Cuba commemorates first guerrilla victory

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 17 (ACN) Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel saluted the 66th anniversary of the first victorious battle of the Rebel Army, the guerrilla force led by Fidel Castro and created to launch the national liberation war (1956-1958) against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Diaz-Canel stressed that the combat of La Plata, in eastern Cuba’s Sierra Maestra mountains, confirmed two years later, with the triumph of the Revolution on January 1, 1959, the power of the guerrilla morale over all of Batista’s weaponry.

Waged on January 17, 1957, the 40-minute-long battle of La Plata—a small garrison in the foothills of the sierra—engaged 29 guerrillas, 18 of them members of the expeditionary force that sailed to Cuba on board the yacht Granma, eight local peasants and three men sent by Celia Sanchez, leader of the 26th of July Movement in the city of Manzanillo.