1 Peso Assault to the Moncada Garrison

On 26 July 1953, Fidel Castro led roughly 160 rebels in a coordinated attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba — the second-largest military installation on the island. The assault failed badly. Over half the attackers were killed, many of them captured and executed after the fact by Batista's forces rather than in the fighting itself. Castro was arrested, tried, and sentenced to fifteen years; he served two before a general amnesty.

The date became the name of the revolutionary movement itself, and its commemoration in Cuban coinage has been a recurring fixture since the 1970s. This 1988 issue appeared during a period of significant Cuban commemorative output aimed partly at the foreign collector market.