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Cuban Revolution
I  INTRODUCTION

Cuban Revolution, widespread uprising in Cuba that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1952-1959) and brought the government of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro to power. The revolution established the only communist state in the western hemisphere and produced profound changes in the economic and social structure of Cuban society. It also ended more than a half century of United States influence in Cuban internal affairs.

Batista’s government, which came to power following a military coup in 1952, had become widely unpopular as a result of rampant corruption and harsh repression of dissent. Batista faced growing opposition to his rule from many segments of Cuban society. Fidel Castro, a political activist and former lawyer, led the best organized of a number of anti-Batista forces. He waged a successful guerrilla campaign from the mountains of eastern Cuba while steadily building a broad network of support both within Cuba and abroad. This coalition of opposition forces eventually induced Batista to flee the country.

Following the overthrow of Batista, Castro began changes that dramatically altered Cuba’s political, economic, and social structure. He confronted the United States, which had been involved in Cuba’s internal affairs for decades, and announced that Cuba would follow a socialist path. Castro severed Cuba’s close ties with the United States and aligned Cuba with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), then the leading power among the world’s communist nations. This strain on relations between the United States and Cuba continued into the 1990s.

The revolution also left a legacy of opposition among exiles who left Cuba rather than live under the Castro government. More than 1 million Cubans left the island for exile in the three years following the revolution. At first, many of these exiles were professional middle-class Cubans who saw their livelihoods threatened by Castro’s economic policies and objected to the political system that Castro imposed. Restrictions on political freedoms and economic hardships caused thousands of other Cubans to flee the island in the years since Castro seized power.

Many of these exiles fled to the United States and settled in Miami Florida; many in this community remain committed to the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a democratically elected government in Cuba. See Cuban Americans.

II  BACKGROUND

Cuba had been a Spanish colony since 1492. In 1898 the United States declared war on Spain and captured Cuba along with several other Spanish possessions (see Spanish-American War). The Cuban Republic was founded in 1902. However, its independence was limited by the insistence of the United States that it had the right to intervene in Cuban internal affairs.

During the early part of the 20th century, U.S. business investment in Cuba grew, and by the late 1930s it had become an important part of the Cuban economy. U.S. influence in Cuban affairs and U.S. business interests on the island were often resented by Cubans, especially when the worldwide economic depression of the early 1930s devastated Cuba’s economy. When Cuban leader Ramón Grau San Martín enacted legislation that reduced the influence of the U.S. government and businesses in Cuba, the United States responded by supporting Cuban military officer Fulgencio Batista, who overthrew the Grau government in 1934.

As Cuba’s army chief, Batista functioned as the real power in Cuba, installing a series of puppet presidents. He served a four-year term as president himself from 1940 to 1944 and returned to the presidency in 1952 when he organized a military coup that overthrew the elected government. During his second regime, Batista’s government grew increasingly repressive and corrupt.

Batista’s relationship with U.S. businesses was complex. He promoted investments by U.S. companies, but he also encouraged the growth and diversification of Cuban businesses to reduce Cuba’s dependence on sugar production, which had dominated the economy since the late 1700s. During Batista’s regime U.S. businesses owned 35 percent of the Cuban sugar industry. This represented the smallest proportion of U.S. ownership since the 19th century. Nevertheless a growing number of Batista’s opponents came to see him as a symbol of continued U.S. economic dominance over the island.

Resistance to Batista’s government developed among university students and gradually spread to include varied segments of Cuban society. Because the Cuban economy was growing in the mid-1950s, the opposition to Batista focused mainly on the repressive nature of the dictatorship and Batista’s suspension of constitutional government. A number of Cuban revolutionaries, however, advocated major social and economic reforms to end peasant land evictions, to reduce chronically high seasonal unemployment in Cuba’s important sugar industry, and to narrow social and economic inequalities.

One of the people opposing Batista was Castro. On July 26, 1953, Castro and several dozen associates attacked the army’s Moncada barracks in Cuba’s second largest city, Santiago. The attack failed. Castro was captured following the attack, but the bravery of his actions and the edited version of the speech he gave in his defense at his trial won him widespread attention. Castro was sentenced to prison, but a confident Batista released him from jail in 1955. Castro went to Mexico and to the United States to gather forces and to raise funds for an invasion of Cuba. While in Mexico he met Argentine revolutionary Ernesto (Che) Guevara, who would prove a valuable ally in the coming revolution.

III  THE VICTORY OVER BATISTA

In 1956 Castro, Guevara, and about 80 other revolutionaries sailed from Mexico aboard the yacht Granma. They landed in Cuba in a shipwreck. Batista’s soldiers killed most of the guerrillas, and the remainder fled to the Sierra Maestra mountains of eastern Cuba and began fighting an improvised guerrilla war. The guerrillas adopted the name 26th of July Movement, after the date of Castro’s attack on the Moncada barracks.

The guerrillas’ program was moderate, promising elections, constitutional government, and land reform according to the constitution. Castro affirmed that he was not a Communist. By mid-1958 the guerrillas under Castro’s command numbered just 400. Batista’s army proved inept, however, and 12,000 government troops failed to defeat Castro’s small band of guerrillas. The 26th of July Movement also had important support among the organized anti-Batista forces in the cities, where revolutionaries engaged in many acts of sabotage and acquired weapons and supplies for the guerrillas in the mountains.

Especially important were university students organized in the Revolutionary Directorate, an independent group led by José Antonio Ecchevarría. The Directorate’s attempt to assassinate Batista in March 1957 nearly succeeded, but many of its members, including Echeverría, were killed in the attempt. In 1958 guerrillas from the Directorate and from another revolutionary group, the Second Front at Escambray (led by Eloy Gutíerrez Menoyo), were operating in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba.

Another source of opposition to Batista was professional military officers, who conspired to overthrow Batista on several occasions. In September 1957 a major military uprising temporarily seized the naval base at Cienfuegos. The military plotters were arrested.

In March 1958 Castro and his movement called a nationwide general strike. The strike failed in most of the country because Cuba’s major labor organization, the Cuban Confederation of Labor, threw its support behind Batista. In the same month, the U.S. government cut off weapons sales to Batista’s government. U.S. envoys and political moderates in Cuba tried to convince Batista to leave power peacefully, but Batista refused. Meanwhile, revolutionaries from Castro’s movement and from other organizations escalated violent resistance. During the second half of 1958, guerrillas seized ground in the countryside from the army. In the cities, several of Batista’s leading henchmen were assassinated and numerous government buildings were bombed. Batista’s forces responded by killing the leading urban revolutionaries.

As a result, Castro emerged as the only significant revolutionary leader. In late 1958 Castro dispatched an invasion force led by Guevara and fellow revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos to central Cuba to coordinate activities with guerrillas independent of Castro’s organization. In December of 1958 the only pitched battle of the war took place for control of the city of Santa Clara in central Cuba. Following the battle, Batista’s army retreated and disintegrated, and Batista’s regime collapsed. In the early morning hours of January 1, 1959, Batista fled the country.

IV  BREAK WITH THE UNITED STATES

Victorious revolutionary forces established a new government, which disbanded Batista’s army, prohibited political parties, and deferred elections. As the leader of the best-known and most powerful revolutionary group, Castro exercised the greatest influence on government policies, and he became prime minister in February. Castro visited the United States in April, where the U.S. government offered him assistance as well as criticism. In May the new Cuban government enacted a major land reform law that nationalized most farms larger than about 400 hectares (about 1000 acres). This action appropriated much of the Cuban property held by large U.S. agricultural firms.

Seeking to break the hold that the United States had on Cuba, Castro sought foreign support to counter the traditional influence of the United States. In late 1959 Castro approached the USSR, the leader of the world’s Communist nations, for support. Although Cuba’s Communist Party had joined the insurgency against Batista quite late, its leaders had increasingly assumed key roles in the new order. In May 1960 Castro reestablished diplomatic ties with the USSR, which had been severed under Batista’s regime, and made an agreement to import Soviet oil. In June the Cuban government took over foreign-owned petroleum refineries that refused to process Soviet oil. Within days the U.S. government outlawed the purchase of Cuban sugar, the mainstay of Cuba’s economy. Cuba then assumed control of all U.S. property on the island and established a military alliance with the USSR. In January 1961 the United States broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. As Cuban policy shifted to the left, many moderate leaders resigned from the government or were forced out of office.

V  SOCIAL CHANGES

To rally support, Castro appealed to Cuban patriotism and promised a better life for the poor. A spellbinding public speaker, he spoke for hours at a time several times a week, seeking and obtaining broad popular support. He traveled frequently throughout Cuba in a campaign to meet people, find out about their problems, and elicit their backing.

Castro’s government launched a number of programs aimed at improving social conditions among poor and uneducated Cubans. In 1961 the government temporarily closed schools and sent about 270,000 students and teachers to the countryside to teach illiterate citizens how to read and write. This crash program to increase literacy, and follow-up efforts in subsequent years, taught almost everyone to read and write. Before the revolution about a quarter of all Cubans were illiterate, with a median schooling level of third grade. In the mid-1990s the literacy rate approached 95 percent, and the typical Cuban had a middle school education.

Also in 1961 the government decreed that all health care would be paid for by the state. The government built clinics in rural areas that had no medical facilities, and it required graduates of medical schools to provide two years of health care service in these areas.

Seeking to shape a new society, the government strongly fostered cooperative activities in neighborhoods and in the work place. Neighbors cleaned up streets and parks, encouraged recycling of materials, and helped in mass vaccination campaigns. Workers built housing units next to their work places.

VI  ECONOMIC CHANGES

In 1960 and 1961 the Cuban government took control of all private firms except small agricultural plots belonging to individual Cubans. The government believed that it could organize the Cuban economy more effectively than private firms; socialism, its leaders believed, was more rational than the market.

Following the break with the United States in the early 1960s Cuba’s economy suffered a number of setbacks. The United States organized a partial embargo on trade with Cuba in late 1960 and expanded it to a full embargo in early 1962. The embargo made it illegal to import goods from Cuba to the United States, or to export to Cuba any products that were manufactured or had parts that were manufactured in the United States. The result was severe shortages of consumer goods in Cuba within a few years.

The Cuban government faced a further economic setback when it attempted to decrease Cuba’s dependence on sugar by diversifying the economy. Efforts were made to encourage industrialization, including the manufacture of light consumer goods, as well as machinery and equipment. The government also tried to increase the variety of agricultural crops grown by Cuban farmers. These efforts failed, partly because of poor planning, organization, and incentives by the government; partly because of lack of incentives; and partly because many of Cuba’s most qualified businessmen and technicians fled the country when Castro began nationalizing businesses in the early 1960s. The Cuban economy declined drastically in the years that followed and the government began rationing food, clothing, and most goods and services.

Cuba abandoned its diversification policy in the mid-1960s and again focused on sugar production. In 1970 the government mobilized the country’s workers in an unsuccessful effort to produce a record annual total of 10 million tons of sugar. The overemphasis on sugar production drained workers from other sectors of the economy and led to increased shortages of already scarce consumer goods. With substantial Soviet assistance, the Cuban economy recovered and grew rapidly in the 1970s, although it still specialized on sugar production. Dependent on Soviet assistance, Cuba integrated its trade and investments with the USSR and the Communist countries of Europe.

VII  LEGACY OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION
A  Domestic Legacy

At home the Cuban government made major strides in improving social conditions. By the 1980s Cuba’s health care system was the best in Latin America, and its infant mortality rate ranked among the lowest in the world, dropping to 9.4 per 1000 live births in 1995. Between 1958 and 1995, Cuban life expectancy rose to 76 years, matching that of the United States.

The policies implemented by the Castro government caused a radical realignment of power in Cuba. The private owners of the nation’s wealth lost their property and the government came to own and operate nearly all aspects of economic life. The small wealthy class that had ruled Cuba was replaced with a new elite of government officials and educated professional workers.

But Castro’s domestic policies have encountered opposition, both from dissidents inside Cuba and from the Cubans who left the island for exile. Castro’s economic policies have alienated many Cubans who found their prospects for economic betterment blocked by a government that restricts the ownership of property and regulates the earnings that individuals make in their work. Castro’s political policies also cost him the support of many Cubans who opposed the suspension of the Cuban constitution of 1940, the refusal to allow open elections for the nation’s political offices, the repression of political dissidents, the imprisonment of tens of thousands of political prisoners, and the instances of torture. Others objected strongly to the sharp constraints on freedom of religion and the deportation of hundreds of members of the clergy.

B  Foreign Affairs Legacy

Cuba’s break with the United States and its alliance with the USSR enmeshed Cuba in the Cold War, an ideological and political struggle between the nations allied with the United States and those allied with the USSR. The United States consistently opposed Castro’s regime, and in 1961 it backed a group of Cuban exiles who landed at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Castro’s government. The attempt was defeated, but the invasion widened the gulf between the United States and Cuba.

Cuba then became a key player in the Cold War. In mid-1962 Castro welcomed the secret deployment of Soviet ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads on Cuban soil. This led to a major confrontation, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end of which the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles and warheads in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.

With the U.S. government committed to overthrowing Cuba’s government, Cuban leaders established a wide-ranging alliance with the USSR and with revolutionary movements and governments throughout the world that were opposed to the United States. From the 1960s to the 1980s Cuba covertly supported revolutionary movements in many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Altogether more than 300,000 Cuban troops served overseas. Many Cubans posted abroad believed that these war efforts defended the homeland and its revolution; for other Cubans, the war efforts were difficult to justify and deflected efforts from pressing economic and social tasks in Cuba.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost its principal ally, and the United States tried to undermine the Cuban government. In 1992 the U.S. government prohibited trading with Cuba for subsidiaries of U.S. firms located in foreign countries. In 1996 the Congress of the United States passed the Helms-Burton Act, which attempted to discourage foreign investments in Cuba. These attempts failed, however, as Castro obtained other trading partners and foreign investors. In the late 1990s, Cuba remained the only Communist regime in the world outside East Asia. Although domestic opposition grew, government leaders insisted that Cuba would remain a one-party political system.


Contributed By:
Jorge I. Domínguez
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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