councilor.org
| Source | Louis Proyect |
| Date | 07/03/15/21:17 |
| THE MONCADA FORTRESS LIES just a short drive from Santiago's central
square. In the 1950s it stood on the outskirts of the city. A once grey, two-storey battle-mented barracks, now painted bright yellow picked out with white, its above-ground entrance is approached via a row of concrete steps. The second largest barracks in the country in the 1950s, second only to Havana's Camp Columbia, it was originally designed to house the Rural Guard during the American occupation after 1898, and often regarded subsequently as a symbol of government repression. A hundred years later, its large courtyards are shared between a number of classrooms and a dusty museum, for the revolutionaries of the 1950s had promised that such barrack buildings would be turned into schools. The cells and the interrogation rooms remain as they once were, bleak testimony to past atrocities. On 26 July 1953 an armed attack took place at Moncada, led by Fidel Castro, the flamboyant figure then aged 26 who was to dominate Cuban politics and history for more than half a century. The assault on Moncada, and a simultaneous move against the barracks at Bayamo, was designed to secure weapons from the arsenal, but its underlying purpose was to overthrow the Batista government established after a coup d'etat the previous year. The action itself proved to be a disastrous failure, little more than an ill-prepared Putsch, as the Communists described it, showing no more interest in the country's insurrectionary traditions than they had done in the 1930s. Yet Moncada was a challenge to the regime, and would lay the groundwork for a revolutionary organisation, the July 26 Movement, that would sweep to power ess than six years later. It also made the name of its leader known across the island. Castro was regarded at the time as the outstanding figure of his generation, a brilliant student orator and a successful athlete, a man marked for politics from early youth. He was born in August 1926, the son of Angel Castro, a white settler immigrant from Galicia, and his second wife, Lina Ruz, a woman from Pinar del Rio. Angel Castro became a wealthy landowner in Oriente and had several children, but only Fidel's younger brother, Raul, would play a major role in his life's work. Their childhood was spent in and around their father's estate at Biran in Oriente, close to Mayari and the Bay of Nipe.1 Castro was educated at a Jesuit college and trained as a lawyer at the University of Havana, and in 1948 he married Mirta Diaz Balart, the sister of a student friend and the daughter of a wealthy family.2 He appeared set for a conventional political career, and had been preparing for the elections of 1952 as a possible congressional candidate for the Ortodoxo party, when his plans were interrupted by Batista's coup. Castro became one of the more extraordinary political figures of the twentieth century and Cuba's history will long be dominated by him. His successful revolution made world headlines in 1959 and created the Cuban nation, giving meaning to the struggles of the past and transforming a troubled but essentially peripheral Caribbean island into a player on the world stage. Under his leadership, the Cuban people 'stood up' - in the vivid expression of Mao Tse-tung - and understood for the first time who they really were. As a leading international presence for more than 40 years, Castro dealt on equal terms with successive presidents of the two nuclear superpowers. As the most charismatic leader of the Third World during its heyday, his influence was felt far beyond the shores of his island. Grey-bearded in old age, he continued to exercise a magnetic attraction wherever he travelled, with an audience as fascinated by the dinosaur from the history books as they had once been by the vibrant revolutionary firebrand. The Russians were beguiled by Castro from the start (Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan in particular), European intellectuals (Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir) took him to their hearts, African revolutionaries (Ahmed Ben Bella, Kwame Nkrumah and Agostinho Neto) welcomed his assistance and advice, and Latin American political movements were inspired by his Revolution. Only the leaders of the United States, where nine successive presidents preserved him as an eternal enemy, and of China, which for many years considered his political behaviour to be irresponsible, refused to fall for his charm. Castro became a world hero in the mould of Garibaldi, a national leader whose ideals and rhetoric would help shape the history of a continent. The ignored countries of Latin America, ruled for the most part in the 1950s by narrow oligarchies inherited from the colonial era, were brought into the global limelight, their governments rudely challenged by the revolutionary rhetoric of the island republic. Whether for him or against him, successive Latin American generations were profoundly influenced by the figure of Fidel. Cuba under Castro became a Communist country where nationalism was more significant than socialism, where the legend of Marti proved more influential than the philosophy of Marx. Castro's skill, and one of the keys to his political longevity, lay in keeping the twin themes of socialism and nationalism endlessly in play. He gave back their history to the Cuban people, enabling them to see the name of their island stamped firmly on the twentieth-century global story. His timely invocation of the name and example of Marti, the hundredth anniversary of whose birth had occurred opportunely in January 1953, proved particularly felicitous. For many Cubans, Batista's return to power had ruled out any further journeys along the democratic road to political power. An impatient Castro embraced armed insurrection without a second thought, and began to organise in the wake of Batista's coup. Such a strategy was a staple ingredient of Cuba's own troubled history, as well as in the insecure countries that bordered the Caribbean. Nor was Castro alone. Other small and independent groups, gathering secretly in Havana and other towns, were dusting down the old tradition of political violence and preparing for an assault on Batista's regime. Castro's charisma, his strategic vision and his organising talents, gave his group a powerful advantage. He assembled more than 150 men, trained them, and raised the necessary funds. Most of them were radicals rather than revolutionaries; most came from the youth wing of the Ortodoxo party. Castro drafted a manifesto that outlined a programme for government, invoking the name of Marti. He also made preparations for guerrilla warfare in the countryside, like Guiteras in the 1930s, lest his planned attack on the Moncada barracks should fail. The preparations for the Moncada operation went ahead undetected. A small farm was leased near Siboney, outside Santiago, and men and munitions were gradually assembled there, the local peasants given the impression that they were constructing buildings to hold battery chickens. On the chosen day in July 1953, a hundred guerrillas dressed in army uniforms set off from Siboney to Santiago in buses and motor cars. They had surprise on their side, but the defenders of the barracks had the advantage of a superior position. Castro's guerrillas were obliged to fight uphill. Several soldiers were killed in the battle, but the guerrillas were easily repelled. Castro's makeshift troop retired in disarray, leaving more than half of their number behind. Some were dead, while many were captured and subsequently executed. Fidel's younger brother, Raul, was among those taking part. His unit successfully seized the Palace of Justice, adjacent to the barracks, but was forced to withdraw when the rest of the plan collapsed. Raul escaped into the countryside, avoiding the slaughter that followed, but he was eventually captured and put on trial. Fidel also escaped into the hills, only to be discovered a few days later. His life was saved by a black lieutenant from the Rural Guard, who had the wit to take him to the police station in Santiago rather than to Moncada barracks, where he would certainly have been shot along with the other prisoners. He was later transferred to the hilltop jail of Boniato, outside the city. The regime exacted its revenge. A senior general arrived from Havana i bringing specific instructions from Batista that outlined what was to be done, i It was 'humiliating and dishonourable for the army to have lost in combat 1 three times as many men as the insurgents did,' announced the general, according to Castro's account at his subsequent trial. 'Ten prisoners must be shot for each dead soldier.'3 That was Batista's order, and it was followed to excess. The ensuing bloodbath, with more than 70 guerrillas shot in captivity, did much to turn public opinion against his regime. Only the intervention of the Catholic archbishop of Santiago called a halt to the killings. Castro was put on trial in Santiago in September, along with more than a hundred defendants, many of them local leftists who had had no connection with the Moncada attack. Castro, as a qualified lawyer, took on their defence, basing his case on the illegality of the regime and the inherent right of the citizen to rebel against an illegal government. When asked who was behind the attack, he replied that 'the intellectual author of this revolution is Jose Marti, the apostle of our independence'. His defence was so successful that only 26 prisoners were found guilty and most were treated leniently. The Santiago judges still retained their independence. Raul, however, as one of the leaders, was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Fidel had not been on the first list of defendants and was brought before a different court in October, his own trial being held in the nurses' room of a civilian hospital. According to legend, he made a two-hour speech, justifying his actions and outlining his political programme, but since no record was kept of his words, he had to reconstruct them later. 'Condemn me, it does not matter,' were his concluding words. 'History will absolve me.' |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho