BY RAFAELA VAZQUEZ AND MARELYS VALENCIA
JULY 26, 1953 saw a singular event in 51 years of the island’s republican history. The country was shaken by rumors of an armed assault on the garrisons of Moncada in Santiago de Cuba and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in the city of Bayamo. There was talk of a group of around 120 youths, approximately 60 of whom were massacred during or after the event.
Fulgencio Batista’s regime unleashed a repression never seen before. Censorship initiated the suspension of constitutional rights, while the police arrested anyone they deemed suspicious. The government knew that what had occurred was no fortuitous event, but the match that could ignite the fuse of the new struggle; the generation led by Fidel Castro was the result of 50 years of confronting the derision of unpopular governments servile to the United States. The Centenary Generation, as they were later called, synthesized the ideas of the Revolution that had begun in 1868 and was truncated so many times.
Any historical episode contains the drama and disillusionment of the past. Cuba’s total independence had never been achieved; four centuries of colonization were followed by a flawed Republic.
The particular situation in the ’40s and ’50s and the protagonists of that period—whether for or against the national interest—would be a definitive one. Let us look at the immediate and decisive antecedents of the landmark that initiated the way toward the real Revolution.
www.granma.cu/ingles/julio4/30unico-i.html