Over that weekend here, hundreds of thousands of working people, students, and others across the island took part in rallies and other activities celebrating these two key events--that marked the beginning of the revolutionary war that was to topple the U.S.-backed dictatorship in January 1959 and opened the door to a government of workers and farmers in Cuba.

In conversations with ordinary Cubans across this city, many saw these events not simply as historical commemorations. In addition, they saw them as a response to Washington's war against the people of Afghanistan and the U.S. rulers' arrogant threat--as President George Bush put it last month in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly--that for every country in the world that does not join in "the fight against terror" there is "a price to be paid. And it will be paid."

In face of imperialism's course of "plunder, exploitation, wars, and destruction of the conditions for life on the planet," Castro said at the Santiago celebration, the world "will be conquered by ideas, not by force."

"There is no weapon more powerful than a profound conviction and a clear idea of what must be done," the Cuban leader said.  
 
Opening of revolutionary war
Forty-five years ago, 82 revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro, set sail from Tuxpan, Mexico, aboard the yacht Granma to launch a revolutionary war against the tyrannical regime of Fulgencio Batista. They landed in southeast Cuba on Dec. 2, 1956. In Santiago the rebel forces organized in the July 26 Movement, led in that city by Frank País, spearheaded a popular uprising to coincide with the landing of the expedi-tionaries.

While just over half the Granma combatants were killed or captured by the dictatorship's army within days of the landing, seven men managed to regroup, rifles in hand, over the next two weeks. By the end of December, they and roughly a dozen other surviving combatants had established a base of operations for the Rebel Army in the nearby Sierra Maestra mountains.

Two years later, on New Year's Day, 1959, Batista fled the country in face of the Rebel Army victories in eastern Cuba and its capture of Santa Clara, the third-largest city, as a popular insurrection swept the island.

This year, in addition to the December 2 rally of 100,000 in Santiago's Antonio Maceo Plaza, on November 30 thousands of local residents joined in reenactments across the city of key events in the 1956 uprising, such as the assault on the former police headquarters. Featured speakers at these activities included veterans of the rebellion.

A public rally of 10,000 the next day condemned Washington's arrogant and unending aggressive policies against Cuba today, from the conviction and imprisonment earlier this year of five Cubans framed up on charges of "conspiracy to commit espionage," to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which encourages residents of the island to emigrate to the United States outside legal channels. Demonstrators voiced outrage at the news of the latest casualties of this policy--30 Cubans, including 13 children, who drowned trying to cross the Florida Straits in a flimsy boat that was part of a U.S.-based operation to smuggle immigrants from the island.  
 
Armed Forces Day
The December 2 rally--celebrated annually as Armed Forces Day, the day Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) were born with the Granma landing--included a military review in Santiago. According to the Cuban newspaper Trabajadores, it was the largest held to date outside Havana.

Several thousand men and women marched in impeccable formation, headed by 200 men on horseback dressed as mambises, the 19th century plebeian fighters in Cuba's war of independence from Spain. The contingents included regular troops of the FAR and Interior Ministry, members of the Revolutionary National Police and territorial militias, as well as the workplace militias known as the Production and Defense Brigades.

Also marching were combatants from several generations of revolutionary struggle--the Rebel Army and underground urban struggle of the 1950s; the April 1961 victory over the U.S.-organized mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs; the fight against U.S.-backed counterrevolutionaries in the Escambray mountains and elsewhere in the early 1960s; and voluntary internationalist missions abroad. Hundreds of marchers were organized by the trade unions, the small farmers association, the Cuban Women's Federation, student groups, and other mass organizations.  
 
Unmistakable message to Washington
The military parade sent an unmistakable message to Washington and its imperialist cohort. That message was echoed in an interview with Revolutionary Armed Forces minister Raúl Castro, featured December 1 in the Cuban press. Stressing that the country's military and political preparedness relies on the mobilization of the entire population, he said that Cuba is "a peaceful nation. But no one should doubt that the FAR, together with the entire fighting people, are capable of inflicting such a high price on any aggressor and its allies that they will have to think about it many times" before launching an attack.

In his December 2 speech, Fidel Castro elaborated further on the strength of the Cuban Revolution. He gave a vivid account of the landing of the Granma expedition and how the Rebel Army, which grew to 3,000 combatants with weapons, prevailed over great odds, including an enemy army of 80,000 well-armed, U.S.-supplied troops. At every turning point in defending and advancing the Cuban Revolution in face of imperialism's vastly superior resources, he stressed, the determining factor has been the organization and political understanding of the Cuban people.

Recalling the events of the first weeks after the Granma landing, Castro said:

When we resumed fighting with seven weapons, no one could ever even have dreamed we had any possibility of success. But we adapted to the enemy's technical resources and enormous power despite the insignificant forces and means available to us. Ideas are and always will be the most important weapon of all.

Our experience has taught us that if one day our country were to be attacked and even occupied by powerful forces, each and every man or woman, wherever they may be, can be an army. When a combatant or group of combatants are left cut off or isolated, they can and should assume responsibility for their own actions and continue fighting. The invader will then be forced to fight against an army, ten armies, a hundred armies, a thousand armies, a million armies.

Addressing the younger generations, Castro said, "It is you who will live in the most difficult and decisive century of human history. Your most sacred duty is to prepare for that.... An all-encompassing and all-round culture on a mass scale--something no society has ever dreamed of--is now a real possibility within reach of all Cubans."

Those who took part in the Granma landing, Castro said, "would be envious of every one of you for the struggle that now lies before you--one with much more far-reaching objectives, that is, to defend and develop what has been achieved and, to the extent of our abilities, do for humanity what we believe we have done for our homeland."

Castro pointed to the internationalist example revolutionary Cuba has set, and continues to set, by sending thousands of volunteers, from soldiers to doctors, throughout the world to aid countries struggling against imperialist exploitation.  
 
'We're ready'
Across the island, working people organized actions marking the November 30 and December 2 events. Members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, for example, spoke in schools to give firsthand accounts to students of these turning points in the revolution.

Hermes Caballero, who fought in the November 30 uprising in Santiago, said he was invited to speak to the ninth grade students at Marta Abreu High School in Havana's Playa municipality. "The students were very interested in hearing our account, and there was a period of questions and answers afterward," said Caballero, who was a schoolteacher and a July 26 Movement member in Santiago at the time of the uprising. He was accompanied by another Combatants Association activist who spoke to the students about the Granma landing.

On December 2, in the nearby neighborhood of Náutica, some 20 members of the local Combatants Association chapter held a celebration at a chapter member's home. Similar gatherings took place in neighborhoods throughout the island. Those interviewed by the Militant included combatants from the revolutionary war, participants in the Escambray campaign, and volunteers who had served on internationalist missions in Indochina, Nicaragua, and Angola.

If Washington ever attempts an assault on Cuba, said one member of the Association, the Cuban people will defeat them.

"We're ready," she said.
 
 
Related article:
Cuba's revolutionary example  
 
 
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