In the insurrectional struggle of Cubans to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and conquer a Free Cuba, the youth, united in the Revolutionary Directorate, knew how to convulse the popular conscience, increase the repudiation of the tyrannical regime, and advance the path to triumph.
The events that took place on March 13, 1957, in Havana, with the attack on the Presidential Palace were among those that were inscribed in our history.
That day marked the traces of courage and daring of members of the Revolutionary Student Directorate led by Jose Antonio Echeverria when they carried out, in the afternoon and in a synchronized manner, the assault on the Presidential Palace and at the same time the occupation of the Radio Reloj radio station, under the plan to execute the dictator of the Batista regime and to accelerate the Triumph of the Revolution.
Several factors contributed to the failure to achieve the objective of the operation; the reinforcement never arrived, there was numerical and armament superiority of the garrison of the Presidential Palace as well as Batista’s escape. Carlos Gutiérrez Menoyo, José Antonio Echeverría and a score of combatants were killed in this risky action.
In that operation of the Cuban youth, Fulgencio Batista was never so close to being executed when in the minds of the Cuban revolutionaries grew the idea and certainty that there were people with the necessary will to take the Marti’s ideals to their just materialization, even at the risk of their own lives to point out the path of freedom.
Sixty-eight years have passed since that historic day of struggle led by José Antonio Echeverría, an outstanding leader of the Cuban youth, and the defense of its historical transcendence is kept in full memory by all those who today battle and defy obstacles in the different fronts of society, to keep alive the example of those who gave their generous blood for the conquest of a free and sovereign nation such as Cuba.