The Revolutionary Movement
The inertia and incapacity of the bourgeois political parties to fight against the military regime ¾ even some of those parties joined the regime in one way or another ¾ was in sharp contrast with the belligerence of the popular sectors, especially with that of the young generation which had just been born to political life. From its ranks a movement of new type was born and at its head was Fidel Castro (Birán, 1926), a young lawyer who had performed his first political activities within the University and the Orthodox party.
Advocating a strategy of armed struggle against the dictatorship, Fidel Castro devoted himself to the silent and tenacious preparation for the struggle to come. Actions would start on July 26, 1953, when army garrisons Moncada in Santiago de Cuba, and Céspedes in Bayamo were simultaneously attacked in an action meant to become the trigger for a vast popular insurrection. The operation failed and was followed by the mass assassination of dozens of participants in the attacks who had been taken prisoners during and after combats. The survivors, among them Fidel Castro, were sentenced to long prison terms. During the trial, the young revolutionary leader delivered a bright self-defense allegation ¾ later known as History Will Absolve Me ¾ in which he argued the right of the people to rebel against the tyranny and explained the causes, ways and objectives of the struggle they had planned to carry out. This allegation would become the program of the revolutionary struggle.
Meanwhile, the dictatorship was facing a critical situation because of the dramatic drop of sugar prices in the world market and of the formula of reducing production. To reduce the effects of the depression, the government started the compulsive mobilization of financial resources most of which would end up in the personal bank accounts of the regime members. Despite the introduction during the previous decade of new production items, the Cuban economy, yoked by sugar, could not develop satisfactorily. Proof of it was the huge masses of unemployed and subemployed that by the middle of the 50s they would represent a third of the total work force in the country.
However, by 1954 the tyranny intended to legalize its status by spurious elections that at least would serve to placate the bloody repression. Such circumstance was used by the mass movement, which in 1955 had significantly increased its pressure to obtain the liberation of political prisoners ¾ including the participants in the Moncada Garrison attack ¾ and made workers strikes, particularly in the sugar industry sector. That same year the Movimiento Revolucionario 26 de Julio (26th of July Revolutionary Movement) is created by Fidel Castro and his comrades, and a year later the Directorio Revolucionario (Revolutionary Directory) by the most combative university students.
Once the possibility of any legal struggle against the tyranny was recognized as impossible, Fidel Castro travels to Mexico with the purpose of organizing an expedition to start the revolutionary war. On the other side, the opposing bourgeois parties were rehearsing another operation to make a compromise with Batista trying to find a "political" solution to the situation, but their failure would end up plunging them into disrepute.
On December 2 1956, Fidel Castro landed at the head of the Granma expedition in Las Coloradas, Oriente province. The members of the 26th of July movement in Santiago de Cuba, under the command of Frank País had prepared an uprising as a backup for the landing, but, as the landing had been programmed for two days before, the uprising had ended in an unfortunate failure. After the setback in Alegría de Pío, that dispersed the expeditionary forces, Fidel Castro and a group was able to reach the Sierra Maestra Mountains and create the initial nucleus of what would be the Rebel Army. The letter of introduction of the Rebel Army would be, barely a month afterwards, the attack and occupation of the small garrison "La Plata." This action would serve to refute the rumors spread by the dictatorship about the complete defeat and supposed extermination of the expeditionary forces.
In 1957, while the Rebel Army was gaining experience through a series of actions ¾ among them the battle at "El Uvero", in which a force of 59 soldiers was completely annihilated ¾ the underground struggle was developing in all its force in the cities. On March 13, a group of members of the Directorio Revolucionario failed in their purpose to kill the tyrant during an attack to the Presidential Palace. In the actions the President of the University Students’ Federation, José Antonio Echeverría was killed. To sabotage and other attempts the tyranny would respond intensifying torture, detentions and a wave of assassinations. In July Frank País was caught and assassinated in Santiago de Cuba, an act that would trigger a spontaneous popular strike and paralyze most of the nation. Shortly after that, in September, the uprising of the naval station in Cienfuegos shows how deep the division was within the armed forces. The army was unable to defeat the Rebel Army in an offensive launched against it in the mountains where already two guerrilla columns were increasingly strong.
At the beginning of 1958, the revolutionary movement decides to speed up the offensive against the tyranny by means of a revolutionary general strike that at the same time had characteristics of insurrection. Fidel Castro creates two new columns of the Rebel Army under the command of Raúl Castro and Juan Almeida respectively who are assigned the task to open respective guerrilla fronts in other mountainous regions in Oriente province. The strike of April 9 was unsuccessful and this was a serious setback for the revolutionary movement in the cities. Batista, on his part, considers that the time to put an end to the whole insurrection has come and decides to launch an offensive with 10 000 soldiers against the Sierra Maestra mountains. In ferocious battles ¾ Santo Domingo, El Jigüe, Vegas de Jibacoa, and others ¾ the rebel troops defeat and destroy the battalions of the tyranny that could enter the mountains and force them into retreat. This would be the final turning point. The parties in the opposition, which up to that moment had been maneuvering to capitalize popular rebellion, hasten to admit the undoubted leadership of Fidel Castro.
Several rebel columns start for different parts of the country. The columns under the command of Ernesto Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos advance towards the province of Las Villas, where several groups of guerrilla fighters ¾ from the Directorio Revolucionario and the People’s Socialist Party (Communist) ¾ are already operating. On November 20, under Fidel Castro’s personal direction the battle of Guisa was launched, action that marks the beginning of the final revolutionary offensive. In coordinated actions, the now numerous columns integrating the II and III Oriental Fronts occupy several towns and close the circle around Santiago de Cuba. In Las Villas, Che Guevara occupies one after the other the towns alongside the central highway and gets ready for the final assault against the provincial capital, Santa Clara, while Camilo Cienfuegos obtains a resounding victory after a tenacious battle over the Yaguajay Garrison. On January 1 1959, Batista flees from the country and in a last minute maneuvering, with the blessings of the US Embassy in Havana, General Eulogio Cantillo tries to establish a "civic-military" government board. Fidel Castro forces the surrender of the troops in Santiago de Cuba and calls the people to a general strike that, with the support of all the population, will finally guarantee the triumph of the Revolution.
