Caribbean P130h domestic print (!) 200p 2024 UNC | Barracks from 1953

You receive a banknote from 2024 in the design indicated in UNC condition.

This item is the variant printed domestically, not in Russia. The domestically printed version:

• Series has two letters instead of three on the Russian-printed notes
• Serial number is printed in poor quality and (most or all) have one "dropped" i.e. not horizontally aligned serial number

Front: Frαηκ Pαίs, student revolutionary

Back: Cιυdαd Escοlαr 26 de Jυlιο (formerly  Μοncαdα Βαrrαcκs), Sαntiαgo.

About these famous Barracks…

On July 26, 1953, a small, lightly armed band of young rebels launched a dawn attack on these Barracks, the second-largest military base on the island, located in the main city of the east of the island, Santiago.

Their bearded, cigar-smoking leader—who would later become the country's leader (1959–2008)—did not expect a conventional victory. The aim was to ignite a popular uprising, seize weapons, and crack the aura of permanence surrounding the ruling regime.

How it unfolded

• Timing: early morning during carnival, hoping soldiers would be distracted.

• Reality: miscommunications, missed rendezvous, and sheer bad luck. Units lost coordination almost immediately.

• Outcome: swift defeat. Many rebels were killed during or after capture; torture and summary executions followed.

The leader survived, was arrested, and put on trial. In court he delivered a long political defense—later circulated as a manifesto—arguing for land reform, education, and national sovereignty. It turned a failed raid into a moral indictment of the system.

The attack targeted the dictatorship that had ruled the country since a 1952 coup, led by a strongman who remained in power from 1952—1959.

Why it mattered (despite failure)

Militarily, the barracks event was a fiasco. Symbolically, it was decisive.

• The date gave its name to a new revolutionary movement.

• The imprisoned rebels were later amnestied, regrouped abroad, and returned to wage a guerrilla war that triumphed in 1959.

• It became the foundational myth: blood first, legitimacy later.

Today the barracks no longer serve a military function. They operate as a museum and school, their façade repainted in revolutionary colors—an early defeat recast as the opening chapter of a victorious narrative.

About Frank Pαίs

Frank Pαίs was one of the most important—and least flamboyant—figures of the island’s revolutionary struggle in the 1950s.

Born in Sαntiαgo in 1934, he was a schoolteacher by training: quiet, intensely disciplined, deeply ethical. While others became famous for battlefield exploits, País built the urban underground—cells, couriers, safe houses, arms caches, strikes, and sabotage—without which the rural insurgency would have collapsed. He coordinated student groups, workers, and middle-class supporters into a coherent clandestine network that could paralyze cities on command.

Pαίs served as the principal organizer of the July 26 Movement in the eastern region, effectively acting as its internal chief while the better-known leadership operated in exile or in the mountains. He planned and executed uprisings, including the major coordinated action of November 30, 1956, designed to support the return of the guerrilla force by sea. Even when that operation failed tactically, it demonstrated the reach and seriousness of the urban resistance.

In July 1957, at just 22 years old, Pαίs was captured by security forces and executed in the street. His killing provoked massive spontaneous protests and a general strike in Santiago—one of the clearest signs that the regime had lost moral authority in the cities.

Within the revolutionary narrative, País occupies a particular role:

• not the orator,

• not the battlefield commander,

• but the architect of internal legitimacy and logistics.

If the revolution had a conscience, it looked a lot like Frank País—methodical, incorruptible, and already thinking about governance while others were still thinking about victory.