![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/moncada-ayer.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Cuban people could no longer endure the abuses inflicted upon them. Since Fulgencio Batista’s coup in 1952, which shattered constitutional order and imposed a dictatorial regime, the country had plunged into a deep moral and material crisis.<\/p>\n
Repression became systematic. The progressive 1940 Constitution was abolished, political parties were banned, and strict censorship of the press was imposed. Members of the suspected opposition were relentlessly hunted down by the notorious Military Intelligence Service (SIM).<\/p>\n
Corruption became institutionalized. While Batista and his inner circle amassed fortunes through deals with the American mafia, the majority of the Cuban populace lived in poverty. In rural areas, half of all children suffered from parasites and anemia. Farmers lacked basic resources and were frequently evicted to make way for foreign corporations, which controlled 75 percent of the country\u2019s arable land.<\/p>\n
In towns and cities, conditions were equally dire. Ninety percent of public services were in the hands of U.S. companies, and nearly 30 percent of the population faced unemployment. State health and education services were grossly inadequate.<\/p>\n
Faced with this reality, Fidel Castro\u2014a young lawyer educated at the University of Havana\u2014concluded that the political path had been exhausted. Inspired by the ideals of Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed, he chose the route of armed struggle. He would later declare, \u201cMart\u00ed was the intellectual author of July 26. He taught us that freedom is not begged for; it is won with the edge of the machete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fidel carefully selected military targets: the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba and the Carlos Manuel de C\u00e9spedes garrison in Bayamo, which were the second and third most important fortresses in the country.<\/p>\n
A group of 160 young people\u2014mostly workers, farmers, and students under the age of 30\u2014along with two women, Hayd\u00e9e Santamar\u00eda and Melba Hern\u00e1ndez, prepared to lay down their lives to free the nation from tyranny.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This was only the beginning of a war for liberation. One of the goals of the assault was to seize weapons; the other was to ignite a national uprising. \u201cWe knew it was almost a suicide mission, but Cuba needed to be shaken from its slumber. As Mart\u00ed said, \u2018A just principle from the depths of a cave can do more than an army,\u2019\u201d Melba Hern\u00e1ndez would later recall.<\/p>\n
The battle turned out to be one-sided. The element of surprise was lost, and the revolutionaries’ weapons were inferior in both caliber and firepower. The repression that followed was brutal. Batista ordered that for every soldier killed, ten revolutionaries should die. Most of the wounded or captured were tortured and murdered to meet that quota.<\/p>\n
However, the blood spilled and the suffering endured by those young revolutionaries were not in vain. The revolution had begun\u2014and it could no longer be stopped. As Fidel Castro would later say, July 26 was \u201cthe small engine that started the big one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though a military failure, the July 26, 1953 attack exposed Batista\u2019s true nature. The regime\u2019s savage repression provoked international outrage and mobilized previously apolitical sectors of Cuban society. The attack became a powerful symbol of resistance. The future guerrilla nucleus, formed in exile in Mexico, would go on to adopt the name \u201c26th of July Movement\u201d (M-26-7).<\/p>\n
\u201cMoncada taught us how to turn setbacks into victories. It wasn\u2019t a defeat; it was a spark,\u201d Fidel Castro said in 1963.<\/p>\n
As Cuba\u2019s national poet Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n wrote: \u201cMart\u00ed promised it, and Fidel fulfilled it.\u201d On October 14, 1960, the Council of Ministers passed the Urban Reform Law and the Law on Vacant Lots and Recreational Estates. With these two landmark acts, the Revolutionary Government declared that it had fulfilled the Moncada Program, addressing six fundamental problems inherited from the neocolonial period: land ownership, industrialization, housing, unemployment, education, and public health.<\/p>\n
Today, as Cuba continues to suffer under the United States\u2019 inhumane policies, we must honor the memory of those young men and women who did not hesitate to give their lives for the nation\u2019s freedom. The struggle is not over; we continue to work toward a better future.<\/p>\n
Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMoncada taught us how to turn setbacks into victories. It wasn\u2019t a defeat; it was a spark,\u201d Fidel Castro said in 1963.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[729,34],"ppma_author":[109],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-cuba","tag-attack-on-the-moncada","tag-fidel-castro"],"authors":[{"term_id":109,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"gilberto-gonzalez-garcia","display_name":"Gilberto Gonz\u00e1lez Garc\u00eda","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4256,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions\/4256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}