The Cuban president was addressing the celebration of the 53rd anniversary of the simultaneous assault he led on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba and the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks in Bayamo. The attacks, of which Castro was the principal organizer, initiated the revolutionary struggle that five and a half years later, on Jan. 1, 1959, brought down the hated U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and opened the door to what became the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

Early in the rally, messages were read from Fernando González and René González, two of five Cuban revolutionaries serving draconian prison terms in the United States after being framed and convicted in 2001 on charges that included conspiracy to commit espionage as well as murder conspiracy.

“Our pride grows whenever we learn of Cuba’s contribution to the literacy of hundreds of thousands throughout the world,” wrote Fernando González from the federal prison in Oxford, Wisconsin. Saluting the people of Granma, René González, who is incarcerated in Marianna, Florida, told the rally, “Breaking the wall of silence, the echo of each victory in Cuba reaches our cells… Each triumph of our people sows dignity, ideas, and solidarity, which in turn find fertile ground beyond our borders.”

Together with Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino, all five have now been imprisoned for close to eight years, even though nearly a year ago an appellate court in Atlanta overturned their convictions on the grounds that they had not received a fair trial in Miami. That decision has been appealed by the U.S. government.

Castro focused his speech on the achievements of the people of Granma since 2002, when several major social campaigns were launched. Among numerous examples he cited was the program to introduce computers in elementary education. The effort that started with one computer in a primary school with 18 students in the town of Pilón has now become a computer training program benefiting 75,000 elementary school students throughout the province with access to more than 2,000 computers.

Stressing the educational, health, and other gains over the last four years, the Cuban president said, “The truth is Granma does not need any Yankee transition plan to teach our people to read and write or to vaccinate them and provide health care.” The Cuban Revolution itself was the “transition” the Cuban people fought and died for, he noted.

Castro was referring to a report released July 5 by the U.S. government’s cabinet-level Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which proclaims that Washington will offer health care, education, housing opportunities, and humanitarian assistance to Cubans during a period of “transition” from socialism back to capitalism—if the revolutionary government is first overthrown by forces Washington deems “democratic.”

The subject of much popular derision in Cuba today, the plans being laid in Washington provide for wresting homes, land, and basic industry from the workers and peasants of the island, and returning them to their pre-1959 owners, who many decades ago fled to Miami and elsewhere.

Castro pointed out that solar panels to provide electricity for TVs and other equipment have been installed at 485 schools in Granma—a third of them with fewer than five students and 24 with one student and one teacher each.

“Not a penny’s worth of fuel is used for the electricity needed,” he reminded his listeners, adding that the resources devoted to maintaining these schools is an important commitment not only to the children, but to women of Cuba as well.

The only alternative, he noted, one rejected by the revolutionary leadership of Cuba, would have been for the mothers of the children attending these small rural schools to assume responsibility for their education.

That evening in the eastern city of Holguín, Castro dedicated the province’s new integrated system of small generating plants. Linked to the national grid, these units have boosted electrical production in the country by more than 100,000 megawatts. The largest such complex of generators yet installed in the country—119 at 27 sites located in 13 of the area’s 14 municipalities—is part of the multifaceted campaign under way here in what is known as “the year of the energy revolution.”

Taken together, the measures being implemented will cut electrical consumption by more than 50 percent by installing more energy-efficient industrial equipment, making millions of energy-efficient household electrical appliances available at subsidized prices (to date, 8 million to 9 million have been distributed to homes throughout Cuba), while increasing electric generating capacity and decentralizing it to strengthen the country’s readiness to resist military aggression.

The military threat is one Cubans take seriously in light of Washington’s announced “transition plans” and its growing hostility to the social and po litical advances being registered by the people of Venezuela. Not only do the governments in Havana and Caracas collaborate on many initiatives, but tens of thousands of Cubans are today living and working in Venezuela as doctors, teachers, and agricultural specialists, and contributing to numerous other social programs.

The rally in Holguín was addressed by representatives of the thousands of young Venezuelans and Bolivians studying in the province, as well as by a representative of the Cuban families hosting Latin American medical students in their homes.

Saluting their presence, and the advances being registered by the struggles in their countries, Castro also addressed the people of Cuba saying, “Let us enjoy the satisfaction of having fought for more than half a century, under threats, blockade and Special Period, which will be medals held high not only by the children and Cuban families. They will be carried by the children of other Latin American peoples too, because we are not foreigners to you, and you will never be foreigners to us.”

“It encourages us to know that it is those of us on this planet who defend justice, true freedom, true human rights who are increasing in numbers,” Castro noted, “not those who attack and kill hundreds of thousands of human beings, as is now occurring in Lebanon, a peaceful country, deserving of international sympathy and respect, whose people are being massacred, bombed and invaded by Yankee imperialism.”

On the eve of July 26, bonfires lit the streets of Havana block by block as, throughout the day, neighbors contributed vegetables, meats and spices for the block’s soup “chef” to take charge of. Once the hearty caldosa was ready, young and old savored it and mingled, some dancing—as midnight brought another 26th of July.
 
 
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