Havana Presidential Palace Attack (1957)

Wed Mar 13, 1957

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Image: Two men, armed with rifles, participating in the palace attack in Havana on March 13th, 1957

On this day in 1957, the Directorio Revoluncionari Estudiantil, a group of anti-Batista, revolutionary Cuban students, attacked the Presidential Palace in Havana in a failed attempt to assassinate Fulgencio Batista and overthrow the government.

Participants of the attack successfully stormed the palace, making it to the third floor and killing many of Batista’s personal guards, but failed to locate and kill Batista himself. The rebellion was successfully quelled, and two of the revolutionaries were put on trial; the rest were either killed or escaped.

A large pro-Batista rally, attended by ~250,000 people, took place on April 7th. Signs read “For Batista, in the Past, Now and Forever” and “Five Hundred American Residents of the Isle of Pines Have Faith in Batista.”

On January 22nd, 1959, Fidel Castro stated to journalists that individual-focused acts such as the palace attack are “false concepts about the revolution” because “tyranny is not a man; tyranny is a system…We were never supporters of tyrannicide or military coups, [which tended] to inculcate the people a complex of impotence.”