Raised rifles and approval defined April 16, 1961, in response to the young leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, at the burial of the victims of the bombing the day before by U.S. planes, under camouflage, to bases located in Ciudad Libertad, San Antonio de los Baños and Santiago de Cuba.
Since then, the date has been a reference for the celebration of the Day of the Militiaman in Cuba, a moment that remembers the courage of the patriots who demonstrated their willingness to fight rather than see their sovereignty trampled.
In the name of their compatriots, those gathered there gave a resounding yes to the political affiliation of the socialism of the Cuban Revolution in progress.
The aggressions of April 15 also caused injuries of varying degrees to more than 50 people.
A crowd of militiamen and people in general gathered for the mourning farewell before the front of the Colon Cemetery, near the corner of 23rd and 12th, one of Havana's cultural nodes.
Testimonies of attendees reported that silence and expectation reigned before the beginning of the act, and the former was only broken after listening to Fidel's arguments when he explained that from now on the Revolution would take the road of socialism.
That speech entered the history of Cuba not only as a tribute to the martyrs of the recent events, but also for being the announcement of an unprecedented event in the western hemisphere.
(...) "And that we have made, said the leader, a socialist revolution under the very noses of the United States, and that we defend that socialist revolution with those rifles, and that we defend that socialist revolution with the courage with which yesterday our anti-aircraft gunners riddled the aggressor planes with bullets", he said at the time.
"What the imperialists cannot forgive us is that we are here, what the imperialists cannot forgive us is the dignity, the integrity, the courage, the ideological firmness, the spirit of sacrifice and the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people.
Fellow workers and farmers, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble, and for this Revolution we are ready to give our lives," said the revolutionary leader.
Fidel Castro summarized the climate of US harassment, aggressions and sabotage against the Island since the triumph of the Revolution in the face of the first sovereign and social justice measures, many of them conceived in the Moncada Program in 1953, in the plea History will absolve me pronounced by the head of the Revolution.
The revolutionary leader recalled that Cubans knew well what an American intervention and invasion was, since what happened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but what happened recently in this land was different.
It was a kind of piracy and filibustering of the 20th century, international, illegal and abusive. An undeclared war that could not be qualified as such, which included constant bombing of ports, sabotage to economic centers and crimes.
He also warned about the nature of the bombings of April 15 and valued them as a prelude to an aggression and invasion, already imminent.
Life soon proved him right, because the following day an armed mercenary force, instructed and paid by Washington, began the invasion of Playa Giron and Playa Larga.
Under the nomenclature of Assault Brigade 2506, formed by mercenaries of Cuban origin, without any patriotic ideal, tried to destroy the nascent Revolution in exchange for money.
The mercenary brigade was neutralized and soundly defeated in less than 72 hours by Cuban militiamen and former combatants of the Rebel Army and was the first defeat of imperialism in Latin America.
The mercenarism cradled by the Union since then continues in the same way. From failure to failure, in exchange for money and perks for the bosses and even a lot of renown as fourth generation war stars. It is a spawn of a few think tanks answering to the US ruling class.
All at the expense of the economic contribution of a people who are largely unaware of where the contents of the coffers they help to swell, made invisible by a cloud of disinformation and manipulation, are going.
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