9781422279786

Cuba Under the Castros

CUBA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

HAITI

PUERTO RICO (U.S.)

JAMAICA

Exploring Cuba Arts and Literature of Cuba

Cuba Under the Castros Cuba: Facts and Figures Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations The Culture and People of Cuba The Opening of Cuba, 2008-Present

Cuba Under the Castros

John Ziff

Mason Crest Philadelphia

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Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com ©2018 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

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on file at the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-1-4222-3811-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4222-7978-6 (ebook) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4222-3337-5 (hc) ISBN 978-1-4222-8622-7 (ebook)

1. Southwestern States—Juvenile literature. 2. Arizona—Juvenile literature. 3. California—Juvenile literature. 4. Nevada—Juvenile literature. I. Title. F785.7.L37 2015 979—dc23 2014050200

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Table of Contents 1: Revolution................................................................7 2: Years of Living Dangerously ................................21 3: Dreams and Realities ............................................39 4: Hard Times ............................................................53 5: Twilight of Fidel Castro’s Regime ........................65 Series Glossary of Key Terms....................................74 Further Reading ........................................................76 Internet Resources ....................................................77 Index ..........................................................................78 Photo Credits/About the Author..............................80

Words to understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills.

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Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista waves to the crowd during a parade. Batista dominated Cuban politics from the mid-1930s until the late 1950s.

amnesty— an official pardon given to a group of individuals accused or convicted of offenses against a government. barracks— a building or set of buildings where soldiers are housed. coup— a sudden seizure of governing power, often by a small group, through vio- lence or the threat of violence. regime— a government in power. revolutionary— someone who leads or joins a revolution; rebel. Words to Understand in This Chapter

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Revolution B y late 1956, Fidel Castro was ready to launch his sec- ond attempt to overthrow the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. But his plan unraveled before the first shot had been fired. Castro had spent a year and a half in Mexico, where he’d organized, outfitted, and trained a group of fellow Cuban exiles to spearhead a revolution in their homeland. With funds provid- ed by a former Cuban president, Castro had bought an old yacht, the Granma , to transport his men to Cuba. On the night of November 25, 1956, the vessel slipped out of the Mexican port of Tuxpan. Crammed aboard were 82 eager revolutionaries . Castro planned to land his force at Niquero, a small town along Cuba’s southeastern coast, on November 30. The loca- tion and timing were important. Trucks, jeeps, weapons, and

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other supplies would be waiting in Niquero. So would about 50 men ready to join Castro’s group. Farther to the east, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, supporters had received instructions from Castro to begin an armed uprising on the 30th. That would occupy government forces while Castro’s men went ashore, got organized, and swung into action. The regime would quickly find itself battling rebels on two fronts, and if all went well, many ordinary Cubans who opposed Batista would be inspired to join the revolution. Castro, however, miscalculated how long it would take for the overloaded and underpowered Granma to complete the 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) voyage from Tuxpan to Niquero. The yacht was still at sea on November 30, when revolutionary cells attacked a government office, the police station, and the army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Fighting continued through December 1, before government forces got the upper hand. The Cuban military was on alert, and on December 2, a reconnaissance aircraft spotted the Granma in the waters off southeastern Cuba. A patrol boat soon appeared on the hori- zon, and the yacht made for safety in a mangrove swamp. Though all 82 revolutionaries managed to scramble ashore, they couldn’t unload critical supplies and weapons. And, because they were about 15 miles (24 km) south of the target landing zone, the men and equipment waiting at Niquero would be of no help. Slowly and laboriously, the revolutionaries moved inland. With little food or water, they grew more exhausted by the day. On the afternoon of December 5, Castro’s men rested at the

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Cuba Under the Castros

edge of a sugarcane field near the tiny village of Alegría del Pío, unaware that a local peasant had informed the authorities of their presence in the area. Cuban troops surprised and routed the revolutionaries in a brief firefight. The survivors fled in all directions, hiding out wherever they could, individually or in small groups. Most were captured—and many of them were executed—in the days that followed. The Cuban government initially reported that Fidel Castro had been killed. But that wasn’t the case. A sympathetic peas- ant concealed Castro, along with several other revolutionaries, in his home. Eventually, the group trekked into a rugged, jungle-covered mountain range, the Sierra Maestra. There, the remnants of the revolutionary expedition reunited. Of the 82 who had started out from Tuxpan, just a dozen remained. In addition to Fidel Castro, they included Raúl Castro, the leader’s younger brother;

Revolutionaries camped in the Sierra Maestra, 1957.

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Camilo Cienfuegos, a 23-year-old former art student; and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentinian medical doctor. All would play leading roles in Cuba’s revolution. For his part, Fulgencio Batista didn’t regard the ragtag bunch that had escaped into the mountains as a threat to his regime. He declined to order troops to pursue and mop up the revolutionaries. “No one survives in the Sierra Maestra,” he scoffed. A Society Divided Batista’s confidence would ultimately prove unwarranted. At the time, however, there seemed little reason to believe Fidel Castro was anything but inept as a revolutionary leader. And, on the surface at least, Cuban society did not appear to be fer- tile soil in which to germinate a popular uprising. By the mid- 1950s, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s most prosperous nations. It had a large, well-educated, and thriving middle class. Overall, Cubans enjoyed a high degree of social mobility, a rar- ity for Latin America. However, the benefits of prosperity were unevenly shared, accruing mainly to city dwellers and to large rural landowners. Many peasants lived in desperate poverty. “Urban Cuba,” notes Mark Falcoff, an American scholar of Latin America, “had come to resemble a Southern European country (with a living standard as high or surpassing that of France, Spain, Portugal and Greece) while rural Cuba replicated the conditions of other plantation societies in Latin America and the Caribbean.” But discontent had begun to percolate even among Cuba’s flourishing urban middle class. Increasingly, Cubans who were

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Cuba Under the Castros

Throughout Cuba’s history, groups waging guerrilla warfare against the national govern- ment have hidden out in the Sierra Maestra mountain range. After Castro’s initial attacks failed, he and his men hid in the mountains to rebuild their force and recruit others to the revolutionary cause.

economically comfortable chafed at their lack of political free- doms. Batista used secret police to silence his critics. He cen- sored the press. In the face of student demonstrations, he closed the University of Havana, Cuba’s oldest and most respected institution of higher learning. The regime’s corruption was another source of widespread anger. Previous Cuban leaders had lined their pockets at the expense of the public, but under Batista, as one historian noted, “every government activity was milked” for illicit profit.

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Batista controlled an army of well over 20,000, along with an air force and a navy. A 7,000-man police force also upheld the dictator’s will. Nevertheless, the island nation of Cuba, the largest country in the Caribbean, was nearing a tipping point. The Republic of Cuba Cuba had been a Spanish possession from the 1490s until 1898. That year, Spain was forced to relinquish control of the island after suffering defeat at the hands of the United States in the Spanish-American War. In 1902, after several years of U.S. military occupation, the island officially became independent as the Republic of Cuba. There was one major condition, though: the United States compelled Cuba to accept a measure passed by the U.S. Congress, known as the Platt Amendment. Among other pro- visions, the Platt Amendment gave the United States the right to intervene militarily in Cuba under certain circumstances— including when American officials deemed that necessary for “the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty.” In response to political and social unrest on the island, and to protect American commercial interests there, American troops were dispatched to Cuba four times under the Platt Amendment (in 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1920). The amendment was officially repealed in 1934. Still, the United States retained considerable influence in Cuba. In 1934 the American ambassador encouraged Fulgencio Batista, the chief of staff of Cuba’s army, to oust a provisional president whose proposed reforms might cut into the profits of

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Cuba Under the Castros

This 1902 magazine illustration, titled “Cuba’s Choice,” shows a young woman (Cuba) trying to decide which of three paths to choose. The first path, labeled “Reciprocity,” is blocked by an American senator who wants to maintain tariffs on sugar imports. The sec- ond path, labeled “Cuban Loan” leads to Uncle Sam offering the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States the authority to intervene in Cuban affairs. The third path leads to the U.S. Capitol and annexation. None of the paths seems promising to Cuba.

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American companies doing business on the island. Batista complied. Over the next six years, Batista ruled Cuba from behind the scenes, installing and removing a succession of presidents. Cuba’s political system had been chaotic and dysfunctional since the country gained independence. In 1940, however, Cubans’ hopes for stability and democracy were buoyed. That year, a constitutional assembly adopted a progressive constitu-

Fulgencio Batista (center) shakes hands with Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles during the Cuban dictator’s visit to Washington, D.C., in November 1938. U.S. officials had encouraged Batista to seize power, and they supported his government.

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Cuba Under the Castros

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