• What was the Cuban Revolution?
• The Revolution in power
• Causes of the Cuban Revolution
• Consequences of the Cuban Revolution

We explain what the Cuban Revolution was, who was part of it and its events. Also, its causes and consequences.

The leftist Guerrilla Army was led by Fidel Castro Ruz.

What was the Cuban Revolution?

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.

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 began 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 there a revolutionary army with which to overthrow Batista, objective They began on November 25, 1956, landing in Cuba and entering the Sierra Maestra in the eastern part of the country.

At the command of the Guerrilla Army, Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos and Juan Almeida, enjoyed enormous worldwide sympathy in the context of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as they began their nearly 3-year struggle to overthrow the dictatorship.

On January 1, 1959, the guerrilla troops took Havana and Santiago, establishing a government provisional and diverse, 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.

The Revolution in power

Despite of commitment revolutionary with new free elections as soon as they 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 periodically, but through an indirect system at the hands of the Council of State chaired by Fidel Castro, president of Cuba 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 which is considered one of the highest points of the entire 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 at the continental and world level, still a symbol of the anti-imperialist struggles of Latin America and from the third world, as well as from the revolutionary left and the leftist commitment to 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 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 unemployment and corruption generalized.

Consequences of the Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution brought with it the beginning of the communist regime.

For its part, the main consequences of the Cuban Revolution can be summarized as:

• Fall of the Batista dictatorship and the 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 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.
• Start of Communist regime Cuban who still governs this nation, and that they would quickly win the rejection of the Latin American intelligentsia that initially supported them, due to their authoritarian policies (executions, summary trials, persecution of opponents, homosexuals and artists, prohibition of leaving 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 anti-communist dictatorships such as Pinochetism ( Chile) or the National Reorganization Process (Argentina).