Assault On Moncada Barracks

After Batista took the power by a military coup on 10 March 1952, Fidel Castro and his group began to train young men that were aware of the absence of a political force to face and to overthrow the tyranny of Batista by taking part in the armed struggle against what they perceived to be an illegitimate government. They used the campus of the University of Havana and the other firing ranges in Havana (for example, Quinta de los Molinos) and disguised themselves as businessmen interested in clay pigeon shooting and hunting.

Fidel Castro who was seeking an opportunity to deal a blow to the military force of Baptista and to spark a national uprising against the regime, decided to carry out an assault to the Moncada barracks, the well-fortified fortress in Santiago de Cuba, where support for the clandestine movement against the government was strongest. The plan was elaborated in secret at all. Besides Fidel Castro, the military leader, it was known only by Abel Santamaría, the civil leader, and Renato Guitart. The rebels learned what the objective was, when they gathered at the farm in Siboney the night before the attack.

The rebels were preferably young people (the average age was 26, the same as that of Fidel Castro), mostly Orthodox Party members or sympathizers, unaware to all personal ambition, and not infected for bad habits of the traditional politics. They were recruited from the lower middle class and working class: workers, peasants, employees, students, modest professionals. Only four of the 160 rebels were university graduates, and most had only a primary education. Castro avoided recruiting among intellectuals that were more apt to challenge his ideas. The uniforms that were necessary to attire the rebels, were obtained from the laundry of a military hospital by one of its workers in exchange for $200; consequently, they were mostly blue uniforms. In the majority the weapons consisted of shotguns, rifles, and handguns of various old models. Weapons, uniforms, and all necessary resources for the fight were obtained without forcing the wealthy people to contribute.

The plan was not so complicated: the barracks would be taken by storm, so that seizing of the weapons stored in the building and spreading false messages by using the communication equipment of the army to confuse the soldiers of Batista, would be possible. The captured weapons would be handed out throughout city to use them in the armed actions in the future. In the meantime, Santiago's radio station would be secured to mobilize the public against the Batista government by broadcasting the speeches of Eduardo Chibás. Eduardo Chibás was a chief political figure of the prerevolutionary Cuba, guide, and source of the inspiration for the Cuban youth of the time, and founder of the Cuban People’s Party that militated Fidel Castro. A Manifesto del Moncada, written by the young poet Raúl Gómez García under Fidel Castro’s orientation was also ready to be read to the folk at the radio.

The date of the attack was specifically chosen because the carnival in Santiago de Cuba is traditionally held every year on July 25. People from different parts of the region attend on that day, so that the presence of so many young persons from other counties would not attract any attention.

On the other hand, two days before the assault on the Moncada Barracks, the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) of the dictator Batista had informed Colonel Chaviano, head of the barracks, that an attack on it was being prepared, but the date was not known according to the information obtained by an informer. Thus, the defense of the garrison was reinforced before July 26 by increasing the number of the soldiers. Chaviano was not at the barracks when the attack occurred, but at the carnivals in Santiago de Cuba, and he arrived at the barracks in the middle of the attack.

According to the plan, the rebels were organized in three groups: the first group of about 90 men, led by Fidel Castro, would attack the barracks, a second group consisting of 6 men, including Raúl Castro, and led by Léster Rodríguez, would take the court house (Palacio de Justica) nearby, overlooking the barracks, and a third group, consisting of 23 men and led by Abel Santamaría, Fidel Castro’s second-in-command, would take the civil hospital (Hospital Saturnino Lora) at the rear of the barracks, opposite the court house, so that these three attacking groups would form a covering crossfire. Fidel Castro had not invited his brother to this action, and he was surprised to see his brother at the Siboney Farm.  In the group of Abel Santamaría, there were also two women, his sister Haydée Santamaría and his girlfriend Melba Hernández, that would treat the wounded rebels.

To support the assault on Moncada Barracks, it was planned to take the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks in Bayamo simultaneously. This action included also the blowing up of the bridges over the Cauto River, to prevent the arrival of the troops from Santiago de Cuba. 28 rebels were ready to participate in this action.

On July 26, 1953, the rebels, consisting of 135 armed persons, left the farm in Siboney very early before the sunset, planning to attack the garrison at dawn. The group formed a sixteen-automobile convoy to give the appearance of being a delegation headed by a high-ranking officer sent from western Cuba.

Even though the assault was planned meticulously in theory, unfortunately, it didn’t work in practice because of unforeseen technical problems. A car broke down before reaching Moncada, so that some rebels couldn’t involve in the struggle.

The convoy disintegrated due to the velocity difference of the motor vehicles. Several cars headed off in the wrong direction and never made it to the barracks. For example, the car driven by Ernesto Tizol was in supposedly got lost in the city, and those cars that followed him never reached the barracks, so that almost a third of the revolutionaries could not participate in the attack. Furthermore, one of the cars in this group was carrying the heavy weapons; thus, many of the rebels that would have taken part in the attack, were left behind without any weapon.

When the pioneering rebels called on the sentries to make way for the “general”, there happened an unexpected encounter with the patrolling soldiers, when Castro’s car, the second in the pioneering group, was stopped. Following their previous orders, once they saw that Castro’s car had stopped, the rebels in the convoy behind jumped of their cars to attack the garrison, believing that they were inside of the barracks. According to Fidel Castro’s auto-criticism, this was a fatal mistake, because the subsequent gunfire alerted the troops throughout the barracks, before the buildings had been infiltrated by the rebels. Only 5 rebels who were in the first car were able to enter the barracks barbershop, of which 3 died in combat, and another 2 were captured and executed. The premature shootout that alerted the troops and allowed the barracks' soldiers (250-300 at that time) to quickly mobilize and in a few minutes the rebels were outnumbered more than 10 to 1. Under intense gunfire the attackers were reduced to fleeing and cowering behind the cars. Although the unprotected courthouse and the civil hospital were seized successfully, the assault on the garrison was a fiasco. The rebels were confronted with an enemy superior in weapons and in number. To continue the fight under those conditions was a massive suicide, so that Castro gave the order to withdraw to prevent further loss. The fight began outside the barracks and lasted in a short battle of positions about 20 minutes.

During the attack 15 soldiers and 3 policemen were killed, and 23 soldiers and 5 policemen were wounded. The loss of the rebels during the fight was less: 9 rebels were killed, and 11 rebels were wounded (4 of them were friendly fire).  18 rebels, captured by the soldiers in the civil hospital, were shot to death in the small-arms target range of the barracks within immediately two hours after the attack, and their corpses were strewn throughout the combat area, as if they were killed during the attack. Another reason for the increase in losses is that Castro had not planned any system of communication between the groups. The order was not known to Santamaría and his group, who continued shooting at the barracks from the Civil Hospital and were then arrested and shot by the army. Abel Santamaría’s eyes were gouged out, while his sister Haydée was forced to watch this process, and his corpse was also passed off, as if he was killed during the attack 2 days before.

The real bloodshed started immediately after the attack was driven back. Batista closed the newspaper "Noticias de Hoy", organ of the Popular Socialist Party, and applied censorship to the press and radio throughout the country. Within 48 hours of the attack thousands of people were detained by an extensive operation. As the consequence of the brutal repression of Batista’s forces, 55 to 70 of the fleeing rebels had been captured. They were tortured by the Batista’s officers, and 34 of them were murdered. When Batista transformed El Cuartel Móncada into a torture and death workroom, some unworthy men transformed the military uniform into butchers' aprons to execute each participant of the insurrection. A handful of rebels escaped into the nearby countryside, but most of them were apprehended shortly thereafter; the rest managed to escape and returned to Havana.

On 21 September 1953 the trial begun with 122 defendants, 65 of them being mostly political leaders and opposition activists that were not involved in the rebellion. 15 of 122 defendants, including Carlos Prio Socarras (President of Cuba from 1948 until he was deposed by a military coup led by Fulgencia Batista in 1952), Aureliano Sanchez Arango (Cuban lawyer, politician and university professor that served as Minister of Education and Foreign Minister in the period of 1948-1951), Jose Pardo Llada (Cuban journalist, radio commentator most listened to in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s), and Blas Roca Calderio (Head of the Communist Party of Cuba for 28 years before the revolution) were underground or in exile and never went to court. 51 of 99 captured rebels, including Fidel Castro, were somewhat lucky because they were remanded for trial.

The trial proceeded in 11 headings and was completed just in 15 days. 19 rebels were found not guilty, because the judges could not find any evidence to confute their false testimony. Some leaders like Raúl Castro, Oscar Alcalde, Pedro Miret, and Ernesto Tizol that confessed their participation in the accused action, received 13-year prison sentence. 20 other rebels were sentenced to 10 years. 3 of the defendants that had refused to participate in the attack at the last moment, got 3-year sentences. Dr. Melba Hernandez Rodriguez del Rey and Haydée Santamaria were sentenced to 7 months, since it was not possible to evidence that they handled weapons.

During the trial Fidel Castro charged the military with the systematic murder of the detainees. Consequently, the chief of the Moncada barracks impeded Castro to take part in the trial by claiming that Castro was ill and could not attend the hearings. The tribunal then separated Castro from the proceedings and granted him a separate trial. In the prison an attempt was made to poison Fidel Castro. Despite all the efforts to block Castro appearing in the court, he made a speech with full enthusiasm in his own defense. A carbon copy of the speech was smuggled page by page out of the court by the stenographer that leaked it to Haydée Santamaría. This speech, known by the last words of his speech as “la historia me absolverá / history will absolve me”, was later published as the manifesto of the revolution. Fidel Castro was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment as the leader of the whole insurrection.

Two years later a group of prisoners’ mothers initiated a campaign to free the imprisoned rebels. Soon a group of leaders, editors and intellectuals that were opposite to Batista’s regime, signed a public appeal demanding freedom for the political prisoners. Concurrently the Cuban Congress passed a bill granting general amnesty to political prisoners. After being signed by Batista, 30 rebels that were imprisoned, resumed their freedom after 22 months of captivity.