Enigma’s second episode: The 26th of July Movement

The second episode of Al Mayadeen‘s Enigma documentary series, aimed at shedding the light on the Cuban revolution and the impact it had on the world, highlighted the most prominent figures in the Cuban revolution and the circumstances that led to it altogether.

The episode that aired at 9 PM Al-Quds time talked about the time period that Cuba spent under US control and Washington’s exploitation of Cuba’s resources, as well as the foundation of the July 26 movement and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro’s emergence as a key figure in the revolution.

With the US Marines docking in Cuba in 1898, the Cubans’ war of liberation against the Spanish Empire ended. For centuries, the island was under the control of Spain, but now it was the United States that had the Caribbean nation under its control; the end of the War of Independence coincided with the rise of imperialism, throwing Cuba and the rest of the world into a new era.

In the aftermath of the war, on a farm located in the heart of Havana, the people warmly received with veneration Dominican Generalissimo Máximo Gómez, the man of the two wars. The general lived on this farm for the rest of his life.

This farm was also where Cuba established its demobilization offices for the liberation army, the men who left everything behind on the battlefield and handed over their weapons. In exchange, they received 75 pesos and went back to their civilian lives with nothing but their weariness, their torn-up military uniforms, and a semi-republic that was born with its hands tied.

On December 31, 1901, the Military Governor of Cuba, Leonard Wood, called for the holding of a general presidential election. Without any opposition, Tomás Estrada Palma was elected as Cuba’s first president while he still lived in the United States after he had been exiled by the Spanish colonialists.

The first president

Estrada Palma’s presidency wasn’t all smooth sailing, as two opposition factions grew under his rule: the moderates on one hand and the liberals on the other. The dispute between the two factions was heightened, and by 1906, the President demanded a military intervention by the United States.

On September 29 of that year, a US naval landing operation saw some 2,000 US Marines land in Cuba. Soon thereafter, Estrada Palma submitted his resignation before Congress and went to Matanzas by train, thus leaving Cuban history.

The US military intervention between 1898 and 1902 was the first, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Another one took place in 1906 when then-US President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Charles Magoon as occupation governor of Cuba, who was largely criticized for his tenure in the Caribbean nation.

Between 3,000 and 5,000 marines were going through the streets of Havana to guarantee the success of the US operation, though they would perform their duties in civilian clothing, never being seen donning their military attire.

The renowned red, white, and blue Cuban flag might have flown everywhere in the Island nation, but another red, white, and blue was exploiting Cuba’s resources, for Magoon was ravaging its natural resources for the benefit of the United States.

US exploitation of Cuba

Cuba became a cake that military generals and the political elite wanted a piece of for themselves, and all of that was going on under the watchful eyes of US diplomats that worked in Cuba.

The representative of the United States in Cuba was a strong man – not only because Washington treated Cuba as its trustee under the Platt Amendment, but also because the US was the largest importer of Cuban sugar, meaning that a hefty portion of the island nation’s economy was dependent on the United States.

In 1912, Cuban sugar replaced in the US markets the sugar that it had imported from Europe and the West Indies, among other nations. Moreover, American businessmen owned 34% out of the 160 sugar mills and plantations in Cuba in 1907.

As for the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, established under the pretext of guaranteeing Cuba’s independence, it was a thorn in the side of the people of Cuba, because it served as a reminder of the US hegemony over their country. At the beginning of the 1920s, Cuba, with all its deeper structures and institutions, was subject to the control of its northern neighbor. At the same time, corruption, bribery, and plundering of state coffers became customary, especially among the ranks of the political elite.

There was plenty of money to spend, as sugar prices rose due to World War One sending them soaring to 23 cents per pound, or $6.83 in today’s money, which was more than profitable for Cuba – or the US businessmen who owned much of the sugar businesses – at a time when the country was practically serving as a massive sugar plantation. By 1916, Cuba was the main source of sugar for the allies, but everything was about to change. Sugar prices plummeted, and the Cuban government was bankrupt.

It was getting harder and harder for the least fortunate, which prompted them to revolt against the ruling class. The demonstrations and protests gave rise to concerns in Washington, as it saw that the government in Havana was inept and incapable of confronting the crisis, which would influence the elections set for 1920. A new US ambassador was appointed, and Washington continued to interfere in the island’s internal affairs: Special Representative of the President, Enoch Crowder.

Coming aboard the USS Minnesota, Crowder arrived in Havana, and there he established his general barracks. From there, he served as more or less an advisor to the Cuban President, as he was puppeteering the President and giving him orders he had to follow. Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso, Cuba’s third President, was lenient, and rampant corruption ravaged his government.

In light of this status quo, young, forward-thinking personalities began to emerge, drawing inspiration from Jose Marti and the founding fathers who fought epics of liberation.

By the end of 1922, Cuban revolutionary youth Julio Antonio Mella founded the Federation of University Students (FEU) and co-founded the Communist Party of Cuba. He was the first student leader who became a prominent and prestigious national figure.

Mella was resented by the government, and he was arrested, but pressure from the Cuban people forced the president to release him. He later fled President Gerardo Machado’s repression in Cuba and lived in exile in Mexico. Machado sent his assassins after Mella, and the young revolutionary was assassinated at 25 years old after he was shot in the back on January 10, 1929.

Despite his numerous crimes, Machado, a dictator, was propped up regardless, with support from the United States, and in 1928, US President Calvin Coolidge went to Cuba on an official visit to attend the Summit of the Americas that was held in Cuba.

Although President Gerardo Machado had prepared the bright and new amphitheater for the University of Havana to receive the US President, the students protested against Coolidge’s visit, forcing him to stay out of the theater.

Popular resistance was one of Machado’s biggest enemies, as he instructed the police and the military to violently suppress any demonstration or protest by beating the protestors or using water cannons – or even live munition – against them. The island was bleeding, and after Mella’s assassination, poet and writer Rubén Martínez Villena led Cuba’s Communist Party.

It was Villena, despite having tuberculosis, who led the strike in 1933, and it was then that newspapers stopped publications, and restaurants, cafes, and pubs closed down for the first time in history. Everything was shuttered, and there were barely any people in the streets.

There was change, for the working class was unified, allowing them to discover a previously untapped strength that redirected the narrative in Cuba, which forced Machado to leave office and resort to exile.

Antonio Guiteras and La Joven Cuba

Antonio Guiteras was one of the key figures in the Cuban revolution, though he was not recognized by the Communist Party at the time despite being a true anti-imperialist nationalist socialist revolutionary.

The United States never recognized the government of Ramón Grau San Martín, otherwise known as the One Hundred Days Government, which lasted from September 4, 1933, until January 15, 1934, and it was set not to last for long since the beginning due to internal disputes between President Grau, Interior Minister Guiteras, and the Chief of the Armed Forces Fulgencio Batista, a violent and brutal man whose tenure saw the Cuban people wearing nothing but black in mourning of their loved ones throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

Under pressure from the new US ambassador to Havana, Jefferson Caffery, President Grau was forced to step down from office.

With the collapse of the One Hundred Days Government, it became clear that regardless of who was in power, the real leader of Cuba was Fulgencio Batista as commander of the armed forces.

Batista’s bloody rule over Cuba lasted because the dictator ruled with an iron fist, as he dispersed demonstrators using live bullets, suspended constitutional guarantees, and took no steps to hold legislative elections as corruption ravaged the Caribbean island.

Guiteras chose the path of rebellion and founded La Joven Cuba for that, but Batista’s forces persecuted him, so he chose to leave the country. While he was trying to escape the suppression, he was martyred, fighting until the last breath on May 8, 1953, on the banks of the Canímar River in the province of Matanzas.

The rise of Fidel Castro

The 1940s began with the winds of a new constitution. With the birth of the new constitution, a new president was elected, General Fulgencio Batista.

Even after the United States entered World War II, the Cuban government demonstrated its subordination by declaring war on Japan, and then on Germany and Italy. In the following years, two governments were formed, the first headed by Grau and the second by Carlos Prío Socarrás.

Both leaders exacerbated corruption and expanded the killers’ hold on the country, with students, unionists, and proletariat leaders getting killed left and right, the likes of Niceto Pérez and Jesús Menéndez.

The Cuban region of Birán was an investment hub for US businessmen, and there were stark differences between the wealthy American companies and the poor population of the region. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz watched his people suffer as a result of injustice in the life of the Cuban countryside, and this had, of course, an impact on his awareness and understanding of the meaning of justice.

However, as he declared many years later, Castro became a revolutionary when he was at the University of Havana after he became a law student in 1945 in the only university that was in Cuba at the time, making for a grand hub for leftist students who played a part in the revolutionary struggle.

Warry of the possibility that the Independence Party would win the 1952 elections, General Fulgencio Batista staged a military coup, through which he overthrew the constitutional government and abolished the 1940 constitution. The United States wasted no time recognizing the government that came as a result of the coup, consolidating its influence on the island.

Castro was among the first to condemn the military coup before an emergency court, accusing the putschists of violating the constitution.

January 1953 was the year that split the country’s history in two – it was the month when Cuba celebrated the 100th birthday of José Martí.

The poet was commemorated and honored with a march of torches that kicked off from the amphitheater of the University of Havana on January 27, 1953. The new generation was expressing its position. Fidel Castro and Abel Santamaría Cuadrado, serving as commander and second commander, respectively, were secretly preparing the resistance against the existing regime.

Later on in the year, the dawn of July 26 would radically change the history of Cuba, with Fidel Castro and his comrades going into the Moncada Barracks. There were 106 revolutionaries, six of whom were killed in action, while 55 others were brutally executed after the element of surprise failed them during their armed attack on the second-largest military fortress in Cuba. Those who managed to stay alive fled to the Sierra Maestra mountain range. This operation would go on to immortalize them and eventually lead to the toppling of the Batista regime. The 26th of July Movement would go on to change Cuba forever, making Batista the last US asset to hold public office in Cuba.

Castro and the Treaty of Mexico 

The revolutionaries formed a resistance movement in Mexico against Batista’s rule, taking decisive steps to unify their ranks. That is when the leader of the 26th of July Movement, Fidel Castro, and José Antonio Echeverría, the President of the Federation of University Students, signed what they called “the Treaty of Mexico”.

There was not a single arena in which the Cuban people resisted the US-backed dictatorship, as resistance spread throughout the entire island, with the Cuban people taking to the streets to bravely resist their oppressors. Many men risked everything to support the revolution, planting IEDs, raising funds for the revolutionary army, and raising awareness about the resistance movement through brochures and other forms of media. That is when the red and black flag of the 26th of July Movement started being seen all over Cuba.

Batista’s assassins, at the direction of their paranoid leader, killed key revolutionary figure Frank País in the streets of Santiago de Cuba. Not fearing the repercussions, the citizens of Santiago de Cuba held a funeral for the revolutionary who was born and raised in the city, marching against the regime and in support of the cause. Despite all the bloodshed and oppression, the United States did not once stop backing the government.

There were many ways that Washington supported the ruthless dictator, including advisory meetings with CIA agents and high-ranking officials, as well as senior US officials, not to mention indirect arms sales to the Batista regime using a lengthy trail. Washington would sell arms to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, who would, in turn, sell them to Batista.

In the summer of 1958, Batista waged a bloody offensive on Sierra Maestra using an army of 10,000 men with the aim of crushing the revolutionary army.

However, this bid failed, and about half a century into its struggle for freedom, Cuba managed to get rid of Batista. The ruthless dictator escaped from the country on December 31, 1958, and on the first day of 1959, the leader of the first Cuban revolution entered Santiago de Cuba as the nation’s leader.