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Revolution in Cuba took place after much battle
between the governmental forces and the guerrilla
led by Fidel Alejendro y Ruz Castro. After a
decisive fight Fulgencio Batista, the president left
the country for the Dominican Republic.
On the 1st January 1959 with the overthrow of
Batista government by Fidel Castro and the
revolutionary comrades took the command of the Cuba.
At the dawn of the Castrist revolution, their leader
Fidel Alejendro y Ruz Castro promised to redress the
country; to promote freedom; eradicate corruption
and re-establish trust between the governmental
forces and the mass. To strengthen his allegiance
towards the nation, he immediately applied reforms
in different sectors and at the same time
expropriated Batista’s fellow companions who
remained in the country of their property for
according to him they had stolen Cuba’s wealth and
this for almost four decades.
The most important reform was no doubt the agrarian
one. The big farms were taken from their owners and
were created big state farms.
By December 1959, not even a year, another stage of
the revolution took place with the moderate leaders
in the revolt being eliminated from the instances of
power to be replaced by extremist communist ones.
Expropriation of properties and businesses, both
domestic and foreign, continued on a large extent
after the establishment of extremist communist in
key positions in the state hierarchy.
In 1961, the invasions of the Bay of Pigs, Playa
Giron, by the Americans and Cuban exiles
strengthened Castro’s position of at the head of the
state both inside and outside Cuba. The anti-
revolution groups were exterminated inside Cuba.
Fidel Castro openly affirms himself as a communist.
The government was declared socialist and schools
parochial and private were nationalised. There were
literacy campaigns across Cuba and students, the
‘literacy brigadistas’, were sent in the countryside
to educate the people. Schools and state
administered hospital, community welfare centres
were opened in all provinces. The health and
education system changed. The Clergy were sent away
from Cuba and religious practice discouraged as the
churches were believed to be nurturing
anti-revolutionary groups.
Cuba came to a point of no return with the Marxist
Leninist ideology of an equal and classless society
where no ‘exploiter’ and no ‘exploited’ existed. In
communist Cuba there existed neither a privileged
class nor a middle class as they fled to Florida,
America.
By the middle of 1961, Fidel Castro created a
one-party system merging all the fellow comrades of
different fronts join the Communist Party. Rural
Cuba saw the growing of national cooperatives and
peasant became state employees’ big state farms.
But by 1987 to 1992, the reforms started since the
revolution was halted with the collapse of the
western block, the Soviet Union.
There was a wave of change as the big state farms
were parcelled and lands were given to farmers for a
sustainable agriculture. No machinery and fuel as
well as fertilizers, the state began an ecological
agriculture in rural and urban Cuba. They resorted
to traditional techniques in planting and growing in
the fields as well as developed polyculture crop
rotation and organic fertilizers. This proved to be
a success. Cuba opened its frontiers to outside
world which brought in foreign currency thus making
life better for its citizens. From communist Cuba
turned to become socialist. Now with the handling
over to Rau Castro, Fidel Casto’s younger brother
last July 2006, the question whether Cuba transit
towards a free economy or stay one of the last
bastion of socialist communist in Latin America and
the world. |
