The strike of April 9 brought final victory closer

Wednesday, April 9, 1958 dawned as a sunny and apparently calm day in much of the country, but at 11:00 a.m. a radio broadcast broke the peace as the passionate voice of the announcer said:

"Attention Cubans, this is the 26th of July Movement calling to a Revolutionary General Strike! Today is the day of freedom, the day of the Revolutionary General Strike. Forward, Cubans, as from this moment the final struggle begins in all of Cuba that will only end with the overthrow of the dictatorship! Workers, students, professionals, bosses, join the revolutionary general strike, from this moment (...)"

Thus began one of the most heroic actions to topple President Fulgencio Batista.

The hopes that motivated that national uprising were not vain in the early days of 1958, when the Rebel Army had already consolidated as a guerrilla force, as evidenced by the departure on March 1 from the Sierra Maestra mountains of the columns led by commanders Raúl Castro and Juan Almeida Bosque to found the II Frank País Front and the III Mario Muñoz Monroy Front, respectively, whereas Commander Camilo Cienfuegos fought in the plains.

Throughout the island, the underground struggle gained momentum and spread to towns and cities under the leadership of the 26th of July Movement and with the participation of the “March 13” Revolutionary Directorate and the Popular Socialist Party.

Great enthusiasm and the decision to turn the new year into the last of the dictatorship prevailed. Commander in Chief Fidel Castro had met early in March with the leaders of the Movement and the Rebel Army to draft on March 12 the 21-point Manifesto to the Cuban People, a document that highlighted "the noticeable collapse of the dictatorship, the maturing of national conscience, and the belligerent participation of all social, political, cultural and religious sectors of the country as the struggle against Batista enters its final phase". It also said that "the strategy of the decisive action lies in the Revolutionary Strike supported by Armed Action".

Fidel always thought that the actions in the cities should be fully synchronized to support the fighting troops, so the project of the General Strike of April 9, 1958 was approved and organized to happen in parallel with both nationwide uprisings and actions of the Rebel Army.
In Havana, Marcelo Salado led the attack on an armory, the drivers’ strike and other acts of sabotage and propaganda, but the repressive forces outgunned the combatants, poorly organized and lacking in sufficient coordination to stand much of a chance against Batista’s forces, who controlled the cities with great violence.

Marcelo Salado was shot down as he tried to direct the actions, betrayed by a former traitor comrade who had become a policeman and caught the revolutionary by surprise.

More than 100 revolutionaries lost their lives in the General Strike of April 9, either that day or in the following weeks, to the repression of the tyrant’s police and army in his last months in power.

The strike failed but it was hardly fruitless: the end came a little more than six months later, as Fidel had predicted in a letter to his fellow revolutionary Faustino Pérez, one of the survivors of the action: “I am full of hope that we will have turned defeat into victory sooner than many can even imagine".