ANAIC recalled the defeat inflicted, between April 17 and 19, 1961, by the Cuban Army and the popular militias on a mercenary force of more than 1,500 men, with air and naval support, financed, trained and armed by the United States with the purpose of overthrowing the young Revolution.

The plan consisted of occupying a small portion of Cuban territory, between Playa Larga and Playa Giron, to form a provisional puppet government that would later seek the US military intervention, the statement noted, after recalling that then President John F. Kennedy took responsibility for the failure.

But both, he and the 11 subsequent US presidents, continued their attempts to put an end to the Cuban revolutionary process by other means and methods, unable to understand the impossibility of overthrowing a revolution when it has support of practically all the people, it stressed.

In that sense, the statement recalled that from the spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution carried out here in the days of the mercenary invasion, the first groups emerged “of what would later become the Italy-Cuba National Friendship Association.”

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