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The inertia and incapacity of the bourgeois political
parties to oppose the military regime -even some of those parties joined
the regime in one way or another- 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
new strategy of armed struggle against the dictatorship, Fidel Castro
devoted himself to the silent and tenacious preparation for the struggle
to come.
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Actions would start on July 26, 1953, when army garrisons Moncada
in Santiago de Cuba, and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in Bayamo were
simultaneously attacked in an action meant to become the trigger
for a vast popular insurrection.
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The Moncada was the little engine that put
into motion the big one.
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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 -later known as History Will
Absolve Me- in which he argued the right of the people to uprise 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
-including the participants in the Moncada Garrison attack- 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 Directorate) by the
most combative university students.
The unhappy politics of promotions, the stimulus for enthroning nepotism,
the favoritism, the flattery and the lack of technical and professional
preparation of some of the principal heads and officials of the Army,
constituted elements that influenced in the decision of a group of officials
-with academic preparation- to conspire for improving the professional
level of the institution. These officials called "Puros" could
be located mainly in the Military Camp of Columbia, the Fortress of San
Carlos de la Cabaña, and in military academies. Among these officials,
José Ramón Fernández, José Orihuela, Enrique Borbonet, Ramón Barquín,
Manuel Varela Castro stood out. An accusation caused the detention of
all plotters and the abortion of the seditious attempt.
Another fact that worried the Batista regime was the assault to the Domingo
Goicuría Barracks on April 29 1956. Around 12:00 o'clock approximately
50 men attacked and tried to occupy the "Goicuría" barracks.
The immense majority of combatants were military men of the Authentic
Organization (OA) and they were under the command of Reinold García. The
action was a firm failure because Batista military knew that combatants
would attack; the evidence is in the balance of the action: 17 dead attackers
without any wounded, while the Army did not have any casualty. The assault
to this barracks, headquarters of the Regiment Not. 4 of the Rural Guard,
in Matanzas, constituted an element that stimulated to intelligence and
repression bodies to act with more energy and, in particular, to disjoint,
neutralize, and not to underestimate the groups of plotters belonging
to the Authentic Organization.
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.
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On December 2 1956, Fidel Castro landed at the head of the Granma
expedition in Las Coloradas, Oriente province.
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The landing of the Granma's expeditionaries
initiated the guerrilla struggle in the mountains on December
2, 1956.
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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 -among them the battle at "El Uvero"-, 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 paralyzed 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.
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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. 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 on the Sierra Maestra
mountains.
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The strategy used by the Rebel Army ended
the tyranny of Batista.
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In ferocious battles -Santo Domingo, El Jigüe, Vegas de Jibacoa, and others-
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 definite 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.
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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 -from the Directorio Revolucionario
and the People’s Socialist Party (Communist)- are already
operating, among others.
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Rebel Army and people: Unity and action.
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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 La Habana, 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.
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