Youths Mark 1953 Raid by Castro Forces

Cuban teen-agers on Tuesday re-enacted a daring guerrilla raid 35 years ago that marked the start of a revolutionary struggle that would shake the Americas.

The dawn attack on the Moncada Barracks in this eastern port city on July 26, 1953, was led by a 26-year-old lawyer named Fidel Castro.

The raid on the sleepy garrison of 1,000 soldiers by Castro and 150 young followers armed with rifles and a machine gun failed, but it helped cement the opposition to the corrupt rule of dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The 26th of July is now Cuba’s national day and culminates with a mass rally and Castro’s traditional annual address to the nation.

Castro and his younger brother, Raul, were captured a few days after the Moncada attack. During the trial, the fiery Castro delivered an eloquent defense of the action in a speech now known as “History Will Absolve Me.” It set the tone and philosophy of the broad-based July 26th Movement.

Imprisoned on the Isle of Pines, Castro was freed in 1955 under an amnesty, went to Mexico and returned with a force of 81 men in December, 1956, to launch a full-scale war in the Sierra Maestra mountains overlooking this city.

On Jan. 1, 1959, five years and five days after the Moncada attack, Castro took power.

Following tradition, an array of new installations, ranging from hospitals and housing developments, were opened in the past week in the province, many of them built by volunteers “to salute the 26th.”

‘Rectification Campaign’

The government has a two-year-old “rectification campaign” to eradicate employee absenteeism, low productivity and other signs of inefficiency in the island nation’s economy.

But domestic commercial production fell by 3.2% last year, while Cuba’s foreign debt grew by $671.8 million to $5.6 billion.