Havana, Cuba.-Representatives of youth organizations along with Cuban veterans celebrated Sunday the 56th anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist character of the Revolution in April 1961.

The commemorative event took place at 23 & 12 Cinema, a few meters from the site where Fidel Castro made the historic declaration on April 16, 1961, during the funeral of the victims of an air raid carried out the day before by U.S. warplanes against the air bases of Ciudad Libertad and San Antonio de los Baños, and the airport of Santiago de Cuba.

That air attack was the prelude for the mercenary invasion of Playa Larga and Playa Giron, known as Bay of Pig Invasion, an action prepared by the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and executed under the command of John F. Kennedy.

During the ceremony, Yuniasky Crespo, from the Executive Bureau of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba in Havana, confirmed that the proclamation of Socialism is one of the most transcendental moments in the country’s contemporary history.