In Isla de la Juventud today, January 1, 1959 is remembered, when members of the July 26 movement and revolutionaries held in the Presidio Modelo took the former Isle of Pines in the name of the Revolution.
A review of history refers that from Palma Soriano, on December 31, 1958, through the airwaves of Radio Rebelde, Fidel Castro Ruz declared: “I have come to tell our people that the dictatorship is defeated. It is possible that the fall of Batista is a matter of 72 hours ”.
The defeat of the tyrannical regime was imminent; In the middle of the party for the reception of the new year, Fulgencio Batista gave a melodramatic speech of resignation from his position as president, the news of his flight gradually leaked out and hours later the stations confirmed it.
Behind the bars of the Presidio Modelo in Isla de Pinos the “news” spread like wildfire thanks to a radio team that was clandestinely guarded by Casto Amador in circular number four where they were, among other inmates, militants of the July 26 movement and 80 soldiers revealed against the dictator.
While the people outside took to the streets to celebrate, Commander Carlos Viera La Rosa, head of the prison, traveled to the Columbia Military Camp in Havana to seek instructions from General Eulogio Cantillo, who planned to carry out a coup, after the Batista's escape.
In the afternoon a military commission arrived from Columbia to free ex-Colonel Ramón Barquín, sanctioned for the events of April 4, 1956, which went down in history as the "conspiracy of the cigars." Together with him, the rest of the military convicted for the same cause returned to the Cuban capital.
José Ramón Fernández - at the head of a group of soldiers still dressed as inmates - took command of the Rural Guard Squad and the entire prison; Armando Hart held the position of Governor of the territory for a few hours and Jesús Montané Oropesa, appointed Mayor, relieved him and in his place another pinero Mariano Rives took over.
Fernández, military chief of the Region, transmitted that day the first message in the name of the Revolution to the people, through La voz de Isla de Pinos (current radio station Radio Caribe), a small station founded on December 15, 1958, whose owner it was the large landowner Francisco Cajigas.
The next morning, before the people gathered in the General Lacret park, Mariano Rives - a member of the 26 de Julio Revolutionary Movement - was presented as mayor of Isla de Pinos, who had participated in the seizure of the Rural Guard barracks at the Post of the Navy, the City Council, the Tax Zone and Customs.
That January 1959 "the island had to be secured regardless of what happened in Havana (Columbia)," José Ramón Fernández assured his colleague Luis Báez years later.
Today when the pineros are determined to rescue the economy of the territory based on the municipal development strategy, they thank the Revolution for their socioeconomic growth, thought here when the centennial youth led by Fidel kept unjust prison in the old Model Prison.
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