The trial against Fidel Castro takes place on October 16, 1953, at the Civil Hospital in Santiago de Cuba, where Fidel delivers his defense speech "History Will Absolve Me", denouncing the crimes committed against the assailants at the Moncada barracks and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and the illegality of the Batista regime, also exposes its political-revolutionary program.
The most far-reaching trial for the events of the attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba is the self-defense of the main accused Fidel Castro. With the purpose of silencing their voice, they improvised a tribunal in the nurses' room of Saturnino Lora Hospital, in Santiago de Cuba, where Fulgencio Batista's regime tried to encircle justice.
Fidel, in his plea, destroyed the lies and slanders of the representatives of the tyranny, denounced the crimes and tortures against the assailants, revealed the unconstitutionality of the Batista government and argued the right of the people to rebel against that opprobrium. He presented the political, economic and social problems suffered by the country and listed the main measures that the triumphant revolution would adopt with defined objectives, known later as The Moncada Program, a strategy of the revolutionary process to achieve a better society.
Fidel raised the righteousness that he and his comrades had for the overthrow of those who came to power with the coup of March 10 and irrefutably demonstrated the unjust sanction imposed on their comrades and the one they intended to impose on himself. .
The masterly exposition of the right to rebellion against despotism, recognized from the most ancient antiquity by men of all doctrines, ideas and beliefs, is indelible.