Untold History; The Story of Fidel Castro - Comandante of Communist Cuba

Victor Wairiuko February 25, 2023
The untold history of Fidel Castro, Cuban revolution of 1933 communists, Fidel Castro wife, why did Fidel Castro overthrow Batista, and Fidel Castro death.
Fidel Castro, a politician and communist revolutionary from Cuba, participated in the Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Castro made the decision to join "The Movement," a paramilitary group, in order to fight for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's military government in the wake of his early life.
While some could argue that "Communism for the masses and capitalism for the bosses," it makes sense that Fidel Castro and Che Guevara wore their Rolex watches as reliable tool watches in 1959 and throughout the 1960s since they were accurate timing devices. Keep in mind that this was before quartz watches. Rolex watches were also not nearly as much of a status symbol or "luxury watch" in the early 1960s as they are today; rather, they were dependable tools created with a specific purpose and a great ally for a soldier, sailor, or pilot.
fidel-castro
Fidel-Castro


Fidel Castro History

The 13th of August 1926 saw the birth of the man who would become known as Fidel Castro in Biran in Oriente, the island of Cuba's most eastern region.

His father, Angel Mara Bautista Castro y Argiz, was born in the northern Spanish province of Galicia in 1875. In the early 1890s, Angel was drafted into the Spanish army and later dispatched to Cuba, one of Spain's last remaining American possessions, to aid in the struggle to quell a Second War of Independence that had broken out there in 1895.

Due to American participation, this Cuban independence effort, unlike earlier ones, was successful, and in 1898, Cuba declared its independence from Spain.

Due to the nature of its independence war, it was now under the geopolitical control of the US, a connection that would have a significant impact on the nation's history throughout the twentieth century. Angel Castro briefly traveled back to Spain before departing for Cuba in 1905 via the Havana port.

He held a number of occupations between the years 1900 and 1910, including one as a laborer for the American United Fruit Company. By the 1920s, he had built up his own agricultural company where he hired out men to work on sugar plantations.

He formerly had over 300 workers and had relationships with American businesses operating in Cuba. Fidel was thus born into a family that was not very poor.

Angel Castro wed Mara Argota y Reyes in 1911, and the two went on to have five kids. Following the breakdown of this union, Angel had seven more kids with Lina Ruz González, a farm worker who later served as both his mistress and second wife. These included Fidel and his younger brother Ral, who would grow up to be his lifelong closest political comrade.

What is the Brief History of Fidel Castro?

Fidel had an unusual childhood because he was born out of wedlock at a time when illegitimacy still carried a heavy social stigma. Fidel was reared by Angel Castro among the kids of sugar plantation workers and under his mother's surname. Many of these were hard-working, impoverished employees from Haiti and other Caribbean countries.

Fidel's early experiences living among his father's employees may have had a significant impact on his subsequent opinions of how US corporations affect the island's economy and people. Fidel, along with his older siblings Ramon and Angela, were transported to Santiago de Cuba to start their schooling when he was just six years old.

Fidel Castro Jesuit Education

They were living in substandard housing with a tutor who could hardly afford to buy the barest needs. Castro was curiously not baptized until he was eight years old in 1934, despite the fact that the island's predominant religion was Roman Catholicism. This appears to have been done in order to allow him to join the La Salle boarding school. He was subsequently sent to El Colegio de Belen in Havana after attending the privately endowed, Jesuit-run Dolores School in Santiago.

Despite having a passion for geography and history, Fidel never achieved academic success, but he was an excellent athlete. He was recognized as Havana's top young athlete in 1943 and 1944 for his accomplishments in baseball, basketball, the high jump, and middle distance running.  

Cuban society was in disarray when Castro was growing up. Following the nation's struggle of independence in 1898, the island went through a period of extreme political instability and subpar economic growth. The republic's politicians, from the top down, engaged in pervasive bribery and corrupt conduct, and the political structure of the nation was extremely corrupt.

This was mostly caused by US commercial interests that controlled significant portions of the Cuban economy. The island had also turned into a haven for the Italian Mafia and other criminal organizations with American headquarters to conduct their operations. In the meantime, the nation's economy remained underdeveloped and was predicated on the resource-intensive production of staples like bananas, coffee, and sugar.

Cuban Revolution of 1933 Communists

Overall, this caused a few elite to greatly profit while keeping the majority of Cubans in abject poverty. With the so-called Rebellion of the Sergeants in 1933, the Cuban military thereafter started interfering in politics more and more during the 1930s.

As a result, Sergeant Fulgencio Batista, the general commander of the military component, would start to play a significant role in Cuban politics by serving as President from 1940 to 1944. After that, he moved to Florida in the United States, but he eventually returned to the political battle in Cuba with dramatic results.

Fidel Castro enrolled in the University of Havana's law program in 1945. Here, as he was involved in many student protest movements against the overt corruption of Cuban politics and the ruling elites, was when his political instincts first started to show.

On the university campuses of the island nation, armed gangs were prevalent and engaged in widespread criminal activity, reflecting the greater breakdown of law and order across Cuban society.

When Castro joined the Committee for the Independence of Puerto Rico, an organization that had been formed to push for the neighboring Caribbean island's independence from the United States, at this time his anti-American position first became apparent.

During the Spanish-American War of 1898, Puerto Rico had effectively turned into an American colony, but it never received statehood status, a position that still exists today. Castro and his fellow student activists in Havana condemned the situation's continuation and saw it as part of America's ongoing plan to subjugate the Caribbean, Central American, and South American republics and conquer the Americas.

Castro first developed a name for his rebellious efforts among the larger Cuban society during these years in Havana. He was quoted in various newspapers throughout the winter of 1946 as a result of his criticisms of the government's corruption and use of force.

He then established close ties with many left-leaning political organizations in the nation, particularly the Unión Insurrecional Revolucionaria, or Insurrectional Revolutionary Union. Police at the time suspected him of killing a rival student leader, though nothing was ever established. Although he recovered his reputation for strong oratory, he never rose to the position of prominent student leader and was repeatedly beaten in school elections.

Castro took a temporary break from his studies in the summer of 1947 to join an effort to topple Rafael Trujillo's right-wing regime in the Dominican Republic. Like Batista in Cuba, Trujillo was a military ruler who enjoyed American assistance.

Castro was one of the group's commanders when they left Cuba for the Dominican Republic in late July of that year with the intention of toppling Trujillo. However, a coalition of US, Cuban, and Dominican soldiers rapidly put an end to the effort.

Many others were detained, but Fidel managed to escape when it is said that he jumped off the ship he was on into shark-infested waters while carrying a gun above his head. This incident is significant because it marked the first time the future leader of Cuba directly engaged in armed revolt in the Caribbean.

After the failed voyage to the Dominican Republic, Castro began an expansion of his revolutionary efforts. He became more well-known among Havana's student protest movements against the government, and throughout 1948, he made many journeys to Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama to meet with left-wing revolutionary organizations there.

Fidel Castro Wife

He played a key role in the efforts to establish a Pan-American Students Conference, which would stand in opposition to right-wing administrations throughout Latin America, especially in the Colombian capital of Bogota in the late spring of 1948. Later that year, he wed philosophy student Mirta Daz-Balart while still in Cuba.

Given that Balart hailed from a well-known Cuban family with close ties to the nation's political elite—exactly the people and organizations that Castro was supposed to be openly opposing—it was viewed as an improbable union. Even some of the people Castro had protested against gave the pair lavish gifts on their wedding day, and they spent their honeymoon in the United States.

Despite these odd contrasts, Fidel and Mirta were married for seven years and produced a son they called Fidelito before getting divorced in 1955.

havana cuba
Havana Cuba


Why Did Fidel Castro Overthrow Batista

With the help of Jorge Azpiazu and Rafael Resende, Castro founded a law company in the early 1950s. These people, however, were fellow leftists, and in truth, the business was working on a pro bono project to represent employees who had been treated unfairly or fired from their jobs.

Castro was also expanding his grasp of leftist ideology at this time by reading widely from communist pioneers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as well as other, more contemporary political theorists like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

In 1952, Castro ran for election to the Cuban Congress in the national elections as a member of the Partido del Pueblo Cubana - Ortodoxos Party, a catch-all left-wing populist group established in Cuba in 1947 by Eduardo Chibás. At this point, Castro was leaning toward reforming Cuba from within.

Actually, this marked the beginning of Castro's nonviolent reform of Cuban politics. Following a brief military coup in the same year, 1952, Fulgencio Batista returned to the political scene in Cuba and within months had installed a new military dictatorship on the island.

With the support of Washington, he would now impose a one-party military dictatorship on Cuba.

Castro now began his violent campaign to topple the Batista government. Within weeks of Batista retaking control of Cuba, Castro began work on a new revolutionary initiative that he and his supporters, including his younger brother Ral Castro, dubbed "The Movement."

Within a few months, they took their first action, which had a big impact on the Cuban Revolution.

Castro and about a hundred other people raided a Cuban army barracks at Moncado in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953. The assault was an abject failure. The 400-man garrison murdered over half of the insurgents, captured the majority of the rest, and only a small number managed to escape.

The 26th of ‘July Movement’

Fidel was one of those who was apprehended; he was subsequently given a fifteen-year prison term for organizing an uprising against the government.

He gave a lengthy defense during his trial in what would become his most well-known speech, La Historia Me Absolverá, in which he criticized Batista's government and laid out his own political and economic theories. The second-largest island in the Cuban Archipelago, Isla De Pinos, is where Castro spent out his sentence.

He changed the name of "The Movement" to "The 26th of July Movement" when he was being held captive in honor of the day the Moncado Barracks attack had taken place.

Castro served less than two years of his sentence when Batista decided to release him from prison in the summer of 1955, despite his continued fiery behavior. The despot will soon come to regret that choice.

Castro was deported to Mexico City after being freed in 1955, where he and his brother Ral started planning resistance to Batista. Here they met Ernesto Guevara, an Argentinian doctor better known by his stage name "Che" Guevara, a fellow member of the Latin American Revolution.

Guevara traveled extensively throughout South America as a young man, and the shocking poverty he saw there—poor he blamed to American Neo-Imperialism—radicalized him.

The Castros, Che Guevara, and their supporters prepared and made plans in Mexico for their trip back to Cuba in the months that followed. At the same time, the Batista regime at home was becoming more oppressive. As a result, Castro and slightly over 80 supporters departed Mexico in the summer of 1956 on board a sizable yacht known as the Granma, which was allegedly named after a previous owner's grandmother.

After a series of mishaps, they became stranded at Beach Las Coloradas, close to Los Cayuelos in Cuba. Batista's men attacked them, forcing them to flee into the Sierra Maestra mountains, where they are currently sheltering.

At this point, only 19 of the original group are still alive. Their armed uprising had an unlucky start, but it would go on to produce unexpected results in the months and years that followed.

Cuban Revolution - Castro's Return to Cuba and the Fall of Batista

Now, Fidel and his supporters began a guerrilla fight against Batista's rule from their comparatively safe location within the Sierra Maestra Mountains, planning bombing assaults against government forces.

When more people joined the insurrectionists in the highlands, their numbers quickly grew. To obtain more weapons and explosives, attacks were made against government barracks, and by 1957 Castro was in charge of a tiny army in the country's interior.

Other militant groups with a desire to topple Batista's government soon started to emerge. All of this caused Batista's soldiers to come under growing pressure from the revolutionaries by 1958.

During the summer, many of Batista's own soldiers had deserted their posts out of disgust over the crimes against civilians they were being commanded to commit in order to suppress the revolutionaries, tipping the balance of power in favor of Castro and the 26th of July Revolution.

Fidel Castro Seized Power In Cuba

Finally, on December 31, 1958, Batista announced his resignation and left the country for the Dominican Republic, taking $300 million in stolen funds with him.

Castro's soldiers took over Moncado Barracks on January 2, 1959, as a show of power. Six days later, on January 8, they captured Havana. Despite its rocky beginnings little over two years prior, the Cuban Revolution was successful.

Castro did not gain control of the situation right away. Instead, a provisional government led by the moderate lawyer Manuel Urrutia Lleo was elected to lead the nation; however, Castro and his supporters dominated the new interim government's cabinet.

With his designation as the Presidency's Representative of the Rebel Armed Forces, Fidel's military might received governmental recognition. After Batista was overthrown, the new administration effectively ruled the country by decree without the help of a parliament, and because of Castro's influence over Urrutia, the head of the 26th of July Movement, Urrutia became the de facto ruler of the nation.

The situation became more evident a few weeks later when José Miró Cardona, the prime minister, announced his resignation and left for exile in the US.

In the middle of February 1959, Fidel assumed his position as his successor. He would continue this role until a new constitution was enacted in 1976, at which point he was appointed President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba. Following his initial appointment as Prime Minister in 1959, Castro would ultimately occupy this position until 2008, meaning that he held a position of prominence in Cuba for 49 years.

Castro was always expected to be the most important member of the new government once it took office. Future ties between the nation and its neighbor, the United States, a former ally of Batista, were a much more divisive topic. Castro declared himself to be a leftist, but for a while, individuals like as Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate for president of the United States in 1960, thought Castro might be persuaded to support the American cause. It was a misguided viewpoint.

Castro rapidly steered his nation toward a partnership with the Soviet Union and other left-leaning governments in Latin America. Additionally, his elevation of militant leftists like Che Guevara to high government positions made it abundantly evident which direction the administration intended to take the nation.

In the first year or two of the new regime, relations with the US were further strained when Castro ordered the nationalization of US business interests in Cuba.

When Castro addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in September 1960, where he publicly identified himself with regimes hostile to the US, tensions increased even more.

Bay of Pigs Invasion Summary 

The United States administration eventually attempted to intervene militarily in Cuba as a result of the escalating hostility. Millions of funds had already been set aside by the Dwight Eisenhower administration for the purpose of undermining Castro's government. When John F. Kennedy was elected president in the latter half of 1960, the US government had already established strong ties with the Cuban exiles who had fled their country and resided in Florida and other states since 1959.

Several of these Cuban exiles had established the Democratic Revolutionary Front, a political organization, and Brigade 2506, a counterrevolutionary group. During the beginning of 1961, they were working together with the US Central Intelligence Agency.

They were training in Guatemala, nevertheless, to prevent apprehension at home and to allow the Kennedy dictatorship to distance itself from the group. A plan had been developed here by the spring of 1961 for approximately 1,400 of these Cuban paramilitaries to launch a naval assault of Cuba with the assistance of cutting-edge US military equipment including B-26 Bomber Aircraft and M41 Tanks.

Yet, despite their best efforts and the US government's backing, the endeavor would be a complete failure and irreparably harm US-Cuban relations for the rest of Castro's life.

On April 16, 1961, the invasion force departed by sea from Nicaragua and Guatemala. The US had bombarded a number of targets in Cuba the day before. The 1,400 Cuban paramilitaries started arriving along the shore in an entrance of the Gulf of Cazones, also known as the Bay of Pigs, on the morning of April 17.

Within hours, a shootout between Brigade 2506 and a local militia broke out. This gave Castro and his administration in Havana enough time to react to the landing. Captain José Ramon Fernandez was now given the go-ahead by Fidel to launch a counterattack.

To destroy the invasion fleet, bombings started in the hours that followed. Castro's soldiers moved in when this was done and the escape path for Brigade 2506 was blocked. At this point, Fidel assumed personal command of the operation.

The Kennedy administration abandoned the US's substantial air support that had been part of the invasion's original intentions. The assault army was doomed without it and with their escape path blocked. Brigade 2506 submitted on April 20, less than three days after their initial arrival, having already killed 118 soldiers and wounded hundreds more. Similarly, the Castro regime captured approximately 1,200 Cuban paramilitaries.

The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion sparked a wide-ranging response.

Castro could now look back on this as a significant win over the American imperialists, whom his dictatorship demonized for oppressing and attempting to rule South America.

On the other hand, Kennedy's administration's failed invasion was a disaster for its 
foreign policy. Although Kennedy's administration did manage to negotiate the release of more than 1,000 Cuban paramilitaries in exchange for more than $50 million in food and medicine for Cuba in 1962, it was revealed that it had conspired to overthrow a foreign government and that the invasion had been botched from a military standpoint.

Aside from this, the Bay of Pigs invasion attempt's most important result was that it pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union in the Cold War camps. Within weeks, further serious talks between Moscow and Havana were under way as Castro sought closer economic and military links with the Soviet Union and the nations that made up its Communist bloc.

Later, in December 1961, Castro declared publicly that he was a communist, effectively aligning his nation with that of the Soviet Union. The Kennedy administration responded by advocating for Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States. A confrontation seemed to be coming.

The infamous Cuban Missile Crisis, which broke out in Cuba during the course of 1962, was much more explosive than the Bay of Pigs. Most people agree that the crisis was the time when the Cold War was most likely to turn into a full-fledged nuclear conflict. 

Castro began edging even closer to the Soviet Union after the Bay of Pigs battle in the spring of 1961. 
After the events of 1961, there was a growing consensus that a fresh US attack or conspiracy would eventually be realized, and that the only way to safeguard the revolution and keep the Castro dictatorship in power was to permit the Soviet Union to establish military defenses within Cuba.

As a result, in the months that followed the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev had worked out a deal whereby the Soviet Union would place its sophisticated ballistic missiles at strategic locations in Cuba.

The Thirteen Day Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962?

By doing this, the nation would be shielded from a potential American invasion or counterrevolutionaries with American support. It was a disastrous choice that led to one of the most significant political crises in contemporary history.

The US U-2 spy plane's Major Richard Heyser was flying a reconnaissance mission over Cuba on October 14, 1962, when he observed and captured images of a location on the island where Russian SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles were being built.

John F. Kennedy, the president of the United States, received a briefing on the Russian missile bases being deployed in Cuba two days later. This marked the start of the period of time known as the "Thirteen Days" of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy called a meeting of the National Security Council and a number of other important advisors very away.

It was decided that these locations were already or soon would be able to launch Russian nuclear missiles, and that these missiles would be able to quickly strike every significant American city along the East Coast.

During this first meeting, Kennedy received advice from a number of people to move right away to directly bomb the missile sites in Cuba and then, possibly, to start a direct invasion of the island to topple Castro's regime and ensure that no more threats of this nature could be made against America.
Kennedy chose a less forceful course of action, yet it nonetheless triggered a period of tremendous political crisis in the days that followed.

Despite the fact that the nuclear warheads that were triggering the crisis were located on Cuban soil and directly engaged the Castro regime, the crisis that was now developing mostly took place between Washington and Moscow.

Yet the political gambit here was that Russia would give Cuba substantial financial and military support in exchange for Castro's government allowing the Russians to station their missiles on Cuban territory. It should be mentioned that the Soviets thought that this was a strategically sound move.

By 1962, the United States had its own nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles stationed for several years in areas that were geographically close to both Russia and the United States, particularly Turkey on the southern border of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev and the leading figures in the Soviet government in Moscow thought they might place nuclear weapons in Cuba similarly to how the US had done in Turkey earlier.

After all, why shouldn't Russia do the same if the United States had warheads pointed at Moscow and other Soviet cities from a nearby location? If this was their reasoning, however, they would soon be shown to be mistaken, albeit in a fashion that would ultimately benefit Russian interests.

Club-Havana-Torpedo-cigars
Club-Havana-Torpedo-Cigars



What is the Quarantine in the Cuban Missile Crisis?

In the days that followed the initial meeting on October 16th, the crisis grew worse. After initial diplomatic efforts failed, Kennedy's administration authorized what was known as a "quarantine" of any vessels entering or departing Cuba on October 22nd.

The term "blockade" was avoided because, according to some legal definitions, it would have been equivalent to declaring war on Castro's Cuba. Immediately, US planes and ships were sent to the Western Caribbean to monitor all ships trying to reach Cuba and determine whether or not their cargoes contained war materials.

In a live, broadcast speech that evening, Kennedy assured the people that any strike launched from Cuba on any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union.

Then he clarified that the quarantine that had recently been put in place was there to make sure that no further Russian military equipment entered in Cuba. Kennedy insisted, however, that the quarantine's aim was not to stop all imports in the same way as the Russians had stopped all supplies coming by land into West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade in 1948.

The world community as a whole and Khrushchev's government in Russia would now take the next step.

The situation grew worse in the days that followed as the Soviet Union's and America's allies stepped up their rhetoric and declared their readiness to support their respective partners in the event that the crisis turned into a full-fledged war. Pope John XXIII made a request for both sides to think about the effects of their acts on October 24.

Castro remained adamant that installing the weaponry was a defensive rather than an offensive move throughout these days, but Moscow's response was what counted. First indications were not promising.
On October 24, Soviet news organizations carried a message from Khrushchev to Kennedy in which he demanded that all activity in the waters near Cuba cease immediately. The Soviet Union viewed the quarantine as an act of military aggression.

This effectively indicated that the crisis will continue to worsen. As a result, the placement of nuclear ballistic missiles in Castro's Cuba on October 24 and the hours that followed brought the world possibly as close to the start of a nuclear war as it has ever been.

Fidel Castro Cuban Missile Crisis

In the hours that followed, the US sent hundreds of bomber aircraft, including over two dozen B-52 bombers with nuclear bombs, into the skies over Cuba and in close proximity to Soviet airspace. It also demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council.

The threat of nuclear war was quite real.

The most intense part of the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred on October 25th, 26th, and 27th. The US quarantine continued to inspect ships bound for Cuba for nuclear armaments as diplomatic talks between Russia and the United States went on.

On the 26th, talks between Moscow and Washington did begin, but they were almost derailed when a surface-to-air missile fired from Cuba shot down an American airliner. Later, Khrushchev said that rather than being a Soviet Union directive, Ral, Fidel's brother, had given the order for this attack.

After another aircraft was shot down, Washington now decided to invade Cuba, but calmer heads won out. By the end of October 27, negotiations were well underway for Kennedy's administration to remove its own nuclear warheads from Turkey in exchange for the Russians pulling their missiles out of Cuba and stopping the construction of the launch pads there.

Fidel Castro Cuban Missile Crisis
Fidel Castro Cuban Missile Crisis


Kennedy further stated in his letter to Khrushchev that the US administration will respect Cuba's sovereignty moving forward and refrain from any more interventions like the Bay of Pigs invasion. This deal was sufficient to protect Cuba's independence going forward and allow the US and the Soviet Union to maintain their public image.

How did the Cuban Missile Crisis End ?

Consequently, on October 29, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis came to a conclusion after thirteen days.
Following the Crisis, a deal was made to improve communication between the US government and the Soviet government in Moscow. The Cold War also progressively entered a de-escalation phase, during which hostilities decreased during the course of the 1960s and particularly the 1970s, before resuming in the 1980s.

All of this had the effect of ensuring that the United States would never again directly meddle in Fidel's Cuba. Castro visited Moscow and numerous other Soviet cities in 1963 as he continued to bring Cuba closer within Russia's sphere of influence during the Cold War in the early 1960s.

Following this state visit, he started a variety of social, economic, and political reforms in Cuba that were similar to those that were implemented throughout the Soviet Union.

Hence, Cuba would continue to act as a hostile nation toward the United States right on its borders.

While never again openly meddling in Cuban politics, America continued to impose broad-based economic, diplomatic, and trade sanctions against Castro's government and Cuba. These sanctions would have a significant impact on the nation's economy in the years and decades to come.

Under Fidel's leadership, Cuba's progress in the years that followed produced a confusing and varied bag of outcomes. The nation saw a severe economic collapse in the 1960s as a result of a number of issues, some of which were related to the American economic sanctions placed on the island and others of which were the result of subpar economic planning by Castro's government.

Like the rest of the Caribbean since the seventeenth century, a large portion of the country's economy was still dependent on the sugar business, but other emerging industries like the casino and tourism, which had been expanding before the revolution, were now experiencing an exponential fall.

What Caused the Economic Crisis in Cuba?

As a result, throughout the 1960s, Cuba became more and more dependent on Soviet Union aid, which at one point reached close to 40% of its GDP.

But after that, things got better. Even though the state was the dominant actor, the Cuban economy expanded significantly in the 1970s and 1980s, despite global economic stagnation at the time. Yet, as we shall see, the Cold War's final end and the Soviet Union's decline in the 1980s brought about a new period of economic hardship for Cuba in the late 20th century.

The healthcare system that was developed over the decades of Fidel's administration must undoubtedly be one of the Castro regime's greatest accomplishments. Before to the Cuban Revolution, Cuba's healthcare system was among the best in Latin America; but, after the revolution, these accomplishments were expanded.

Under the Castro dictatorship, all Cuban citizens had free access to universal healthcare.
In reaction to a mass exodus of Cuban physicians to the United States during the early years of the government, significant investment started in the 1960s. In addition, Article 50 of the 1976 Cuban constitution, which established Cuba, specifically reaffirmed the government's commitment to the nation's healthcare system.

As a result, the country's doctor-to-patient ratio grew, rising from a low of 9.2 doctors per 10,000 people in 1958 to a high of over 60 doctors per 10,000 people in 1999. As a result, Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the US and a 79-year-old life expectancy at birth.

The nation also had great success in the 1990s and 2000s in eradicating and limiting the spread of HIV, and it has created a number of ground-breaking medical solutions in recent decades ahead of the more advanced western world.

When Fidel Castro was in charge of the nation, the educational system also prospered. Following the revolution, the state assumed ownership and operation of all educational institutions. The administration placed a high premium on and made significant investments in the healthcare and education systems.

The Castro regime spent up to 10% of the nation's GNP on education in recent decades, which is almost twice what neighboring industrialized nations spend on education on average.

A drive to reduce illiteracy in the nation was started right away after the revolution.

Almost 97% of Cubans in their early adult years were literate in 2000.
Additionally, a 1998 UNESCO research discovered that Cuban pupils had a significantly higher level of education than their peers in most of the developed world. These included institutions of higher education, like the University of Havana, which was nationalized in 1961.

The nation was also quite forward-thinking in how it made it possible for men and women to have equal access to higher education. The fact that institutions like the University of Havana are now desirable options for overseas students may be the best proof of the effectiveness of both this educational system and the healthcare system implemented by the Castro administration.

Castro steered Cuba toward a more neutral attitude in the worldwide battle between the United States and its NATO allies and the Soviet Union in the 1970s, despite the way in which Cuba had developed as the focal point of the Cold War in the years immediately following the Cuban Revolution.

It’s centered on the Non-Aligned Movement, an informal alliance or forum of developing country governments that had arisen in the 1950s as an alternative to supporting one of the two major Cold War power blocs.

Initially, Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of independent India, and Josip Tito, the leader of communist Yugoslavia, were the driving forces behind the Non-Aligned Movement.

Nation nations initially criticized Castro for attending the Fourth Non-Aligned Movement Conference in Algiers in 1973, believing that Cuba was too closely tied to Russia.

Castro was able to politically separate Cuba from Moscow in the years that followed, and in the late 1970s he held the position of president of the Non-Aligned Movement. The Soviet Union remained Cuba's main commercial partner due to economic considerations and the United States' ongoing sanctions on the nation, but under Castro in the 1970s, the nation substantially withdrew from the Cold War's front lines.

Castro did not decide to cut off its partisan connections with the Soviet Union because he was generally opposed to fighting in other countries. Cuba did in fact play a significant role in a number of foreign conflicts in Latin America and Africa, particularly the latter, throughout the 1970s. Castro's conviction that Cuba was but one participant in a larger effort at an International Revolution was influenced by Che Guevara from an early age.

Guerrilla Warfare by Ernesto "Che" Guevara 

As a result, the Cuban government led by Castro had supported several left-wing and revolutionary movements throughout the southern hemisphere from its inception. Moreover, Guevara established the Andean Project guerrilla movement in the 1960s with Castro's approval with the intention of sparking left-wing revolutions in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina.

After Guevara was apprehended and assassinated in Bolivia in October 1967 by the US Central Intelligence Agency, this particular plan was shelved. In spite of this loss, which was a serious blow to Fidel personally and politically, he continued to assist revolutionary forces across Latin America and the Caribbean in the years that followed.

Why Was Cuba Involved In Angola

Castro was most active on the international stage and in supporting other revolutions during the 1970s in Africa. He and Che Guevara had aided rebels in the Congo who were fighting an American-sponsored regime in the middle of the 1960s. The 1970s saw the expansion of this policy, and Castro at the time referred to Africa as "the weakest link in the imperialist chain." Therefore, in 1975, after Angola gained independence from Portugal, hundreds of military advisers were dispatched to the country, where a civil war had just started. Angola is located in southwest Africa.

Castro's aides were dispatched to assist the Communist Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola in its struggle with the National Union for the Complete Independence of Angola, which was supported by the West. It marked the beginning of Cuba's pivotal role in the brutal Angolan Civil War, which would last for 27 years in some form or another.

Some 370,000 Cuban military personnel and an additional 50,000 Cuban civilians had served in Angola as medical personnel, nurses, and other personnel by 1991. This indicates that throughout the first fifteen years of Angola's civil war, over 5% of Cuba's population participated in military service there.
Furthermore, at the time, Cuba fought on more than one front in Africa. 

In the late 1970s, Fidel Castro also engaged the country in revolutionary battles and civil wars in nations like Somalia and Madagascar. Cuba's relationship with the United States and its allies slightly improved in the latter part of the 1970s, despite the nation's growing role in instigating and supporting revolutionary movements across Africa.

As a result, a group of influential figures, including Mexican President Luis Echeverra,

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and US President Jimmy Carter jointly offered to strengthen ties with the island country. Carter was especially prepared to give up the combative approach that had been preferred by his predecessors in the White House, particularly John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

And while Carter persisted in criticizing a number of features of Castro's government, he also engaged in substantive talks aimed at fostering better ties between the two neighboring nations. Castro consented to the release of a large number of political prisoners and the establishment of regulations that would permit Cubans who had emigrated to the United States after the revolution 20 years earlier to temporarily visit family in Cuba, albeit under stringent restrictions.

For his part, Castro hoped that the US would lift its economic sanctions against Cuba. Although this did not occur, the harsher punishments were softened, giving some financial relief.

The “Grey Years” In Cuba Summary

Despite some domestic achievements in improving Cuba's healthcare and education systems, the nation was plagued throughout Fidel's lengthy reign as president by a repressive authoritarian regime. There was limited room for political protest under the Communist system, as there was everywhere else in the world.

Throughout the Cold War, press censorship and initiatives to purge "bourgeois" or "counter-revolutionary" elements from Cuban society were rampant, but this was especially true during the so-called "Grey Years," a period of nearly ten years in the 1970s when Castro's regime was especially repressive.

There was significant cultural repression of poets and artists during this time, as well as persecution of intellectuals and professors. During these years, the LGBT community suffered particularly. The end result of all of this was an increase in the number of people attempting to enter the United States illegally from Cuba, as Florida is only a short boat journey away.

Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1976 and a relaxation of some state restrictions on the arts, "The Grey Years" started to wind down, but political opposition remained forbidden under Castro's rule for years to come.

The persecution of people who disagreed with Fidel's dictatorial rule in Cuba resulted in a significant event in 1980 that influenced a large portion of the Cuban population in the United States.

Following years of repression and the efforts of tens of thousands of people to flee Cuba, Castro's government decided to momentarily open a port to permit people to do so. This was Mariel's port and harbor, which located about 40 kilometers to the west of Havana. The port was open for anyone wishing to depart Cuba for the United States for more than six months between April 15th, 1980, until the end of October that year.

Before it was reopened a little more than six months later, over 120,000 Cubans had already departed for the US. The so-called Mariel Boatlift became a contentious political issue in the US since President Jimmy Carter's administration was concerned how to handle the influx if it persisted in such large numbers.

By the time Mariel Harbour was reopened, the massive influx of Cubans into Florida, and Miami in particular, had changed the demographics of the Sunshine State in ways that continue to have an impact today. This is especially true given that the Cuban American vote is a sizable group with its own political lobby in a state that consistently votes for the president of the United States.

Fidel Castro's regime made significant changes to Cuba during the 1980s.

The principal export of the nation, sugar, saw its price plummet on a global scale, contributing to yet another downturn in the economy. The rate of unemployment increased significantly. Cuba, which had somewhat managed to free itself from Soviet domination in the 1970s, consequently found itself returning to a reliance on Russian subsidies and the Russian export market.

Yet, this was a short-term tactic. As General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev took over in 1985. As a reformer, he started to implement a number of new programs that attempted to modernize the Soviet Union and end the Cold War, which had resumed when Ronald Reagan took office as US president in 1981.

Gorbachev's reforms, however, had unexpected repercussions, and by the late 1980s, the Eastern Bloc of communist nations, which extended from East Germany to Russia's borders, were pushing for extensive political changes. The Berlin Wall was torn down in November 1989, bringing the city back together after it had been divided for over 50 years.

The war between capitalist America and communist Russia ended two years later with the fall of the Soviet Union.

The fall of the Soviet Union had significant effects for Castro and Cuba.

Fidel had built a reputation for himself over the course of forty years as the Soviet Union's buddy and the arch-enemy of America right on its doorstep. The nation had also depended heavily on Moscow between the early 1960s and the late 1980s for financial assistance to boost its economy. Communist governments like Castro's were being toppled quickly in nations like Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, though, as the Soviet Union fell and the Cold War came to an end.

In Cuba, there was a good chance that the same might transpire, but Fidel moved immediately to assure the continuity of his reign. To avoid any internal uprising among the military, Castro tightened his grip on power. He also temporarily aligned Cuba with other Latin American governments that shared the United States' animosity.

Through such mechanisms, Castro was able to ensure that the Communist regime in Cuba persisted after the Cold War ended, despite the fact that the United States made clear that it intended to keep pressure on Castro's government by securing a vote at the UN Human Rights Commission accusing it of widespread violations of human rights.

When was the Special Period in Cuba

The fact that Castro's government continued to exist after the Cold War ended marked the beginning of what Fidel referred to as "a Unique Era in Time of Peace." Castro claimed that this was a "unique" time, but the reality for the majority of Cubans in the 1990s was one of growing destitution.

The nation was now subject to US economic sanctions and was no longer able to access the funds and support that it had long enjoyed from Moscow. Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev's successor as president of the new Russian state, had a strong dislike for Fidel, and Russia provided little help to its erstwhile partner. Therefore, Cuba's economy crumbled in the early 1990s despite some sporadic attempts to repair relations with some western governments.

When compared to 1990, economic output had decreased by over 40% by 1992.

The island nation saw extensive electricity outages, a lack of gasoline for driving automobiles and other purposes, and a complete halt to importation of necessities like Russian-made cars. As raw material shortages worsened, Cuban factories were forced to close, which accelerated unemployment and the country's economic downfall. As a result, Cuba's "Special Period" was essentially a time of economic collapse.

There was a reaction to the early 1990s economic crisis. There was a definite undertone of anger in Cuban society at large regarding the challenges everyday people were facing.

In response, the leadership attempted to improve the economic climate before it sparked attempts to topple the government, as had occurred throughout Eastern Europe. As a result, starting in late 1991, piecemeal preparations were made to allow private businesses to function in Cuba and to authorize the use of dollars as a substitute currency.

havana
Havana


Also, political changes that attempted to make the administration of the nation more representative of the people and to oust many of the senior officials who, like Castro, had risen as a result of their participation in the revolution back in the 1950s were started.

Travel restrictions both inside and outside the country were loosened, which had a significant positive impact on the island's economy as tourism—the majority of which came from Spain and South America—quickly overtook the production of sugar as the main industry in Cuba. As a result, by 1996, the country's budget deficit had almost completely disappeared, and foreign investment was rising, despite widespread criticism that the socialist revolution's principles were being abandoned.

Despite the deregulation of some aspects of the Cuban economy, Fidel Castro maintained his image as the unrelenting foe of capitalism on the international stage and sided with numerous governments hostile to the US and other western capitalist powers.

This included some retroactively statesmanlike behavior. For instance, Castro had long been a staunch opponent of the apartheid regime employed by the government of South Africa, and in fact, part of Cuba's ongoing involvement in the Angolan Civil War had been to aid South African dissidents.

Castro was invited to the 1994 inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the first black president of South Africa because he had been a longtime friend of the prominent anti-apartheid activist. Possibly more contentious was Castro's leadership of a new alliance of South American nations that advocated socialism and an anti-American posture.

Fidel was most closely allied with Hugo Chavez in this situation, supplying Cuban medical knowledge in exchange for Venezuelan oil. Other nations, like Bolivia, would affiliate with "the Pink Tide," as this movement came to be known, but the political and economic collapse of Venezuela in the aftermath has severely damaged this movement's reputation.

Field Castro Family

In the years following the Cold War, Castro's private life also came under some scrutiny.
This came after his daughter left the country in 1993 to seek asylum in the United States, where she publicly criticized her father's government.

Castro's more extensive private life was both highly guarded and quite unusual. He had multiple lengthy affairs in addition to at least two marriages.

He had countless other children from his past relationships in addition to the five kids he had with his second wife, Dalia Soto Del Valle. Yet, he had a tight bond with his younger brother Ral, who had been a political ally of his since the late 1950s.

Castro, though, was often regarded as quiet and secretive. And despite being the leader of the communist government, Fidel did not shun having greater material wealth than the average Cuban. He owned many other sizable homes in addition to the big estate known as "Punto Cero" in Havana, and he frequently traveled by limousine. 

Castro rarely appeared in public wearing anything other than a green military uniform, despite the fact that his public image—which was meticulously produced and controlled throughout his lengthy reign—was known as the Commandante or the Commander.

Castro was re-elected by the Cuban National Congress to a second five-year term as president in 2003. However, only three years later, in July 2006, Fidel handed temporary control of the country over to his brother and steadfast supporter Ral Castro.

Who Took Over After Fidel Castro?

His brother Raúl, This break was initially planned to give Fidel enough time to recover from surgery for a major intestinal issue that had caused internal hemorrhage. Fidel had not actually been in charge of the government since the Cuban Revolution's victory and successful arrival into Havana in 1959.

After a further year and a half, this retirement became permanent. The Commandante had not been seen in public for more than 19 months by February 2008, when the National Assembly convened to elect a new president for the following five years.

The news that Fidel, who was 81 years old at the time, would not run for reelection was possibly not shocking to Cuba or the rest of the world. Instead, authority would pass to his brother Ral, whose election as President of the National Assembly on February 24 marked the end of his brother's 49-year reign as the leader of Cuba's Communist government.

When his health declined, Castro spent the majority of his retirement out of the public eye. He continued to write for Granma, the party's publication of record, and occasionally delivered speeches in front of an audience. 

He wrote his memoirs, the first book of which was published under the title The Strategic Victory and included a description of the 1950s Battle Against Batista's Government. He gave up his last significant political role in 2011 when he appointed his brother Ral as the next secretary general of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Yet, he continued to have some influence on world affairs in his later years. He supported nuclear non-proliferation and warned against the dangers of a conflict between the United States and a nuclear state like North Korea. When he visited the nation in March 2016 as the first American head of state to do so since the Revolution, he did not, however, have a meeting with US President Barack Obama.

Fidel Castro Death 

Fidel passed away on November 25, 2016, just over six months later, from an unidentified disease. When his ashes were interred in Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, a funeral procession was conducted along the route that the revolutionaries had traveled across Cuba in early 1959.

After nearly 50 years as the country's dictator, Fidel Castro left behind a variety of legacy. Similar to how other Communist regimes like China survived the conclusion of the Cold War, the Communist Party of Cuba still controls Cuba as a one-party, authoritarian state to this day.

Cuba had remained a steadfast supporter of left-wing, Latin American socialism, but like China, the nation has been compelled to abandon rigorous devotion to socialist ideals since 1991.

As a result, the economy is still planned or regulated, even if it does allow some private enterprise and is increasingly dependent on tourism. In the past twenty years, Cuba has been more accessible to the outside world in ways that were unimaginable throughout the majority of Castro's time as the regime's leader.

Nonetheless, a lot of factors still negatively impact Cubans' life. The nation has one of the lowest records for press freedom and bad human rights records overall. The economy is nevertheless noticeably weak and continues to be subject to economic penalties from other nations. Nonetheless, recent political and economic reforms give hope that in the short to medium term, a more open society and economy would emerge.

It is hard to evaluate Fidel Castro because of his extensive political career.

He began as a member of the Latin American Revolution, hoping to rid Cuba of American influence and alter its political system. There is no denying that when Fulgencio Batista oversaw the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s, the island was plagued with shocking government corruption and misbehavior, which was personified by Batista. Hence, at this time, anyone reacting against the Cuban regime had a lot of credibility.

But, because of how the Cuban Revolution unfolded in the 1950s, the Soviet Union swiftly came to have political sway over the new Cuban government. The nation was notorious for being the setting in which the United States and the Soviet Union came closest to nuclear war, which made it a key player in the Cold War in the early 1960s.

The United States has maintained economic sanctions against Cuba for more than 60 years, and that has had the most significant long-term effect. Throughout the nearly 50 years that Fidel Castro was in power, the economic issues this caused cast a long shadow over Cuba and its economic growth.

Nonetheless, there were several decades after the Cuban Revolution and the island's participation in the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 1960s that allow for an evaluation of Castro's rule. A somewhat mixed legacy must be considered based on these years.

Positive changes and innovations were made to Cuban society in several cases.
Additionally, the nation boasts an inclusive education and healthcare system that is unmatched by the typical American, who must pay exorbitant costs to enroll in the best colleges or search for jobs that provide private health insurance.

Cuba has made amazing medical advancements for a nation of its size as a result, and it also contributes significantly to international efforts to provide medical aid. Contrasted with this, however, is the fact that Castro's Cuba was a severely harsh authoritarian regime that persecuted a large portion of its population over the course of the previous 50 years in order to keep Castro and his supporters in an unchallenged position of power in Havana.

Castro may be remembered as a leader of a government that showed how communism might improve the lives of millions of its citizens in the areas of healthcare and education, but whose authoritarian tendencies and harsh policies ultimately marred his leadership.

How do you feel about Castro? 

He was either a nationalist patriot who freed the Cuban people from a brutal dictatorship or he was just another tyrant who persecuted the Cuban people.

Thank you very much for reading, and if you have any questions or comments, please let us know in the comment area.

  Thank you for visiting our Kiki's History website, and we hope that you find our content both informative and enjoyable. If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We value your feedback and appreciate your support.

Most Popular Post [See Here] 

Post a Comment

0 Comments