the cuban revolution

The Cuban Revolution is of great importance from the point of view of universal history. It represents one of the last strongholds of Soviet communism from the Cold War era, as well as an example of how a military dictatorship can be perpetuated, even in the present, in a small island nation.

This article shows the historical context that led to the emergence of the Cuban Revolution, as well as its specific causes and triggers, an overview of the main armed confrontations and the development of Cuba after the overthrow of a dictatorship and the establishment of another. .

Historic context

At the end of the 19th century, an independence movement led by José Martí had formed in Cuba against the Spanish crown. By then, Cuba had already been a colony of the powerful European country for more than 400 years, and they were more than socially and culturally ready to become independent. The Cuban War of Independence lasted from February 24, 1895 to December 10, 1898, the date on which the island achieved victory thanks to the crucial intervention of the United States. The North American nation declared war on Spain, since it had its own colonial interests in the Caribbean Sea, which tipped the balance of power in favor of the island’s independentistas.

However, shortly after gaining independence, the United States began to control the newly installed government. This interference continued over the years, effectively turning the Caribbean nation into a de facto colony of the United States, which generated much resentment among the Cuban population.

This, together with the rise of real socialism throughout the world, which in this case promised to remedy the social inequalities inherited from the colonial period, provided the ideal context for the development of the armed movements that would end up seizing power on the island in the middle of the century. XX, maintaining it to this day.

The beginning and causes of the revolution

The beginnings of the Cuban Revolution can be linked to the victory of the Soviet Revolution in Russia in 1917. This revolution, started in the middle of the First World War and led by Lenin, overthrew the Russian tsarist monarchy, putting an end to the Russian empire and establishing a new system of government that would become popular in many other countries around the world, particularly in Latin America: socialism.

Socialism became very popular in the Central and South American continent due to centuries of colonialism, which generated deep inequalities between social classes. Peronism arose in Argentina and Jacobo Árbenz assumed power in Guatemala, thus starting the rise of socialism in Latin America.

In 1952, Fulgencio Batista, who had been Cuba’s constitutional president from 1940 to 1944, carried out a coup with which he overthrew the president-elect Carlos Prío Scarrás, thus establishing a military dictatorship and suspending constitutional guarantees.

As is often the case in most military dictatorships, during the Batista dictatorship, supported by the United States government, the dictator and his closest allies enriched themselves enormously at the expense of the Cuban people, further deepening social inequalities. This gave way to multiple protests by students and other members of civil society that were violently repressed, pushing Cuban society to take up arms.

On July 26, 1953, a group of young people led by Fidel Castro tried to take over a military barracks, but they failed. All were arrested, but later pardoned by Batista himself, in response to growing international pressure. Once free, in 1955, Fidel and his companions founded the July 26 Movement, a profoundly anti-imperialist political organization whose sole purpose at that time was to overthrow the dictatorship.

The members of the movement went into exile in Mexico, where they begin to plan the true Cuban Revolution, which officially begins on December 2, 1956 when the same group of 82 anti-imperialist rebels returns to the island.

The triumph of the Cuban Revolution

Shortly after landing in Cuba on December 2, 1956, the 82 rebels clashed with Batista’s army, killing more than two-thirds of the group. In fact, only 20 rebels survived, among them Fidel, his brother Raúl and the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

After the confrontation, they managed to enter the Sierra Maestra, a mountainous and wooded area near Santiago de Cuba, in the south of the island. There they established themselves more or less safely, which gave them the opportunity to recruit more rebels and sympathizers to their cause.

1957 was the year in which the revolutionary armed movement obtained more recruits and managed to spread throughout the island. In February of that year, Herbert Matthews, a reporter for the New York Times, interviewed Fidel in Sierra Maestra and published the interview in that newspaper, the most widely read in the United States. This launched Fidel and his movement into the international arena, generating great support both inside and outside the island.

The New York Times article managed to get many more Cubans to join the armed movement, which carried out its first open military action in the Combat of El Uvero, on May 28, 1957. Then, on September 5 of the same year , stands the Cienfuegos base, which was not under Castro’s command. Batista’s army bombarded the base, with which he managed to put an end to part of the 400 rebels, including lieutenant Dionisio San Román, the leader of the uprising. The survivors join Fidel’s ranks.

1958 marked the bloodiest stage of the armed struggle. After multiple battles, Fidel manages to control the southern half of the island, despite attempts by Batista’s army to counterattack at various points. Arriving in the last months of 1958, the columns of the revolutionary army commanded by Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto “Che” Guevara took control of the strategic city of Santa Clara, Batista’s last redoubt before reaching Havana. The dictator Batista fled the island leaving his second in charge, but he did not resist the arrival of the guerrillas in the Cuban capital, thus consolidating the victory of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. After the victory, Fidel appointed Manuel Urrutia as interim president of the nation, thus taking control of state institutions.

The Cuban Revolution and Communism

The revolutionary government was originally supposed to call a general election after a year in power. However, after the victory on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro changed his mind and ignored the agreement reached in Sierra Maestra with other insurgent groups at the beginning of the armed movement, declaring that holding open elections would mean a return to the political parties. corrupt politicians and the rigged elections of the Batista government.

This, together with the progressive increase of communist influence in the Cuban revolution and other tensions between Fidel and President Urrutia, forced the latter to resign his post and go into exile in the United States, assuming the position of President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado. With this and with the fact that Fidel was appointed Prime Minister by Torrado, whom he fully controlled, Fidel became a de facto dictator , and would remain so for practically the rest of his life.

The newly installed revolutionary government immediately received the support of the Soviet Union and the communist party of the Soviet Union. Under this influence, a series of measures were taken on the island, such as the Agrarian Reform, which involved a series of expropriations and nationalizations of lands and confiscations of assets, which considerably improved the living conditions of many low-income Cubans. However, this also affected, but negatively, many interests of North American companies in Cuba, for which the government of Washington took action on the matter and imposed a harsh economic blockade on the island on February 7, 1962.

Washington was concerned about having a direct ally of the Soviet Union just a few miles from its coast, especially in the midst of the Cold War. However, the economic blockade only contributed to improving and consolidating relations between Cuba and the USSR. The same year that the blockade began, Cuba agreed to install a series of Russian medium-range nuclear missile bases that could only have one objective: the Atlantic coastal areas of the United States. This led to the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the most dangerous moment of the entire Cold War and the closest the world has come up to now to open nuclear war between the two greatest military powers.

The fall of the Soviet Union

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a hard blow for the Cuban Revolution, since 85% of its foreign trade depended on the aforementioned Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Fortunately for Fidel and the other Cuban leaders, Russia continued to support Cuba and the Castro regime, even though the flow of trade and economy fell drastically, and the regime was forced to take some economic measures it never wanted to take. Among these measures, the Cuban government allowed the use of the dollar in the economy, independent jobs that were paid in foreign currency, and definitively opened the doors to tourism. In any case, between the fall of the Soviet Union and the economic blockade by the United States, the island was hardly able to develop a thriving economy.

The revolution today

Even today, the architects of the Cuban Revolution are still in power and the blockade is still in place. There have been some recent attempts to improve relations between Washington and Havana, but these attempts ultimately failed. On April 13, 2009, the Democratic administration of Barak Obama took steps to ease the blockade on Cuba, allowing for the first time unrestricted travel by Cuban-Americans to the island. Then, in 2011, it allowed missionaries and students to travel to Cuba from the United States, given certain conditions.

Things were looking pretty good. On April 11, 2015, then-President of Cuba Raúl Castro, who had replaced an ailing Fidel, met with President Obama in Panama City, marking the first meeting between the leaders of those countries in more than 50 years of history of the economic blockade.

However, any progress made by the Obama administration was quickly lost with the coming to power of the Republican Party led by Donald Trump, who took all possible measures to repeal those taken by his predecessor in all possible fields, including everything related to Cuba.

Currently, the blockade is still in place and the Caribbean island is led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who assumed the presidency on October 10, 2019 after the first general elections held since the arrival of the Cuban Revolution to power 60 years ago. back, finally fulfilling the promise that Castro had made in Sierra Maestra during the beginning of the revolution. However, the vast majority of reports indicate that these elections were not open or democratic, and the Caribbean island continues to be in a difficult situation from the economic point of view and freedoms.

Important figures of the Cuban Revolution

The following is a short list of some of the most important figures associated with the Cuban Revolution.

• Fidel Castro: Leader of the revolutionary movement. He was the commander of the revolutionary troops that overthrew Batista, he served as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976, and then as President until 2008, although at that time his brother Raúl was already acting as interim president. He died in Havana on November 25, 2016.
• Raúl Castro: Fidel’s brother and prominent figure of the revolution. He held the executive power on an interim basis between 2006 and 2008, and then as president between 2008 and 2018.
• Juan Almeida Bosque: He is considered the third most important figure of the revolution, after the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro.
• The Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara: Doctor, journalist and Argentine guerrilla nationalized Cuban and commander of one of the columns that took Santa Clara, among other things.
• Camilo Cienfuegos : Known as the People’s Commander, he was one of those who led the capture of Santa Clara.
• Manuel Urrutia : President of Cuba after the victory of the revolution. He resigned and went into exile in the United States.
• Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado : Communist President of Cuba since Urrutia’s resignation until the figure of President of the Republic disappeared in 1976.
• Juan Manuel Márquez : Member of the group that attacked the Moncada Barracks. He died in Sierra Maestra.

Important events and dates during the Cuban Revolution

The following is a timeline with the chronology of the most relevant events and some of the most important armed confrontations during the Cuban Revolution.

• December 10, 1898 – Cuba achieves independence from Spain with the help of the United States.
• March 10, 1952 – Fulgencio Batista leads the coup against the elected president Carlos Prío Socarrás, thus beginning the dictatorship on the island.
• July 26, 1953 – Fidel leads the attack on the Moncada Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba, but they fail and are arrested.
• May 15, 1955 – Fidel and his group of Moncadistas are released through an amnesty law signed by Batista.
• November 25, 1956 – Fidel and a group of 82 guerrillas set sail from Mexico bound for Cuba to start the revolution.
• December 2, 1956 – The group of guerrillas landed in what is now the Province of Granma and the Cuban Revolution began.
• February 17, 1957 – An interview with Fidel Castro from Sierra Maestra is published in the New York Times, popularizing the revolutionary movement.
• May 28, 1957 – Combat of El Uvero, the first open military action by the guerrillas.
• September 5, 1957 – Uprising at the Cienfuegos naval base.
• March 26, 1958 – The US government imposes an arms embargo on the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, thus limiting its military power.
• May 6, 1958 – Batista begins the counterattack in Sierra Maestra, failing in the attempt.
• August 7, 1958 – Fidel takes control of half the island and orders Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos to march on Santa Clara.
• November 3, 1958 – Presidential elections in which Batista is the only candidate.
• December 28, 1958 – The guerrilla column under the command of Ernesto Che Guevara attacks Santa Clara.
• January 1, 1959 – The Cuban Revolution triumphs, taking control of the Presidential Palace. Fidel declared Santiago de Cuba as the provisional capital and proclaimed Manuel Urrutia Lleó as president.
• July 17, 1959 – Urrutia resigns as president and Fidel proclaims Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado as the new president. He remains in power for 17 and a half years.
• April 17, 1961 – The US government orchestrates and supports the invasion by landing at the Bay of Pigs, with which anti-Castro fighters sought to overthrow Fidel and remove the communists from power.
• February 7, 1962 – United States President JF Kennedy declares the unilateral economic blockade of Cuba.
• October 1962 – The United States discovers that the USSR is building nuclear missile bases on Cuban soil, triggering the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis, which came close to sparking a nuclear conflagration between the United States and the USSR.
• December 2, 1976 – The Cuban Constitution of 1976 enters into force, eliminating the figure of President of the Republic. Fidel Castro assumes power.
• April 13, 2009 – The Obama administration begins to lift restrictions on travel to Cuba from the United States.

References

BBC News World. (2018, December 30). Cuban Revolution: What were the causes of the uprising with which Fidel Castro changed Cuba in 1959 . https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-46532629

Chilean National Library. (2021). Cuban revolution . Chilean Memory, National Library of Chile. http://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-94604.html

Universal history. (2022, February 26). The Cuban Revolution . https://mihistoriauniversal.com/edad-contemporanea/revolucion-cubana

Memories of Fish. (2020, May 19). The CUBAN REVOLUTION in 10 minutes | Brief history of Cuba . Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_vrcyqBslc

Pérez Medina, N. (2017, January). Triumphal entry of January 1, 1959 . Informatic science University. https://www.uci.cu/universidad/noticias/entrada-triunfal-del-primero-de-enero-de-1959