Unlike the previous year when Cuba’s nationalist (but still pro-capitalist) policies generated an economic boom and mass support for the state, the radicalizing policies of the summer of 1960 produced palpable tensions and outright opposition to Fidel Castro’s version of revolution. Held on July 26, 1960, this rally to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Fidel’s failed Assault on the Moncada Barracks took on an oddly forced tone. Held outside the city of Santiago in a remote field in eastern Cuba, the rally entailed mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people to the site, including an unprecedented number of invited foreign Leftists from Latin America and the United States. Compared to its predecessor in July 1959, which relied on civic volunteers to coordinate the visit of 500,000 formerly landless peasants to Havana and their stays in private homes, the 1960 rally lacked the euphoria and spontaneity of citizen-led organization.
