Latin America

The Rise of Fidel Castro's Cuba

Towering in at 6 feet 3 inches, Fidel Castro the cigar smoking former leader of Cuba has truly showing is political might. Fidel Castro, the Cold War giant who out surviving the presidencies of every president who called for his downfall, stepped down in February 24, 2008 after 49 years of leading Cuba from revolution to republic. 

 Castro’s interest in politics started early as he grew intensely more nationalistic, feeling that the United States interference in Cuban affairs was less than helpful. First joining the Partido Ortodoxo headed by Chibas in his college days. The ortodoxo’s were bend on exposing  corruption demanding the reform in the Cuban govenment. Castro the student left to Colombia to attend a Latin American Student conference. It was around April 9th 1948 when the infamous assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in Bogota took place and the era of La Violencia shook Colombia as armed insurrection spread and the students took up arms spreading the flames of revolt by passing out pamphlets.

Back in Cuba, Fidel gained his Doctor of Law degree (equivalent of a J.D.) in 1950. His political career gained momentum as he ran for a seat in parliament, but then things took a turn for the worst as General Fulgencio Batista’s 1952 coup placed Batista as de facto leader. Castro seeing this as a clear violation of the constitution of 1940, soon found the groundwork for his revolution.
 Fidel gathered the means and support necessary for his first move against the Batista regime, the famous 26th of July 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks, the largest military barracks outside of Santiago de Cuba. Though the attack proved unsuccessful as many of his followers died in the fight leading Castro, Raul, and a few others to retreat to the Sierra Maestra mountains where they were later captured and sentenced to fifteen years in prison where he gave his famous “History will Absolve Me” speech. After two years in prison in Isla de Pinos he left for Mexico were he reorganized and regrouped his men now under the name of the 26th of July Movement, named after the disastrous first attempt to overthrow Batista.

Once in Mexico Castro met with Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the dashing spokesman for guerilla warfare, who join Castro’s eight-odd men in their continual goal of overthroughing Bastista. Thus, Castro set off on his yacht named Granma to land on the shores of Cuba. While all but twenty of the original men of the 26th of July Movement survived their first bout with Batista, Castro and the remaining retreated to the Sierra Maestra Mountains to once again regroup and continue their guerilla war. Castro’s movement gained popular support and soon many of the resistance groups around Cuba joined the 26th of July Movement, most notably the Santiago group formed by Frank Pais. As the battles waged on, Castro declared the Manifesto of Sierra Maestra in which he guaranteed the restoration of the Constitution of 1940 and elections to be held in 18 month after regaining the government from the Batista regime.

 Fidel Castro successfully gained control of Cuba in January 8, 1959 and called for an end of the junta created by Batista and became the head of the military. Soon he gained the position of Prime Minister in February and started expropriating the property owned by foreign companies, mostly the US’s and compensating them with the low values the corporations gave their land in order to cheat the tax system.
 This clearly didn’t fare well with the United States as the United Fruit Company (remember Guatemala?) suffered major losses. As Castro came to the United States to seek a meeting with Eisenhower in April of 1959, he was promptly denied and thus his sights turned to the Soviet Union.
The relationship between Cuba and the United States became strained as Castro pass his first Agrarian Land Reform in April of 1959 which forbid foreign ownership of land. The Cuban-Soviet ties grew closer as the US relations grew tense. As Castro imported goods like oil from the USSR, US owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the material and Castro responded promptly by expropriating the land. Eisenhower reduced the amount of sugar imports from Cuba to only 7,000,000 tons and thus Castro countered that with another round of land nationalization of over 800 million dollars worth of US businesses and property in Cuba in 1960. In January 1961 the US and Cuba officially cut ties and the infamous embargo was placed in 1962.

After failure of US-Cuban relations, numerous attempts were made to overthrow or more accurately assassinate Castro. Most notable the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, the unsuccessful attempts at training and sending in the rich Cuban exiles of Florida to overthrow the regime, but with lack of experience and US military support the attempt was both an embarrassment and failure in the Kennedy era. Plus CIA backing of gangsters, conspirators, assassins, an ex-lover, a few shady fellows from Las Vegas, some choice cigars from Langley, and an unhygentic diving suit sent the number of attempts on Castro’s life to about 638. Its no wonder that the USSR called for the US to quit trying to kill Castro. (Cuban Missle Crisis anyone?)
With all of these attempts, all these leaders of the world coming and going, with superpowers falling and others rising, Fidel Castro remained when others left. Now as his brother Raul assumes the Presidency, it seems that life without Castro as the president of Cuba will defiantly be different. After all, he out survived everyman who tried to kill him, politically that is.

© 2008 Metropolis Lights.