Batista funeral inoted states4/7/2023 One focus for Fulgencio Batista were Fidel Castro’s underground supporters, who funneled supplies and weapons. The portrait fueled Fidel’s popularity and possibilities. Castro himself told the reporter, “They never know where we are, but we always know where they are.” Matthews wrote, “Thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro and the new deal for which they think he stands.” Further, he observed that a “formidable movement of opposition to General Batista developing” and the guerilla forces were poised to take advantage. Times reporter Herbert Matthews had made his way to the mountains for a face-to-face meeting. And while Batista announced falsely that every member of Castro’s guerilla force was dead, the New York Times published a photograph of Castro very much alive. Meanwhile, Batista engaged in indiscriminate bombings, and forced relocations of Cuban peasants to squash the insurgency. Almost miraculously, they made their way safely to the Sierra Maestra mountains and plotted their next move. Just over a dozen of Castro’s guerillas survived the onslaught. When Castro’s men landed, they came under heavy fire. Thus, the Castro brothers, Che, and 80 other Cuban revolutionaries sailed for Cuba, in December of 1956, on a small yacht christened, the Granma. Among them was Che Guevara whom Castro invited to join his assault on the Batista regime. In Mexico, Castro met a number of exiles from other Latin American countries, many of whom shared his commitment to revolutionary change. Yet, Castro realized he also needed a revolutionary guerilla force. It commemorated the Moncado attack, and pledged support for democracy, equality, anti-imperialism, and Cuban nationalism. Castro realized that he needed to shift public opinion behind him, and formed a political body known as the ’26th of July Movement’. With the economy skewed towards the sugar and tourism industries, some Cubans grew fabulously wealthy while others faced low wages, unemployment, and poverty. Meanwhile, US investment in Cuba grew to about $1 billion. While Batista was normally ruthless in disposing of his political enemies, he freed the pair as part of an amnesty campaign. Yet in another surprising twist of fate, they were freed from prison in 1955. History will absolve me!”įidel and brother Raul were sentenced to 15 years in prison. His last words in the courtroom were: “Condemn me. The former law student used the occasion to call for political and social rights for all Cubans and a robust policy of land redistribution. Many of Castro’s approximately 160 men were killed in fighting. Believing that the Cuban army stood as the greatest impediment to Batista’s overthrow, Castro and scores of supporters attacked the army’s Moncada Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba, which is a coastal area in the southeastern part of the island.Ĭastro hoped the action would prompt a popular uprising. The plot went awry but Castro remained obsessed with the idea of revolution. And so he enlisted as a volunteer in an attempted overthrow of the Dominican Republic leader, Rafael Trujillo, who was an ally of the United States. Theories of Revolutionīy the late 1940s, Fidel Castro was eager to test his theories of revolution. This article comes directly from content in the video series The Great Revolutions of Modern History. Martí had said, “Revolution, is not what we begin in the jungle but what we will develop in the republic.” He’d spoken of the necessity to gain independence from Spain, and for the need to fundamentally transform Cuba. Instead, he found a muse in the revolutionary Cuban poet Jose Martí. Castro was attracted to the concept of social revolution that he’d discovered in the writings of Karl Marx.Īnd yet, Castro didn’t draw revolutionary inspiration from such theories of communism as Marx or Vladimir Lenin. But he went on to study law and become the leader of a revolutionary student group in Cuba. Castro had sometimes been described as a bully when he was a child. (Image: Matyas Rehak/Shutterstock) Fidel CastroĪs the illegitimate son of a wealthy Spanish landowner and his maid, Castro could personally identify with the perils of social inequality. In 1953, Fidel Castro and scores of supporters attacked the army’s Moncada Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba. Fidel Castro, a person who in time would become Batista’s arch rival, was in his 20s when Batista seized power. His strong ties to the United States, and his obvious penchant for corruption, meant that popular resistance to the Batista regime began almost immediately. By Lynne Ann Hartnett, Villanova University In 1952, the Cuban General, Fulgencio Batista, overthrew the existing government in a military coup d’état supported by the US government.
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