The martyrs of March 13, 1957, who led the attack on the Presidential Palace and the Radio Reloj radio station, not only wrote a page in the history of Cuba with their revolutionary action against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, but will always be present in the memory of the Cuban people. The objective of this action was to overthrow the Batista regime and through the national radio to call the people to a general strike and to join the armed struggle.
The development of the events and the results of the action were different to how they had been planned, since not all the support forces that had been foreseen participated in the assaults and the objective of executing the tyrant was not achieved. Although the attackers reached the third floor of the Palace, they did not locate or execute Batista, who managed to escape through a secret door.
A group of young men led by José Antonio Echeverría assaulted the Radio Reloj radio station building, simultaneously with the operation carried out at the Presidential Palace. After successfully taking the building, Echeverría read a part of the revolutionary proclamation announcing Batista's execution, but he did it, by mistake, a few minutes before the beginning of the attack on the Presidential Palace.
He only managed to say "People of Cuba! At this moment the dictator Fulgencio Batista has just been executed in a revolutionary manner. In his own burrow in the Presidential Palace, the people of Cuba have gone to settle accounts with him. And it is we, the Revolutionary Directorate, who in the name of the Cuban Revolution have given the coup de grâce to this regime of opprobrium. Cubans listening to me: He has just been eliminated..." At that instant, an employee took the broadcast off the air, so the speech was interrupted. When Echeverría was informed that he was no longer on the air, he fired shots at the station's master. From 3:30 to 4:00 in the afternoon only the "Tic-Tac" was heard on Radio Reloj's frequency.
The group, after leaving the building, went to the headquarters of the University Student Federation (FEU) at the University of Havana to hand over their weapons to the people and begin an armed insurrection; but before they arrived, a patrol of Batista's police appeared and, after an exchange of gunfire in the street, student leader José Antonio Echevarría was killed.
The heroic action of these young men on March 13, 1957 is remembered every year by Cubans as one of the glorious pages of the history of the Cuban Revolution.