Cuba's Revolution

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History of the Cuban Revolution

by Trevor Rayne

• Cuba's revolution has its origins in the struggle against Spanish colonialism, which intensified in the second half of the 19th century. An uprising in 1895 sealed the fate of Spanish colonialism, but victory was snatched from the people by a US expeditionary force in 1898.
• Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti, who had travelled in the USA, wrote of the occupiers: 'I have lived inside the monster and I know its entrails...Shall we bring the country dear to our hearts, virgin and fruitful, to this frenzied pack of rich against poor,...white against black.... Shall we deliver it into this oven of wrath, into these sharp-toothed jaws, into this smoking crater?'
• The English poet Rudyard Kipling celebrated the event in a poem inviting the USA to 'Take up the white man's burden'. But Mark Twain wrote of the US imperialist expedition that the stripes of the US flag should be painted over in black and the stars replaced by a skull and crossbones.
• Cuba became an economic colony of the USA, with US troops returning to suppress revolts. By 1920, US investors owned two thirds of the arable land. The Mafia moved into Havana's gambling and tourist business in the 1930s. After the Second World War, Cuba became a transshipment stage for 'French Connection' heroin into the USA, and a degenerate playground, brothel and casino for US imperialism.

The Attack on the Moncada Barracks

• On 26 July 1953, 160 young militants attacked the Moncada barracks in Santiago. Half of them died, most after torture. Many went to prison. Fidel Castro's brother Raul explained the event: 'It was not a putsch designed to score an easy victory without the masses. It was a surprise action to disarm the enemy and arm the people, with the aim of beginning armed revolutionary action% it marked the start of an action to transform Cuba's political, economic and social system and put an end to the foreign oppression, poverty, unemployment, ill health and ignorance that weighed upon our country and our people.'
• Fidel Castro was among those captured and imprisoned. In his defence speech, immortalised as 'History will absolve me', Castro identified three social forces that would determined his revolutionary strategy and alliances.

  'The big landowners, reactionary clergy and transnational corporations represented by Batista.' 'The national bourgeoisie, capitalists in contradiction with imperialism, but among whom only the most progressive would support a revolution.'
  The masses, 'the 600,000 Cubans without work%. The 500,000 farm labourers who live in miserable shacks,% the 100,000 small farmers who live and die working land that is not theirs,% the 30,000 teachers and professors,% so badly treated and paid; the 20,000 small businessmen weighed down by debts; the 10,000 young professional people who find themselves at a dead end% These are the people, the ones who know misfortune, and are therefore capable of fighting with limitless courage.'

• Following protests and in an attempt to court legitimacy, Batista released Castro and the other survivors of Moncada in May 1955. Castro left for Mexico amid rising repression and there met the Argentinian doctor Che Guevara.

The Revolution begins

• On 25 November 1956, the tiny yacht Granma set sail for Cuba. Castro said, 'We will be free, or we will be martyrs.' 82 waded ashore to do battle with Batista's thousands of US-equipped troops. They were immediately strafed by Batista's planes. Tramping through swamps, sucking sugar cane for moisture and nutrition, they were betrayed by their guide and ambushed.
• 12 partisans regrouped and began guerrilla warfare in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. On 21 August 1958, Castro ordered Che and Camilo Cienfuegos to lead two columns down from the Sierra Maestra.
• Batista fled Havana at 2am on 1 January 1959. A military junta replaced him. Camilo and Che continued to lead their guerrilla columns into Havana. Workers and peasants all over Cuba responded to Castro's call for a general strike. The Revolution triumphed.
• 20,000 people had been killed in the liberation war. As he entered Havana on 8 January, 32-year-old Castro reportedly ordered 50,000 rifles and machine guns to be imported to defend the Revolution.
• At the time of the Revolution, the largely rural population had an average annual income per person of $91.25 - an eight of that of Mississippi, the poorest state in the USA. Only 11% of Cuba drank milk, 4% ate meat, 2-3% had running water, and 9.1% had electricity. 36% had intestinal parasites, 14% had tuberculosis, and 43% were illiterate.
• On 2 January 1959, the government announced that 50-60% of casino profits would be directed to welfare programmes. The first of a series of land reforms was enacted on 17 May. Large estates were expropriated and turned into state farms. The US United Fruit Company was dispossessed without compensation. Land was turned over to small farmers, sugar cane farms were made into cooperatives.
• The Cuban government offered to discuss compensation for US-owned farms and mineral properties. The US Secretary of State declined the offer.

Defence of the Revolution

• During 1959, the CIA began monitoring the telephone conversations of Cuban leaders. Subversive radio stations transmitted to Cuba from Miami, the Bahamas and Central America.
• At the end of the year, the CIA began to land saboteurs in Cuba.
• On 6 July, the US sugar quota from Cuba was cut off. Castro nationalised US-owned sugar mills.
• In July, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended the President authorise a full invasion.
• As the invasion force approached on 16 April, Fidel Castro announced the socialist character of the Revolution. At 2am on 17 April a force of 1,500 Cuban counterrevolutionaries landed at the Bay of Pigs. Castro personally directed the counterattack, using Soviet-supplied weapons, while the workers and peasants of the Committes for the Defence of the Revolution rounded up thousands of counterrevolutionary sympathisers in the cities.
• The invasion force was destroyed in less than 72 hours. US imperialism was humiliated.
• The gains of the national democratic revolution had been preserved only by taking it forward to the socialist revolution. Later that year, Castro explained: 'The anti-imperialist, socialist revolution could only be one single revolution, because there is only one revolution. That is the great dialectic truth of humanity: imperialism, and, standing against it, socialism.' He thumped the table in front of him and shouted, 'I am a Marxist-Leninist and I shall be a Marxist-Leninist until the last days of my life.'
• The US imperialists have used every means at their disposal short of all-out war to strangle the Revolution: economic sabotage, bacteriological warfare, the economic blockade (which has cost Cuba an estimated £40bn) and repeated attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. In the face of this relentless pressure, still the Cuban people resist to defend the dignity of life socialism has achieved.

Cold War Policies

Now that we have a solid background on the impact and ramifications of using nuclear weapons, we must consider the best way to approach possible nuclear warfare.

In the post-1945 conflict between the Soviet Union and the US, the anticipation of a nuclear attack was ever present. Just ask Bert the Turtle.

Your question is this: Which policy to combat communism, and stop a nuclear attack, is your preferred method? Is it containment or deterrence? Give three reasons for your choice.

As always, leave your name in the comment and you need EIGHT SENTENCES for full credit.

Reconsider the Bomb

Hello All -

Very good job addressing the question from Wednesday night. Well done!

I've added two pieces of evidence below. Using these and the New York Times Article from before, do you still think it was acceptable to use atomic weapons?

Think critically and be sure to cite only the evidence!!!

Your response is due by History class on Monday.

Evidence #1:

PROTECTION OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS AGAINST BOMBING FROM THE AIR IN CASE OF WAR
Unanimous resolution of the League of Nations Assembly,
September 30, 1938.

The Assembly,
Considering that on numerous occasions public opinion has expressed through the most authoritative channels its horror of the bombing of civilian populations;
Considering that this practice, for which there is no military necessity and which, as experience shows, only causes needless suffering, is condemned under the recognised principles of international law;
Considering further that, though this principle ought to be respected by all States and does not require further reaffirmation, it urgently needs to be made the subject of regulations specially adapted to air warfare and taking account of the lessons of experience;
Considering that the solution of this problem, which is of concern to all States, whether Members of the League of Nations or not, calls for technical investigation and thorough consideration;
Considering that the Bureau of the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments is to meet in the near future and that it is for the Bureau to consider practical means of undertaking the necessary work under conditions most likely to lead to as general an agreement as possible:
I. Recognizes the following principles as a necessary basis for any subsequent regulations:

1) The intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal;

2) Objectives aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be identifiable;

3) Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in such a way that civilian populations in the neighbourhood are not bombed through negligence;

II. Also takes the opportunity to reaffirm that the use of chemical or bacterial methods in the conduct of war is contrary to international law, as recalled more particularly in the resolution of the General Commission of the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments of July 23rd 1932, and the resolution of the Council of May 14th, 1938.


Evidence #2:

"Effects of Nuclear Fallout"

Many people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki died not directly from the actual explosion, but from the radiation released as a result of the explosion. For example, a fourteen-year-old boy was admitted to a Hiroshima hospital two days after the explosion, suffering from a high fever and nausea. Nine days later his hair began to fall out. His supply of white blood cells dropped lower and lower. On the seventeenth day he began to bleed from his nose, and on the twenty-first day he died.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the few surviving doctors observed symptoms of radiation sickness for the first time. In his book Nagasaki 1945, Dr. Tatsuichiro Akizuki wrote of the puzzling, unknown disease, of symptoms that "suddenly appeared in certain patients with no apparent injuries." Several days after the bombs exploded, doctors learned that they were treating the effects of radiation exposure. "We were now able to label our unknown adversary 'atomic disease' or 'radioactive contamination' among other names. But they were only labels: we knew nothing about its cause or cure... Within seven to ten days after the A-bomb explosion, people began to die in swift succession. They died of the burns that covered their bodies and of acute atomic disease. Innumerable people who had been burnt turned a mulberry color, like worms, and died... The disease," wrote Dr. Akizuki, "destroyed them little by little. As a doctor, I was forced to face the slow and certain deaths of my patients."

Doctors and nurses had no idea of how their own bodies had been affected by radioactivity. Dr. Akizuki wrote, "All of us suffered from diarrhea and a discharge of blood from the gums, but we kept this to ourselves. Each of us thought: tomorrow it might be me... We became stricken with fear of the future." Dr. Akizuki survived, as did several hundred thousand others in or near Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, at least ten people who had fled from Hiroshima to Nagasaki survived both bombs.

The Fine Print

After the Bomb Blog Requirements

1- You must put your name in the comment. :)

2 - You must you all the grammar conventions that Ms. Grinnan has taught you!

3 - You must make references to the evidence provided. Most post will ask you to consider not only the question but the evidence used to decide.

4 - Thank critically!

*** Remember that each post is sent to me for approval before it goes "live" ****

The Cost of Victory

Our first blog post comes in the form of a serious question:

Was the United States justified in using atomic weapons on two Japanese cities to end World War II?

Carefully consider the evidence at hand, not the 20/20 vision we have in 2012. Using ONLY the the pieces of evidence below, write a blog post (minumum of 8 sentneces) stating your position and defending your actions. You may engage in civil discourse with another poster - CIVILY. :)

Your first post is due by History class on THURSDAY.

Death Totals for Island Invasions near Japan