Rachael Millette

Dr. Esposito
History 450
March 31, 2016
The Cuban Revolution
Part I: The Setting for a Revolution
There were a variety of factors that contributed to the evolution of Cuba into a nation
controlled by a communist dictator. Their complicated history of colonialism, United States
meddling and military dictatorships gave birth to a people who never truly knew freedom. People
were oppressed, impoverished, and resentful towards the United States for consistently
exercising control over the Cuban homeland. They witnessed coups, military dictatorships and a
rigid lack of freedom. These were the people that opened their arms to Fidel Castro and his army
of revolutionaries, with their promise of positive changes and dramatic reform.
Cuban history has a consistent theme of United States involvement and intervention.
When Cuba gained its independence in 1898, it was after decades of struggle against their
Spanish colonizers. The light of newfound freedom was dimmed by the presence of the United
States, the overseers of Cubas transition into a sovereign state. Cuban independence from Spain
was guaranteed as a condition of the Treaty of Paris, an agreement concerning Cubas future as a
nation which they were not even invited to sign. Far from granting Cuba full independence, it
made them a protectorate of the United States.1 It would not be until 1901 that Cuba was finally
able to hold elections and chose its own leaders. Once again, this step towards independence for

1 Leo Huberman and Pau M. Sweezy, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution, (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1960),14.
1

Cuba was made with the United States holding their hand. In exchange for an end to U.S.
occupation of the island, the Platt Amendment was forced into the Cuban constitution.
The Platt Amendment guaranteed the United States the legal authority to intervene in
Cuban affairs, which they did multiple times over the next three decades.2 The Platt Amendment
stated that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban
independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and
individual liberty.3 The first condition of the Platt Amendment forbade Cuba from allowing any
foreign countries to establish military bases on the island, while the seventh condition forced
Cuba to give the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified
points to be agreed upon by the President of the United States,4 which ensured that the United
States had no competition for access to the island as well as a guaranteed military base in
Guantanamo Bay.
The less than satisfactory independence and the consistent theme of United States
intervention greatly affected the outlook of the Cuban people. Decades of struggle were ended
after the United States defeated Spain in just three months of war. For the first half of the
twentieth century, Cuba cycled through dictatorships, coups, and American military intervention.
Henry Guggenheim, the American ambassador to Cuba from 1929-1933, argued that the
conditions of the Platt Amendment were inhibiting the development of the Cuban government by
fostering Cuban dependence on the United States. He believed that American policies regarding
Cuba were outdated and needed revisiting, or else the Cuban government would never be
competent, effective or truly independent.5 He wrote that he was, in complete agreement with
2 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 16.
3 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 15.
4 Ibid.
5 Henry F. Guggeheim, Amending the Platt Amendment, 450.
2

the dictum that it is far better for Cuba to make her own mistakes than to have our government
make mistakes for her.6
Fulgencio Batista was the most domineering force in Cuban politics from 1933 until 1959 when
he fled to the Dominican Republic to escape Castro and his guerrillas. Batista was a brutal
dictator that forcefully put down opposition. He was able to maintain control over Cuba for years
with violence and the assurance that the United States government backed his regime. Geraldine
Lievesley states that:
There were strong US military and intelligence links with Batistas regime and a heavy
flow of military matriel ranging from guns to rocket launchers was orchestrated by the
Military Assistance Advisory Group. Such aid was supposedly regulated by a mutual
security agreement and was intended to be used for hemispheric defense but the US
turned a blind eye to the fact that it was being used to repress domestic critics rather than
external enemies.7
So why would the United States tolerate a dictator that stood so brazenly against the values that
were held by Americans? For all of his violent repression of opposition, he was an enemy to
communism.
The United States government during the 1950s had a skewed view of what communism
looked like, and were often mislead in their efforts to prevent or defeat it. Lievesley explains
that, the US and its allies defined communist in a highly elastic manner as anyone who was
challenging the status quo, endangering their economic investments or championing the interests
of the poor.8 Vanni Pettin makes the argument that during the 1950s, the United States was
caught in a puzzling predicament. Their zealous commitment to thwarting communism was
somewhat compromised by the decolonization that was happening across the globe. As a former
colony, the United States was in a position to support newfound freedom and the shirking of
6 Guggenheim, Amending the Platt Amendment 453
7 Geraldine Lievesley, The Cuban Revolution: Past, Present and Future Perspectives, 11.
8 Lievesley, The Cuban Revolution, 11
3

colonial and imperial rule, but the context of the Cold War made such a position nearly
impossible.9
In order to understand how Cuba became a decidedly communist country, it is essential to
understand the man who was at the center of the revolution. Fidel Castro was born to a
successful sugar and lumber farmer in the Oriente Province of Cuba in August of 1926.10 His
father, Angel Castro, was a Spanish immigrant and fathered seven children over the course of
two marriages.11 Fidel grew up with his many siblings in relative wealth, although it was
impossible to grow up in rural Cuba and not witness the extreme poverty that was part of the
harsh reality of Cuban life.
Fidel Castro had the benefit of a private education, and was interested in law and politics
from a fairly young age. His Roman Catholic father sent him to a boarding school in Santiago for
elementary school and for high school, he attended the Beln Jesuit school.12 His high school
yearbooks said of him, he has known how to win the admiration and the affection of all. He will
make law his career and we do not doubt that he will fill with brilliant pages the book of his
life.13 Castro began attending the University of Havana in 1945, where he jumped into politics
with both feet, and his astounding oratorical gift marked him early as a campus leader in the fight
for honest government and for better conditions for the poor of Cuba.14
Castros was very politically involved during his years as a student at the University of
Havana. In 1947, a group of around 3,000 men, with Fidel Castro among them, sought and failed
to invade the Dominican Republic to oust Rafael Trujillo, the countrys dictator. The young law
9 Vanni Pettina, The Shadows of the Cold War over Latin America: The US Reaction to Fidel
Castros Nationalism, 1956-59 Cold War History 11 (2011).
10 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 25.
11 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 25-26.
12 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 26.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
4

student headed a committee that fought racial segregation that kept black students from
participating in athletics and he served terms in the positions of vice president and president of
student body at the University of Havana.15 Fidel Castro was passionate about political change in
Cuba and he fought for it with incredible zeal. Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy explain that,
Fidel was arrested again and again for his active participation in mass meetings and student
protests against corruption in Cuba and other Latin American countries.16 A declassified CIA
document states that Fidel was identified in one of the earliest reports in Agency files as one of
the young student leaders in Cuba, who manages to get himself involved in many things that do
not concern him, and that his political participation was a concern of the CIA as early as
1948.17 Castros active participation in Cuban politics continued throughout his college career
and into his professional one.
Upon graduating from the University of Havana in 1950, Fidel Castro stayed in the
capital city to practice law. He worked to defend political prisoners and lower-class workers and
farmers.18 In 1952, Castro was on the ticket for a position in Congress when Fulgencio Batista,
who was campaigning for the presidency, staged a coup dtat and canceled the upcoming
elections. This infuriated Castro, who petitioned to have Batista imprisoned and his coup
declared unconstitutional.19 20 He failed in his endeavors to use the legal system against the
dictator, so Fidel Castro chose to stage a revolution.
The first blatant act of rebellion against the regime of Fulgencio Batista was on the night
of July 26, 1953 when Fidel Castro led a group of rebels in an attack on the Moncada Army
15 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 26-27.
16 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 27
17
18 Ibid.
19 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 28
20 Deac, Raid on Moncada Barracks, 51.
5

Barracks. While Castro led around 135 rebels to seize the Moncada Barracks, a smaller party was
simultaneously supposed to attack the Bayamo Barracks around sixty-six miles away. According
to Wilfred P. Deac, the selection of locations for these attacks were made for several reasons,
stating that:
Moncada and Bayamo barracks were key military installations in Oriente province, the
symbolic center of the Cuban revolutionary traditionuprisings for independence from
Spain in 1868 and 1895 had both begun there. Additionally, that province, already rife
with anti-Batista feeling, was at the other end of the island from Havana.21
Castros brilliant plan began to fall apart almost as soon as it was put into action. The Moncada
and Bayamo Barrack attacks were a perfect example of Murphys Law, meaning everything
that can go wrong, will go wrong. The rebels careful plan of caravanning to the barracks,
disarming the guards and seizing control of the garrison encountered problems at every step.
Cars were separated from the group, alarms were risen, and shots were fired.22 The rebels either
fled, were captured or killed on the spot.
The aftermath of the Moncada Barracks attack affected the lives of countless Cubans. The final
death toll for the rebels was sixty-nine, although only eight were killed during the two raids.23
This was due to the brutal treatment of the rebels after their defeat by the military and police
forces. Deac explains:
while the initial brutality toward the prisoners could be accounted for by spontaneous
combat reactions, its continuation for several days pushed it over the line into official
policy. Colonel Alberto del Rio Chaviano, who took no part in the action, made no effort
to stop it. Article 26 of the prison statue making officers responsible for the well-being of
their captives was suspended only hours after the raids. 24
After the attacks, Batista ordered that for each soldier he lost in the attack, ten prisoners would
be executed.25 The butchery in Santiago touched so many lives that the Archbishop of Santiago
21 Deac, Raid on Moncada Barracks, 51-52.
22 Deac, Raid on Moncada Barracks, 52-53.
23 Deac, Raid on Moncada Barracks, 55.
24 Ibid.
25 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 29.
6

intervened and pushed for the prisoners to be tried rather than instantly executed by Batistas
forces. 26
Fidel Castros failure on the twenty-sixth of July and his subsequent imprisonment allowed the
revolutionary leader to gain new levels of fame and brought international attention to the antiBatista movement in Cuba. The one hundred and twenty-two prisoners arrested for being in
connection with the Moncada Barracks attack were brought to trial on September 21, 1953. On
the first day of the proceedings, Castro was questioned about the attacks, and was unflinching in
admitting that he participated in them.27 When asked why, he said, simply because there is no
freedom in Cuba, because since the 10th of March nobody can talk.28 On the second day of the
trial, Castro was granted permission to act as an attorney, which allowed him to ask questions of
witnesses and defendants. Deac explains that, Castro knew he would be convicted. Acting as his
own attorney, he decided to use the trial to get as many of his people acquitted as possibleand
to turn the proceedings into his own political forum.29
On the third day of the trial, Fidel Castro was nowhere to be found. The chief judge in the trial
was handed a note which stated that Castro was ill and would not be making it to trial.30
According to Castro, two doctors were sent to his prison cell and stated that they were sent there
to examine him.31 The purpose of this visit was to have written record that Castro was sick in
order to keep him from the court proceedings. Castro immediately realized what was happening,
and so he sent a letter to the court in the hands of Dr. Melba Hernndez, one of the two women
involved in the attacks on the Moncada barracks.32 In this letter, Fidel Castro stated that there
26 Ibid.
27 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 30.
28 Ibid.
29 Deac, Raid on Moncada Barracks, 56.
30 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 32.
31 Castro, History Will Absolve Me, 10-11.
32 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 32-33
7

were active efforts to keep him from the courtroom, he was being kept in illegal isolation, his life
was in danger and requested that the court send another doctor to prove his wellness.33 This
action on the part of Castro and Hernndez did little to improve their conditions as prisoners.
Castro was moved to an even more remote part of the prison, while his colleague was placed in
solitary confinement.34 The judges sent two physicians to examine Castro, both of whom
declared him healthy, but when they ordered him to return to court, the Batista regime would not
allow it.35
During his time in prison, Fidel Castro wrote a lengthy, stirring, and now famous speech
titled History Will Absolve Me. Castro acted as his own lawyer during his trial, and rather than
spending his time making excuses for his actions, he railed against Batista and his regime,
accusing them of countless offenses against the people of Cuba. He spent five hours in court that
day, recounting the injustices suffered by the Cuban people at the hands of Batista and his
corrupt and ineffective government. He also laid out plans of how to solve Cubas poverty and
unemployment, how to improve the education system and provide healthcare.36 In his speech,
Castro expressed patriotism, a reverence for Cuban history, and a love for the land and the people
in it. He passionately explained, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can
isolate them neither prison walls not the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit,
a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.37
Fidel Castro was sentenced to fifteen years at the prison on the Isle of Pines, and he spent
seven months in solitary confinement before being granted normal prison privileges.38 While
33 Ibid.
34 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 34.
35 Ibid.
36 Castro, History Will Absolve Me.
37 Castro, History Will Absolve Me, 9.
38 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 48.
8

Castro was in prison, Batista was facing serious opposition from the Cuban people, international
media and foreign governments. There were people pushing for amnesty for the rebels and in
order to regain some popularity, Batista approved.39 Castro and his comrades made headlines
everywhere and were treated as respected celebrities by the people, and as a threat by the
government. Fidel Castro found his voice stifled by the suspicious government and so he left
Cuba for Mexico in order to raise money, recruit men, and spread the word of his revolution that
was soon to come.
Part II: Invading Cuba from Mexico and Guerilla Warfare
In Mexico, Fidel Castro remained as active as ever in his effort to start a revolution in Cuba and
overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Castro was joined in Mexico by his brother Ral
and other Cuban exiles involved in the 26th of July Movement to continue their fight for a free
Cuba.40 Fidel spent most of his time traveling around Latin America and the United States, doing
a speaking tour and visiting with exile Cubans in an effort to raise money for their revolution.
While giving a speech in New York, Castro spoke to his audience about his ideas for a new
Cuba, saying:
Cuba earnestly desires a radical change in every field of its public and social life. The
people must be given something more than liberty and democracy in abstract terms.
Decent living must be made available to every Cuban; the state cannot ignore the fate of
its citizens who were born and grew up in the country. There is no greater tragedy than
that of the man capable and willing to work, suffering hunger together with his family for
lack of work. The state is unavoidably bound to provide him with it or to support him
until he finds it.41
Castros message clearly resonated with crowds of Cuban exiles and other supporters of a
free Cuba, because when he returned to Mexico, he had raised around $50,000 for his
39 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 49.
40 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 50.
41 Ibid.
9

revolutionary army.42 According to Timothy Wickham-Crowley, it is also quite possible that

Castro had received as much as $100,000 from Carlos Pro Socarrs, the President of Cuba that
was ousted by Batista in 1952.43 He purchased arms and provisions for his eighty-man army and
meticulously planned his operation. Castro wrote a list of rules for his movement, exercising
tight control over their funds, supplies and the daily schedule. He instituted a midnight curfew
and an 8 am wakeup call and other measures to make certain that his men were disciplined and
ready for combat.44
Fidel Castro met Colonel Alberto Bayo and hired him to train the Cuban soldiers. Bayo
was a sixty-three year old man, born in Cuba and raised in Spain where he began his military
career studying at the Infantry Academy and the Military Aviation School.45 Bayo had years of
experience under his belt after fighting the African Moors as a Captain in the Spanish Foreign
Legion and fighting against the Spanish dictator, Franco, in the bloody Spanish Civil War. These
years of military service and training made him extraordinarily qualified to instruct the Cuban
revolutionaries in guerilla warfare.46 For weeks before they found a proper location for practical
field training, Bayo visited the Cuban men in their Mexico City apartments to provide theoretical
instruction about guerilla warfare.47 Eventually Castro and Bayo found a mountain ranch,
partially covered in jungle on which they would begin their field training. For three months, they
trained with Bayo, becoming familiar with weapons, learning to safely create bombs and take
down aircrafts. Huberman and Sweezy explain what the men learned under Bayo:

42 Ibid.
43 Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Two Waves of Guerilla-Movement Organizing in Latin
America, 1956-1990, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2014. 215-242. 221
44 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 51.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
10

[H]ow to camouflage and take cover; how to carry a wounded comrade and care for
him; how to march through the jungle and see and hear without being seen or heard. All
this and much more they learned on forced marches up the mountains and in the jungles,
carrying full packs, running, crawling, lying still, marching for five hours, ten hours,
fifteen hours a day. They learned how to harass the enemy, to bewilder him, to attack and
withdraw, attack, disappear, return, wear him down. They learned discipline and
comradeship.48
It was during this training that a young Argentinian-born doctor, Ernesto Che Guevara, began
to stand out as an exceptional student and soldier. When the men finished their training, Bayo
graded them based on their performance over the past few months, and Guevara was recognized
as the best of Bayos students.49
While in Mexico, seven of the Cuban revolutionaries, including Fidel Castro, were
caught in possession of a large quantity of weapons and arrested. Their arrest report details the
weapons recovered from the car and the ranch property they were using for their training. The
document lists that the men had four 38-caliber fully automatic pistols, one 7mm pistol with
three clips and twenty-seven cartridges, seven clips for the pistols, hand grenades that were
manufactured in the United States, rifles, fifty kilos of dynamite, machetes, knives, and fortynine boxes that each contain twenty 30.06 caliber cartridges.50 They were interrogated by the
Mexican police, and admitted that they were exiled Cuban nationals that intended to return to
Cuba in the next two months to overthrow the current Cuban government.51 The men told the
Mexican police that they believed they had the support of 90% of the Cuban populace, who were
stockpiling weapons and waiting for Castro and his men to return to the island.52

48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Fernando Gutirrez Barrios, Investigation into a Conspiracy Against the Government of the
Republic of Cuba. Wilson Center Digital Archives. June 24, 1956.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
11

The arrest record shows just how detail-oriented Castro was when it came to managing
his soldiers and comrades. He held all of their passports, kept records on how often each of the
men trained and how well they were doing in said training, and meticulously budgeted their
funds so that they all lived on around $400 a month with each man getting an allowance of ten
pesos a week for personal expenses. One of the most interesting parts of the report is the
description of how Castro used postal stamps to send messages to allies and supporters. Renata
Keller explains that Castro and his followers used them to communicate with each other, saying
that the stamps, according to their classification and price, expressed carious encoded warnings
and instructions. Through this system the revolutionaries could send messages such as: We have
spies and I am being very closely watched.53
So if the men were arrested in Mexico with a weapons stockpile which they admit they
plan to use to overthrow a government, why did the Mexican officials not take action to stop
them? The author of the police report was Captain Fernando Gutirrez Barrios, who did not
express any sense of alarm while writing his report. He seems to believe that Castro and his men
are not a real threat to Mexico or Cuba due to their small number of men, supplies and funds. He
also makes it clear that he believed Castro when the Cuban said he had no connections with
Carlos Pro Socarrs, the former President of Cuba, which was a lie on the part of Castro. Keller
speculates why the Mexican investigators released the Cubans from prison. She says that based
on later interviews with Fidel Castro and Fernando Gutirrez Barrios, that the men formed an
unlikely friendship during their interactions with each other, which may have caused the
captain to go easy on Castro.54 She also says that Castro was a clever and manipulative man who
53 Renata Keller, Stamps, Rum, and Hand Grenades: Fidel Castros Recipe for
Revolution, Wilson Center (2015).
54 Ibid.
12

was able to make his admissions of guilt seem more thorough and complete than they actually
were. She explains that the reports contents and its absences show that he was able to hide
both his connections with Pro Socarrsand the fact that he was printing propaganda in Mexico
with the aid of lucha libre wrestler and printmaker Arsacio Vanegas Arroyo.55
This incident was one of several in which Castro was arrested in Mexico and had his
weapons confiscated. Huberman and Sweezy state that many Mexican officials were bribed by
the Cuban Embassy to spy on Castro and that Batistas secret service agents were also hunting
him.56
On November 15, 1956, Fidel Castro publicly announced that he would be leaving
Mexico and beginning his invasion of Cuba, saying, I want everyone in Cuba to know I am
coming. I want them to have faith in the 26th of July Movement.57 Apparently this
announcement troubled his mentor Bayo, who strongly believed in keeping military plans secret
from the enemy.58 Castro defended his unorthodox decision by claiming that informing Batista
that he was returning to Cuba was a form of psychological warfare. On November 25, ten days
after Castros announcement, eighty-two men boarded a yacht called the Granma, with the
intention of sailing to the town Niquero. They were loaded down with their weapons and
ammunition, medical supplies and plenty of food. They planned on reaching Niquero five days
later, where a farmer named Cresencio Prez would be waiting for them along with a hundred
men and trucks to transport them to Manzanillo. Once there, they would be joined by other
rebels and attack the Cuban army, seize their weapons and supplies, while rebel supporters in
several cities across the island would create diversions with shootings, riots and bombings.59
55 Ibid.
56 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 52.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
13

Loaded with fresh supplies and arms, they would retreat into the mountains to outfit the hundreds
of volunteers that would rally to their cause and together they would fight to bring down the
Batista regime. 60
That was the rebels plan, but that is not what happened. The Granma encountered
terrible storms on the crossing from Mexico and the water pump did not work correctly, so the
storm-tossed rebels had to use buckets to remove the water from the deck. The engine of the ship
also needed maintenance which prevented them from moving as quickly as they planned to
move.61 Their radio was broken so that they could receive messages, but not transmit them, so on
November 30th when they received a message that their planned diversions happened without
them, there was nothing they could do about it. Every hour that passed with them at sea, Batista
had more time to prepare for their arrival. On December 2nd, they were still at sea when one of
the men fell overboard and had to be rescued. They had almost arrived at Niquero when their
boat ran aground and became stuck in the mud. This forced the men to leave behind all of the
supplies, weapons, medicine, and ammunition that they were counting on having and truck
through several miles of muddy, choppy waves to reach the shoreline.62 Miraculously, all of the
eighty-two men arrived safely to shore, but they were acutely aware that they were lost and
would soon be exposed by the daylight. The rebels ran for the mountains, leaving the Granma in
the open waters to be spotted by Batista forces. 63
For weeks, the rebels lived in the wilderness, occasionally happening upon a farmhouse
where they could pay for food, drink, and shelter. They relied heavily on the campesinos, the
rural peasants, and their training from Alberto Bayo to keep them alive. On December 5, the
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid, 53.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
14

rebels were resting at a sugar plantation when they were attacked by aircrafts raining down
machine gun fire and bombs.64 The men ran for cover in the cane fields, but when the bombs set
the fields ablaze, they split up into small groups and ran for the nearby wilderness. Many were
injured, including Che Guevara, who was shot in the neck, and many of the men were killed.
Some of the small groups of men were captured and killed by Batista forces, while some
successfully hid for days and weeks on end.65 Fidels group and his brother Rals group both
spent days in cane fields, surviving on nothing but cane juice.66 After two weeks, the brothers
stumbled upon each other in the woods. According to Ren Rodriguez, one of the men with
them, Fidel assured the men that the days of Batistas dictatorship were numbered, a statement to
which the others responded with exasperation.67 Rodriguez recounted how he thought Fidel
Castro had lost his mind, saying I was very mad with Fidel because after all we had just been
through, with many of our men lost, Fidel stands there telling us with complete confidence that
the days of the dictatorship were numbered.68
The campesinos, or Cuban peasants, and the support, or at least acceptance, that they
offered the rebels were essential to the survival of the 26th of July Movement. The extent to
which the campesinos supported the revolutionaries is unclear. Huberman and Sweezy argue that
the campesinos, if initially lukewarm in their reception to the rebels, quickly became crucial
supporters due to positive interactions with the rebel soldiers. They say that the campesinos
began to actively back the rebels because, unlike soldiers they had previously encountered, the
soldiers of the 26th of July Movement, were friendly and considerate, not arrogant and brutal.
They did not pillage and rape; on the contrary, they paid for everything they took, and the
64 Ibid, 54.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid, 54.
15

penalty for rape in this army was death.69 Gil Carl AlRoy argues that while the peasants
supported the rebels, the Cuban Revolution was not a true peasant revolution, and that their
involvement has been dramatized by many historians.70 Boris Goldenberg states that, even those
whose lot was miserable were not revolutionarymost of the population of the countryside
remained passive throughout the struggle against Batista.71
While the 26th of July Movement remained headquartered in the Sierra Maestra, they
began to implement their plans for reform. With the help of Dr. Julio Martnez Paz, the rebels
were able to procure the essential medical instruments and drugs needed to establish a field
hospital in the mountains.72 This hospital was the first medical care center in the area and
provided for the health of both the soldiers and the campesinos, who, up to that point, never had
access to modern medical care.73 Another important reform that the revolutionaries instituted was
the establishment of a school in the Sierra Maestra. Ch set up the first school, which was so
successful in increasing literacy in the rural mountain area that thirty schools were established
over the next two years.74 Huberman and Sweezy argue that these reforms were essential in
swaying the campesinos to back the revolution. They state that, Fidel Castro spent time with
them, ate with them, talked with them, continually explained, in terms they could understand,
what the rebel program was. And since the theory and the practice went hand in hand it was not
difficult for the campesinos to comprehend that this program was the answer to their needs.75
69 Ibid, 57.
70 Gil Carl AlRoy, The Peasantry in the Cuban Revolution, The Review of Politics 29 (1967):
88.
71 Boris Goldenberg,"The Cuban Revolution: An Analysis," Problems of Communism, (1963):
4.
72 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 57.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
16

The agrarians reform instituted by the Cuban revolutionaries were perhaps the most
important factor in consolidating the support of the peasants. Ch Guevara stressed the
importance of rural communities and agrarian reform and their role in revolution in his book
Guerilla Warfare. He explains how rural areas are better suited for guerilla warfare than urban
areas, saying:
[H]ere the guerilla can represent the desires of the great mass of poor farmers to possess
their own land, animals, and all that makes up their life from cradle to graveMao Tsetungs China began as workers uprisings that were defeated and almost wiped out. It
recovered only when it took seat in rural areas and adopted the cause of agrarian reform.
Ho Chi-minhs victory in Indochina was based on poor rice farmers oppressed by French
colonists. In Algeria, Arab nationalism is bolstered by oppressive conditions of
sharecropping imposed by French colonists. In Puerto Rico, special conditions so far
have prevented a guerilla outbreak, but nationalism is arising because the poor farmers
want their land back form the Yankee invader. The same craving drove the farmers of
Eastern Cuba to fight, ever since Batista first came to power thirty years ago, for the right
to hold land.76
The revolutionaries land reforms involved redistributing land from large properties owned by
one individual to the campesinos. Huberman and Sweezy discuss an early instance of land
redistribution by the rebels in which the soldiers executed a ranch foreman who had increased
the properties of his landlord from ten acres to four hundred acres by accusing the peasants of
being pro-rebel and seizing their farms.77 Agrarian reform was colossal for Fidel Castro and his
idea of a new Cuba. He spoke on the issue in his famous speech, History Will Absolve Me, in
which he states the inhumanity of having hundreds of thousands of farm laborers that can only
work four months out of the year, and then starve for the remaining eight months. He discusses
the poor living conditions of the farmers, who labor on land that they will never own, who, like
feudal serfs, have to pay for the use of their parcel of land by giving up a portion of their

76 Che Guevara, Guerilla Warfare (New York: ), 4.

77 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 58.
17

products; who cannot love it, improve itbecause they never know when a sheriff will come
with the rural guard to evict them from it.78
Even though the 26th of July Movement relied heavily on the rural peasants for support
and survival, the urban working class was an essential part of the Cuban Revolution. These were
the people who spread anti-Batista propaganda, crafted bombs to attack busses, trains,
government buildings and the homes of Batista supporters.79 Using dynamite, these rebel
supporters blew up the gas and electric lines in Havana, leaving the city without gas and
electricity for nearly fifty-four hours.80 They helped Ch Guevara attain the materials he needed
to start the rebel newspaper, Cuba Libre, and helped distribute it throughout Cubas urban
areas.81
Batistas response to the revolutionary army and their popular support was violent. Those
who were caught supporting the rebels, or even suspected of supporting them, were kidnapped,
tortured, and murdered. Batista used fear and violence to suppress the voices of his opposition,
and while this may have deterred many Cubans from being involved in the revolutionary
movement, it also sent many fleeing to the mountains to join Castro. Batistas actions were
incredibly polarizing and caused many of the people who had supported his regime in the past to
reconsider their position. Declassified United States Government documents show that the
American government even attempted to have Batista step down from power after years of
supporting his regime with funds, intelligence, and weapons.82 It was clear to everyone in 1958
that the days of Batistas dictatorship were coming to an end, and while some rejoiced, many
78 Castro, History Will Absolve Me, 30.
79 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 58
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Jack B. Pfeiffer, Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, Evolution of CIAs AntiCastro Policies, 1959-January 1961, Vol. III. (1998): 9.
18

became increasingly worried about the specific nature of leadership that Fidel Castro would
provide for Cuba.
Castros political views worried many who had a stake in the Cuban Revolution. While
Ernesto Ch Guevara and Raul Castro were both known Marxists, Fidel had yet to declare
himself a communist or that he intended for Cuba to be a communist nation, though his leftist
inclinations were evident. Declassified documents from the CIA discuss their efforts to
understand Castro and the Cuban revolutionary forces. They state:
By early 1958, the Agency had become sufficiently concerned about the pro-Communist
orientation of Castros government, and particularly the pro-Castro proclivities of his two
principal deputies, Ernesto Che Guevara and Raul Castro Ruz, Fidels brother, that
penetration of the Partido Socialista Popular was a priority concern of the field. At least
two agents were successfully placed in the PSP ranksIn both instances, the Agency
representatives returned unharmed; and both reported on the radical and anti-American
nature of the Castro movement.83
The CIA was so concerned about the possibility of a communist controlling Cuba that Alfred
Cox, Chief of the Paramilitary Division, Political and Psychological Staff of the Clandestine
Services suggested that the United States government engage in dialogue with Castro before it
was too late. He knew that Batista would soon be out of power and that Castros anti-American
ideology would soon be a very real problem for U.S. interests. He suggested that the U.S. show
that they were sympathetic to many of Castros grievances and support with him with arms and
money.84
By early 1958, the momentum of the revolutionary movement was strong and constantly getting
stronger, while Batista desperately held onto power. On February 24, 1985, Radio Rebelde, or
Rebel Radio, began broadcasting across Cuba, telling the country how the revolution was
developing from the Sierra Maestra, or the Territory of Free Cuba in the Sierra Maestra, as the
83 Ibid, 6.
84 Ibid, 9.
19

rebels were now calling the area.85 It was through Radio Rebelde that Castro delivered his
Manifesto from The 26th of July Movement to The People in which he called for the Cuban
people to unite against the tyranny of the Batista regime.86 The Manifesto was a call to all of
Cuba to recognize the ills of Batistas government, to stop paying them taxes, and to support the
revolutionary army, whose revolutionary war would soon begin in earnest.
Fidel Castro made the mistake of warning Batista that there would soon be a general
strike across the island, in an attempt at psychological warfare, which simply enabled Batista to
use force and intimidation to keep workers from engaging in the strike. The strike was not the
great moment of victory that the rebels planned for it to be. While it momentarily succeeded in
some cities, it was mostly a failure and Batistas response was quick and brutal. Huberman and
Sweezy argue that it was only Fidel Castros impressive oratory skills that kept Cubans engaged
in the revolution. They say that he used the Radio Rebelde to tell the truths of the revolution that
were censored by the Cuban press, mixing bitterness with grief, he gave a detailed catalogue of
the dictatorships continuous atrocities thus inflaming them to anger again.87 As much as
Castros words inspired the Cuban people, they angered Batista, who retaliated by announcing a
full-fledged campaign against the revolutionaries.
Batistas military launched their campaign on May 5, 1958 with the odds of 40 to 1
against the rebels.88 Twelve thousand Cuban soldiers versus three hundred revolutionary soldiers,
who had the advantage of fighting in the mountainous terrain to which they were accustomed but
that was unfamiliar to Batistas army. When soldiers were captured by the rebel army, they were
handed over to the International Red Cross to receive medical treatment and then returned to
85 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 61.
86 Fidel Castro, Sierra Maestra Manifesto, Latin American Studies.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuban-rebels/manifesto.htm.
87 Huberman and Sweezy, Cuba, 62.
88 Ibid, 63.
20

their homes and families.89 According to Huberman and Sweezy, Batistas soldiers had expected
the rebel army to be brutal towards their enemies, so they were pleasantly surprised by such good
treatment. In fact, the liked it well enough to volunteer military information of importance and,
on one occasion, to turn over to the Fidelistas a portable radio transmitter and receiver and
government army code book.90 This allowed the rebels to anticipate the movements of Batistas
army in order to better plan attacks, and since the Batista army was so much larger than that of
the rebels, having such information was priceless. Using these radio transmitters, the Cuban
rebels instructed Batista pilots to bomb the areas where their own troops were located and to
drop crucial supplies to the rebels.91
The rebels struck a powerful blow to Batista when they joined with the rest of the antiBatista groups in a united front against the dictator. Efforts for the groups to join forces against
the dictator had been ongoing for several years without any success, partly due to Fidel Castros
refusal to accept anything less than a total revolution. The revolutionary leader would not support
a new government that maintained any piece of the Batista regime, because he believed that
meaningful change would not be possible if any part of the former dictatorship remained.92
Signing the document along with Castro and the 26th of July Movement were the Partido Cubano
Revolucionario, Labor Unity, Organizacin Autntico, Directorio Revolucionario, Partido
Democrta, Federation of University Students, Civic Resistance Movement, Ex-Army Officers
and the Federation of University Students.93 Together, these groups provided a legitimate and
powerful opposition to the Batista regime. It should be noted, however, that the Communist Party
was not invited to sign. The united groups asked the United States to stop aiding Batista with
89 Ibid, 64.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid
21

weapons, funds, and military expertise. Even after the U.S. government enacted an arms
embargo on the Cuban government, they continued to train Batistas military forces.94
After three months, Batistas campaign against the rebels was falling apart. Batista lost
ten percent of his fighting force, either to desertion, captivity, serious wounds, or death and an
even greater percentage of its weapons.95 The next step was for the rebels to leave their
stronghold in the Sierra Maestra, where they had been for close to two years, and spread their
revolution throughout Cuba. Fighting an experienced and well-equipped military using guerilla
warfare was much easier in the rugged terrain of the mountains than it was in the open fields and
plains of the rest of the island. Ch Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos led two columns of men on
a march from the mountains to Santa Clara, the capital city of the province of Las Villas, on a
mission to seize the city, which would effectively divide Cuba into Batista territory and
revolutionary territory. On Christmas Eve, 1958, they successfully seized the city. Across the
entire island, groups of rebel soldiers seized cities and attacked Batistas military, making it clear
to anyone who still harbored doubts that the revolutionaries would soon control Cuba.

Castro in Power: The Rise of a New Government

In the early morning hours of New Years Day, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba for the
Dominican Republic. By dawn the next morning, Castro accepted an unconditional surrender
from the Batista forces at Fort Moncada, the sight of his first act of rebellion years before. Castro
insisted that Batistas supporters not be murdered, but captured, tried, and punished according to
their crimes. This does not mean, as Huberman and Sweezy would argue, that Castro was an
94 Ibid, 66.
95 Ibid.
22

exemplary leader and humanitarian. Generally, the punishment for supporting Batista was death
by firing squad, and although there are no official documents available to document the number
of individuals killed for being on the wrong side of the revolution, the number is believed to be
anywhere from 200-600, depending on the source.
It would not be until May 1, 1961 that Castro announced his intention that Cuba be a
socialist state and until December 1, 1961 that he openly declared himself a Marxist-Leninist in a
televised speech. The debate over whether or not Fidel Castro was always a communist is still
ongoing. Saul Landau claims that Castro was committed to communism long before he was a
revolutionary leader. He states that, Fidel Castro in 1968 explained to me that he had become a
Marxist from the very time that he read the Communist Manifesto in his student days, and a
Leninist from the period when he read Lenin while in prison on the Isle of Pines in 1954.96 So if
Castro had been a communist for most of his adult life, why would he wait so long to say so?
There are various reasons as to why Castro waited to openly declare both his ideas for the
governance of Cuba and his own personal beliefs. Most likely, he wanted to consolidate power
and see how the world responded to his leadership. He knew that by declaring himself a
communist and Cuba a socialist state, he would effectively be severing any ties he had with
Western democracies and embarking on a difficult journey to create a socialist nation in the
backyard of the United States.
The Cuban Revolution was not an anomaly. It was not surprising. It was not
unprecedented. It was the result of decades, even centuries of oppression. Cubas history of
colonialism and slavery under the Spanish, imperialism and interference from the United States,
and military dictatorships and coups from within their own borders all set the country up for a
96 Saul Landau, "Cuba and Its Critics," Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine 39
(1987): 4.

23

revolution. The nature of that revolution was largely determined by Fidel Castro, the leader who
made it happen. That is not to say that Cuba would not have had a revolution if it were not for
Castro, but it probably would have been slower in its coming, perhaps even less violent, less
revolutionary.

Bibliography
AlRoy, Gil Carl. The Peasantry in the Cuban Revolution, The Review of Politics, Vol. 29, No.
1. (Jan. 1967) p. 87-99.
Castro, Fidel, Sankar Srinivasan, Pedro A. Tabio, and Andrew P. Booth. History Will Absolve

24

Me: Castro's Court Argument. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.

Castro, Fidel. Sierra Maestra Manifesto (July 12, 1957). Accessed April 30, 2016.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuban-rebels/manifesto.htm
Deac, Wilfred P. Raid on Moncada Barracks, Military History, Vol. 20, No. 3. (Aug. 2003), p
50-56.
Guevara, Che. Guerilla Warfare. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1961.
Guggenheim, Henry F. Amending the Platt Amendment, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 3
(Apr. 1934), p. 448-457.
Gutirrez Barrios, Fernando. Investigation into a Conspiracy Against the Government of the
Republic of Cuba. Wilson Center Digital Archives. June 24, 1956. Accessed April 28,
2016.
Huberman, Leo, and Paul M. Sweezy. Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution. New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1968.
Keller, Renata. Stamps, Rum, and Hand Grenades: Fidel Castros Recipe for Revolution,
Wilson Center, September 29, 2015.
Landau, Saul. "Cuba and Its Critics," Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine 39
(1987): 4.
Lievesley, Geraldine. The Cuban Revolution: Past, Present and Future Perspectives.
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Luxenberg, Alan H. Did Eisenhower Push Castro into the Arms of the Soviets? Journal of
Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), p. 37-71.
Pettin, Vanni. The Shadows of the Cold War over Latin America: the US reaction to Fidel
Castros nationalism 1956-59. Cold War History 11 (2011).

25

Pfeiffer, Jack B. Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, Evolution of CIAs Anti-Castro
Policies, 1959-January 1961, Vol. III. (1998): 9. Accessed April 30, 2016.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB355/bop-vol3.pdf
Platt, Orville H. "Transcript of Platt Amendment." OurDocuments.gov. Accessed February 24,
2016. http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=55.

26