The Cuban Revolution


If we turn our eyes just South, we find an island so close yet so distant from us. And if we look past its quaint buildings and tropical paradise,   we find a story of oppression and freedom, of struggles and revolutions. How did the Castros take power in Cuba?   How did Cuba rebuff decades of American influence and establish a communist stronghold   only a hundred miles away?Let’s read about Cuba. To answer our questions, Let’s go through the history until the revolution.
When Columbus arrived on October 28th, 1492, the natives, mostly made up of Taino people,   initially welcomed the expedition. But as we all know,  90% of natives in Cuba died off due to diseases and conquest.
As a Spanish colony, Cuba depended on tobacco production at first,   but when its neighboring country, Haiti, was embroiled in a revolution,   its sugar mills were largely destroyed, and Cuba seized the opportunity.  
Haitians migrated to Cuba with their money and knowledge on sugar plantations   and from then, Cuba became the leading producer of sugar, also known as “white gold.” But sugar came on the backs of slavery - and as Cuba became the leading producer of sugar,   its slave population exploded. 

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  It’s estimated that today, 60% of Cubans are in part descendants of slaves. And as the Spanish empire disintegrated, it couldn’t let go of its most profitable   colony and its peculiar institution that fueled the Cuban economy.
Over time, waves of independence also rocked Cuba, and Carlos Manuel   de Cespedes declared Cuban independence in 1868 and started a bloody Ten Years’ War,   which resulted in meager, half-hearted reforms. And finally in February 1895,   Cuba engaged in another war with Spain under the visionary and poet, Jose Marti.
After bloody conflicts, news of Spanish atrocities traveled   to the US where Yellow Journalism - led by figures like WIlliam Randolph   Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer - grabbed the public’s opinion with sensational stories.   Then public opinion completely shifted after the explosion of USS Maine,   after which an American victory in a one-sided Spanish-American War ensured Cuban independence.

 
But American occupation soon followed and the Platt amendment was added to the constitution   that allowed the US to intervene in Cuban affairs and establish a naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
And corruption was rampant among Cuban leaders and the US occupied the country a number of times   under the pretext of maintaining order. Later, Gerardo Machado, who at the end held   onto dictatorial power by means of force and manipulation, turned Cuba into a police state. Fulgencio Batista then took power in a coup, dominating politics for the next 25 years   through installing puppet presidents then becoming a president himself in 1940 then   through a coup in 1952 again. Although Batista proceeded with vast reform programs initially,   he revoked most liberties by the time he became a dictator, and used the police to mercilessly   silence enemies and censor the media. But since Batista supported American business   interests and strongly opposed communism, the US government supported the right-wing dictator.
So the stage is set for the Cuban Revolution: absolute political control by a dictator,   economy driven by agriculture and tourism that involved drug, gambling,   prostitution businesses by the mafia, still one of the foremost economies of Latin America   but majority of Cubans still experiencing poverty especially in the countryside.
In many ways, Cuba was fertile ground for revolution.  Lawyer turned revolutionary, Fidel Castro   vowed to upend the brutal, US-backed dictatorship of Batista.  Forming a group called “The Movement,” on July 26 1953, he and 165 revolutionaries attacked   the Moncada Barracks, a military garrison outside Santiago de Cuba.   He was soon overwhelmed by the government’s forces and many of them died and were arrested on site. 
Captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison, Castro is soon granted amnesty by Batista in an   act of publicity, so Castro and his brother travelled to Mexico where they could grow   their newly named “26th of July Movement” - named after the date of the Moncada assaults. There they met an Argentinian Doctor and Marxist-Leninist named Ernesto “Che”   Guevara, who was radicalized by the destitution he saw during his tour through South America.
Che’s   revolutionary ideas immediately attracted Fidel, whose relationship was described   as between “ Lenin and Trotsky, like Hitler and Goebbels,” according to journalist Georgie Geyer.
Castros then toured the US to raise funding for his imminent invasion of Cuba. And on the 25th of November 1956, on an old, decrepit boat named Granma, the 82   men crammed in and set sail for Cuba and reached the Southern tip of Cuba on December 2nd, 1956.  
But Batista’s troops were already waiting for them. Immediately they were heavily outgunned   and out of the 82 initial men, only 19 made it to their destination in the Sierra Maestra mountains   where they would resist by grueling guerilla warfare for 2 years. From there Castro would show his mastery of propaganda.  
New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews climbed into the Sierra Maestra to report   on the rebellion and described Fidel as “quite a man - a powerful six-footer, olive-skinned,   full faced.”
Castro would order his ragtag group of soldiers to march around in different uniforms   to give an impression of a larger army, and his PR coup made him a media star especially in the US,   gaining sympathy for his cause.
His private radio station streamed winning stories that   attracted hundreds of soldiers into the group. And with Batista’s regime largely   discredited by the public over time and the US even ceasing to provide arms supplies,   Batista’s massive numerical superiority became irrelevant against the fanatically   motivated revolutionaries who now believed they had a better chance than ever before.
On December 27, 1958, Che Guevara and his forces captured Santa Clara with a force of 350   against 3500 government troops. Hearing the news, Batista fled into exile and on January 3rd 1959,   revolutionary commanders Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara marched onto Havana with great welcome,   Fidel and Raul Castro first captured Santiago, then moved into Havana on January 9th 1959.
It was quite a sight.
Crowds destroyed symbols of Batista’s rule and 20,000 soldiers basically   surrendered to only a few hundred rebels. It was not so much that Castro defeated the army,   but Batista’s regime collapsed by itself internally.
So the improbable revolution of the ragtag group of revolutionaries had succeeded, and the US   helped to topple Batista’s regime and immediately recognized Castro’s government on 1/7/1959.
But in   just a few years, the US engaged in a secretive invasion to overthrow Castro and Cuba deployed   nuclear missiles aimed at the US. What could have happened?

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