After fierce fighting, following the landing three days earlier of some 1,500 mercenaries in that Zapata Swamp region in the western Matanzas province, the forces of the Rebel Army, the National Revolutionary Police, and the popular militias defeated the invaders. “Let the tanks not stop until the mats are wet with the waters of Playa Girón because every minute that those mercenaries are on our soil is an affront to our Homeland,” the supreme leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, had ordered.

The invasion was organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and had the air and naval support of that northern nation’s Army, whose government has since tried to reverse the social transformation process in Cuba.

For Fidel Castro, the historical significance of April 19, 1961, transcended the country’s boundaries because that day, he said, Yankee imperialism suffered its first major defeat in Latin America.

In an act commemorating the anniversary in 1965, the revolutionary leader affirmed that the victory in Playa Girón “marked the day when the plans drawn up by the Pentagon smart generals, and the CIA genius, collapsed.”

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