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The action of March 13, 1957

An unusual movement of students was evident around the University of Havana, that March 13, 1957. Also, those who were near the Presidential Palace listened to fire firings, shortly after 3:00 o´clock in the afternoon. Inside the mansion everything was hell.

The Revolutionary Directory intended to conduct an armed action that beheaded the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista, who was then ruling in Cuba and had blood-stained all the country. The general secretary of that group, José Antonio Echeverría, organized the action whose strategy was to strike above.

The intention to execute Batista was correlated with the occupation of Radio Reloj broadcasting station, the taking of the University of Havana, the irruption in barracks and the closing of communications. By means of this action in the city, the youth cooperated with the guerrillas who fought in the Sierra Maestra range.

The fifty young people who entered the old Presidential Palace moved to the building in two automobiles and a van of the Fast Delivery Company, where the majority of the combatants went. Once inside the building they assumed diverse missions. Those who went up the second floor in search of the dictator verified that he was escaped by an internal stairs, attached to its office.

Combats inside the Palace were violent; the garrison´s resistance became stronger, many young people died, and others were run out of ammunition. It is decided to back down, to request reinforcements and to continue the attack later, but the operation of support did not work.

The Cuban leader Fidel Castro has described the attack to the Presidential Palace on March 13, 1957 as "an well organized operation, an act of extraordinary boldness and bravery, in which there also were failures and unforeseen facts".

The taking of Radio Reloj

Radio Reloj was pirated by several national radio networks, and as soon as the fact were known, the other mass media would copy the news.

At 3:21 in the afternoon of March 13, 1957, José Antonio arrived at the Radio Reloj´s booth and gave to the speakers several reports, that informed about the attack to the Presidential Palace and from an alleged report issued by officers and enlisted personnels that would have taken the control of the Army, after dismissing the high officers and officials of the tyranny.

At the end of this bulletin, one of the speakers announced that the leader of the University Students Federation (FEU) would give a speech the Cuban people. Immediately, José Antonio began an enthusiastic harangue that still today moves the Cubans, in which he announced the fall of the tyrant (something that should have happened according to the plans)…The speech was cut when the student leader repeated his words, at the moment when an employee in charge of transmissions, in another place, removed the station from the air.

When the student leader was informed of this, he fired some shots to he CMW master.

In afternoon of that March 13, Fidel Castro was in the skirt of the Caracas hill, in the Sierra Maestra, taking ahead the final campaign of our liberating deeds. The guerrillas always had a radio with them, to keep up to date on that was happening in the country.

In the ceremony dedicated to celebrate the forty years of the attack to the Presidential Palace, (Museum of the Revolution today), Fidel remembered that between 3:30 or 4:00 of that afternoon they listened to Radio Reloj signal. "That tic-tic, or toc-toc, or tac-tac, I did not know how to define it well - and another thing was not listened to. I said to my comrades: " Something extraordinary must be happening in Havana. And we waited until at last it began to appear some news pn the attack to Palacio".

That  March 13 1957 was signaled in Cuban history as the day when for a few seconds tyrant Fulgencio Batista was almost executed by a group of students, in his own office.

Some years later, at present, the youth who carried out that action, and the action itself, continue making college students and all the Cuban youth to get together each  March 13, in a conscious exercise of loyalty to History.