Cuba is set to celebrate the 59th anniversary of its Revolution, on January 1, 1959.
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Midnight Sunday will see Havana fire 21 artillery rounds from the old San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress, in a traditional ceremony that will be broadcast live on television. State officials will then greet Cubans with a message commemorating the Revolution and its achievements.
On January 1, Cubans will celebrate by attending concerts, cultural activities and dance shows planned by the Ministry of Culture across the island.
In the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, the final resting place of the late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, and the place where he delivered his victory speech at dawn on January 1, 1959, there will also be celebrations, under the title of “Fiesta de la Bandera.”
On the occasion, Bolivian President Evo Morales sent a message of congratulations to the Cuban people.
On his official Twitter account, Morales recalled the victory, saying, “Who must decide who should govern are the people and nobody but the people."
The president also recalled in another tweet that with this historic event, also came the fall of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had assumed power after orchestrating a coup in 1952.
Como hoy, 1958, el dictador Fulgencio Baptista, fugó a República Dominicana derrotado por la Revolución del pueblo cubano, encabezada por el comandante Fidel Castro. Así, el fin de año marcó el inicio de una de las revoluciones antimperialistas más importantes de la historia.
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 31, 2017
A day earlier, the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, also sent a congratulatory message to Cuban President Raul Castro, on behalf of the Sandinista government.
On January 1, 1959, Rebel Army forces headed by Fidel Castro entered the city of Santiago de Cuba victorious, marking the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
La creación de mecanismos de integración de Latinoamérica es parte del legado de la #RevoluciónCubana https://t.co/kvS1tHpgnx pic.twitter.com/VRWMRnQM94
— teleSUR TV (@teleSURtv) December 31, 2017
For Brazilian sociologist Emir Sader, the influence of the Cuban Revolution in Latin America was greater than that of the Russian Revolution in Europe in its time.
Chilean political scientist Marta Harnecker has emphasized that the triumph of the Cuban Revolution broke the fatalism of the Latin American left, the power of the United States on the continent and the recourse of dictatorships by oligarchies.
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Indeed, for Castro, the unity of Latin America and, even more, that of the of Third World, was essential, leading him to create the Tricontinental in January 1966, which helped support national liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
The creation of regional bodies such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP), the Union of South American Nations in 2008 (Unasur) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States 2010 (Celac), were also a manifestation of this continental unity, especially in the face of imperialist aggression from the United States.
On this day, social organizations on the continent and the world over continue to be inspired by the Cuban Revolution and its legacy of anti-imperialism.