December 2, 2024
the disembarkation in Granma province, December 2, 1956
With a stem towards freedom, and sailing the sea in an epic voyage from Mexico to Cuba, 82 men aboard a small yacht starred -68 years ago today- in a disembarkation of rebellion and heroism that made the emancipation dream of a nation and its people be reborn.
It was then December 2, 1956, and in a place known as Los Cayuelos, about two kilometers from Las Coloradas beach, in Niquero (Granma province), that the epic of the expeditionary group of the Granma yacht would take place among icy waters and tangled mangroves.
What tremendous conviction of those young revolutionaries led by Fidel, when they enlisted in adventure of liberty with more courage than weapons, and arrived in the homeland determined to be free or martyrs.
What stoic endurance of those men who, in spite of having been whipped around for days and nights by the storms of the sea, were capable of crossing, with hunger, thirst, fatigue and their weapons at their own expense, a muddy coast with water up to their chest, and then, a swampy and tangled mangrove swamp with mosquitoes, gnats and thorny branches that cut through their skin.
What enormous bravery of those expeditionaries, who three days after the landing faced their baptism of fire with the setback of Alegria de Pio, and in spite of the spilling of the blood of the first heroes and the dispersion of the incipient troop, in a war cry they enunciated the certainty of their ideals: Nobody surrenders here…!
And what a beautiful coincidence that would reaffirm the fighting determination of the 82 brave men aboard the Granma, when in Cinco Palmas, on December 18, after the reunion of Raul and Fidel, and with only eight men and seven weapons, an unshakable prophecy was launched: “Now we have won the war!
From then on, the Sierra Maestra would be painted olive green until the triumph of January 1st, 1959. In that first year of the Revolution, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) would emerge, whose doctrine of war of all the people has its foundational roots in the same date of the heroic landing, and in the feat written, for all times, by its expeditionaries.
Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English