SANTIAGO, Cuba — Arriving outside the old military barracks early Saturday in vintage American sedans, hundreds of Cuban schoolchildren wielding old BB guns re-enacted the armed attack that launched Fidel Castro's revolutionary battle 50 years before.
"Fidel! Fidel!" thousands of Castro's supporters chanted as he took his seat for a 50th anniversary celebration of the audacious armed attack he led on the Moncada barracks in this eastern provincial capital when he was just 26 years old.
Getting up to address the nation of 11.2 million people, Castro — who turns 77 next month — declared it "incredible" to think he was so young when led the attack five decades ago. Castro is now the world's longest-ruling head of government.
Despite more than four decades of American trade sanctions, and especially acrimonious U.S.-Cuba relations in recent months, the socialist system that Castro created two years after taking power in 1959 also has survived. Today, Cuba is among only four communist systems in the world and only one in the Western Hemisphere.
Castro's government is dealing with a severe cash crisis and widespread international criticism for imposing prison sentences of up to 28 years in prison for 75 dissidents and the rapid execution of three men who hijacked a ferry and tried to reach Florida.
Before the sun rose over this eastern city on Saturday, more than a dozen of the men who survived the attack at the same site five decades before attended the pre-dawn reenactment at the former barracks that now serves as a primary school.
Although they were initially caught off guard, Batista's soldiers gained control of the situation. Six attackers and 16 soldiers were reported killed during the resulting fire fight.
Cuban historians say 55 of the rebels who were captured were tortured to death, and the military killed 10 civilian bystanders.
Despite the mission's failure, it was a public relations success. Batista's violent response only brought Castro and his supporters more sympathy.
"Many great things in history after started out as crazy acts," Moncada attack survivor Pedro Trigo Lopez said of the audacious raid. "If Moncada had never occurred, we today would have been suffering from the same economic circumstances as our Latin American brothers," said the 75-yearold Trigo, one of 31 living survivors.
If not for the attack, Cuba today would be "a semi-colony of the United States," said 69-year-old Moncada survivor Ramon Pez Ferro, who serves on the Cuban parliament's foreign relations committee. "We were young people with political worries who wanted to achieve independence for our country and improve its social situation."
During the subsequent trial, Castro, a trained lawyer, defended himself and gave a courtroom speech that brought him and his cause even more support.
"I know that prison will be harder for me than it has been for anybody," Castro said in the speech, whose text was later secretly distributed. "But I do not fear it, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant. ... Convict me; it does not matter. History will absolve me."
Castro and the other survivors were freed in a general amnesty after 22 months. They went to Mexico, where they organized a guerrilla campaign and toppled Batista's government on Jan. 1, 1959.
The anniversary of the attack — July 26 — is now communist Cuba's most important national holiday, known as the Day of National Rebellion. On the island, it replaced May 20, Cuban Independence Day, a date embraced by Cuban exiles as their own patriotic holiday.
The imposing Moncada barracks were closed to the news media on Saturday as Castro's security team swept the area and erected a security perimeter for the evening speech by the Cuban leader on a stage outside the building.
While he always reflects on the historic importance of the Moncada attack, Castro has often used his July 26 speeches to make important policy pronouncements on issues such as immigration and Cuba-U.S. relations.
About 10,000 people — mostly high-ranking government and Communist Party leaders — were invited to attend the anniversary ceremony. For the first time in recent memory, members of Cuba's foreign diplomatic corps were not invited.
A local party leader on Friday declined to say why the diplomats were not invited, but implied it was because the audience area was not large enough to accommodate everyone.