THE GRANMA ARRIVES TO CUBA'S ORIENTE PROVINCE

The Grandma during her last visit to Cuba

On a day like today in 1956, a 18 m diesel-powered cabin cruiser built in 1943 named Granma for the previous owner's grandmother, was used to transport 82 fighters of the Cuban Revolution from Mexico to Cuba for the purpose of overthrowing the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

The Grandma wants to commemorate this event that represented the beginning of the Cuban Revolution and she has gone to the library to search more information about it. She remembers her last visits to Cuba and her last memories with the Granma.

Before going to the library, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

Granma is the yacht that was used to transport 82 fighters of the Cuban Revolution from Mexico to Cuba in November 1956 for the purpose of overthrowing the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

The 18 m diesel-powered cabin cruiser was built in 1943 by Wheeler Shipbuilding of Brooklyn NY as a light armored target practice boat, US Navy C-1994 and modified postwar to accommodate 12 people.  

Granma, in English, is an affectionate term for a grandmother; the yacht is said to have been named for the previous owner's grandmother.

The yacht was purchased on 10 October 1956 for MX$50,000 (US$15,000) from the United States-based Schuylkill Products Company, Inc., by a Mexican citizen -said to be Mexico City gun dealer Antonio The Friend del Conde- secretly representing Fidel Castro.

More information: Granma

The builder, Wheeler Shipbuiding, then of Brooklyn NY, now of Chapel Hill NC, also built Hemingway's Pilar. It is still unknown who removed the light armor and expanded the cabin postwar to convert the navy training boat into a civilian Yacht.

Castro's 26th of July Movement had attempted to purchase a Catalina flying boat maritime aircraft, or a US naval crash rescue boat for the purpose of crossing the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba, but their efforts had been thwarted by lack of funds. The money to purchase Granma had been raised in the US state of Florida by former President of Cuba Carlos Prío Socarrás and Teresa Casuso Morín.

The Granma

Shortly after midnight on 25 November 1956 in the Mexican port of Tuxpan, Veracruz, Granma was boarded by 82 members of the 26th of July movement including their leader, Fidel Castro, his brother, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos.

The group -who later came to be known collectively as los expedicionarios del yate Granma (the Granma yacht expeditioners)- then set out from Tuxpan at 2 a.m. After a series of vicissitudes and misadventures, including diminishing supplies, sea-sickness, and the near-foundering of their heavily laden and leaking craft, they disembarked on 2 December on the Playa Las Coloradas, municipality of Niquero, in modern Granma Province (after the vessel), formerly part of the larger Oriente Province.

Granma was piloted by Norberto Collado Abreu, a World War II Cuban Navy veteran and ally of Castro. The location was chosen to emulate the voyage of national hero José Martí, who had landed in the same region 61 years earlier during the wars of independence from Spanish colonial rule.

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Batista correctly predicted that the landing would take place, and his troops were ready. Consequentially, the landing party was bombarded by helicopters and airplanes soon after landing. Since the terrain on the coastline provided little cover, the party was an easy target. Many casualties ensued, most of them during battle at Alegría de Pío further inland. The survivors continued to the foot of Pico Turquino in the Sierra Maestra to carry out guerilla war.

Initially, Batista did not know who exactly were among the casualties, and international media widely reported that Fidel had died. This was, however, not the case. Of the 82, around 20 had survived.

According to the most credible version, the survivors were Fidel, Raúl, Guevara, Armando Rodríguez, Faustino Pérez, Ramiro Valdés, Universo Sánchez, Efigenio Ameijeiras, René Rodríguez, Camilo Cienfuegos, Juan Almeida Bosque, Calixto García, Calixto Morales, Reinaldo Benítez, Julio Díaz, Rafael Chao, Ciro Redondo [es], José Morán, Carlos Bermúdez, and Fransisco González. All others had been either killed, captured, or left behind.

The 26th of July Movement, in Spanish Movimiento 26 de Julio; M-26-7, was a Cuban vanguard revolutionary organization and later a political party led by Fidel Castro.

The name commemorates its 26th July 1953 attack on the army barracks on Santiago de Cuba in an attempt to start the overthrowing of the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

 

The Grandma

Fidel Castro's nationalist ideology was founded in the ideas of José Martí.
 
This is considered one of the most important organizations among the Cuban Revolution. At the end of 1956, Castro established a guerrilla base in the Sierra Maestra. This base defeated the troops of Batista on December 31, 1958, setting into motion the Cuban Revolution and installing a government lead by Manuel Urrutia Lleó.

The Movement fought the Batista regime on both rural and urban fronts. The movement's main objectives were distribution of land to peasants, nationalization of public services, industrialization, honest elections, and large scale education reform.

In July 1961, the 26th of July Movement was one of the parties that integrated into the Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas (ORI) of the Integrated Revolutionary Organization (IRO) as well as the Popular Socialist Party and the March 13 Revolutionary Directory.

On March 26, 1962, the party dissolved to form the Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista de Cuba (PURSC) or the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (UPSRC), which held a communist ideology.

The 26th of July Movement's name originated from the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, an army facility in the city of Santiago de Cuba, on 26 July 1953. This attack was led by a young Fidel Castro, who was a legislative candidate in a free election that had been cancelled by Batista. The attack had been intended as a rallying cry for the revolution.

More information: The Vintage News

Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison but, along with his group, was granted an amnesty after two years following a political campaign on their behalf. Castro traveled to Mexico to reorganize the movement in 1955 with several other exiled revolutionaries -including Raúl Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Juan Almeida Bosque. Their task was to form a disciplined guerrilla force to overthrow Batista.

The original core of the group was organized around the attack on the Moncada Barracks merged with the National Revolutionary Movement led and Rafael García Bárcenas and with a majority of the Orthodox Youth.

Soon after, National Revolutionary Action led by Frank País would join. Because of the commonality in their ideology and their goal of wanting to topple the Batista regime, the M-26-7 would quickly add more young people from diverse political backgrounds. 

The Grandma visiting The Granma, Cuba

On 2 December 1956, 82 men landed in Cuba, having sailed in the boat Granma from Tuxpan, Veracruz, ready to organize and lead a revolution. The early signs were not good for the movement. They landed in daylight, were attacked by the Cuban Air Force, and suffered numerous casualties.

The landing party was split into two and wandered lost for two days, most of their supplies abandoned where they landed. They were also betrayed by their peasant guide in an ambush, which killed more of those who had landed. Batista mistakenly announced Fidel Castro's death at this point.

Of the 82 who sailed aboard the Granma, only 12 eventually regrouped in the Sierra Maestra mountain range. While the revolutionaries were setting up camp in the mountains, Civic Resistance groups were formulating in the cities, putting pressure on the Batista regime. Many middle-class and professional persons flocked toward Castro and his movement. While in the Sierra Maestra mountains the guerrilla forces attracted hundreds of Cuban volunteers and won several battles against the Cuban Army.

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara was shot in the neck and chest during the fighting, but was not severely injured. Guevara, who had studied medicine, continued to give first aid to other wounded guerrillas. This was the opening phase of the war of the Cuban Revolution, which continued for the next two years.

It ended in January 1959, after Batista fled Cuba for Dominican Republic, on New Year's Eve when the Movement's forces marched into Havana.

More information: Passage Maker

After the takeover, anti-Batistas, liberals, urban workers, peasants, and idealists became the dominant followers of the M-26-7 movement, which gained control over Cuba.

The Movement was joined with other bodies to form the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which in turn became the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965.

Cuba modeled itself after the soviet-bloc countries of eastern Europe, becoming the first socialistic government in the Americas. Once it was learned that Cuba would adopt a strict Marxist–Leninist political and economic system, opposition was raised not only by dissident party members, but by the United States as well.

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Fidel Castro's government seized private land, nationalized hundreds of private companies -including several local subsidiaries of U.S. corporations- and taxed American products so heavily that U.S. exports were cut half in just two years. 

The Eisenhower Administration then imposed trade restrictions on everything except food and medical supplies. As a result, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union for trade instead. The US responded by cutting all diplomatic ties to Cuba, and have had a rocky relationship ever since. In April 1961, a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles and dissidents launched the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion against Cuba.

The flag of the 26th of July Movement is on the shoulder of the Cuban military uniform, and continues to be used as a symbol of the Cuban Revolution.

More information: Morning Star

Remember that the revolution is what is important,

and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.

Che Guevara