|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 25 July 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Moncada attack - A watershed in the National Liberation Movement of Cuba by L. R. Stephen, Ex-Co member of the Sri Lanka - Cuba Friendship Society. The fiftieth anniversary of the attack on Moncada Garrison in Santiago de Cuba will be held tomorrow. The event, although aborted, is treated by many historians as the precursor of the Cuban Revolution that followed in 1959. Even after half a century since the event, its historical and political significance still remain afresh in our minds. Although in their sheer magnitude, the contemporary events such as the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the victory of the Algerian Revolution cannot be compared with the attack on Moncada Garrison in toto, the far reaching political impact of that attack on the sub-continent of Latin America and the Caribbeans is more or less similar to that of the former two events in their respective continents. Whether one likes it or not, one cannot speak of Moncada without the name of Fidel Castro Ruz, the master-mind and its leader. The armed attack on the Moncada Garrison in Santiago de Cuba marked a watershed in the later developments of the national liberation struggle of Cuba and so do it impact on the Latin America and the Caribbeans, as a whole. A young boarder of 12 years at a Jesuit School in Santiago de Cuba addressed a letter to the then US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt congratulating him on his re-election in 1940. It was signed by one Fidel Castro as 'your friend,' as if he had no difficulty in seeing himself, even at that tender age, as the equal to figures such as FDR. President Roosevelt must have never thought, even in his wildest dreams, that his 'friend' of 12 would one day ever lead an attack on the Moncada Garrison nor a rebellion to overthrow the US vassal Fulgenico Batista and becomes the first Prime Minister of the independent and sovereign Republic of Cuba. Undoubtedly, if Roosevelt was living at the time, he would have unhesitantly congratulated Fidel on that memorable day as US President Roosevelt was of a rare calibre hardly found in any of his successors. While as a law student in the Havana University, Fidel Castro was involved in politics up to his neck. In 1946, he joined the student action group - Revolutionary Insurrection Union and in 1947 he was a founding member of the Cuban Peoples' Party (Orthodox) - (CPP(O). In the same year, he was part of an aborted armed expedition that had planned to overthrow dictatorship of Rafael Trujilo in Dominican Republic. After graduating, Castro ran for election on CPP (O) ticket in 1952, but this never took place because of a coup d'etat conducted by Fulgencio Batista. On July 26th, 1953, Fidel led an attack on Moncada Army Garrison in Santiago de Cuba which was crushed. Taken prisoner, he was tried and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Castro's famous defense speech'History will absolve me', later became the programme of the July 26th Movement. After being released in 1955 as a result of a mass public pressure, he went to Mexico where he began to organise what was to become Rebel Army. The assault on Moncada Army Garrison was not a victory in military sense, but not a defeat either, in strategic term. It was a historical achievement with both positive and negative aspects. Moncada Attack was a significant achievement as it later grew as a Vanguard - the July 26 Movement. It was military in form but profoundly political in content. It proved the fact that it is difficult to capture power without a creative combination of all forms of struggles wherever they can take place; countryside, city, town, neighbourhood, mountains etc., but always based on the idea that mass movement is the focal point of the struggle and not the vanguard with masses merely limited to support it. Thus began the war of liberators in Cuba to end the war of oppressors, which was to be culminated in 1959 with the establishment of the independent and sovereign Republic of Cuba, the first ever socialist state in the Western Hemisphere, only 90 miles away from the United States of America. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
