Sunday was the 62nd anniversary of the first offensive Fidel Castro's guerrillas made against Cuba’s then dictator Fulgencio Batista. The rebellion, which began July 26, 1953, eventually brought down Batista and altered the ideological aims of the island nation a mere five years later.

Easily the most important holiday for the communist country, this year’s celebration was decidedly different from those observed on past anniversaries.

After 50 years of icy tension between the U.S. and Cuba, there is finally a thaw. The United States, which backed Batista’s forces during the revolution, re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba on July 20.

The usual anti-U.S. rhetoric was missing amid performances and patriotic speeches championing the future of socialism. Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura, who offered the keynote speech at the celebration before the 6,000 Cubans that gathered at the Moncada Barracks to participate, described the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the neighboring nations as the culmination of a first step that began in December.

"Now begins a long and complex road toward normalization of bilateral relations that includes among other aspects the end of the blockade and the return of the Guantanamo naval base," the 84-year-old vice president said, as reported in Reuters.

Since December of last year, several diplomatic wrinkles between the U.S. and Cuba have been ironed out. President Obama has requested that Congress start to lift the embargo against Cuba, and Cuban leader Raúl Castro has absolved Obama for all past U.S. aggression against his country.

The words of camaraderie expressed in this year's softer celebration are a far cry from the incendiary remarks directed at the U.S. by Fidel Castro back in 1962, as the leader tried to foster anti-U.S. sentiment in Latin America.

As noted in a Time article that traces Cuba’s “Revolutionary pragmatism,” Fidel said at the time, “In America and the world, it is known that the revolution will be victorious, but it is improper revolutionary behavior to sit at one’s doorstep waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by.”