BY MIKE TABER
On July 26, 1953, some 160 revolutionaries under the
command of Fidel Castro launched an insurrectionary attack on
the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's second-
largest city, and a simultaneous attack on the garrison in
nearby Bayamo. The attacks failed, and more than fifty of the
captured revolutionaries were massacred.
This action marked the beginning of revolutionary armed struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
Batista had seized power March 10, 1952, in a military coup against the government of Carlos Prío and canceled scheduled elections. Batista was a retired general who had been the strongman in successive governments in Cuba from 1934 - in the wake of a revolutionary upsurge that toppled dictator Gerardo Machado - until 1944. As the Cuban bourgeoisie and their Yankee patrons reconsolidated power following the initial battles of late 1933, Batista bought off most of the insurgent political leaders, using repression against those who resisted.
Following the 1952 coup, Batista imposed a brutal military dictatorship that lasted until January 1, 1959. On that date Batista fled the country as his military and police forces crumbled under the combined weight of the victories won by the advancing Rebel Army commanded by Fidel Castro and the growing popular support for the July 26 Movement, culminating in a revolutionary general strike.
In the wake of the attack on the Moncada garrison, Fidel Castro and twenty-seven other combatants were tried and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. Acting as his own defense attorney, Castro gave a courtroom speech that was reconstructed by him in prison, smuggled out, and published as "History Will Absolve Me," which subsequently became the program of the July 26 Movement. An English-language translation is available in Fidel Castro's Political Strategy (Pathfinder, 1987).
The Moncada prisoners were released in May 1955 after a public defense campaign forced Batista's regime to issue an amnesty.
Raúl Castro participated in the Moncada attack and was one of the imprisoned fighters. He rose to the rank of commander in the Rebel Army during Cuba's revolutionary war. Since 1959 he has carried the responsibilities of minister of the armed forces. In addition he is today vice president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, and second secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.
The accompanying article by Raúl Castro was written in 1961. In it, he writes, "Several chapters of a book would be warranted to fully recount this whole historical event."
Cuban historian Mario Mencía has told this story in El grito del Moncada [The cry of Moncada], published in 1986. A revised edition, The Assault on Moncada: The Opening of the Cuban Revolution, will be published in English next year by Pathfinder.
The article is reprinted from Raúl Castro, Selección de discursos y artículos, vol. 1 (Havana: Editora Política, 1988). Translation, and all subheads, are by the Militant.