On September 5, 1957, around 5:20 am, one of the actions that shook Cuba was carried out: The popular uprising in Cienfuegos. With the prominence of young people from the Navy and the July 26 Movement (M-26-7) this action was organized, which marked a milestone in the history of Cuba.
On September 3 a meeting was held in which Navy officers participated. Unilaterally, they decided to postpone the uprising for 24 or 48 hours, but due to lack of communication between the leaders of the M-26-7 and the Navy officers, the news was not reported in time to the Cienfuegos revolutionaries.
The objective was a joint uprising, through a nationwide plan including attacks on military points in several cities. The actions could not be carried out in accordance with the proposed plan, so the uprising of September 5 in Cienfuegos would be isolated, and that gave it a unique connotation, since it patented the supreme value of a people capable of facing alone, with a few weapons, to the war machine guaranteed by Washington to the tyrant Batista.
The action was directed by Julio Camacho Aguilera representing the M-26-7, the central articulating axis in the conception and development of the struggle. The actions intensified and expanded in places such as the Maritime Police, the National Police Station, adjacent to the City Hall, and the Electric Subplant on 37th Street and 48th Avenue.
Among the intrepid, willing to fight to the last consequences, was the young Alejandro González Brito, who held an important responsibility in the Naval District, in Cienfuegos.
When the armed uprising of September 5 failed, Alejandro González Brito was hidden in the Rome Hotel, Room 16. He was arrested there. He was interrogated by several minions of the Batista dictatorship and transferred to the Police Station where he was savagely beaten. He was kept there until September 13 when he was killed at the Castillo de La Chorrera. In honor of him, an elementary school in San Antonio de los Baños was named Alejandro González Brito since 1961, when it was inaugurated.
Although the actions could not be carried out as they were conceived -upon the failure of the initial plan conceived for the uprising-, the Cienfuegos uprising made the pillars of tyranny rumble, continuing the great homeland epic, which shortly after and from the heart of the Sierra Maestra would destroy the dictatorship forever.