Cuba: How Workers and Peasants Made the Revolution

By Chris Slee

Some left groups claim that the Cuban revolution was made by a few hundred guerrilla fighters, and that the working class played no role.

For example, Ruth Braham, writing in Socialist Alternative magazine, claims that the Cuban Revolution ‘’entailed a mere 800 armed guerillas seizing power, again on behalf of a majority but without their active involvement’’.

Similar views have been expressed by members of the International Socialist Organisation. For example, Jonathan Sherlock says:

If you believe that Cuba is somehow socialist, however distorted, then you believe that is is possible to bring about socialism via several hundred guerrilla fighters coming from the mountains at the right moment and seizing power. You will believe … that socialism can be brough about without working-class struggle.

In reality, ‘‘working-class struggle’’ played an essential role in the Cuban revolution. The workers, peasants and students played an active role, before, during and after the insurrection which destroyed the Batista dictatorship in January 1959. The overthrow of the regime was not simply a matter of guerrilla fighters marching into cities. Fidel Castro called a general strike which developed into a mass popular uprising during the first few days of January 1959. The subsequent transformation of property relations was the result of ongoing mass struggles by the workers and peasants.

But before discussing this in detail I will give some historical background to the Cuban revolution.

Spanish Colonialism #

Cuba was ‘‘discovered’’ by Colombus in 1492, and claimed as a Spanish colony. The indigenous population was treated with great brutality, including the horrific massacres. They were dispossessed of their land. Many died of hunger and disease. The majority of the indigenous population of Cuba was wiped out.

Havana became a major port and military centre for the Spanish empire. Ships taking the plundered treasures of central and south America back to Span gathered in Havana before crossing the Atlantic.

Sugar plantations were developed using slave labour. The slaves, who were brought in from Africa, were treated with great brutality. Many died from exhaustion, from industrial accidents in the sugar mills, or from disease, or were killed by their owners, often as punishment for trivial offences. A continual inflow of new slaves from Africa was required to replace those who died. Historian Hugh Thomas speaks of ‘’the need for replacement of 8% to 10% each year’’.

During the 1840s there was a series of slave revolts in various plantations and other worksites across Cuba. The revolts were crushed, but caused some plantation owners to consider replacing slavery by wage labour.

There was widespread discontent with Spanish rule, even amongst the upper classes of Cuban society. In 1868 a war of independence broke out. One of the leaders was Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a plantation owner who freed his slaves and enrolled them in his small army. Some rebel commanders, such as Antonio Maceo, raided plantations and freed the slaves.

But the rebel movement was not united on he policy of freeing slaves. The more conservative sections of the movement were reluctant to authorise Maceo to take the war into the western half of Cuba, where most of the sugar plantations were situated, and the movement remained on the defensive in the east for most of the ten years of the war. In 1878 an armistice was signed between the Spanish colonial government and most of the rebel leaders. Maceo refused to accept it, but his forces were defeated, and he went into exile.

In November 1879 the Spanish prime minister announced that slavery would be abolished in Cuba as from 1888. Many slave owners, believing that ‘‘free’’ labour would be cheaper than maintaining slaves, freed thm before the deadline. Once the slaves were free, plantation owners were no longer obliged to feed them all year round. Instead they could hire workers for a few months in the busy season, leaving them to fend for themselves at other times.

A new war of independence broke out in 1895, inspired by Jose Marti. Jailed as a teenager and then exiled from Cuba by the Spanish colonial authorities, Marti built a movement for independence and democracy amongst Cubans living overseas, particularly Cuban workers living in the United States. While campaigning for independence from Spain, he foresaw the danger of the emerging US imperialism, which aimed to dominate Latin America. He saw the need for Latin American unity to counter this.

Marti succeeded in re-uniting many veterans of the first Cuban war of independence, including Maceo, and returned to Cuba in 1895 to renew the struggle. Neither the rebels nor the Spanish foces were able to win a decisive victory. Marti and Maceo were both killed in the fighting.

In 1898 the United States stepped in, supposedly to support the Cuban independence fighters. But after defeating the Spanish forced, the US ordered the independence fighters to disarm. A military government was established in January 1899, headed by a US general.

US Neocolonialism #

Cuba was ruled by the US military government until 1902, when formal independence was granted. However the US retained the ability to intervene in Cuba, not only economically and politically but also militarily.

A constitutional convention was elected in 1900. However the convention delegates were pressured to accept severe limitations on Cuba’s sovereignty. In 1901 the US congress passed the Platt amendment, which proclaimed the intention of the US to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it saw fit, and to maintain bases in Cuba. The constitutional convention was pressured to accept these US dictates, and to include them as an appendix to the new Cuban constitution.

The delegates were told that the US army would not be withdrawn from Cuba unless they agreed to accept the Platt amendment. They were also promised that if they did agree, Cuban sugar would gain preferential access to the US market.

The US formally handed over power to the new Cuban government in May 1902. Guantanamo Bay and Bahia Honda were leased to the US as military bases. (Bahia Honda was given up in 1912, in return for an expansion in the size of the Guantanamo lease.)

In 1906 there was a revolt against the government of president Tomas Estrada Palma, who has been ‘’re-elected’’ without opposition in fraudulent elections in December 1905. Estrada called for US military aid to suppress the revolt. Two thousand US marines landed near Havana in September 1906. The US set up a new ‘‘provisional’’ government headed by a US judge, Charles Magoon.

In 1909 the US once again handed over government to an elected Cuban president. However, the US retained the ability to impose its will on Cuba through economic and diplomatic pressure and the threat of renewed military intervention. The US literally used ‘‘gunboat diplomacy’’ whenever this was felt to be necessary. On January 6, 1921, following protests against fraudulent elections conducted by president Menocal, the US sent General Enoch Crowder to Havana in the battleship Minnesota. According to historical Hugh Thomas, ‘‘He [Crowder] kept his headquarters on the Minnesota, issuing recommendation to Menocal which were in effect orders’’.

Thus while Cuba wa formally independent and democratic (except that women could not vote), independence and democracy were to a large extent fictitious, since the US could veto or overturn any decision by the Cuban government.

This situation was conducive to a high level of corruption in the political system. Politicians took bribes in return for government contracts, for pardons, etc.

There were periodic outbreaks of protest and rebellion. Most of these rebellions were crushed. But protests by university students in 1922-23 won a victory. Under the leadership of Julio Antonio Mella, secretary of the newly formed University Students Federation (FEU), the students campaigned against corruption in the university. They were successful: a hundred corrupt ‘‘professors’’ who had been given fictitious jobs at the university because they were cronies of the president were sacked. Furthermore, a system of election of the rector by students, staff and ex-students was introduced.

In 1924 Gerardo Machado was elected president. His regime was extremely corrupt and highly repressive. Trade unionists and student activists were murdered. Mella, who had led the student protests in 1922-23, and who had become a founder of the Cuban Communist Party in 1925, was murdered in Mexico in 1929 by an agent of Machado. Political parties were suppressed, and Machado, a former amry officer, used the army as his main instrument of rule.

1933 Revolution #

Many middle class people hoped for US intervention to remove Machado. A group called ABC, comprised mainly of students, carried out bomb attacks with the aim of showing that Machado could not ensure stability, thereby provoking US intervention to remove him.

Meanwhile the Communist Party was gaining strength, despite the repression. In 1930, 200 000 workers participated in a political strike against Machado. A communist-led sugar workers strike closed down many sugar mills in Cuba in early 1933.

In early August 1933 there were strikes throughout Havana, culminating in a general strike on August 12 and the flight of Machado from the country. The US ambassador Sumner Welles tried to organise a new pro-US government to replace him. Welles succeeded in having Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a conservative diplomat (and the grandson of the independence leader of the same name), declared president; but a few weeks later a coup was carried out by a group of sergeants in the Cuban army, in alliance with students from the University of Havana. Fulgenico Batista emerged as leader of the sergeants. He formed a provisional government headed by a university professor, Ramon Grau San Martin. Batista proclaimed himself a colonel and made himself head of the army.

The Grau San Martin government, which included a prominent former student leader Antonio Guiteras, introduced significant reforms such as the eight-hour work day, a minimum wage for workers, land reform, university autonomy and the repudiation of Cuba’s foreign debt.

But the army under Batista remained a repressive force. On September 29, for example, it attacked a memorial rally for Julio Antonio Mella and sacked the headquarters of the National Labour Confederation.

The US withheld recognition from the Grau government, and encouraged Batista to carry out a coup, which he did in January 1934. For the next six years Batista, as army commander, was the effective leader of the country, although there was a series of other people holding the title of president.

While Batista’s January 1934 coup marked a turn to the right, it did not mean the immediate and total reversal of all the gains of the revolution. Batista still claimed to be a revolutionary. While he was willing to repress militant workers, he also wanted to win popular support, which required him to support some progressive reforms. In some ways, Batista in his early years was comparable to third world bourgeois nationalist leaders of military origin, such as Peron and Nasser.

In April 1937 the CP characterised Batista as a fascist, and tried (without success) to form a popular front with bourgeois anti-Batista groups. But by 1938 the CP had changed its policy and made a deal with Batista. The Communist Party was legalised and allowed to reorganise the union movement under its control, resulting in the creation of the CTC (Cuban Confederation of Workers). In return the CP supported Batista, resolving to ‘‘adopt a more positive attitude towards Colonel Batista, compelling him as a result to take up even more positively democratic atttudes’’. In 1940 the CP supported Batista in the presidential elections.

The CP’s deal with Batista was denounced by radical bourgeois democrats such as Eduardo Chibas. It contributed to the hostility towards the CP that continued to exist amongst a lot of radical activists, including many members of the July 26 Movement in the 1950s.

In 1939 a Constituent Assembly was elected. The union movement held demonstrations to demand the inclusion of workers rights in the new constitution. The constitution adopted in 1940 included provisions for a 44-hour week and a month’s paid holidays for workers, and restrictions on the ability of employers to sack workers, amongst other progressive measures. These provisions were, however, implemented very unevenly in practice.

Batista was elected president in 1940, with support from the CP, but also from many wealthy people who feared (wrongly) that his opponent Grau would carry out a social revolution.

Two CP members became ministers in Batista’s government. In 1944 the CP changes its name to the Popular Socialist Party. With its expectation of ‘’lasting peace for many generations’’ after the second world war, the PSP appeared to have abandoned the Marxist understanding of imperialism and class struggle.

The 1944 presidential election was won by Grau. Batista, who did not contest this election, left office a very wealthy man as a result of corruption, and went to live in Miami. But Grau’s government, which included many former radicals of the 1930s, turned out to be even more corrupt than Batista’s.

The issue of corruption led to a split in Grau’s Cuban Revolutionary Party (also known as the Autenticos), with Eduardo Chibas setting up a new party, the Cuban Peoples Party (commonly known as the Ortodoxos) in 1947 on an anti-corruption platform.

With the onset of the Cold War, the Grau government launched an offensive against communists in the unions. Communist union leaders were murdered by pro-government thugs. From 1947 to 1951 the CTC was split, with two labour federations both claiming the name CTC. On July 29, 1947 the Minister of Labour Carlos Prio took over the CTC headquarters by force and handed it over to Autentico union officials.

Eventually the PSP-led federation gave up its attempt to maintain a seperate structure. Some of its unions applied to join the Autentico-led federation, while other unions were dissolved and encouraged their members to join unions affiliated to the rival federation.

The PSP has been considerably weakened, but nevertheless retained a following in some sections of the working class. According to one estimate, ‘‘25% of Cuba’s organised workers remained pro-communist, and of 120 sugar mill locals, the communists retained control of 40’’.

In 1948 Prio won the presidential election. Batista returned from Miami and won election as a senator.

The Prio regime was highly corrupt. Eduardo Chibas regularly denounced corruption on his weekly radio program, and the Ortodoxos won growing support, especially amongst poor people and amongst the youth. But in 1951, Chibas committed suicide, depriving the Ortodoxos of their most popular leader.

The May 1952 elections were expected to be a three way contest between the Autenticos (whose presidential candidate was Carlos Hevia), the Ortodoxos (whose candidate was Roberto Agramonte, following the suicide of Eduardo Chibas), and Batista. But on the night of March 9-10, Batista carried out a coup.

The 1952 Coup #

Although Batista was no longer army commander, he still had the support of many (though not all) army officers. Batista and his supporters quickly took over Havana’s main army base and sent tanks to surround the presidential palace. Prio fled to the Mexican embassy.

The CTC called a general strike in protest at the coup. However Batista promised the CTC leadership that he would respect the existing labour laws, and the strike was soon called off. CTC leader Eusebio Mujal (who had collaborated with the Autentico government in ousting the PSP from the leadership of the CTC) became one of Batista’s closest collaborators, and helped suppress opposition to the dictatorship within the unions.

The Struggle Against Batista #

Batista’s coup initially met little resistance. On March 10, 1952 there was a protest rally at Havana University, involving a few hundred students and workers.

Opposition to the dictatorship grew. Students were amongst the first to take action, holding numerous rallies and demonstrations throughout the years of Batista’s dictatorship. On January 15, 1953 a student, Ruben Batista, was fatally wounded by police at a demonstration. He died on February 13. His funeral the following day became a large, militant demonstration of repudiation of the regime.

Groups of activitsts began to make plans for the overthrow of Batista. Fidel Castro was the leader of one such group, sometimes referred to as the Youth of the Centenary (a reference to the centenary of Jose Marti’s birth). This was the group that carried out the attack on the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953. The aim was to spark a nationwide insurrection which would overthrow Batista’s regime. However it was quickly crushed. many of the participants were murdered by the army and police, while others including Castro were captured and jailed. Castro and others who participated in the Moncada attack later went on to form the July 26 Movement.

Another militant group formed in the aftermath of Batista’s coup was the the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), led by Rafael Garcia Barcena, a university professor who had been a radical activist in the 1920s and 1930s. This group planned to lead a student march on an army camp in April 1953, with the aim of persuading the soldiers to rise against Batista. However the plan was foiled by mass arrests. Garcia Barcena was amongst those arrested. Some supporters of the MNR who escaped arrest continued trying to build a revolutionary organisation. Many of them later joined the July 26 Movement.

Another group, formed in 1955, was the Revolutionary Directorate, led by Jose Antonio Echevarria, the president of the University Students Federation. The Directorate, which mainly comprised students, carried out an attack on the presidential palace in March 1957, in which Echevarria died.

The PSP was very slow to join the struggle against Batista. According to Hugh Thomas, the PSP leaders ‘‘denounced Batista but were slow to do anything more’’. THe PSP denounced Castro’s attack on the Moncada barracks as a ‘‘putsch’’. The PSP remained legal until November 1953, when it was banned, apparently became of US pressure rather than because Batista viewed it as a serious threat. The ban was not enforced very strictly.

Some members of the PSP and Socialist Youth opposed the party’s conservative policy, but it was not until 1958 that the policy changed fundamentally.

Fidel Castro #

Fidel Castro, the son of a rich landowner, was a student at Havana University between 1945 and 1950. He later said:

At university, which I arrived at with only a spirit of rebelliousness and some elementary ideas about justice, I became a revolutionary, I became a Marxist-Leninist, and I acquired sentiments and values which I hold today and for which I have struggled throughout my life.

He became active in student politics. He was elected by his fellow students as a class representative, and became increasingly involved in a struggle for control of the FEU between supporters and opponents of the Grau government. The FEU leadership, which at the time was pro-government, at one stage threatened Castro with death if he set foot on campus. He defied these threats and his opponents backed off.

Castro, influenced by the ideas of Jose Marti, was interested in democratic and anti-imperialist struggles throughout Latin America. He became chairperson of the FEU’s committee for Dominican democracy, which campaigned against the dictatorship of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. He did not confine himself to propaganda against Trujillo, but when he heard about a proposed expedition of armed Cuban and Dominican democacy fighters to overthrow the dictator, he joined up and participated in military training on an island off Cuba’s coast. The expedition was a fiasco, but the experience helped him develop his idea on how to carry out an armed insurrection against a dictatorship.

Castro became involved in efforts to build links with students in other Latin American countries, with the aim of establishing a Latin America-wide student federation. In pursuit of this goal, he visited Venezuela, Panama, and Colombia. He happened to be in Colombia in 1948, at the time when that country’s most popular political leader, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, was murdered. This provoked a popular uprising in Bogota. Crowds stormed police stations and seized weapons. Castro joined in the uprising.

Castro graduated as a lawyer in 1950. However, practising law was not his main interest.

While at university he had joined the Cuban Peoples Party (also known as the Ortodoxos). Over time, as Castro studied Marxism, he began to recognise the limitations of the Ortodoxo Party. Nevertheless, he maintained links with it, became many of its members and supporters were radical-minded workers, students and poor people, whose support Castro wanted to win.

Castro was chosen to be a parliamentary candidate of the Ortodoxo Party in elections planned for May 1952. (These elections were cancelled after Batista’s coup of March 1952)

When the elections were cancelled, Castro began preparing for an armed uprising. He recruited 1200 young people, mainly drawn from the Ortodoxo youth, and gave them some very elementary military training.

Castro says that during this period, he was a ‘‘professional revolutionary … I was devoting my full time to the revolution’’. As a lawyer, he defended some poor people in court, but did not charge them a fee. He was financially supported by his comrades in the revolutionary movement.

During this period Castro organised ‘‘a small circle of Marxist studies’’ for some of his closest collaborators.

The Attack on the Moncada Barracks #

On July 25, 1953 Castro called on 160 of the members of his group to gather at a farm outside Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city. Early next morning they carried out an attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago, as well as on a barracks in the city of Bayamo.

Castro hoped that with the advantage of surprise his forces would take the Moncada barracks with little or no bloodshed, then use the army’s own internal communications channels to promote rebellion, or at least cause confusion, among soldiers around the country. He also planned to issue a call for a general strike against Batista. He was hopeful that the combination of a general strike and rebellion by sections of the army would be able to overthrow Batista.

The attacks failed. Some of the attackers died in the fighting; others were murdered by Batista’s forces after being captured. Others, including Castro, were taken prisoner and put on trial.

Castro’s Ideas #

There is a commonly held view in the Trotskyist movement that Castro was just a radical bourgeois democrat at the time of the struggle against Batista. Even Joseph Hansen, one of the best Trotskyist writers on Cuba, asssumes Castro was not a Marxist prior to 1959.

However, Castro was very much influenced by Marxist at the time of the attack on the Moncada barracks. In his 1985 interview with Frei Betto, Castro stated:

I had already acquired a Marxist outlook when we attacked the Moncada garrison. I had fairly well-developed revolutionary ideas, acquired while I was university through my contact with revolutionary literature.

This revolutionary literature included some of the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Castro added that

my contribution to the Cuban revolution consists of having synthesised Marti’s ideas and those of Marxism-Leninism and of having applied them consistently in our struggle.

Castro explained his decision not to join the PSP, but to work initially in the framework of the Ortodoxo Party, as follows:

I saw that the Cuban communists were isolated due to the pervasive atmosphere of imperialism, McCarthyism and reactionary politics. No matter what they did they remained isolated …

So, I worked out a strategy for carrying out a deep social revolution – but gradually, by stages …

I realised that the masses were decisive, that the masses were extremely angry and discontented. They did not understand the social essence of the problem; they were confused. They attributed unemployment, poverty, and the lack of schools, hospitals, job opportunities and housing – almost everything – to administrative corruption, embezzlement and the perversity of the politicians.

The Cuban Peoples Party harnessed much of that discontent, but they did not particularly blame the capitalist system and imperialism for it …

The people were confused, but they were also desperate and able to fight … The people had to be led along the road of revolution by stages, step by step, until they achieved full political consciousness and confidence in their future.

I worked out all these ideas by reading and studying Cuban history, and the Cuban personality and distinguishing characteristics, and Marxism.

Trial and Imprisonment #

Castro used his defence speech at his trial for thr attack on the Moncada barracks to explain the goals for which he was fighting. The speech, later published under the title History Will Absolve Me!, outlined his program.

Castro called for the ‘‘restoration of civil liberties and political democracy’’, which had bee suppressed by Batista’s coup. He also advocated granting land to landless tenant farmers, making this land ‘’not mortgageable and not transferrable’’. For wage workers, Castro proposed ‘’the right to share 30% of the profits of all large industrial, mercantile and mining companies, including the sugar mills’’. He advocated ‘’the confiscation of all holdings and ill-gotten gains of those who had ommitted frauds during previous regimes, as well as the holdings and ill-gotten gains of their legatees and heirs’’. To implement this, he advocated special revolutionary courts to look into the records of all corporations and banks.

Castro advocated the ‘’nationalisation of the electric power trust and the telephone trust [which were US-owned], refund to the people of the illegal [excessive] rates these companies have carged , and payment to the treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the past’’.

He also advocated setting a maximum amount of land to be held by each type of agricultural enterprise, and redistributing the remainder amongst peasant families; promoting agricultural cooperatives; cutting all house rents in half; and building new houses for city residents.

This was not a socialist program, but a radical democratic program. Castro later said that if the program had been more radical, ‘’the revolutionary movement against Batista would not have obtained the breadth that it achieved and that made victory possible’’.

Castro was sent to prison on the Isle of Pines, where has was able to read the writings of Marx and Lenin much more extensively, and deepen his understanding of Marxist theory.

Meanwhile Castro’s supporters outside the prison defied Batista’s repressive laws by publishing History Will Absolve Me! and distributing tens of thousands of copies. They built a mass movement demanding freedom for all political prisoners, including the Moncada veterans.

The July 26 Movement #

Fidel Castro and 18 other Moncada veterans were released from prison under an amnesty on 15 May 1955. Castro immediately set to work creating a new revolutionary organisation, the July 26 Movement. He aimed to united those willing to carry out revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship, and succeeded in winning the support of many, including veterans of the the MNR, such as Armando Hart and Faustino Perez, as well as Frank Pais, who led a revolutionary organisation based in Oriente province in eastern Cuba.

Castro continued to believe in the need for an armed insurrection to overthrow Batista. Nevertheless, before launching an armed struggle, he tested out the possibilities for peaceful methods of struggle.

The government soon showed that it had not changed. It banned a proposed mass rally. It banned Fidel Castro from appearing on radio and television. It closed down a newspaper that printed revelations about the army’s murder of prisoners following the attack on the Moncada barracks. It began once again making mass arrests of opponents of the regime. And it began again to murder its opponents. Jorge Agostini, an army officer who had resigned following Batista’s coup and become a campaigner against his regime, was murdered in June 1955 by Batista’s thugs.

After two months of growing repression, it was clear that the removal of the Batista regime by peaceful means was not possible. On July 7 Castro left Cuba and went to Mexico. There he has his followers carried out military training in preparation for a return to Cuba to overthrow the dictatorship. While in Mexico Castro met Che Guevara and persuaded hiim to join the planned expedition.

In August 1955 Castro issued a manifesto containing a 15-point program of reforms, including distribution of land among peasant families, nationalisation of public services, mass education, and industrialisation.

Meanwhile in Cuba itself the July 26 Movement was being built as an underground organisation throughout the country. Armando Hart, a key leader ot this work, comments that:

All over the country, the organisation of the Movement continued to advance. In the weeks preceding the Granma [which reached Cuba on December 2, 1956] there was no municipality or corner of the island without its underground leadership and cell.

In May 1956 the J26M began publishing an illegal newspaper, initially called Aldabonazo, then Revolucion. The first editorial said:

For the July 26 Movement, only those who aim at something more than simply toppling the dictatorship are capable of really eliminating it … The July 26 Movement asserts that the current government is not the cause but the result of the republic’s fundamental crisis … It would hardly be worthwhile to confront the dictatorial, corrupt and mediocre regime we suffer without aiming for a revolutionary transformation of the moral, political, economic and social causes that made possible the criminal act committed by the seditious group (i.e. Batista’s coup).

Thus the J26M aimed at radical social change. But most of its activists did not regard themselves as Marxists. They were radical democrats. They were concerned about social justice, not just formal political democacy. But in the beginning most did not have a clear socialist perspective.

Over time, many of them evolved towards socialist ideas. But some did not. Some later turned against the revolution as it began to enter the socialist stage.

Fidal Castro, the central leader of the J26M, was a Marxist, but did not say so publicly. Some other leaders such as Raul Castro and Che Guevara were also Marxists. But the J26M also included people who were strongly anti-communist. US author Julia Sweig notes that

Anti-communism within the 26th of July cadre itself was common, both because of the Cold War climate of the 1950s and because the PSP, officially banned in 1952, had a reputation for having collaborated with Batista from the 1930s.

Strategy of the J26M #

While the program of the J26M was bourgeois-democratic, its methods of struggle were militant. The J26M’s perspective was to build up towards a general strike and popular insurrection. The second manifesto of the July 26 Movement to the Cuban people, issued in 1956, called for workers to be organised from the bottom in revolutionary groups in order to declare a general strike.

Fidel Castro was strongly committed to this perspective, and spoke or wrote about it many times. In a message dated December 14, 1957, Castro said

The workers section of the July 26 Movement is involved in organising strike committees in every work centre and every sector of industry, together with opposition elements from all organisations that are prepared to join the strike …

Che Guevara was also enthusiastic about the goal of a general strike. He wrote that

The revolutionary general strike is the definitive weapon, the intercontinental rocket of the peoples.

But when the July 26 Movement was launched in 1955, it was still a long way from being able to put into practice the plan for a revolutionary general strike. This was due both to its still limited roots in the working class, and to the political limitations of many of its cadres.

Strikes #

Mujal’s control of the trade union movement made it difficult for the J26M to build a strong base in the unions. Nevertheless the J26M did participate in strike action and strike solidarity where possible.

In September 1955 there was a series of bank strikes led by opponents of Batista, including the J26M member Enrique Hart, who was arrested and kept in prison until after the strikes were over.

In December 1955 there was a strike of over 200 000 sugar workers, in protest at a government move that would have reduced their wages. Strike leaders included members of he PSP and the J26M, and even some pro-Mujal union officials who felt the need to support the strike to maintain some support in the rank and file.

The strike received broad solidarity, including from the students. According to J26M leader Armando Hart,

A number of towns were virtually taken over by the strikers and supporters. Virtually all economic activity in these towns was paralysed, leading them to be termed ‘dead cities’.

Batista was forced to concede to the striker’s demands.

Castro Returns #

Fidel Castro and 81 supporters set sail for Cuba on 24 November, 1956 in the yacht Granma, reaching the Cuban coast (later than expected) on December 2.

On November 30, the J26M underground carried out armed attacks on army and police buildings in Santiago. There was also industrial action by some workers in Oriente province, including a 24 hour strike in the town of Guantanamo. These actions were intended to coincide with the landing of the Granma, thereby distracting Batista’s army from attacking Castro’s foces before they could reach the relative safety of the mountains.

However, the Santiago uprising was crushed before the Granma reached the Cuban coast. Most of Castro’s fighters were killed or captured shortly after the landing. Castro and a few others survived, and a guerilla front was established in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.

The guerilla force gradually expanded. J26M activists, including survivors of the Santiago uprising, came from the cities to join the guerillas. The peasants increasingly supported the guerillas, and some joined the Rebel Army. But it did not become simply a peasant army. It included a large proportion of workers, including both agricultural labourers from the sugar and coffee plantations and workers who had come from the cities to join the guerillas.

The J26M continued to build a strong urban underground network, which sent supplies, money, and recruits for the guerillas; carried out propaganda in the cities; organised strikes and protests; and carried out acts of sabotage and armed attacks on Batista’s police and army in urban areas.

The J26M urban underground organised protests against police murders. For example, on January 2, 1957 the body of William Soler, a teenager, was found in the streets of Santiago. He had been murdered by the police after being arrested. Underground activist Armando Hart describes what happened:

This crime caused great popular indignation, and Santiago became a boiling pot. The idea was raised of holding a women’s demonstration along Enramada Street at the beginning of 1957, and we all went to work organising it. It was an event that showed the strength the July 6 movement already had among the masses. The men lined the sidewalks, and the women marched through the streets. There were huge banners denoucning the intolerable situation and demanding there be no more murders.

The J26M also used public protests, or the threat of them, to prevent the police and army murdering captured activists. When Armando Hart and two others were arrested by the army in January 1958, the J26M took over a radio station and broadcast the news so the army could not kill them secretly in a fake ‘‘battle’’, as they had been planning to do.

Preparing for a General Strike #

The idea of a general strike was a central tenet of the J26M strategy. However the first attempts to actually implement this perspective were unsuccessful or only partially successful.

The J26M had only a weak presence in the union movement in Havana at the time of the Granma landing, despite widespread sympathy amongst workers for its goals. The movement’s influence in the working class was stronger in Santiago, and in Oriente province (of which Santiago was the capital), in part for historical reasons (according to Armando Hart, ‘’the population there had been radically Fidelista since the days of Moncada’’), and in part because of the consistent political work of Frank Pais and his comrades. There was also a better relationship between the J26M and the PSP in Santiago than in Havana. By mid-1957, according to US author Julia Sweig, ‘‘Local labour cells [in Oriente] had already carried out mini-shutdowns, and walkouts were operating under a real structure …’’

The Frente Obrero Nacional (National Workers Front) was set up by the J26M in 1957. Its role was to prepare for the general strike. But it was still far from being strong enough to achieve this goal. It remained weak in Havana.

The CTC was still firmly controlled by Mujal, while the PSP, which had a following amongst sections of the working class, was hostile to the J26M. This hostility was reciprocated. Many of the leaders of the J26M urban underground were so hostile to the PSP that they did not want to cooperate with it in any way. The situation was bettr in Santiago than in Havana.

Attempted General Strikes #

There were two attempts at a nationwide general strike before the eventual victorious strike of January 1959.

On July 30, 1957 Frank Pais, the leader of the J26M urban underground in Santiago, Cuba’s second largest city, was murdered by the police. This triggered a spontaneous strike in the city. All stores in Santiago closed in protest. Tens of thousands followed the funeral cortege to the cemetary.

According to Armando Hart, a leader of the urban underground, ‘‘Beginning on that day, a powerful strike movement broke out in Santiago and throughout Oriente’’. However attempts to spread the strike action across Cuba had only limited success

The J26M national leadership called a general strike for August 5, 1957. The strike was in general not effective in Havana, though electrical plant workers, telephone workers, bank employees and several bus lines did go on strike.

The J26M called another general strike in April 1958. This strike failed. According to Sweig:

At eleven in the morning of April 9, 1958, the 26th July Movement interrupted Havana and Santiago radio stations to broadcast a call for a general strike. Precious few workers walked out of their jobs in the capital, where poorly armed militia attacked an armoury in Old Havana and other targets. Almost without exception, police gunfire eliminated the commandos. Sabotage to the city’s main circuit board caused temporary blackouts from Old Havana to the Vedado district. By late afternoon though, most bus routes had resumed their normal schedules, businesses and banks had reopened, and workers had completed their afternoon shifts. According to one report, not one factory or business of Havana had shut down as a result of the worker walkouts, and the movement’s militia took the brunt of police violence deployed to counter their sabotage …

In Santiago de Cuba workers did strike, but by afternoon employers had already begun to replace them … Fearing that striking workers might lose their jobs without having accomplished anything, on April 10 Vilma Espin issued a ‘‘back-to-work’’ order in Santiago and notified Havana to call off the strike.

The failure of the strike showed that the J26M on its own did not have sufficient organised support in the working class to call a nationwide strike. The J26M had called the strike without consulting other organisations, including most importantly the PSP. The PSP opposed the strike, saying it was premature and had not been properly built.

J26M and PSP #

The mutual hostility between the J26M and the PSP was due to two factors: on the one hand, the cold war anti-communist attitudes that prevailed amongst many J26M activists; on the other hand, the Stalinist politics of the PSP and its very dubious historical role in the revolutionary struggle in Cuba. In the 1930s the CP had made an alliance with Batista, and between 1940 and 1944 had participated in his government. In 1953 the PSP condemned the attack on the Moncada barracks as ‘‘putschism’’ and ‘‘petty bourgeois adventurism’’.

The PSP was slow to join struggle against Batista. In October 1956, shortly before the Granma set out for Cuba, the PSP sent emissaries to Castro in Mexico warning him that conditions weren’t right for an armed struggle in Cuba. According to Jon Lee Anderson, the author of a biography of Che Guevara,

they tried to win Fidel’s agreement to join forces in a gradual campaign of civil dissent leading up to an armed insurrection – in which the PSP would also participate. He refused and told them he would go ahead with his plans, but hoped the party and its militants would support him nonetheless by carrying out uprisings upon his rebel army’s arrival in Cuba.

However, according to J. P. Morray, a US leftist writer generally sympathetic towards the PSP:

Public declarations of the Cuban Communist Party as late as July 1957 showed that it opposed his [Castro’s] insurrectionary tactics; and not until February 1958 did it acknowledge the utility of the guerilla struggle.

The PSP was internally divided over the question of collaboration with the J26M. The party’s line began to change in late 1957 and early 1958. In February 1958 it expressed support for Castro’s guerillas while condemning the tactics of the J26M urban underground. The PSP said that the latter reied too much on militia sabotage, fighting the police, etc., rather than winning the support of workers to take action themselves. These criticisms had considerable validity, especially in Havana.

By early 1958 a number of PSP members had come to the guerilla zones and joined the Rebel Army, in particular Che Guevara’s and Raul Castro’s columns.

Then the J26M announced its intention to call a strike in April 1958, the PSP expressed their willingness to support it. However when the J26M urban underground rejected any involvement by the PSP in organising the strike, the PSP ignored the strike call. Some PSP members reportedly dobbed in J26M strike organisers to the police.

Why Did the April 1958 Strike Fail? #

After the defeat of the strike, there was discussion within the J26M about the reasons for the failure. At a meeting of the J26M National Directorate, held in the Sierra Maestra liberated zone on May 3, 1958, there was detailed discussion of the reasons for the defeat. Some of the key leaders of the J26M urban underground were criticised, by Che Guevara amongst others, for sectarianism in refusing to work with the PSP. They were also criticised for the tactics which they used in trying to build the strike.

The J26M urban underground had tried to make up for its lack of deep roots in the working class in Havana, and its resulting lack of ability to organise workers to take a collective decision to go on strike, by using its militia. The theory held by at least some sections of the urban underground was that gun battles in the streets between the police and the J26M militia would give workers an excuse to stay home from work. The rational was that workers wanted to strike byt were scared of being sacked or arrested if they did. The street fighting would give them a pretext for staying away from work without openly admitting to their employer and the police that they supported the strike.

Faustino Perez, a key leader of the urban underground, outlined some of the mistakes made in organising the strike in a letter he wrote in October 1958. One mistake was that, although the J26M had announced its intention to call a general strike, the date of the strike was kept secret:

We kept the agreed-upon date a secret, supposedly for the sake of the militias’ action, and we made a fleeting annoucement at a time – 11am – when only a few housewives were listening to the radio … We caught our own cadres of the organisation by surprise … as well as the people as a whole.

According to Bonachea and San Martin, the original intention was that the strike call would be issued at noon, when many workers had gone home for their midday break (siesta). Fighting in the streeks would give them an excuse to stay at home. But in fact the strike call was issued at 11am, when most workers were still at work. Presumably the hope was that the workers would take a collective decision to go home and not come back. This seems t have happened in Santiago but not in Havana.

Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, a PSP leader who became a strong advocate of an alliance with the J26M, points out that workers had a lot to lose by going on a political strike, and hence would not do so unless they had confidence in the organisation that called the strike. They risked being sacked, and as Rodriguez points out:

the loss of a job may have signified for any of them the fall into misery, from which they might not recover for the rest of their lives, since for each employed worker there were three workers looking for a job.

This situation caused the urban workers, above all those in Havana, to demand guarantees of seriousness and organisation before they would launch themselves into a strike movement which, if it was not sufficiently prepared, would culminate in an easy defeat and irreversible misery for themselves.

In April 1958 the J26M was not yet able to give such ‘‘guarantees of seriousness and organisation’’.

Some writers have accused Fidel Castro of pressuring a reluctant urban underground leadership into calling the April 1958 strike, knowing it would be defeated, in order to discredit the urban leadership, which Castro allegedly saw as potential rivals. For example, Bonachea and San Martin assert that: ‘‘It can be stated unequivocally that Fidel Castro was responsible for the conception of the strike and its failure’’. US author Julia Sweig however, after examining the Cuban archives, shows that the reverse was the case – it was the urban leadership that persuaded Castro that the time was ripe for calling the strike. Similarly, former underground activist Armando Hart, in his book Aldabonazo, reprints a letter from Faustino Perez, a key urban underground leader, who explains that the date of the strike was set after a discussion between the Havana and Santiago leaderships.

Lessons of the April Defeat #

Following the failure of the April 1958 strike, the leadership of the July 26 Movement released that any future general strike had to be much better prepared and should only occur when the objective conditions were ripe. But they never renounced the idea of a general strike. This is clear from Che Guevara’s account of the J26M leadership meeting held on May 3, 1958 to discuss the failure of the strike.

Summarising the discussion at the meeting, Che said:

The analysis of the strike demonstrated that subjectivism and putschist conceptions permeated its preparation and execution. The formidable apparatus that the July 26 Movement seemed to have in its hands, in the form of organised workers’ cells, fell apart at the moment the action took place.

Che explained that the leaders of the J26M urban underground had made a number of errors. They had been ‘‘oppsed to any participation by the Popular Socialist Party in the organisation of the struggle’’. This had led to the ‘‘conception of a sectarian strike, in which the other revolutionary movements would be forced to follow our lead’’. They had also thought it would be possible for the capital city to be seized by J26M militias, ‘‘without closely examining the forces of reaction inside their principle bastion’’.

The meeting ‘‘raised the need for nity of all working class forces to prepare the next revolutionary general strike, which would be called from the Sierra’’ (i.e., from the mountains, where Fidel Castro was based).

Che added that the movement

did away wth various naive illusions of attempted revolutionary general strikes when the situation had not matured sufficiently to bring about an explosion of that type, and witout having laid the groundwork of adequate preparations or an event of that magnitude.

Following this meeting the J26M changed is policy and began trying to work with the PSP in preparing for a new general strike, to be called when the conditions for success were present. The PSP had by this time changed its policy and agreed to work with the J26M. Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, a prominent leader of the PSP, went into the mountains to meet with Fidel, and reached an agreement on collaboration in a common struggle against Batista. The J26M National Workers Front was merged with the CP-led Committees for the Defence of Workers Demands to form FONU (the United National Workers Front).

In the meantime the guerilla struggle continued in the countryside. For Castro and Guevara, guerilla warfare was not counterposed to urban mass struggle. Rather the guerilla struggle, by weakening Batista’s army, would help prepare the conditions for a successful general strike.

Conferences of workers’ representatives were held in two of the liberated zones (northern Oriente and Yaguajay). A plan for a third such conference in the Sierra Maestra had to be cancelled due to a government military offensive. However, between August and December 1958 Fidel Castro had meetings with numerous workers representatives who came to the Sierra to meet him.

There were also numerous meetings of workers and peasants in particular local areas. For example, in Las Villas province, where a guerilla column led by Camilo Cienfuegos was operating,

A comision obrera (workers committee) was formed and affiliated with the Column No. 2. Its objectives were to eliminate the official pro-Mujal leadership in the sugar mills; hold free elections in the unions; and to draw up a list of demands and supervise their fulfilment with the support of the rebel army. By November, Cienfuegos was able to preside over a meeting attended by about 800 sugar workers from the San Agustin and Adela sugar mills. On November 28, Major William Galvez presided over a meeting of 500 delegates representing workers from seven sugar mills in the region. The following day, a peasant congress attracted over 300 participants, and the asociacion campesina (peasant association) was organised.

Castro’s ‘Obsession’: Destroying the Old State Apparatus #

Towards the end of 1958, the guerrillas were inflicting major defeats on Batista’s troops and rapidly expanding the liberated zones. According to Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, the plan for a general strike was central to Fidel’s thinking at the time. The goal was to ‘‘paralyse the life of the nation until all power had passed into the hands of the revolution, and not just a fragment [of power]’’.

According to Rodriguez, the need to ‘‘destroy the political apparatus of the dominant classes’’ was ‘‘practically an obsession for Fidel Castro in the final days of 1958’’. Fidel’s thinking on this issue was influenced both by his reading of Marx’s writings on the Paris Commune, and by the practical experience of Latin America, where revolutions which overthrew a dictatorship but left the old army intact were sooner or later followed by a counter-coup carried out by army officers for the benefit of imperialism and the oligarchy.

The Insurrection #

By the end of 1958, the guerilla forces controlled much of the country and were advancing on Havana. The US, realising that Batista could no longer control the situation, began trying to bring about his replacement by a new government, comprising people who were less discredited than Batista, but still favourable to US interests.

According to Bonachea and San Martin, ‘’…since November, the US government had been taking urgent steps to remove Batista from power while trying to prevent Fidel Castro from taking over’’. Initially Batista resisted, but around 2am on January 1, 1959, he flew into exile, handing over power to one of his officers, General Eulogio Cantillo.

Castro responded to these events by ordering guerillas led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos to advance on Havana, and by calling a general strike to coincide with the entry of the guerrillas into the cities. In a radio broadcast on January 1, Castro called on ‘’the people of Cuba, especially all workers’’ to ‘‘immediately make preparations for a general strike, to begin throughout the country on January 2, supporting the revolutionary forces and thus guaranteeing the total victory of the revolution’’. He urged Cuban workers to ‘‘organise themselves in the factories and other workplaces to bring the county to a halt at dawn’’.

According to historian Hugh Thomas:

On 2 January the 26th of July Movement had called for a general strike to mark the end of the old regime, and in Havana and most cities this was fairly complete. In Havana the rebel trade union FONU … called for mass demonstrations … The rebel committees in all unions came out into the open … The old CTC leaders who had compromised with with Batista, Mujal at their head, had fled into hiding … In the next few days all the unions reformed themselves with new leaders … Militants of the 26th of July and Directorio took over as de facto police. Offices of newspapers which had backed Batista were occupied.

The general strike is sometimes dismissed as irrelevant because Batista had already left the country. But General Cantillo was attempting to create a new military-dominated government that would preserve the instituions of the bourgeois state. The general strike, which was effective throughout Cuba, developed into an insurrection that helped destroy the old state apparatus. Batista’s army and police disintegrated.

According to Bonachea and San Martin:

… the people answered Castro’s call for a general strike with jubilation. The country’s paralysis was universal, and nothing indicated that Cantillo’s orders to go back to work would be obeyed, or the streated would be cleared of throngs of elated Cubans. All the police precincts had surrendered to the urban fighters … The very possibilities of a struggle to death for control of Havana was so discouraging to the regular troops that many started abandoning the perimeters of the military bases, changing into civilian clothes and putting some safe distance between dangerous areas and themselves.

When Cantillo realised he could not control the situation, he handed over control to the army to Colonel Ramon Barquin, who had been jailed for attempted military rebellion against Batista. The aim was to preserve the army as an instituion by giving it a new leadership. Barquin tired to negotiate with the J26M. But when the Rebel Army continued to advance and Batista’s army continued to disintegrate, Barquin surrendered.

Fidel Castro later said the general strike made ‘‘a decisive contribution to victory’’.

Dismantling the Old State Apparatus #

After the insurrection Castro moved immediately to dismantle two of the key institutions of the old state apparatus. The old army and police were disbanded and replaced by new army and police, whose initial cadres were drawn from the Rebel Amry and the urban underground. Some members of the old army and police who were not guilty of serious crimes under the old regime and were sympathetic to the revolution were allowed to join the new army and police, after a rigorous selection process. But the army and police were led by people who had been anti-Batista fighters.

Over the next year or two, a peoples militia was created and Committees for the Defence of the Revolution were organised on a block-by-block basis. Cuban academic and diplomat German Sanchez summarises these developments as follows:

The repressive agencies of the former regime were eliminated and new defence organisations, based on revolutionary vigilance, were established with the essential involvement of ordinary people.

Castro and his supporters also encouraged workers and peasants to mobilise through their mass organisations (such as unions) to demand and actually carry out radical social changes.

The New Government #

After the insurrection Manuel Urrutia became provisional president. Urrutia had been a judge who had defied Batista during a trial of J26M members involved in the Granma expedition and the November 1956 Santiago insurrection. As one of three judges, he issued a dissenting verdict argung that the rebellion against tyrrany was justified.

Despite his opposition to Batista, Urrutia was basically conservative, and he appointed a cabinet consisting mainly of conservative lawyers and politicians headed by prime minister Jose Miro Cardona. Fidel Castro was not part of this cabinet.

While allowing the government to pass into the hands of bourgeois figures, Castro encouraged mass mobilisations that put them under pressure to carry out radical reforms. Conflicts arose over issues such as land reform. Castro mobilised the workers and peasants to break the resistance of conservative elements with the government. In the course of 1959 there were four more general strikes in support of Castro and his radical reform program. These strikes, called by the CTC (which was now led by J26M activists), occured on Januar 21, March 13, July 23, and October 25.

On February 16, 1959 Miro Cardona resigned and was replaced as prime minister by Fidel Castro. Over the following months a series of other bourgeois figures resigned from positions in the cabinet, civil service, etc.

During July a conflict between Castro and Urrutia led to huge mass mobilisations. Urrutia had given press conferences and media interviews claiming that communists were causing ‘’terrible harm’’ to Cuba. He claimed that Fidel Castro agreed with his anti-communist views, apparently trying to divide Castro from the PSP and thereby weaken the left.

On 16 July Castro resigned as prime minister. Next day he went on TV and accused Urrutia of using the supposed communist threat to create a pretext for future US intervention in Cuba.

In response to Castro’s speech, crowds gathered outside the presidential palance demanding that Urrutia resign, which he soon did.

Catro them announced that his own political future would be decided at a mass meeting to be held in Havana’s civic plaza on July 26.

On July 23 a strke called by the CTC demanded Castro’s return to power. On July 26 the mass meeting in the civic plaza attracted a huge crowd, estimated at one million, who cheered the annoucement of Castro’s return as prime minister. This reflected mass support for Castro’s revolutionary policies.

During 1959 the government introduced a range of measures that benefited the poor. Wages were increased, with the lower paid workers benefiting disproportionately. Rents were cut, as were electricity and phone charges. Tax changes benefited the poor. Protection against unfair dismissal weas extended to all workers, and the social security system was expanded.

Private becaused were opened to the public. Private clubs were handed over to unions for the enjoyment of their members. Workers benefited from cheaper health services, expanded educational opportunities, and additional child care centres.

The increased rights of workers to challenge unfair dismissals led to an increase in the the number of claims, rising to over 40 000 cases. Labour disputes were nearly always resolved in favour of the workers. According to Efren Cordoba, a US citizen of Cuban origin, such disputes led to the bankruptcy of some employers, resulting in the seizure of their enterprises by the government.

Cordoba accuses Castro of deliberately stirring up industrial disputes in the initial months of the revolution. He claims that

… Castro and his colleagues were apparently intent on arousing workers’ expectations and fomenting a climate of tension … The prime mininster referred on various occasions to the employers’ lack of observance of labour legislation, to the inclination of wealthy men to send their money abroad and to do little for Cuba, and to the unfair treatment accorded to various sectors of the working class.

Castro himself said:

The Cuban pople actually acquired a socialist awareness with the development of the revolution and the violent class struggle that was unleashed at the national and international levels. This struggld served to develop the conscience of the masses; they were able to realise in a few months what only a minority had previously been able to understand after decades of ruthless exploitation.

Land Reform and Nationalisation of Industry #

In History Will Absolve Me, Castro had spoken of the nationalisation of US-owned electricity and phone companies, and of the confiscation of property obtained by fraud. He also spoke of the redistribution of land of the big land owners to small peasants.

Land reform began soon after the overthrow of Batista. Initially the revolutionaries had intended to simply divide up the land of big landowners amongst the small peasants. This was done in many areas.

But the workers in the big sugar plantations had been wage earners, not tenant farmers. Many had been involved in nions since the 1930s. Their consciousness was proletarian, not petty-bourgeois. Surveys showed that most sugar cane workers wanted job security as wage earners rather than becoming peasant farmers. They wanted a small plot of land for growing their own food (indeed many had already won this through union struggles) but were happy for the sugar plantations to be run as state farms. Hence when the big sugar plantations were taken over they became state property. Thus the state became owner of 40% of Cuba’s land.

The confiscation of assets gained by fraud also put some productive assets in the hands of the state. Some capitalist property was also taken over by the state in response to violations of labour laws by the owners.

The measures described above, while affecting particular capitalists, did not mean the abolition of capitalism as a system. A substantial part of the economy