Top Left leaders Prakash Karat (CPM) and A B Bardhan (CPI) will be going to Cuba to take part in the celebrations to commemorate 50 years of landing of 'Granma', the leisure yacht which brought Fidel Castro and 12 of his comrades from Mexico to Cuba on December 2 to wage revolution against the Batista regime.

Margaret Alva will represent the Congress at the celebration to take place between November 28 and December 2. In August, Karat and Bardhan were invited to be part of Castro's 80th birthday. But the event was cancelled due to Castro's sudden illness. Though Karat and Bardhan would not be present on all five days of the function, they are likely to meet Castro.

The landing of 'Granma' has a special significance in modern Cuban history. Its landing was planned to re-enact the route that Jose Marti had taken during the war of Cuban independence in 1895. Accompanied by Che Guevara, who joined in Mexico as doctor of the revolutionary army, Granma was overcrowded with 82 soldiers when it left Mexico on November 25 but only 12 survived when the yacht landed at Playa de los Colorados, 15 miles away from the designated spot of Niguero.

Apart from Castro, those who survived included Castro's brother Raul, heavily wounded Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos.

Source: The Times of India