Shortly after midnight on 25 November 1956 in the Mexican port of Tuxpan, Veracruz, the Granma was surreptitiously boarded by 82 members of the 26th of July movement including their leader, Fidel Castro, his brother, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos. The group—who later came to be known collectively as los expedicionarios del yate Granma—set out from Tuxpan at 1 a.m. and, after a series of vicissitudes and misadventures, including the near-foundering of their heavily overladen and leaking craft, disembarked on 2 December on the Playa Las Coloradas, municipality of Niquero, in what is now Granma Province (after the vessel), but was then part of the larger Oriente Province. The Granma was piloted by Norberto Collado Abreu, a Cuban Navy veteran and ally of Castro. The location