The 26th in Ciego de Avila

The 58^th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barracks was celebrated this morning in Ciego de Avila in a ceremony that wrapped up by 8:15.

The main speech was delivered, as it was last year, by Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura. The text is here and Granma has more coverage.

Machado discussed the “strategic” importance of raising farm output. He noted that enterprises are slow to identify idle lands that can be turned over to producers, the process of turning over the land is slow, and not enough assistance is given to new producers. (See Cuban media report.)

The Communist Party’s Central Committee will meet in the coming days, he said, to discuss the economic reform process. Machado also referred to preparations for a Communist Party conference next January. One of the party’s tasks, he said, will be to work “so that prejudices against the non-state sector of the economy are left behind.” This idea, that communists need to accept and inculcate the attitude that private economic activity is a good thing, has already been announced as one of that meeting’s tasks.

Raul Castro is making a habit of letting someone else play first fiddle at the 26^th of July ceremony. In the past two years at least, he gave a substantive speech soon afterward (see last year’s). This year, maybe the Central Committee meeting will provide that occasion, or a just-announced August 1 meeting of the National Assembly.