The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution (Hardcover)

by Antonio Rafael De LA Cova (Author)
Key Phrases: Haydée Santamaría, León Orúe, José Tobío, Fidel Castro, Santiago de Cuba, Civil Hospital (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro, then a lawyer and staunch opponent of the Batista dictatorship, led a group of followers in an attack on the Cuban army garrisons at Moncada and Bayamo. The attacks were poorly planned and executed and ended in disastrous failure. Castro, who later surrendered, displayed a remarkable ability to manipulate public perceptions. At his trial and famous history will absolve me speech, he painted the attack as a ringing success in the opening struggle against tyranny. Today, of course, the attack is celebrated across Cuba as the beginning of the revolution. De la Cova is a native of Havana and an assistant professor of Latino studies at Indiana University. He has provided a systematic and scrupulously balanced study of the attacks and their aftermath that serves to dispel many of the myths that have been propagated and accepted for decades. Previous accounts were overly dependent on official versions, but the author has utilized extensive interviews with survivors from both sides. This is a valuable reexamination of a pivotal event. Freeman, Jay
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Product Description

No account of Fidel Castro's rise to power is complete without mention of the failed attacks of July 26, 1953, on the Cuban army garrisons at Moncada and Bayamo. Yet no single volume to date has offered a comprehensive assessment of the assault that set the Cuban Revolution into motion and for which the 26 of July Movement was named. In this thorough study, Antonio Rafael de la Cova views this initial overthrow attempt as a propaganda victory that marked the start of Castro's ascent to national power. Drawing from three decades of interviews with more than one hundred participants--including surviving rebels, military and government personnel, and politicians--de la Cova screens historical facts from popular fictions to build an accurate account of this turning point in Cuban history and the cold war.

In July of 1953, aided by his brother Raúl, Fidel Castro led 160 sparsely armed and poorly trained followers in simultaneous assaults on two Cuban army posts, declaring as his goal the restoration of constitutional democracy on the island. Skirmishes lasted only minutes on both fronts as the insurgents failed to take the garrisons and were killed, captured, or dispersed without contingency plans. A master of manipulation, Castro was later able to recast this humiliating military defeat as a political victory when Major General Fulgencio Batista's troops summarily executed more than fifty rebel prisoners, garnering the ire of the people.

De la Cova chronicles the assaults and their aftermath as they happened, with a special focus on countering false statements later made by Castro at his subsequent trial and in his published defense speech History Will Absolve Me--a required text for Cuban schoolchildren to this day. Through research and interviews, de la Cova brings to light the persistent falsehoods told of atrocities committed by Batista's soldiers and Castro's rebels. He proves that Castro invented a legend of prisoner torture, mutilation, and dismemberment and that likewise Batista falsified the historical record of the attack. The myths surrounding the assault provided superb fodder for building support for the successful guerrilla campaign that brought Castro to power in 1959. Assessing the impact of this mythology, the divided loyalties of the Cuban soldiers, and U.S. policy toward Cuba in the 1950s, de la Cova presents a detailed and candid survey of the lasting importance of the Moncada attack and its place in history as the birth of the Cuban revolution.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 391 pages
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press (June 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570036721
• ISBN-13: 978-1570036729
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #977,852 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Castro sends innocents to slaughter at Moncada, July 15, 2007

By	Laurence Daley (Corvallis, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

de la Cova, Antonio Rafael. 2007 The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution.. University of South Carolina Press ISBN-10: 1570036721 ISBN-13: 978-1570036729


This is the most carefully researched study of the attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953 ever produced to date.

This attack and its failure started Fidel Castro on his way to international notoriety. Every detail of this complex event is covered, and every point made in a scholarly and impartial manner.

Now forget what you have read before on this topic, for most of what "you know" is incorrect. In this book we clearly see the first large fruiting of Castro's devious and Machiavellic mind, and we clearly discern a project which was an intentional military failure and yet an immense propaganda victory for its originator.


This book is even more detailed and thorough than Sun Shuyun, 2006 "The Long March," but reveals a parallel theme: communist propaganda has built false edifices of history, and on the altars in these obscene temples many naïve innocents were sacrificed by tens of millions to the gods of Marxist history. And as we know now all has turned to ashes.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not an easy read, but worth it, July 26, 2008

By	Jorge Vazquez (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Moncada attack is not an easy ride. De La Cova has done a masterful job putting the facts together of events that launched the Cuban Revolution. It will require patience b ythe reader to get through the book, but it is well worth it.

Main points I got out of it:

1) It completely debunks the myth that US policy pushed Castro into the Communist side. De La Cova shows that Castro's decision to align himself with communism was all Castro and had nothing to do with US policy From the beginning his personality was well suited for this.

2) The comparisons with Hilter are chilling and expose, once again, his true intensions from the beginning.

A must read for anyone interested in Cuban History.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Good Read, June 7, 2008

By	kickit (United States) - See all my reviews

As an avid fan of historical books, I was pleased to find a book about the Cuban Revolution, a topic that I had little knowledge of. This book is very well reaserched and is extremely informative. Prior to the writing of theis book, de la Cova interviewed dozens of rebels, soldiers, and civilians invloved with the Moncada attack, making his observations relativelly unbiased. Also, de la Cova uses the accounts of medical professionals and others present to refute some of the myths associated with the Moncada attack, including parts of the black legend, which held that some of the rebels were brutally tortured and killed after the attack.

Though de la Cova takes a staunch anti-Castro stand in this book, which is expected, he does not attempt to justify the actions of Batista's soldiers following the attack. He portrays Castro as an authoritarian tyrant using accounts of the rebels that he commanded.

I also liked the way de la Cova wrote the book. He did not spend paragraph after paragraph describing facts and statistics in great detail, which would have made the book hard to read. The book is similar to the works of Stephen Ambrose and other war writers in that it focuses primarily on oral history. I was never bored while reading this book.

The only real problem that I had with "The Moncada Attack" was that de la Cova has a tendency to repeat himself a lot during his writings. For instance, he compared Castro's Moncada Attack to Hitlers Beer Hall Putsch on at least three occassions. However, this was not a big problem and it seemed that the repetitions helped me remember some of the facts later on. This book is a great read for anyone who enjoys historical novels like I do or just wants to be entertained.