Cuba Wildly Celebrates July 26th-1953!!!

As Its MOST IMPORTANT HOLIDAY!!

     Today is JULY 26th of 2023. In Revolutionary Cuba JULY 26 of 1953 has become the most important National HOLIDAY and it particularly has been wildly celebrated today!!!

   Any honest history of the Cuban Revolution begins with "THE MONCADA  ATTACK" that took place on JULY 26th of 1953. It was the day a young lawyer named Fidel Castro and 134 other lightly armed rebels attacked dictator Batista's heavily armed Moncada Garrison in Santiago de Cuba, which was 500 miles southeast of Havana. Almost all of the rebels were quickly killed or captured, including Fidel Castro who was captured and sentenced to Batista's Isle of Pines prison. But in May of 1955 Fidel Castro, hated by Batista but worshipped by the majority peasants on the island, was released. Believing that Batista's murder squads would immediately be on his trail, Fidel Castro...especially of the ultra-heroine Celia Sanchez...was whisked from one Safe House to the other before he escaped the island and regrouped in Mexico, from where left to join up with Celia Sanchez's viable revolution that was taking place in the Sierra Maestra Mountains and its foothills in the Southeastern tip of Cuba in and around the city of Santiago de Cuba.

      Back in Santiago de Cuba today -- JULY 26th-2023 -- Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel delivered a powerful speech before a huge crowd and a nationwide radio and television audience, as shown above. As you see in this portion of the speech he stressed "brutal and genocidal U. S. blockade that has tried to starve us since 1962, but those of us who honor the Moncada Attack on July 26th of 1953 will never let foreign criminals deter what the Moncada attackers started so violently."

     As the captions above reference, in these portions of the Moncada speech today, President Diaz-Canel stressed that "...the immoral aims and resources of the United States to this day assualt what the Moncada attackers gave to us, which was the hope that earlier great independence fighters like Jose Marti and Antonio Maceo had died fighting for on Cuban soil against the immoral quests of foreign criminals."

   This image shows that President Diaz-Canel's speech was before a massive crowd in Santiago de Cuba today, and the national television coverage frequently panned around to show the number of eager viewers. In the backdrop was the historic yellow building that, back on JULY 26-1953 was a Batista military garrison attacked by Fidel Castro's rebels, but now on JULY 26-2023 the sparking yellow building is a refurbished School Building.

    Today -- on JULY 26 of 2023 -- two of the still-living revolutinary generals that had participated in the Moncada Attack on JULY 26-1953 repeatedly applauded the Moncada speech delivered by President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

        Of course, after the Moncada Attack became Batista's most coveted and famed prisoner. From July of 1953 till May of 1955 Fidel Castro was in Batista's prison on the Isle of Pines.

     But this photo taken in February of 1957 is the first photo that shows Fidel Castro with Celia Sanchez, and it was the day that she gave him his post-Moncada/post-Prison/post-Mexico telescopic revolutionary rifle. From that day in February of 1957 until January of 1959 Fidel and Celia paired up as the two prime creators and movers that produced the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

     Even after the Castro brothers, Che, Camilo, etc., joined her revolution against Batista, Celia Sanchez -- always supported 100% by Fidel Castro -- made the revolutionary decisions that ended up defeating Batista. And, as shown above, she proudly wore the JULY 26 Moncada patch on her arm.

    After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, Celia Sanchez remained the prime decision-maker in Revolutionary Cuba till the day she died of cancer on January 11, 1980 at age 59. Even after her death, Fidel Castro continued to rule Cuba only as he believed Celia would have wanted him to rule it. Celia, for one thing, renamed the Isle of Pines to its current name of Isle of Youth. It was on the Isle of Youth one morning that Lee Lockwood took the definitive photo above, which shows Celia dutifully writing down some revolutionary rules while Fidel relaxes in a rocking chair with his shoes off. She well knew that whatever rules she wrote down would later be fully supported by Fidel, which was the case in Revolutionary Cuba until the day he died at age 90 on November 25, 2016.

     And so, today on Cuba's National Holiday of JULY 26th in 2023, it is appropriate, I think, to remember that Celia Sanchez's quotation {above} best defines the Cuban Revolution from Cuba's perspective: "We rebels...get far too much credit for winning the Revolution. Our enemies deserve most of the credit, for being greedy cowards and idiots."

     But the factual truth is that Fidel Castro, who had intimate knowledge of the Cuban Revolution, always said that "Most OF THE CREDIT FOR WINNING IT SHOULD GO TO CELIA SANCHEZ."

    And also remember that, while Fidel Castro always gave most of the revolutionary credit to Celia Sanchez, he once told journalist Carlos Franco that "The other two most important revolutionary leaders were Vilma Espin and Haydee Santamaria for what they did as recruiters of men and supplies as well as being dedicated fighters and decision-providers that kept us motivated. We men looked to them, not to ourselves, for the directions about how to reach all the way from the Sierra Maestra Mountains to the capital of Havana. The victory, most of all, was because of those three women."

*&***********************&*