Havana Cuba. – On May 15, 1955, Fidel Castro and other members of the Movement July 26responsible for the assault on the Moncada barracks, in Santiago de Cuba, were imprisoned thanks to an amnesty decreed by Fulgencio Batista, who intended to run for the elections and needed to get rid of popular pressure. That decision would have a very high cost for Cuba, which neither Batista nor Fidel Castro’s supporters could foresee.
The most interesting thing was the context in which that release took place, which says a lot about the freedoms that the Cuban people had under a dictatorship that, with all its cruelty, was little compared to the regime that Castro would establish as of January 1959. .
The popular pressure for the assailants to be released had the relatives of the young prisoners in the front row, who did not cease their claims, backed by the people and extensive journalistic coverage. The mothers, in particular, fought tirelessly. They wrote a letter addressed to the people of Cuba, on behalf of all the mothers of the Nation, to make injustice visible and gather all possible support and solidarity.
The Pro-Amnesty Committee of Relatives for Political Prisoners was created, which had a national reach and added even more pressure on Batista, who was even accused of having hatched a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro. This supposed conspiracy accelerated the process and freed those who, barely five years later, would demonize the Republic as a corrupt and unequal order, becoming heroes for the people and cheered by the media, to establish a totalitarian government. that took away from the Cuban people the rights to demand the freedom of political prisoners, and from mothers the possibility of grouping in order to fight civically and peacefully for the release of their children.
That day, due to his personal ambition and short-sightedness, Batista made the decision that condemned Cuba to an ordeal that seems to have no end. Shortly before, the politician Rafael Diaz-Balartbrother-in-law of Fidel Castro, had given a speech before the House of Representatives warning about the true purposes of Castro and his clique.
“They don’t want a national solution of any kind, they don’t want democracy, elections or brotherhood. Fidel Castro and his group only want one thing: (…) total power to establish the cruelest, the most barbaric tyranny…”, he said.
His words were prophetic. Díaz-Balart calculated that the Castro regime could not be overthrown for at least 20 years. But he fell way short.
