What Does Cuban Revolution Mean
The Cuban Revolution is known as the uprising in arms of the Cuban revolutionary movement , the leftist Guerrilla Army led by Fidel Castro Ruz, against the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista, who ruled the destinies of the Caribbean island since 1952.
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This uprising began on July 26, 1953, when a group of young people led by Castro broke away from the Cuban People's Party and undertook the armed struggle against Batista, calling themselves the “Centennial Generation”, and tried to take over the Moncada Barracks in Santiago. of Cuba and the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Barracks in Bayamo, failing in the attempt and being arrested and prosecuted by the dictatorship .
Castro and his followers would be amnestied in 1955 thanks to international pressure, after paying 22 months in prison, and they founded the July 26 Movement (M-26-7), an anti-imperialist and democratic organization, based on the ideas of José Martí.
Then they went to Mexico and formed a revolutionary army there with which to overthrow Batista , an objective they undertook on November 25, 1956, landing in Cuba and entering the Sierra Maestra in the east of the country.
At the command of the Guerrilla Army, Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos and Juan Almeida, enjoyed enormous global sympathy in the context of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union , as they began their struggle of almost 3 years of duration for overthrowing the dictatorship.
On January 1, 1959, the guerrilla troops took Havana and Santiago, establishing a provisional and diverse government , at the hands of Magistrate Manuel Urrutia Lleó in the presidency and with Fidel Castro as Commander of the Army. This government was recognized by the United States and meant the end of the Batista dictatorship.
See also: Chinese Communist Revolution
The Revolution in power
Despite the revolutionary commitment to new free elections, they barely came to power, as announced in the "Sierra Maestra Manifesto", once in power it was decided not to hold elections until 1974.
Once the Cuban communist regime was declared, the elections have been repeated regularly, but through an indirect system at the hands of the Council of State that Fidel Castro, president of Cuba, chaired from then until 2008, succeeding him in his post. brother Raúl.
The communist regime had the help and alliance of the Soviet Union (USSR) and was sanctioned and economically blocked by the United States since the 1960s, after several invasion attempts to the island failed, one from the Dominican Republic of Leónidas Trujillo and another from the US itself, in the famous Bay of Pigs.
At that time, the USSR's attempt to install a set of nuclear warheads in Cuba to threaten its North American rivals led to a global crisis known as the Cuban Missile Crisis ("Caribbean Crisis" for Russia and "Crisis October "for Cuba) and is considered one of the most critical points throughout the conflict of the Cold War.
After the fall of the USSR in 1991, this led communist Cuba to a time of famine and unparalleled misery that was called the "Special Period" and that led to the desperate flight of many impoverished Cubans, throwing themselves into the water in homemade boats to go to North American territory.
The Cuban Revolution is considered an important event on a continental and world level , still a symbol of the anti-imperialist struggles of Latin America and the third world, as well as of the revolutionary left and the leftist commitment to the armed struggle.
Causes of the Cuban Revolution
The main causes of the Cuban Revolution can be summarized as:
- The worldwide influence of the October Revolution of 1917, in which the Russian proletariat deposed the tsars and started a revolutionary government. The same happened with the Revolution in Guatemala in 1944.
- The coup d'état of Fulgencio Batista against the legitimately elected government of Carlos Prío Socarrás, which caused a deep malaise in the population .
- The dependence on the United States that maintained the Batista military dictatorship in Cuba, while the Cuban people suffered from unemployment and widespread corruption .
Consequences of the Cuban Revolution
For its part, the main consequences of the Cuban Revolution can be summarized as:
- Fall of the Batista dictatorship and beginning of the period of revolutionary reforms and nationalizations in Cuba, which affected the banking and sugar industries and eventually caused a massive exodus of the Cuban middle class.
- Rupture of relations between the US and Cuba (1961) and the economic and commercial blockade of the former towards the Caribbean island, which will become economically dependent on the Soviet Union until its collapse in the early 1990s.
- Beginning of the Cuban communist regime that still governs this nation , and that would quickly win the rejection of the Latin American intelligentsia that initially supported them, due to its authoritarian policies (executions, summary trials, persecution of opponents, homosexuals and artists, exit ban of the island, etc.).
- The Cuban Revolution exerted an enormous influence on other revolutionary leftist movements throughout Latin America, which also led to the emergence of guerrillas and insurrectionary movements that were responded to by the United States through the financing of bloody anticommunist dictatorships such as Pinochetism ( Chile) or the National Reorganization Process (Argentina).