On This Day: Fidel Castro begins Cuban Revolution with failed attack on barracks
JULY 26, 1953: Fidel Castro began the Cuban Revolution after leading an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks.
The future Communist president, his brother Raul and 135 other rebels had dressed as soldiers as they tried to enter the garrison in a convoy of 16 military trucks.
But by the time they reached, the gates the vehicles had become separated and the one containing the heavy weaponry had been lost.
Troops guarding the entrance to the barracks in the island’s second city of Santiago de Cuba raised the alarm after the insurgents tried to mow them down.
In the ensuing battle, which Castro hoped would trigger a popular uprising against Fulgencio Batista’s brutal right-wing dictatorship, six of his men were killed and 19 government soldiers died.
A further 22 rebels were summarily executed after seizing a civilian hospital – and had their bodies strewn around the barracks to look like they died in combat.
The rest, including the Castro brothers, tried to flee into the Sierra Maestra mountains, but they were captured as the government launched a vicious crackdown.
Following a trial, Fidel, then aged 26, and Raul, 22, were sentenced to 15 and 11 years in jail respectively.
During the trial, the elder Castro, who represented himself since he was a trained lawyer, delivered a passionate speech titled History Will Absolve Me.
He and dozens of other rebels were freed in an amnesty in 1955 as Batista believed he had little to fear from them.
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While the attack on the Moncada Barracks failed, it did, as Castro promised in a prior address to his rebels, ‘set an example for the Cuban people, and from the people will arise fresh new men willing to die for Cuba’.
The people had been angered by a regime that – as well brutal and corrupt – ensured wealth was very unevenly distributed and that a large amount left the country.
Castro, who renamed his rebels the 26th of July Movement in its honour, later fled to Mexico.
Along with 81 others, they returned to Cuba on December 2, 1956 and began waging a guerrilla war that soon gained momentum and ousted Batista on January 1, 1959.
A News of the Day newsreel shows jubilant followers carrying 26th of July banners during a march through the capital, Havana.
Initially, Castro, the illegitimate son of a Spanish immigrant farmer, put liberal lawyer Manuel Urrutia Lleo in charge of the provisional government.
But in July 1959, he took power for himself and Cuba, which now has a population of around 11million, has been a one-party socialist state ever since.
Castro organised a planned economy that gave land to peasants, guaranteed jobs for urban workers and provided free healthcare and education and subsidised food.
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In doing so, he angered Washington by nationalising U.S. owned businesses, including the sugar plantations that dominated the island economy.
It also began sponsoring global revolutions by sending troops and arms overseas to aid other communist rebels.
Washington broke off diplomatic relations, launched a trade embargo and in 1961 organised the failed Bay of Pigs by Cuban nationalists.
The height of tensions between the two countries came during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis after the USSR station nuclear weapons on the island.
U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations have never resumed and Washington continues to enforce sanctions that even clamp down on foreign nation that trade with the island.
Since the revolution, 1.2million Cubans have fled the island, mostly to neighbouring Florida, where they are partially enticed by the offer of instant U.S. citizenship.
Castro would also rule with an iron fist and, according to Human Rights Watch, developed a ‘repressive machinery’ that deprives Cubans of their ‘basic rights’.
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The organisation believes the situation has improved since Castro, whose health has been ailing, passed power to his brother Raul in 2008.
Yet Fidel Castro remains a highly divisive figure, around the world, with many lauding him as a champion of anti-imperialism after standing up to U.S. domination.
But opponents argue that Castro, who is now 87, was a ruthless dictator who ruined an economy that before 1959 had been as rich as Italy.