In the 1950s, an armed uprising broke out in Cuba. After more than five years of armed struggle, it won victory in January 1959 and established the first socialist country in the American continent. Cuba is located in the northwestern Caribbean Sea and is the largest island nation in the West Indies.
Cuba was once a Spanish colony. In order to fight for independence and liberation, the Cuban people fought two wars of independence in the 30 years from 1868 to 1898. However, when the Cuban people were about to drive away the Spanish colonists, the United States reached out to Cuba.
In 1898, the United States, which had entered the imperialist stage of capitalist development, launched a war against Spain. After the war, the United States implemented a neo-colonial policy in Cuba, fostered pro-American forces, forced Cuba to accept the "Pratt Amendment", and stipulated that the United States has the right to interfere in Cuba's internal affairs and establish naval bases in Cuba. In 1902, Cuba announced the establishment of a republic, but by the 1950s, all successive governments were controlled by the United States.
In March 1952, Batista seized power again with the support of the US government. Batista staged a coup in 1933, controlling and manipulating the government as the chief of staff of the army. He became president in 1940, and then failed in the 1944 general election. After taking office this time, the parliament was dissolved that year, the constitution with a bourgeois progress since 1940 was abolished, and the "constitutional regulations" and anti-labor laws were enacted. The following year, the Cuban People’s Socialist Party was declared “illegal”. In 1954, it was announced that strikes and mass gatherings were prohibited. In just a few years after it came to power, tens of thousands of people in Cuba were killed, imprisoned, and exiled, more than 100,000 people went into exile in other countries, and millions of people were unemployed. At the same time, U.S. capital further controlled the Cuban economy, and the United States also signed the "Military Mutual Assistance Treaty." According to this, the U.S. military and police at the Guantanamo Naval Base directly participated in the suppression of the Cuban People’s Revolution.
Batista's dictatorship intensified the conflicts in Cuba and aroused strong resistance from the people. On July 26, 1953, the young lawyer Fidel Castro launched an armed uprising against targets such as the Moncada Barracks on the outskirts of Santiago, the capital of Oriente Province. Due to the disparity in power, the uprising failed. Fidel Castro was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. During the court trial, Castro issued a defense statement in the court "History will acquit me".
Card received an amnesty in November 1954, and then went into exile in Mexico. In March 1955, he led the establishment of the "July 26" movement to prepare for armed struggle. During this period, he also got acquainted with Guevara, who later became one of the founders of the theory of guerrilla warfare in Latin America. Che Guevara joined the "July 26" movement in 1955. On the evening of November 25, 1956, Fidel Castro led 82 members on the "Grama" yacht and left Mexico for Cuba. On December 2, it landed in Oriente province and was besieged by Batista's army. As a result, only 12 people broke through and entered the Maestra Mountains.
In May 1957, Fidel Castro's troops launched an offensive against Ubero, where government troops were guarded, annihilating 53 enemies and seizing a large number of weapons. The Maestra Mountains gradually became the center of uniting all anti-government forces. On July 12, 1957 and October 10, 1958, Fidel Castro announced the "Land Reform Declaration" and "Peasants' Land Rights" and other decrees. At the same time, the Batista regime dispatched military police , Intensified the suppression of the country’s growing anti-government movement.
Under such circumstances, more and more farmers, workers, and young students entered the mountainous areas to join the anti-government armed forces. By the beginning of 1958, the team had grown to more than 2,000 people.
Fidel Castro In early 1958, Fidel Castro’s brother Raul Castro led dozens of people to the Krystal Mountains and opened up the first place after Maestra. World War II. In February of the same year, Juan Almeida led his army to open a third front in the Santiago area. At the same time, an armed group of the "March 13 Revolution Steering Committee" composed mainly of young students entered the Daes Cambrai mountain area and carried out guerrilla activities there. By the first half of 1958, the activities of the anti-government forces had spread throughout most of the province of Orient.
In order to curb the rapid development of armed struggle throughout the country, the Batista government began a "general offensive" on the Maestra mountains. The government troops dispatched more than 10,000 people, equipped with aircraft, tanks and artillery. The US troops stationed at the Guantanamo base also dispatched aircraft to carry out raids and bombings on the rebel base. In the face of superior enemies, the anti-government forces adopted guerrilla tactics and used the steep geographical conditions of the mountainous areas to carry out maneuvers, constantly exhausting and attacking government forces. At the end of July 1958, the anti-government army and the government army fought fiercely in Santo Domingo for three days, annihilating the most powerful force in the government army. After more than a month of fighting, the government lost more than 1,000 men, and Batista's "general offensive" went bankrupt.
In July 1958, the Cuban "July 26 Movement", the "March 13 Revolution Steering Committee", the Civil Resistance Movement, the Workers' United Front, the Union of University Students, and the Democratic Party held a meeting in Venezuela and decided to establish a common front.
At the end of August, the two columns of the anti-government army, under the command of Major Camilo Cienfuegos and Major Guevara, drove out of the Maestra Mountains and, with the cooperation of other armed forces, began to attack the western region of Cuba. . On December 29, 1958, the anti-government forces began to attack Santa Clara, the capital of the province of Las Villas. On January 1, 1959, the city was conquered, annihilating and disintegrating more than 3,000 enemy troops. On the same day, troops under the command of Fidel Castro and Raul Castro captured Santiago, the capital of Oriente. Workers and students in the capital Havana launched a general strike and class strike. Batista saw that the situation was gone and fled abroad. On January 2, anti-government forces marched into Havana.
On January 3, 1959, the Cuban Provisional Government was established in Santiago, with Urruati as the interim president and Fidel Castro as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In February, Castro became the prime minister of the government, and in July, Dolticos replaced Uruati as president. The new regime implemented the policies of land reform and the development of national industry, and declared the property of American companies and local big and middle bourgeoisie to be state-owned. In 1961, the "July 26 Movement", the People's Socialist Party, and the "March 13 Revolution Steering Committee" merged into the Cuban Revolutionary Unity Organization. In the same year, Fidel Castro declared that the Cuban Revolution was a socialist revolution.
The victory of the Cuban Revolutionary War was determined by a series of subjective and objective factors. The main thing is to establish base areas in mountainous areas where the government’s control is relatively weak, gradually expand, and finally attack the cities; establish an army with strong combat effectiveness; establish a broad united front and unite the "July 26th Movement", The People's Socialist Party, the "March 13 Revolution Steering Committee", the Cuban Revolutionary Party, the Cuban People's Party, the Cuban National Party, and the "Cuban Workers Movement" have played a leading role. The establishment of the first socialist regime in the Americas had an important impact on the development of the post-war political situation in Latin America and the world.