- At the end of a voyage plagued by bad weather and excessive weight, the Granma landed with its 82 expeditionaries at Los Cayuelos, close to Las Coloradas Beach on the south-eastern coast of Cuba, a territory belonging to today’s Granma Province. The revolutionary struggle recommences.
Chronology
- The expeditionary detachment is surprised by Batista’s air force and army at Alegría de Pío where it is totally decimated and dispersed.
- Fidel, Raúl and another six surviving expeditionaries meet at a place known as Cinco Palmas. In spite of the setbacks, Fidel is full of enthusiasm and proclaims: And now we really are going to win the war!
Nicolás Cartaya Gómez, attaché of the Cuban embassy in Mexico, sends a secret document to the Cuban intelligence agencies about Fidel Castro’s revolutionary activities in the Aztec city where the expedition to the Island was being prepared and indicates that the landing on Cuban coasts was likely to happen in May, 1956.
He sends from the Mexican capital several communications to Patriotic Clubs of the Cuban emigration in the United States.
He writes a letter from Mexico City to Cuban emigrant Mario Villamía judging the poor work carried out until then by New York’s 26th of July Patriotic Club.
- He goes to María Antonia González’s house, in the Mexican capital, to greet Reinaldo Benítez Nápoles, Cándido González Morales and Calixto Morales Hernández, young revolutionaries from Camagüey province, who arrived in Mexico that day, after taking shelter in the Mexican embassy in Havana.
- Together with Héctor Aldama, he visits the apartment where Juan Almeida Bosque, Antonio Darío López, and Israel Cabrera were staying, who had arrived in Mexico that day. He informs them that training would begin soon.
- He receives Faustino Pérez, a member of the M-26-7 National Directorate, at the Mexico City Airport. He comes to coordinate actions and brings 8,250 dollars collected for the struggle among members and supporters of the movement throughout the country.
- He meets with Faustino in the apartment he occupies with Melba and Montané at calle Morena No. 232.
He gives the last instructions to Faustino Pérez in Mexico City, before he returns to Cuba.
He writes the article entitled “La condenación que se nos pide” (The condemnation asked of us), where he clarified the fighting principles and methods of the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement. He denied the story disseminated by the official media about the movement’s involvement in the violent attack on a house where members of the Executive Council of the Orthodox Party used to meet and he recognizes the merits of the true militants who founded it, together with Eduardo Chibás.
He drafts and signs in Mexico the manifesto entitled: “The 26th of July Movement", in which he defines the objectives of the organization and its unitary nature, and also pinpoints their opposition to a dialogue with the representatives of the tyranny. The Bohemia magazine would later publish the manifesto on 1st April.
He welcomes fighters Julio Díaz González, Universo Sánchez Álvarez, and Carlos Bermúdez, as well as Manolo Reyes and Elio Treto, at the Bus Station in Mexico City; they had arrived from Cuba via the Veracruz port, where Raúl Castro was waiting for them.