Cuba Celebrates 50th Anniversary of National Rebellion Day

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 28, 2003

Cuba Celebrates 50th Anniversary of National Rebellion Day

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President Fidel Castro made a speech here on Saturday night, highlighting the country's celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the National Rebellion Day which is in remembrance of a guerrilla attack led the Cuban leader.

Earlier, about 100 young "pioneers" -- school children with outstanding academic achievements and behavior -- symbolically assaulted the previous Moncada Barracks, evoking the memory of theattack that half a century ago served as the prelude to the Cuban Revolution headed by President Fidel Castro.

Santiago de Cuba is located in the east of the Caribbean country.

On July 26, 1953, Castro, heading a hundred young guerrillas, tried to assault the Moncada Barracks, the country's second most important military base back then.

The young guerrillas made use of the Santiago carnival to raid the military base, but they failed and many of them were killed.

The survivors, including Castro and his brother Raul -- now thevice president and minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces -- were jailed. But 22 months later they were freed in an amnesty.

Castro then departed to Mexico, where he organized the expedition of yacht Granma which in December, 1956 secretly arrived in Cuba to begin a guerrilla war in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.

Exactly five years, five months and five days after the failed assault on Moncada, the rebels took control of the country on Jan.1, 1959, after Batista ran abroad.

The end of the Batista dictatorship was a landmark in the history of the Caribbean country, with the beginning of the socialist period of Cuba.

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