Ideology and Politics

On May 1, 1957, in Santiago de Cuba, the trial of another group of insurrectionists came to an end—a trial that was to have a deep and lasting impact. On that date survivors of the Granma expedition and followers of Frank País in the Santiago uprising were sentenced for rebellion against the state, with one of the court magistrates expressing a dissenting opinion. Judge Manuel Urrutia Lleó absolved the accused for what they had done and attempted to do, ¹ for, he said, “the sacred right of resistance against oppression is consecrated by Article 40 of the Constitution of 1940.”