Sixty-five years after that April of fire and courage, the Fidel Castro Ruz Center will host the workshop “Bay of Pigs, 65 Years After the Great Victory Against Imperialism” on April 14th and 15th. The event, which is part of the activities marking the Commander-in-Chief’s Centennial, aims to analyze the significance of the feat that, on April 19th, 1961, demonstrated to the world the Cuban people’s determination to defend the Revolution with arms.
According to information published by the Fidel Castro Ruz Center on its website, the opening lecture, “The U.S. Armed Forces and the Mercenary Invasion of Playa Girón: The Naval Base at Guantánamo,” will be delivered by René González Barrios, Ph.D., director of the Center.
The program includes the presentation of the book Playa Girón: a 65 años desde aquel abril socialista (Bay of Pigs: 65 years since that socialist April), a compilation by Elier Ramírez Cañedo, deputy head of the Ideological Department of the Party’s Central Committee, published by Ocean Sur, and the opening of the exhibition “Fidel, Days of Bay of Pigs” in the Cinco Palmas Hall.
Notable among the presentations to be given are: Background of Operation Pluto; The Mercenary Brigade and the Invasion Plan; The Fight Against Bandits in April 1961, among others.
Since its founding in 2021, the Fidel Castro Ruz Center has promoted the study of Girón as a cornerstone of anti-imperialist resistance. Furthermore, in each edition of the workshop, historians, journalists, and researchers have delved deeper into the lessons of that heroic feat.
The heroic days of Girón also inspired the choice of April 16, 1961, as the founding date of our current Communist Party of Cuba.
As Fidel defined it in 1976, Bay of Pigs was “the choice between the past and the future, reaction or progress, tradition or loyalty to principles, capitalism or socialism, imperialist domination or liberation.” That truth remains as relevant as ever on each anniversary.
The lectures can be followed live on the Fidel Castro Ruz Center’s YouTube channel.
