September 5, 1957: Cienfuegos at the heart of the Homeland

The dawn of September 5, 1957 was a transcendental day in the armed uprising carried out in the city of Cienfuegos by militants of the 26th of July Movement, some officers and members of the Navy and the people in general.

That daring action put the beautiful city in the center of Cuba in the heart of the Homeland, and although it did not achieve its tactical objectives and valuable sons of that land lost their lives in it, it went down in history as a truly resolute and heroic combat, according to the qualification that Fidel would give it years later.

At the height of the event, the war of liberation was already being waged in the Sierra Maestra, a hopeful and growing war of liberation led by Fidel Castro since December 2, 1956, while the fire of initiatives and combats was spreading to other fronts of the national territory.

The action of the Cienfuegos revolutionaries continues to be a glorious deed after 66 years and will always be so. On each anniversary, the sons and daughters of that people make a pilgrimage from Jose Marti Park to the cemetery where the remains of the heroes massacred by the dictatorship, who took part in the combat, rest.

And it is remembered with admiration that on that day the insurgency took Cayo Loco and other enclaves of a city that, aroused, had the courage to defy the corrupt and murderous power, and support them.

It was finally or essentially a beautiful day of light and combat in which the people lived 24 hours feeling full freedom.

If it was a short lapse of time in a lifetime, it announced to all how firm was the decision of struggle that was being forged in the Cuban youth and people again in those times.

The rebels and their followers could not face the brutal onslaught of a well-endowed armed force, strengthened by its great power and criminal viciousness. Batista's repression caused dozens of dead, wounded and mutilated people in his eagerness to abort the action, but he never imagined that the act of rebellion was in itself a moral victory of incalculable value that would reach national significance.

Surprised by this, the dictator Fulgencio Batista did everything he could to subdue, beat and dismantle the M-26-7 and its rapprochement with other progressive forces in the also called Pearl of the South, and this later made itself felt.
In the end, the action in the central-Southern territory must have been part of a chain of insubordinations planned at the national level that included assaults on the Presidential Palace and the General Staff of the Navy in Havana, combats in Santiago de Cuba and those own domains.

Only those involved in the latter could not receive in time the order to postpone the uprising and executed it, according to the date previously agreed upon, September 5.

The initial plans were to carry out the action in April, then it was set for May 28. However, it had to be postponed, first due to technical failures and then due to information that added dangers to the lives of its already risky participants and the effectiveness of the combative undertaking itself. Julio Camacho Aguilera, then designated military chief of a group of officers in that locality, was at the head of this audacious initiative that sought to take the city in its entirety, as well as the maritime police, the radio and communication stations and the headquarters of the Rural Guard.

At the beginning they conquered key sites in a hard fight that lasted almost the whole day. And they were able to enjoy the joy of seeing the city in the hands of genuine patriots.

Fidel, in the speech for the 20th Anniversary of the uprising in Cienfuegos, said:

"No one is able to imagine the extraordinary help that the uprising scheduled for May 28 and the opening of a second guerrilla front in the Escambray Mountains would have meant for the combatants of the Sierra Maestra.

"(...) the fact of the Cienfuegos uprising meant an extraordinary moral encouragement for the combatants of the Sierra Maestra. The tyranny could no longer continue talking about the unity of its armed forces. It is convenient to point out that this phenomenon that took place in Cienfuegos is extremely interesting, because it is indisputable that the tyranny was supported by the armed forces.

"We could not keep the Cayo then, we could not keep the San Lorenzo College, nor the City Hall, nor the Marti Park, nor the city...We did not take it then, but we took it later, and our people have it now definitively and forever. And today we are the owners of our homeland, not only because we knew how to conquer it, but also because we knew how to defend it with dignity and heroism", the Cuban leader said.

Victims of exhaustion and lack of ammunition, at the stroke of midnight the revolutionaries concluded their combat. And the predictable happened. A wave of tortures, assassinations and persecutions awaited them, very much in the barbaric style of a tyrant who filled the country with mourning, while he enriched himself in the heat of surrender to foreign capital and the oligarchy.

Savage crimes such as those that caused the death of brothers Frank and Josue Pais, well-known leaders of the M-26-7, along with other brothers of struggle, in Santiago de Cuba, were examples of the unsustainable and unbearable state of the Cuban reality at that time.
Once freedom was won at the end of the following year, Cienfuegos and Cuba have memory and many places in the city that looks serenely to the Caribbean remember the action, such as the old San Lorenzo School, one of the main scenarios, today called "5 de Septiembre" Basic Secondary School.
Thus September passes with remembrances, tributes, patriotic love and pride, also with serene joy. Nobody forgets the heroes of that full and liberating day, that sublime moment.