In the early hours of December 2, 1956, pilots and navy captains of the Batista dictatorship were exploring the coasts of the eastern region to find and destroy a white boat with an anchor chain stretched along its gunwale which, according to intelligence reports, was carrying an expeditionary force led by revolutionary leader Fidel Castro that left from the Mexican port of Tuxpan.
They failed, however, because Fidel beat them to the punch.
A year earlier, the young fighter arrived in Mexico after being released from prison thanks to an amnesty approved in May 1955 as a result of popular pressure for the release of the survivors of the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Barracks in Bayamo, on July 26, 1953.
From the very outset he devoted himself to organizing the contingent in order to return to Cuba and continue the armed struggle and, to that end, they trained hard under the guiding hand of the Spanish Republican General Alberto Bayo, who lived there.
Despite their strict security measures, the local intelligence and police services arrested the revolutionaries and seized their weapons. They also intended to assassinate Fidel, but their plans were frustrated by the timely preventive measures taken by the combatants.
Fidel was always sure of his intentions, which he once shared with the Cuban people when he said, “(…) in 1956 we will be free or we will be martyrs”.
Many years later the Commander in Chief would say: “(…) That idea was absolutely present with the purpose of fulfilling the promise I had made, but when you look at history, you would think that this promise was not necessary. But once I had made it, I had to keep it”.
In the late 1956, Fidel and his comrades knew that time was against them and they had to act quickly. After failed attempts to buy an old American torpedo boat, they finally got the yacht Granma from an American citizen based in Mexico.
Still under strong surveillance, Fidel and his force moved to a safe house in the Port of Tuxpan, from where the Granma left for Cuba under bad weather to meet their commitment to start the fight before the end of the year.
The leader had coordinated the arrival of the yacht with the November 30 uprising in the city of Santiago de Cuba, led by Frank País, head of Action and Sabotage of the 26th of July Movement, but bad weather and too much weight got in the way and the actions could not take place at the same time. Therefore, the dictatorship managed to concentrate its forces on the expeditionary force and stifle the revolt in the eastern city.
At dawn, in danger of being surprised and with almost no fuel left, Fidel ordered the helmsman to steer the ship directly towards the coast. A few minutes later, the Granma and its 82 passengers ran aground in the mud of a mangrove swamp, so they rushed to reach solid ground.
That a pleasure boat carrying three times more weight than it was designed for could leave at midnight on November 25 and make it to its destination more than a thousand kilometers away between the rough waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea was nothing short of a miracle.
Ernesto Che Guevara would later write about the landing: “We were left on dry land, adrift, stumbling, turned into an army of shadows, of ghosts, who walked as if by the impulse of some psychic mechanism”.
That day, facing incredible difficulties and the imminent danger of being killed, the revolutionaries formed the nucleus of the Rebel Army, forerunner of the glorious Revolutionary Armed Forces.
After the hazardous landing, the fighters headed for the Sierra Maestra Mountains. On December 5, while resting in Alegria de Pio, near sparse scrubland by a sugar cane colony of the then New Niquero company, they were ambushed by the army after a guide who took them there informed on them.
The exhausted rebels were showered with a deluge of lead that made them disperse in small groups, almost all in poor physical condition. In the following days, many fighters were captured and killed in cold blood.
But in those moments that heralded the end, the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement in the region, led by Frank País García and Celia Sánchez Manduley and by the peasants Crescencio Pérez and Guillermo García, managed to rescue, hide and support the survivors.
On December 18, the revolutionaries—led by Fidel—could finally gather at Cinco Palmas, in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Among them were Raúl Castro, Juan Almeida, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Ramiro Valdés and other brave men
Raul recalled their meeting with heartfelt words: “When we made contact that night, there were hugs and Fidel said his famous phrase, ‘We have seven rifles. Now we will really win the war’. That’s why I came to the conclusion that he had gone crazy, but I told him that after the victory. Such was his faith in victory since day one which he was able to instill in all of us in the following months”.
Only 16 days had passed since the Granma had landed, but the final countdown for the dictatorship had started. After that, a mere two years were enough to fulfill that historic prophecy of Cinco Palmas.
