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hicago Artists Against Apartheid will present a program entitled ARTISTS AGAINST THE BLOCKADE. It will be a fund-raiser for needed medical and other supplies in Cuba and for the Palestinian victims of the U.S. government backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians. This program will feature many musicians and speeches, including by Dr. Carelia Rivera Garcia, Cuban solidarity activist born in Cuba, and Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez.

Since 1959 and the success of the Cuban Socialist Revolution in throwing out the U.S. government domination of Cuba and its puppet dictator Batista, July 26th has been celebrated as a national holiday in Cuba.

July 26 is celebrated as National Rebellion Day in Cuba. It commemorates the 26th of July Movement, a revolutionary movement led by Fidel Castro that overthrew the dictatorial capitalist pro-U.S. regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba and declared victory on January 1, 1959.

These holidays commemorate the events of July 26, 1953 when Fidel Castro and a force of 160 others stormed the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's second-largest city. The attack was seen as an opportunity to arm the rebels and instigate a revolution that would bring down U.S. puppet ruler Batista. It did not succeed, with many captured or killed.

Despite the failure of the attack on the Moncada barracks, it is seen as the catalyst for the Castro-led insurrection that eventually expelled the regime represented by head-of-state Fulgencio Batista. The date of the attack was adopted as the name for the revolutionary movement that developed and succeeded on January 1, 1959 and proceeded to get rid of the U.S. corporations and their U.S. colonial government, and to develop the government of, for, and by the people of Cuba.

The U.S. government, under Republican President Eisenhower, responded with an economic blockade of Cuba. This has continued ever since, escalating under Presidents Trump and Biden, who placed and kept Cuba fraudulently on a list of state sponsors of terrorism. This listing and the blockade has cost Cuba all kinds of shortages of food, fuel, medicine. It has cost a loss of income of over 4 billion dollars.

There has been opposition to this blockade ever since in the U.S. and around the world. This opposition continues to this day.