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“Revolutionaries did not chose armed struggle as the path, it was imposed on us by the oppressors”
Fidel led the July 26 movement in a rebuke of US agricultural colonialism that burdened the Cuba. What started as an armed insurrection quickly became a social revolution.
(Thread)
Fidel led the July 26 movement in a rebuke of US agricultural colonialism that burdened the Cuba. What started as an armed insurrection quickly became a social revolution.
(Thread)
Batista was a corrupt and violent instrument of the Cuban and U.S. wealthy classes, and an enthusiastic ally of the Meyer Lansky wing of the Mafia. Thousands of political opponents were murdered and Cuba was left wide open for every kind of exploitation and vice.
Many brave Cubans tried to stand up to this monstrous dictatorship. The bravest of the brave were the group of 135 young Cuban men and women who were recruited by Fidel Castro Ruz to carry out the Moncada Barracks assault.
The plan was to seize the military barracks and the arms it contained, and use this as an organizing center to rouse the entire Cuban population against the Batista regime, which at that point had only been in power for about 16 months.
This was the start of the July 26 movement
This was the start of the July 26 movement
But everything imaginable went wrong, and the uprising was defeated. Batista’s henchmen murdered about 70 of those they captured at the scene or managed to round up later. Others were put on trial and sentenced to various prison terms. Many were tortured.
At his own trial, In what became known as his “History will Absolve Me” speech, Fidel laid bare the crimes of the Batista dictatorship, the illegitimacy of its legal procedures, and the responsibility of all people of conscience to oppose such a regime in Cuba, and anywhere.
Fidel closed his speech to the court: “I can not ask freedom for myself while my comrades are already suffering in the ignominious prison of the Isle of Pines. Send me there to join them and to share their fate.
Its understandable honest men should be dead or prison in a Republic where the President is a criminal and thief. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”
A public outcry led to an early release for Fidel and Raul. They went to Mexico and organized a new expedition to invade Cuba on the motor yacht Granma and start another movement to oust Batista. That too went seriously wrong, and only 12 men survived to keep on fighting.
Their movement grew and took the name of the 26th of July Movement to honor the Moncada barracks event.
On New Year’s Day 1959, insurgent troops headed by Ernesto “Che” Guevara seized the city of Santa Clara in central Cuba, and Batista, seeing the writing on the wall, decamped with his cronies and loot, to go into exile in Portugal where he died in 1973.
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the United States and some of its allies have done their level best to overturn it and restore the old regime to power. They have not succeeded.
Cuba implemented socialist policies of great benefit to its workers and farmers, and especially to women and minorities. Cuba has carried out, and continues to carry, international solidarity projects that have improved the lives of millions in the poorest countries in the world
History has absolved Fidel! Now it is up to us to learn from the heroic story of the 26th of July movement, and never let it be forgotten by future generations.
