As an action, in military terms, the assault on Moncada did not have the success for which it was conceived. Immediately, more than a few came to consider it, even, a true madness.
Since then, the planet Earth has completed 71 revolutions around the Sun and I do not know how many times I have asked myself two questions: What would Cuba have been without Moncada? And: What did that audacious attack, carried out by a group of young men with no more military training or preparation than what they had received in a very short period of time, leave us with?
That action began to catalyze something that Cuba needed very much: unity among the forces opposed to the regime and a good social shake-up, conditioning the role and the action that should mark every people, in need of independence... if it really respects itself.
That 26th of Santiago and Bayamo, totally different from all those lived since the primitive community in this island, was simply the little seed of rebellion that, born from the same fruit, Fidel and the assailants planted for all posterity.
They did not have to go very far -in time and space- to find a historical reference, the thousands of young people who, defying the danger posed by the counterrevolutionary gangs in the middle of the mountains, set out, lantern and primer in hand, to teach people of all ages who had never seen a pencil to read and write.
That was very valid for those who cleansed the Escambray, the Pinar del Río mountain range and other areas of the country of such an eyesore; those who planted more than just their feet on the ground during the decisive days of the Cuban Missile Crisis; those who went to risk their own lives for the future of all on the sands of Playa Girón, and even in other lands of the world.
The Moncada was, is and I do not believe it will ever cease to be, the most candid historical expression of how healthy rebellion can nest within young, entire generations, from one to another.
Otherwise, we would not be willing to continue facing this complex situation that the country is going through, nor would there be a reedition of the assault, year after year, by children, teenagers and young people, there in what is now the 26th of July school fortress, nor a reason for thousands and thousands of Cubans to get up early and gather in squares in all provinces, July after July, as the people of Sancti Espiritus have just done, to celebrate the Day of the (permanent) National Rebellion or, as a beautiful song says: the most joyful day in history.
OFFICIAL VOICE OF THE COMMUNIST
PARTY OF CUBA CENTRAL COMMITTEE
