revolution

For the Cuban people, surrender is not an option

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Original article by Manolo De Los Santos republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Thousands marched on January 26, 2026 in Havana, Cuba, to honor José Martí’s legacy. Photo: Progressive International

Claims by officials in Washington that “Cuba’s collapse is imminent” usually coincide with a tightening of the blockade. Yet, once again, Cubans have reaffirmed their commitment to the revolution and their creative resistance in the face of the latest US attacks.

The halls of power in Washington are echoing with a familiar, predatory chorus. Once again, the White House, various think-tank experts, and US politicians are predicting the “imminent collapse” of Cuba. This is a tune the world has heard for over sixty years, usually sung at its highest volume whenever the United States decides to tighten the economic noose around the island’s neck. However, in 2026, the rhetoric has shifted from sanctions to an overt campaign of total strangulation. Under a new executive order signed in late January, the second Trump administration has escalated the decades-long blockade into a proactive fuel blockade.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel laid bare the intended consequences in a press conference on February 5, 2026: “Not allowing a single drop of fuel to enter our country will affect transportation, food production, tourism, children’s education, and the healthcare system.” The objective is clear: to induce systemic failure, sow popular discontent, and create conditions for political destabilization. The White House rhetoric confirms this intent. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s statement on the same day, that “the Cuban government is on its last leg and its country is about to collapse,” is not an analysis but public signaling, a psychological operation meant to reinforce the narrative of inevitable doom and pressure Cuban leadership into unilateral concessions.

This policy is not merely a “sanction” in the traditional sense; it is a calculated attempt to suffocate a nation by blocking every drop of fuel from reaching its shores. The administration has authorized aggressive tariffs and sanctions on any foreign country or company that dares to trade oil with the island, effectively treating Cuban territorial waters as a zone of exclusion. Since December, multiple oil tankers headed to Cuba have been seized by US naval forces in the Caribbean or forced to return to their ports of origin under threat of asset forfeiture. In direct response to this intensifying siege, Cuba has announced sweeping fuel rationing measures designed to protect essential services. The plan prioritizes fuel for healthcare, water, food production, education, public transportation, and defense, while strictly limiting sales to private drivers. To secure vital foreign currency, the tourism sector and key export industries, such as cigar production, will continue operating. Schools will maintain full in-person primary education, with hybrid systems implemented for higher levels. The leadership of the Cuban Revolution has affirmed that Cuba “will not collapse.”

To the planners in the White House, Cuba is a 67-year-old problem to be solved with starvation and darkness. But to the Cuban people, the current crisis is a continuation of a long-standing refusal to trade their sovereignty for Washington’s demands of submission.

The ghost of the “Special Period” 

To understand why the Cuban people have not descended into the chaos Washington predicted, one must look to the historical precedent of the “Special Period in Time of Peace.” Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba experienced an economic shock that would have toppled almost any other modern state. Overnight, the island lost 85% of its international trade and nearly all of its subsidized fuel imports. The resulting statistics were staggering: the Gross Domestic Product plummeted by 35%, and the daily caloric intake of the average citizen dropped from over 3,000 calories to roughly 1,800. During this era, the lights went out across the island for more than 16 hours a day, and the bicycle became the primary mode of transportation as the public transit system collapsed.

At the same time, Washington escalated its assault through the Torricelli Act (1992) and the Helms-Burton Law (1996), each tightening the noose around Cuba’s economy. However, instead of fracturing under the weight of this tightened blockade, Cubans developed “Option Zero”, a survival plan designed to keep hospitals running and children fed without any fuel, and the Cuban social fabric tightened. The government prioritized the distribution of remaining resources to the most vulnerable, ensuring that infant mortality rates remained lower than those in many parts of the United States despite the scarcity. This period proved that when a population is politically conscious of the external forces causing their suffering, they become extraordinarily resilient. The “Special Period” was not just a time of hunger; it was a period of forced innovation that gave rise to the world’s first national experiment in organic urban farming and mass-scale energy conservation.

The return of the energy crisis

The crisis of 2026 is, in many ways, a sequel to the 1990s, but with higher stakes and more advanced technological targets. The roots of the current energy shortage can be traced back to the first Trump administration’s decision in 2019 to target Cuban oil imports as a means of punishing the island for its solidarity with Venezuela. By designating Cuba as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” and activating Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, the US successfully scared off international shipping lines and insurance companies. This was followed by a focused campaign against the PDVSA (Venezuela’s state oil company) and the shipping firms involved in the trade agreement between countries in the region known as ALBA-TCP.

By 2025, the impact on Cuba’s energy grid was catastrophic. The island’s thermal power plants, most of which were built with aging Soviet technology, were never designed to burn the heavy, sulfur-rich crude that Cuba produces domestically without constant maintenance and expensive imported additives. The lack of foreign exchange, caused by the tightening of the blockade, meant that spare parts were non-existent. By the time the 2026 fuel blockade began, the national grid was already operating at 25% below its required capacity. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has been transparent with the public, noting that without fuel, everything from the morning school bus to the refrigeration systems for the nation’s advanced biotech medicines is under constant threat, a reality that has now precipitated the stringent new rationing regime.

The threat of intervention: from Caracas to Havana

The current US stance toward Cuba cannot be viewed in isolation from its recent military interventions in the Middle East and Latin America. The “regime change” efforts in Cuba are being modeled after the maximum pressure campaigns used against Iran and the military incursions seen in Venezuela on January 3, 2026. The threat of a US military attack is no longer a rhetorical flourish used by Havana to drum up nationalism; it is a documented strategic option discussed in Washington.

The logic behind such an intervention is twofold. First, there is the ideological drive to eliminate the “contagion” of a country that questions the Monroe Doctrine and US domination in the region. Cuba’s existence serves as a reminder that sovereignty is possible even in the shadow of a superpower. Second, and more pragmatically, the US is motivated by a thirst for strategic minerals. Cuba sits on some of the world’s largest reserves of nickel and cobalt, essential components of lithium-ion batteries that power the global transition to electric vehicles and advanced weaponry. In a world where the US is scrambling to compete with China for control of the mineral and energy supply chain, a sovereign Cuba that controls its own mines is seen as an obstacle to American hegemony. If the US can force a collapse, these minerals would no longer belong to the Cuban people; they would be auctioned off to US corporations as it was before 1959.

The new resistance: extraordinary efforts in renewable energy

However, the Cuban response to this renewed strangulation is not a white flag of surrender. Recognizing that fossil fuel dependence is a vulnerability the US will always exploit, Cuba has, in recent years, launched an extraordinary national effort to transform its energy matrix. Building on this momentum, the country completed 49 new solar parks in 2025 alone. This massive undertaking added approximately 1,000 megawatts of power to the national grid, marking a 7% increase in total grid capacity and accounting for a remarkable 38% of the nation’s energy generation. By the end of March 2026, with support from China, the island is on track to add over 150 MW of renewable power to its grid through the rapid deployment of solar parks.

The strategy is clear: if the empire can shut off the oil, Cuba will harvest the sun. “The way the US energy blockade has been implemented reinforces our commitment to the renewable energy strategy,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel declared. The government has committed to a plan to generate 24% of the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030, with a long-term goal of achieving total energy independence. This involves not just large-scale solar farms, but the decentralization of the grid through the installation of thousands of small-scale solar panels on homes and state buildings. This “energy sovereignty” movement is the 21st-century equivalent of the 1990s urban gardens. It is a way of overcoming the US blockade by removing the very commodity, oil, that Washington uses as a leash.

The narrative of Cuba’s “imminent collapse” has been written a thousand times by people who do not understand the depth of the island’s historical memory. The 2026 fuel blockade is a brutal crime against a civilian population, designed to create the very chaos that the US media then reports on as “proof” of government failure. It is the arsonist blaming the house for being flammable. The newly imposed fuel rationing is not a sign of surrender, but a tactical maneuver of national defense, a structured effort to outlast the assault while safeguarding the pillars of Cuban society that precisely make it an alternative to the US model.

Yet, Cuba’s message to the world remains consistent. They are willing to talk and trade, but not to be owned or become a neo-colony of the United States. The story of Cuba is not one of a failed state, but of a people who have decided that the most potent fuel for their future isn’t oil, it’s the will to remain independent. As the sun rises over the new solar arrays in the Cuban countryside, it serves as a silent, glowing testament to a nation that refuses to disappear.

Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).

Original article by Manolo De Los Santos republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.

Continue ReadingFor the Cuban people, surrender is not an option

Drawing lessons from the Cuban Revolution: organization, unity, and internationalism

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This article by republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

On February 16, 1959, Cuba established the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the executive body of their defense force, and its first Army General, Raúl Castro Ruz. Photo: Miguel Díaz-Canel/X

A recent webinar by Pan Africanism Today and the International Peoples’ Assembly looked at global struggles, from Africa to Latin America, showing how Cuba’s enduring resistance offers vital lessons in organization, unity, and internationalism for today’s movements fighting oppression and war.

The world is in an era marked by relentless wars and overlapping crises, from the devastating civil war in Sudan and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the unfolding genocide in Palestine. The demand to end all wars has never carried greater urgency. And in the midst of all these visible battlegrounds persists a more enduring and insidious conflict; the hybrid war and economic blockade waged against the Cuban people and their revolution.

This was the central focus of a recent global webinar convened under the banner of Pan-African and internationalist solidarity, bringing together progressive voices to draw lessons from Cuba’s anti-imperialist struggle. The session, held on October 15, was facilitated by Mbali Gwenda from Pan Africanism Today, who situated the discussion within a broader historical and moral framework, invoking the revolutionary spirits of Thomas Sankara, martyred on the same date in 1987, and Assata Shakur who recently passed, and whose life consistently symbolized uncompromising resistance to oppression.

“We are dealing with the question of the hybrid war and blockade against the Cuban Revolution and her people,” Gwenda said. “A revolution that has been a source of inspiration for all oppressed peoples throughout the world till this day.”

The keynote address was delivered by Manolo De Los Santos, executive director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, who framed Cuba’s defiance not as a miracle, but as the outcome of a centuries-long process of people’s struggle, organization, and consciousness.

The long arc of revolution

De Los Santos began by looking at Cuba’s revolution more than an event confined to the years 1953–1959, when Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others led the guerrilla war against the Batista dictatorship. Revolutions, he reminded the audience, are not events but processes, collective journeys of resistance that unfold across generations.

Cuba’s revolution, he argued, has roots reaching back to centuries of anti-colonial and anti-slavery resistance, when the island was still a colony of the Spanish Empire. Unlike many independence movements in Latin America, Cuban revolutionaries understood that genuine freedom required addressing three interlinked questions:

  1. Could Cuba truly be independent if it remained a slaveholding society?
  2. Could it be free if it continued under the exploitative system of capitalism?
  3. Could it claim sovereignty while dominated by imperial powers, first Spain and later the United States?

These questions shaped the consciousness of generations of Cuban patriots, culminating in the 1959 triumph of the socialist revolution. But as he explained, the revolution’s endurance has rested on three essential pillars: organization, unity, and internationalism.

Organization: the bedrock of resistance

Organization, De Los Santos emphasized, has been the Cuban people’s greatest weapon against imperial aggression. From the early independence wars to the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro, Cubans have understood that only a disciplined, organized people can confront an empire with infinite resources.

This organizational spirit persisted after 1959, with the creation of mass democratic structures that unite workers, women, peasants, students, and youth. The Federation of Cuban Women, for example, mobilizes millions in defense of gender equality and revolutionary ideals, while student and peasant organizations remain vital spaces for political education and collective problem-solving.

Even under today’s extreme shortages such as the lack of fuel to power garbage collection, Cuban communities respond not with despair but with collective initiative, a reflection of their revolutionary organization and social consciousness.

Unity, he continued, has been the second indispensable lesson from Cuba. Every time the people were divided, the empire gained the upper hand; every time they stood together, they won. This unity has transcended class, race, and regional divisions, dismantling the legacies of slavery and racism that imperialism imposed.

The Cuban Revolution’s unity was forged not just through ideology but through practice, through collective participation in building a new society. It remains, as Manolo put it, “the most important defense the Cuban people have.”

Internationalism is the soul of the revolution

If organization is the body and unity the shield, then internationalism is the soul of the Cuban Revolution.

Quoting Fidel Castro, the New York-based researcher reminded participants that “a people who are not willing to fight for the freedom of others will never be able to fully fight for their own freedom.”

This principle drove Cuba to send tens of thousands of its sons and daughters to fight alongside liberation movements in Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, contributing directly to the defeat of apartheid. As he noted, “Cuba doesn’t need gold or minerals from Africa, it knows that its freedom is tied to the freedom of the peoples of the African continent.”

Even today, with over 24,000 Cuban doctors working abroad, many across Africa, Cuba continues this legacy of solidarity. The US, in its campaign of distortion, now accuses Cuba of “human trafficking” for this very act of humanitarianism.

Read more: Cuba’s medical brigades in Africa embody a long tradition of solidarity

The anatomy of a hybrid war

The United States’ war against Cuba has been fought through unconventional means. It is a hybrid war, a combination of economic blockade, financial strangulation, media disinformation, and covert sabotage.

For more than 65 years, the blockade has inflicted immense human and economic damage. In 2024 alone, it cost Cuba USD 7.5 billion, money that could have been used to buy food, medicine, or oil for its 11 million citizens.

The US uses its control of global financial systems to punish any country or institution that trades with Cuba. Banks in Africa or Latin America face sanctions simply for handling Cuban transactions. The blockade’s reach extends into every corner of global trade, designed to isolate Cuba and make daily life unbearable for its people.

Read More: Tens of thousands of Cubans march in support of Venezuela’s sovereignty amid US aggression

The war is also fought in the terrain of ideas. US-funded media campaigns spread false narratives about repression and poverty in Cuba while erasing the country’s achievements in health, education, and solidarity.

Socialism and survival

When asked on how Cuba has managed to survive more than six decades of blockade, Manolo’s answer was clear: because Cuba made a socialist revolution.

Socialism, he said, allowed Cuba to create a system where the needs of the people come before profit. In capitalist societies, when crises hit, the rich survive and the poor starve. In Cuba, food, healthcare, and education are distributed equitably, even in times of scarcity. This social organization transforms a siege economy into a community of resilience.

This difference, he explained, is what makes Cuba unique among nations facing US aggression. It’s also what inspires global movements seeking alternatives to neoliberalism and imperial domination.

Cuba, Sankara, and the spirit of resistance

The session also honored Thomas Sankara linking a symbolic bridge between the African and Latin American revolutionary traditions. Both embodied a commitment to self-reliance, dignity, and international solidarity.

Sankara’s vision of a self-determined Africa resonated deeply with the Cuban experience. His assassination on October 15, 1987 marked a turning point in African politics, yet his ideas continue to inspire movements across the continent, just as Cuba continues to stand as living proof that another world is possible.

Read More: Thomas Sankara’s legacy lives on in Burkina Faso 38 years after his death

A call for global solidarity

In closing, Manolo issued a clear call; the Cuban people will overcome the blockade, but they cannot and should not do it alone. Their survival depends on the solidarity of all who believe in justice, sovereignty, and equality.

Cuba’s endurance is not simply a Cuban story; it is a lesson for all peoples resisting imperial domination. As the world faces renewed militarization and economic warfare, the spirit of organization, unity, and internationalism must also be crucial as ever.

“When they stand with the Palestinians, when they stand with the Congolese, when they stand with the peoples of the African continent,” Manolo concluded, “they are breaking the blockade too.”

This article by republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingDrawing lessons from the Cuban Revolution: organization, unity, and internationalism

So, Are We Just Going to Let Ourselves Die?

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Original article by Roger Hallam republished from Roger Hallam. I don’t have permission to republish this article but expect that it will be ok & he’s in prison.

The elites are blind, the media asleep — but the fuse of revolution has been lit, and history is about to turn.

Shortly before I was imprisoned last year, I had the privilege of joining a Zoom call with a man living in the Central American rainforest. He had been the primary fundraiser for the Social Forum, which, as some readers will recall, was the first international organisation of this century to call for a new global social system: “Another world is possible.” He told me, “Roger, when you go to see funders, tell them two things: First, that the money is not theirs, and second, that it will be worth nothing in ten years.”

This week, I recorded a message for one of the most radical Western companies funding climate crisis activism. I spoke to them about these two realities. Five years ago, perhaps even a year ago, they would have politely—or not so politely—shown us the door. But not now. My colleague was told the presentation was “magical,” information about funding a new global movement was shared with over 100 staff members, and a personal letter from me will be delivered by hand to the company’s founder, whose funds run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the same time, Just Stop Oil announced it would no longer engage in civil resistance. The media response has been significant, but none of it has focused on what really matters. I was sent a series of questions by Justin Rowlatt, the BBC environment correspondent. I replied to him with three main points. First, it is the evolution of a deep culture of respect, service, and trust that took us from three people in a room with a few quid to a household name, with thousands of arrests and millions of pounds in financial support, all within a year. Equally significant has been the unprecedented battering we have received, resulting in hundreds of people being imprisoned, many on multi-year sentences, including nearly all the key organisers. Nothing like this has happened to an open, nonviolent organisation in this country since the Napoleonic Wars.

A day or two later, the police battered down the door of Westminster Friends Meeting House in a raid to arrest a group of young people planning a protest. How many centuries would you have to go back to find this kind of treatment of the Quakers? The point, however, is this: it is only in the face of such state violence that the fearless personality is forged, prepared for the enormous sacrifices needed to bring down regimes.

Then there is the third, least important point, that obviously JSO has not been able to stop the metamachine of universal death that is the British carbon regime. Justin, in true neoliberal style, focused only on the third point: our “failure” – the superficial, the short-term, the flat material plane. He and the media cannot see cultural and spiritual depth. 

The key determinants of regime change are now coming into place — large-scale funding, service-based culture, and the spirit of fearless sacrifice. There is one more ingredient. Ignored by the media is the “climate news” of the past 12 months, which is a hundred times worse than what provoked the mass mobilisation of Extinction Rebellion back in 2018. Underlying temperatures have jumped 0.2°C in a single year. We are now over 1.6°C and will be hitting 2°C by 2030. The carbon sinks are collapsing, and the feedbacks are triggered. Buried in the Appendix of the recent British Insurance Industry report is its prediction of 2 billion deaths at 2°C, and 4 billion at 3°C. That is half of the world’s population dead. This reality is about to explode upon us and trigger the fusion of the elements of revolutionary transformation.

Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent for the New York Times during the 1990s, told me a while ago that the reason why the elites do not see revolutions coming is because they only speak to themselves. They are stuck in their silo. Like Justin Rowlett and the BBC, they can only see what they want to see. The world is falling away beyond our feet. Trump is doing his stuff. They have no alternative but to resort to appeasement. And like in the 1930s, their dream world is about to be swept away.

So are we just going to have ourselves die? The deepest paradox of the present historical moment is that only when we have the courage to answer yes to that question, and so allow ourselves to experience the agonising depths of despair, desolation, and self-contempt, can we come to see and feel reality as it actually is, and so play our part in the coming re-making of the world.

To find out about this new global movement (we’re recruiting!) go to rev21.earth.

Sign Up for Revolution in the 21st Century

Original article by Roger Hallam republished from Roger Hallam. I don’t have permission to republish this article but expect that it will be ok & he’s in prison.

Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Continue ReadingSo, Are We Just Going to Let Ourselves Die?

‘The rich are on course to destroy all our lives’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/the-rich-are-on-course-to-destroy-all-our-lives

A firefighter battles the Palisades Fire as it burns a structure in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles, January 7, 2025

World’s wealthiest 1% have already burned through their share of the entire annual carbon limit, Oxfam warns

THE world’s wealthiest 1 per cent have already burned through their share of the entire annual carbon limit, a damning analysis of super-rich climate destruction has revealed.

A new study by charity Oxfam has analysed the “global carbon budget” — the amount of CO2 that can be emitted without exceeding the international target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Its findings showed that while the richest capitalists had already exceeded that limit in the first 10 days of 2025, it would take someone from the poorest half of the global population nearly three years to use up their share.

Inaction will continue to have deadly consequences, the charity said — and eight in 10 deaths from heat will occur in low and lower-middle-income countries.

Oxfam estimated that by 2050, emissions by the 1 per cent will cause crop losses that could have provided enough calories to feed at least 10 million people a year in eastern and southern Asia.

Emissions from the ultra-wealthy are also causing trillions in economic losses -– the impact on low and lower-middle-income countries over the past three decades has been three times greater than the total climate finance provided by wealthy nations.

…

A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil also issued a rallying call, saying: “We live within a system that serves the few over the many, and the rich are on course for destroying all our lives if they carry on unopposed. We must get organised and resist.

“We need a revolution in politics and economics, and we need to reclaim Parliament from the corporations and billionaires, whilst prioritising the interests of ordinary people.”

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/the-rich-are-on-course-to-destroy-all-our-lives

Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
Continue Reading‘The rich are on course to destroy all our lives’

Fidel Castro: a life of revolution

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Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra with Guillermo García, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Universo Sánchez, Raúl Castro, Crescentio Pérez, Jorge Sotus, and Juan Almeida. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

August 13 marks the anniversary of the birth of Marxist and communist revolutionary Fidel Castro, one of the most influential political leaders of the 20th century. Read our series of articles about the political life of the revolutionary leader.

Fidel Castro was born in Biran, in the east of the island of Cuba, in 1926, and died in Havana on November 25, 2016. His historical figure however, transcends the time in which he lived. Even when historians study the period in the region before the Cuban Revolution, they always keep in mind that, during the 1950s, on a Caribbean island, social, economic, and political changes would take place that would transform the entire history of the continent.

In this case, Fidel’s name cannot be detached from a process that shook the foundations of the entire Latin American and Caribbean society. Although the “Comandante” himself disavowed the simplification of revolutionary and historical processes to a few names, it seems that human memory prefers to engrave in its memory certain individuals rather than economic forces, cultural disputes, or political ideas. At least this has been the case with Fidel, whose figure is tied to the destiny of a country, just as Bolívar is tied to Venezuela, Juarez to Mexico, and Martí to Cuba.

The young student

Fidel studied at a Jesuit school, and perhaps because of this he always maintained an unyielding intellectual discipline, as well as an almost stoic confidence in the unity of any political group that has clear general objectives. At university, he studied law and social sciences. There he began to read several books on politics while presiding over the Federation of University Students (FEU), a space which he was active in during the struggle against the government of Ramón Grau San Martín, and in which he began to denounce the bloody dictatorship of the infamous Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

As president of the FEU, he traveled to Colombia to attend the Inter-American Student Conference and meet personally with Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, the Colombian politician, whose assassination, a few hours before his meeting with the young Fidel, would set off a historical process in Colombian society that began with the famous “Bogotazo”.

Once he finished his university studies, he tried to enter national politics by running for the House of Representatives in 1952, but the disastrous coup d’état of Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government of Carlos Prío Socarrás and prohibited future elections. Fidel tried to denounce Batista before the courts for violating the constitution, but the denunciation was denied. Faced with this adversity, the young Fidel understood that elections and legal denunciations were not an adequate way to engage in political struggle at that time in Cuba.

The beginning of the revolutionary struggle

That is how several young revolutionaries decided to follow the path of armed struggle. On July 26, 1953, they attacked two military bases (the “Moncada” in Santiago de Cuba and the “Carlos Manuel de Céspedes” in Bayamo) which stored thousands of weapons and were located in areas where the people were mostly opposed to the Batista dictatorship. They had hoped that the attack would provoke sympathy among the population and the young military who doubted the dictatorship. But all plans, including the escape plans, failed. More than 80 young revolutionaries were tortured and killed by the repressive forces.

Fidel quickly understood that not every military failure necessarily implies a political failure. In the trial against him, he gave a famous and brilliant self-defense in which he defended two fundamental theses. In the first place, he said that the intellectual author of the attack was named José Martí, implying that the Cuban independence hero, who had died more than 50 years ago, inspired the sovereign ideals of the young revolutionaries. This implied that the revolutionary struggle in Cuba had not ended with Independence from Spain, but continued, thus establishing a political thesis to be followed by the various revolutionary movements in Latin America and the Caribbean during the sixties and seventies of the 20th century: the struggle for independence has not ended because there is still imperialist subjugation. Secondly, he concluded that, although they had been defeated and imprisoned, they were right to act in that way, and that historical time would know how to judge better what at that time seemed a risky adventure of a few young people: “History will absolve me,” Castro said before the judge.

He was imprisoned for almost two years on the Isla de Pinos before being acquitted and banished from Cuba on May 15, 1955. Batista thus hoped to get rid of an uncomfortable political prisoner, although in reality, by doing so, he sentenced himself (in the not-too-distant future) to be defeated militarily and to die in exile in the Spain of fellow dictator Francisco Franco.

After prison, Fidel Castro traveled to the United States and Mexico. In Mexico, he trained (under an ex-combatant of the Spanish Civil War named Alberto Bayo) and organized an expedition of fighters, among them Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The emerging political-military group was called the “26th of July Movement”, in honor of the attack on the military bases. The purpose was clear: to defeat the Batista dictatorship and create a more equitable country. Several months earlier Fidel said in the Palm Garden Hotel in New York City that “In the year 1956 we will be free or we will be martyrs. This struggle began for us on March 10, has lasted almost four years and will end on the last day of the dictatorship or on our last day.”

The Cuban Revolution

Aboard the now revered yacht Granma, a group of 82 expedition members left the coast of Veracruz for Cuba on November 25, 1956. They arrived in Cuba on December 2. Fidel imitated Martí’s military strategy, which consisted of disembarking in the eastern part of the country and approaching the capital from the extreme east of Cuba, passing through the Sierra Maestra, a slight mountain range on the island.

At first, it seemed that the new revolutionary struggle would fail…again. Batista’s army had discovered Castro’s plans and attacked the revolutionary troops with all its might. In Santiago de Cuba, the dictatorship managed to suppress the urban uprising commanded by Frank País, also a member of the Movement 26 of July, in support of the landing of the Granma (which, however, was several days late in arriving). They also quickly discovered the place of arrival of Castro and the rest of the combatants, attacking the guerrillas by air and sea.

After several combats, dispersions, persecutions, and regroupings, only 17 of the 82 original expedition members survived. Despite the obvious adversity, Fidel exclaimed upon meeting with the few survivors: “Now we will win the war!”, which shows a position of historical certainty that Che Guevara would explain years later: “Fidel was certain that, if we left Mexico, we would reach Cuba. If we arrived in Cuba, we would disembark. If we disembarked, we would fight. And if we fight, we will win.

During the coming months, hundreds of new fighters joined Castro’s troops, which were eventually divided into five columns commanded by him, his brother Raul, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara, and Juan Almeida. However, Batista’s army had more than 70,000 soldiers, so the Movement 26 of July launched a guerrilla war in various parts of the country. Batista launched a military offensive called “Operation Summer”, in which he sent 17 battalions to destroy the Rebel Army, but they were surprised with a series of victories by the revolutionary forces.

Fidel’s popularity began to increase. The Revolutionary Directory, another anti-Batista armed group, attacked the Presidential Palace in Havana to assassinate Batista but were defeated. Despite this, Batista’s invincible image began to be demystified. In addition, the dictatorship increased extrajudicial assassinations and torture against political opponents (the most famous case is the death of Frank País), which eroded the government’s public image. On September 5, the Cienfuegos naval base revolted along with several members of the Movement 26 of July. The government responded to the uprising with a bombing in which more than 400 people died. The majority of the Cuban people repudiated the cruelty with which Batista’s troops acted. The government’s repression only made the revolutionaries more popular.

In addition, after several interviews with international media, Fidel and his followers began to gain support outside Cuba, while denouncing the horrendous crimes of the Batista dictatorship.

During several months of armed struggle, Fidel proved to be the only leader capable of uniting the different factions opposing the dictatorship. The most important political movements recognized that he was the only figure capable of commanding the overthrow of Batista. In addition, Fidel proved to be a very astute military strategist, withdrawing his troops in difficult moments and counter attacking fearlessly when he found the slightest opportunity to gain territory. In this way, he managed to conquer most of the East and Center of the country by the end of 1958. Guevara and his troops managed to take the city of Santa Clara, the last strategic defense of Havana.

Despite the attempt of several military men to carry out an orderly withdrawal of Batista and his troops, Fidel ordered a final attack against the forces of the dictatorship. In this way, Castro sought to curtail the installation of a puppet government and assure the establishment of a truly revolutionary government. “Revolution yes, military coup no!” was Fidel’s phrase repeated by radio throughout the Caribbean island. Batista managed to flee Cuba with the support of US Ambassador Earl T. Smith.

Despite the apparent impossibility of the geopolitical situation, the Cuban Revolution triumphed on January 1, 1959 just to the south of the United States.

Fidel was right: victory was possible in Cuba despite all possible disadvantages. It was a matter of finding the right strategy. The Cuban Revolution inspired dozens of political groups to fight to seize power throughout Latin America and across the Global South, often with Cuban support. Thus began a new era in the history of the Caribbean island, which will never forget the name of Fidel Castro.

Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingFidel Castro: a life of revolution