By Ramón Pedregal Casanova on April 15, 2026
Victorious Cuban forces at Playa Giron, April 19, 1961
In September 1960, President Fidel Castro spoke at length before the UN General Assembly about the planned invasion of Cuba and warned the U.S. regime not to carry out the aggression, but the CIA and its cronies pressed ahead. In October, Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs reported that mercenaries were being trained on a farm in El Palmar, Guatemala, and that the Retalhuleu airfield was being prepared by the Americans for the use of aircraft. Eisenhower was so committed to the attack on Cuba that he did not even bother to inform the Revolutionary Government. The complaint was brought before the UN to no avail, while the White House regime sent shipments of weapons and other supplies to the counterrevolutionary guerrillas in the Escambray Mountains to sustain them, and the imperialist administration prepared to sever relations with Cuba once the attacks on the Cuban people began.
On November 18, Kennedy was named president of the empire and continued with the mercenary invasion plan. Then President Fidel took the initiative and demanded that the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Havana be reduced to the number of Cuban personnel at the Cuban Embassy in the U.S. Before the transfer of power, the boss Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations. War was looming, and so the Revolutionary Army launched an offensive that wiped out the counterrevolutionaries in El Escambray. The gringo plans fell apart.
Kennedy, the CIA, and the regime embarked on a race to prepare a full-scale invasion to occupy a portion of Cuban territory where they would install those who would call themselves the Revolutionary Council. The Somoza regime in Nicaragua, with the Puerto Cabezas airport, and the Guatemalan regime would participate in the plan. The imperialists were so eager to destroy the Revolution that they even publicly announced the recruitment of mercenaries in Miami, and it became known that they would have 29 B-26 bombers and a dozen C-54 and C-46 transport planes, six ships, six battalions, along with a company of paratroopers, aviators and frogmen, …
On April 11, the U.S. Navy, carrying a Marine battalion, took up positions in the far western Atlantic off Cuba without entering its waters, and two destroyers escorted the mercenaries as they set out toward the Bay of Pigs. At the time the mercenary operation began, the imperialist regime launched a propaganda campaign claiming “pilots fleeing Cuba” and a story so false that they could not sustain it, as they presented a pilot who turned out to be a mercenary. Commander Fidel responded to the then U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, who claimed that the bombings had been carried out by Cubans who had rebelled against the Revolution. Commander Fidel replied to him following the burial of the first victims caused by the U.S. bombing of Havana: “Does the President of the United States want no one to have the right to call him a liar? Present the pilots and the planes you speak of before the United Nations! The imperialist government will have no choice but to confess that the planes were theirs, that the bombs were theirs, that the bullets were theirs, that the mercenaries were organized, trained, and paid by them, that the bases were in Guatemala and that from there they set out to attack our territory, and that those who were not shot down went to seek refuge on the shores of the United States, where they have been given shelter. That is what they cannot forgive us for—that we are right there, under their noses, and that we have carried out a socialist revolution right under the nose of the United States! And that we defend that socialist revolution with these rifles! And that we defend that socialist revolution with the courage with which yesterday our anti-aircraft gunners riddled the aggressor planes with bullets! Comrades, workers and peasants, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the humble, with the humble, and for the humble.”
In his fourth communiqué, Commander Fidel declared on April 19, 1961:
“Forces of the rebel army and the national revolutionary militias stormed the last positions that the invading forces had occupied on national territory. Playa Girón, which was the mercenaries’ last stronghold, fell at 5:30 in the afternoon.”
The Cuban people, led by their revolutionary leaders with Commander Fidel at the forefront, crushed the invader in 66 hours. The Yankees wanted their assassins to hold out for at least 72 hours so they could “recognize” the mercenary troops as a “government” in need of aid and, after three days, openly launch the invasion.
Ramón Pedregal Casanova, writer, member of the Antiimperialistas.com channel and the Network in Defense of Humanity (REDH)