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Guitar players entertain Fidel Castro and his rebel group hiding in the Sierra Maestra in 1958. (1958 Telenews Newsreel Photo)

Cuban school girls hold a painting of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in 1997 to mark the 30th anniversary of the legendary guerrilla fighter's death. (Canadian Press Photo)

By Aileen S. Yoo
Washingtonpost.com Staff
Updated December 1998

Nestled in the Sierra Maestra is Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city after Havana and regarded as the "cradle of the revolution." It was in these mountains that a young lawyer named Fidel Castro led a band of about 200 men to attack the Moncada Barracks military base in 1953. The 26th of July Movement, as it would be called, marked the beginning of the revolution against the dictatorial regime of President Fulgencio Batista and the rise of Fidel Castro Ruz.

Rise of Castro
The son of a sugar planter, Fidel Castro was born in 1927 and raised in Cuba's eastern province of Oriente. As a law student at the University of Havana, he became active in student politics and joined the Ortodoxos (the Cuban People's Party) -- an opposition group working during the Batista regime -- and became a follower of the party's leader Eduardo Chibas. After receiving his law degree in 1950, Castro immersed himself in helping the poor.

Batista was president from 1940 to 1944 and ruled directly or indirectly from 1933 to 1958 after leading a military coup that deposed President Gerardo Machado. While Batista had allowed free presidential elections, he staged a military coup in 1952, stopped free elections and seized power again. Castro, who had intended to campaign for parliament, charged Batista in court with violating the constitution, but his petition was rejected. The next year, the 26-year-old Castro organized the failed attack in Santiago de Cuba and was captured. In his historic statement at his trial, he said "la historia me absolvera" (history will absolve me).

Castro's 15-year prison sentence was commuted under a general amnesty Batista granted in 1955 to exiled members of opposition and political prisoners. Castro went to Mexico, where he organized and trained a fighting force of other Cuban exiles and met the Argentinean-born revolutionary Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who joined the cause. Castro's second attack in 1956 was also a failure, with Batista's forces killing or capturing most of the men. The survivors, including Castro, his brother Raul and Guevara, fled to the Sierra Maestra, where they established a stronghold, recruited and trained a larger force and waged guerilla warfare against the government for the next three years. After protracted fighting and many defeats, Batista fled Cuba on Jan. 1, 1959, and Castro's revolutionaries marched victoriously into Havana.