Moncada was a military barracks in Santiago de Cuba named after General Guillermont Moncada, the hero of the Cuban War of Independence. On 26 July 1953, the barracks were the site of an armed attack by a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. This armed attack is widely accepted as the beginning of the Cuban Revolution as he adopted the date of the attack, July 26, as the name for his revolutionary movement that eventually overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista on January 12, 1959.