Top Cuban authorities dedicate wreaths to comrades who died on September 5, 1957

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 5 (ACN) Wreaths of flowers from the highest leadership of the country and the Cuban people marked today in the Tomas Acea cemetery, in the central Cuban province of Cienfuegos, the tribute to those who fell on September 5, 1957.

In the brief ceremony, held at the Pantheon of the Fallen for the Defense in that necropolis, three artillery salvos were fired as a tribute to the heroes and martyrs of the popular uprising.

A representation of the people of Cienfuegos, led by the Music Band of the Revolutionary Navy, made a pilgrimage to the cemetery, from the Marti Park, where the main ceremony for the 65th anniversary of the historic event took place.

The commemoration was presided over by Army General Raul Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution, and Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic.

On September 5, 1957, members of the Navy and the 26th of July Movement assaulted the naval base located in Loco Key, in Cienfuegos Bay, took up arms and confronted the military forces of Fulgencio Batista's regime.

Locals of the city also took up arms, and for 24 hours Cienfuegos was in the hands of the revolutionaries.

In response, Batista's troops strafed and bombed the neighborhoods indiscriminately, resulting in dozens of dead, wounded and mutilated among the population.

Although the military objectives of forming a new front were not achieved, this uprising represented, as Fidel Castro expressed, an extraordinary moral encouragement for the combatants of the Sierra Maestra.*