M-26-7 is considered the leading organization of the Cuban Revolution. At the end of 1956, Castro established a guerrilla base in the Sierra Maestra. This base defeated the troops of Batista on 1 January 1959, setting into motion the Cuban Revolution and installing a government led by Manuel Urrutia Lleó. The Movement fought the Batista regime on both rural and urban fronts. The movement's main objectives were distribution of land to peasants, nationalization of public services, industrialization, honest elections, and large-scale education reform.
The 26thof July Movement's name originated from the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, an army facility in the city of Santiago de Cuba, on 26 July 1953.[2] This attack was led by a young Fidel Castro, who was a legislative candidate in a free election that had been cancelled by Batista.[3] The attack had been intended as a rallying cry for the revolution.
Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison but, along with his group, was granted an amnesty after two years following a political campaign on their behalf. Castro traveled to Mexico to reorganize the movement in 1955 with several other exiled revolutionaries (including Raúl Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Juan Almeida Bosque). Their task was to form a disciplined guerrilla force to overthrow Batista.
The original core of the group was organized around the attack on the Moncada Barracks, merged with the National Revolutionary Movement led by Rafael García Bárcena and with a majority of the Orthodox Youth. Soon after, National Revolutionary Action led by Frank País would join. Because of the commonality in their ideology and their goal of wanting to topple the Batista regime, the M-26-7 would quickly add more young people from diverse political backgrounds. Castro sought to frame the Movement as a direct continuation of the anti-colonial struggle of the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence.[4]:22–23
Role in the Cuban Revolution
On 2 December 1956, 82 men landed in Cuba, having sailed in the boat Granma from Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico ready to organize and lead a revolution. The early signs were not good for the movement. They landed in daylight, were attacked by the Cuban Air Force and suffered numerous casualties. The landing party was split into two and wandered lost for two days, most of their supplies abandoned where they landed. They were also betrayed by their peasant guide in an ambush, which killed more of those who had landed. Batista mistakenly announced Fidel Castro's death at this point. Of the 82 who sailed aboard the Granma, only 22 eventually regrouped[5] in the Sierra Maestramountain range.
While the revolutionaries were setting up camp in the mountains, "Civic Resistance" groups were forming in the cities, putting pressure on the Batista regime. The poor and many middle-class and professional persons flocked toward Castro and his movement being tired of the corruption of Batista and his government.[6] While in the Sierra Maestra mountains, the guerrilla forces attracted hundreds of Cuban volunteers and won several battles against the Cuban Army. Ernesto "Che" Guevara was shot in the neck and chest during the fighting but was not severely injured. (Guevara, who had studied medicine, continued to give first aid to other wounded guerrillas.) This was the opening phase of the war of the Cuban Revolution, which continued for the next two years. It ended in January 1959, after the right-wing Dictator Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic, in the early hours of New Year's Day when the Movement's forces marched into Havana.
Political and military action
The guerrillas increased their ranks to 400 men in February 1958.[7] In comparison, the forces of Batista reached 50,000 men, but only 10,000 were able to be used at once to confront the guerrillas. Batista launched an offensive of 10,000 with air and land support to encircle and destroy the guerrillas hidden in the Sierra between April and August 1958, this campaign ended in a decisive failure for the development of the conflict.[8] Finally, after two years of war, the rebels defeated the Batista forces, causing them to flee to the Dominican Republic and take power 1 January 1959. At that time, they added around 20,000 to 30,000 guerrillas and the war had cost the lives of between 1,000 and 2,500 people.
Sabotage and the dissemination of propaganda were key parts of the M-26-7's strategy in both the urban and rural theaters of operation and were used to generate an atmosphere of crisis and to destabilize the public and economic order of the Batista regime.[9] In the countryside, guerillas burned sugar cane fields and oil refineries, blocked bridges and trains, and attacked Batista's soldiers, while in the cities, M-26-7 members cut telephone lines, coordinated strikes, kidnapped public figures, bombed government buildings, and assassinated government officials.[10] The M-26-7 ran its propaganda operations to portray the violence of its actions in a positive light, and notable propaganda efforts included the broadcasting of Radio Rebelde beginning on 24 February 1958 and the invitation of foreign journalists and reporters, such as New York Times war correspondent Herbert Matthews and U.S. military intelligence agent Andrew St. George.[11][12] Both domestic and international propaganda efforts were aimed at informing audiences of the goals and policies of the M-26-7 and glorifying the lives and exploits of the guerilla fighters to generate sympathy for the movement.[13]
Rural activities
The M-26-7 divided its operations between the rural guerillas, who were based in the Sierra Maestra mountains, and the urban underground, which consisted mostly of middle-class and professional Cubans living in towns and cities.[14] Castro focused his efforts in the rural countryside on fighting Batista's soldiers and liberating and governing increasing amounts of territory taken from Batista's control. The M-26-7 incorporated large numbers of peasant men and women into the ranks of the M-26-7 where they served as soldiers, collaborators, and informants to fight Batista's regime. Many peasant leaders were also affiliated with the PSP and used their connections with Communist Party members and sympathizers to recruit support for the M-26-7. Most notably, the Campesino Association, which had been an active Communist organization since 1934, allowed the M-26-7 to access and build on the network of peasant political organizing.[15] The leaders of the Authentic Party (PA) and Orthodox Party and their constituents of small, medium, and wealthy landowners supported M-26-7 as well through funding and protection from Batista's forces, although Castro's platform of agrarian reform would lead to the eventual break between wealthy farmers and landowners and M-26-7.[15]
As they occupied increasing large parts of the rural countryside, the M-26-7 provided public services to local peasants ranging from elementary schooling and literacy education, setting up hospitals and medical services, maintaining toll roads, providing protection from bandits, and enacting laws and decrees. In return, the M-26-7 taxed the peasants under its control and enforced prison sentences and fines against those convicted of tax evasion as well as other crimes including banditry, the cultivation, possession, and use of marijuana, and cockfighting.[15][16] Castro created bureaucratic organizations to administer the rebel-controlled territories including the Administración Civil para los Territorios Liberados (ACTL) in September 1958, which was active in the Sierra Maestra, and the Agrarian Bureau, which was created on 3 August 1958 to oversee the Oriente province.[15]
Urban activities
In 1955, Castro designated Frank País as chief of action of the Oriente province after País merged his organization, Oriente Revolutionary Action (ARO), with the M-26-7.[17] As the head of the M-26-7's urban underground, País centralized its operations under a core leadership known as the National Directorate and moved the M-26-7's headquarters from Havana to Santiago. He also created six separate sections of the M-26-7 which were responsible for organization, labor outreach, civic resistance among the middle class, sabotage activities and an urban militia, propaganda, and a treasury to raise funds.[18] País attempted to support Castro's landing from the Granma with a failed armed uprising in Santiago on 30 November 1956, and after Castro and the surviving guerillas regrouped in the Sierra Maestra, the guerillas depended on their urban counterparts for medicines, weapons, ammunition, food, equipment, clothing, money, propaganda production, and domestic and international publicity.[19] In addition, the urban underground organized worker strikes as well as patriotic clubs for Cuban exiles in the United States, which provided funds for the purchasing of arms and ammunition.[20] The M-26-7 frequently coordinated its actions with other urban-based anti-Batista groups such as the PSP, the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE), and the Organización Auténtica (OA), but by May 1957, the arrests and killings of large numbers of the DRE and the OA and the history of the PSP's collaboration with the Batista regime led the M-26-7 to be the dominant anti-Batista force in the cities.[21]
Frank País's assassination by Santiago police in July 1957 prompted mass demonstrations and worker strikes in the city that quickly spread across the island, leading to a nationwide general strike on 5 August 1957.[22] Though the strike saw limited success, the M-26-7 believed that the speed at which the strike spread and its popularity meant that a future nationwide strike could destabilize Batista's regime enough to lead to his overthrow. However, a subsequent national strike held on 9 April 1958 ended up being a failure for the M-26-7 due to the preparedness of Batista's forces for such an event and poor communication between the M-26-7 and labor groups as to the time of the strike. Many M-26-7 members were also killed in firefights with the police and army as they tried to stage an armed uprising during the chaos.[23]
Post-1959
After the takeover, anti-Batistas, liberals, urban workers, peasants, and idealists became the dominant followers of the M-26-7 movement, which gained control over Cuba. The Movement was joined with other bodies to form the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which in turn became the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965. Cuba modeled itself after the Eastern European nations that made up the Warsaw Pact, becoming the first socialistic government in the Americas. Once it was learned that Cuba would adopt a strict Marxist–Leninist political and economic system, opposition was raised not only by dissident party members, but by the United States as well.[24] Fidel Castro's government seized private land, nationalized hundreds of private companies—including several local subsidiaries of U.S. corporations—and taxed American products so heavily that U.S. exports were cut half in just two years. The Eisenhower Administration then imposed trade restrictions on everything except food and medical supplies. As a result, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union for trade instead. The US responded by cutting all diplomatic ties to Cuba and has had a rocky relationship with the country ever since.[25] In April 1961, a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles and dissidents, including former supporters of the M-26-7, launched the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion against Cuba, shortly after Castro had declared the revolution socialist. After the invasion, Castro formally proclaimed himself a communist.
Despite the support that the M-26-7 received from many Catholic students and priests during the fight against Batista, the movement's victory in 1959 created a split between the M-26-7 and Catholic Church, which resisted the agrarian reform program and what members of the Church saw as Castro's turn to Soviet Communism. Following the National Catholic Congress's protest against the lack of Catholic values in the policies of the M-26-7 and a riot on 17 July 1959 in front of the Cathedral of Havana involving representatives of the Catholic Church and pro-Castro protestors, Castro publicly denounced the leadership of the Roman Catholic church on 12 August.[26] On 6 January 1960, M-26-7 militants then occupied Catholic seminaries, churches, and schools across Cuba and arrested the leaders of the Young Catholic Workers (JOC). After the Bay of Pigs invasion, the M-26-7 closed more churches and detained a number of priests and bishops on 17 April 1961, and the Catholic Church was expelled from Cuba on 1 May in the wake of the nationalization of all private colleges and the expulsion of foreign priests from the island.[26]
Legacy
During the struggle against Batista, the M-26-7 portrayed itself as a unifying movement for all Cubans that would bring about democracy and social justice after Batista's overthrow, particularly for women and the Afro-Cuban minority.[27] Despite only making up 10% of the Cuban workforce, women disproportionately participated in the M-26-7 during the Revolution in a number of capacities that included the manufacturing of propaganda and demonstrations and picketing.[28] In addition, the Mariana Grajales was established in September 1958 as an all-female military unit in the M-26-7.[29] After the Revolution, the revolutionary government, controlled by the M-26-7, established the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) to integrate women into Cuban political, social, and economic life and to eradicate prostitution.[29] Castro and the M-26-7 also emphasized racial integration as a key platform of the movement, and after Batista's overthrow, the M-26-7 quickly desegregated public spaces and implemented reforms, such as the redistribution of land and improved government education and medical services, that disproportionately benefited the Afro-Cuban population.[30] However, the M-26-7's racial policies have been criticized for repressing black political organization and for emphasizing pre-Revolution rhetoric that devalues racial consciousness and asserts that racism in Cuba has been ended by the Revolution despite the lingering presence of prejudiced and discriminatory attitudes on the island.[30]
Since 1959, 26 July has been celebrated as a national holiday in Cuba. Celebrations involving community mobilizations and programs, reenactments, and recitations occur on the local and national level each year to honor the Moncada Barracks attack and the role of the M-26-7 in overthrowing the Batista regime.[31] From 1967 to 1973, three museums were also opened in Santiago, Villa Blanca, and Moncada to commemorate the Moncada Barracks assault and the actions of the M-26-7.[32]
The flag of the 26thof July Movement is on the shoulder of the Cuban military uniform and continues to be used as a symbol of the Cuban Revolution.
Members
The first national leadership of the M-26-7 was made up of the revolutionaries:
The Cuban Revolution was a military and political effort to overthrow the government of Cuba between 1953 and 1959. It began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state. After failing to contest Batista in court, Fidel Castro organized an armed attack on the Cuban military's Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953. The rebels were arrested and while in prison formed the 26th of July Movement (M-26-7). After gaining amnesty the M-26-7 rebels organized an expedition from Mexico on the Granma yacht to invade Cuba. In the following years the M-26-7 rebel army would slowly defeat the Cuban army in the countryside, while its urban wing would engage in sabotage and rebel army recruitment. Over time the originally critical and ambivalent Popular Socialist Party would come to support the 26th of July Movement in late 1958. By the time the rebels were to oust Batista the revolution was being driven by the Popular Socialist Party, 26th of July Movement, and the Revolutionary Directorate of March 13.
Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán was a Cuban revolutionary. One of the major figures of the Cuban Revolution, he was considered second only to Fidel Castro among the revolutionary leadership.
Granma is a yacht that was used to transport 82 fighters of the Cuban Revolution from Mexico to Cuba in November 1956 to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista. The 60-foot diesel-powered vessel was built in 1943 by Wheeler Shipbuilding of Brooklyn, New York, as a light armored target practice boat, US Navy C-1994, and modified postwar to accommodate 12 people. "Granma", in English, is an affectionate term for a grandmother; the yacht is said to have been named for the previous owner's grandmother.
The Moncada Barracks were military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba named after General Guillermo Moncada, a hero of the Cuban War of Independence. On 26 July 1953, the barracks was the site of an armed attack by a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. That day a simultaneous attack was carried out on the Carlos M. de Cespedes Barracks in Bayamo directed by Raúl Martínez Ararás by order of Castro. The attack failed and the surviving revolutionaries were imprisoned. This armed attack is widely accepted as the beginning of the Cuban Revolution. The date on which the attack took place, 26 July, was adopted by Castro as the name for his revolutionary movement which eventually toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista on 1 January 1959.
Celia Sánchez Manduley was a Cuban revolutionary, politician, researcher and archivist. She was a key member of the Cuban Revolution and a close colleague of Fidel Castro.
Frank País García was a Cuban revolutionary who campaigned for the overthrow of General Fulgencio Batista's government in Cuba. País was the urban coordinator of the 26th of July Movement, and was a key organizer within the urban underground movement, collaborating with Fidel Castro's guerrilla forces which were conducting activities in the Sierra Maestra mountains. País was killed in the streets of Santiago de Cuba by the Santiago police on July 30, 1957.
Juan Almeida Bosque was a Cuban politician and one of the original commanders of the insurgent forces in the Cuban Revolution. After the rebels took power in 1959, he was a prominent figure in the Communist Party of Cuba. At the time of his death, he was a Vice-President of the Cuban Council of State and was its third ranking member. He received several decorations, and national and international awards, including the title of "Hero of the Republic of Cuba" and the Order of Máximo Gómez.
Vilma Lucila Espín Guillois was a Cuban revolutionary, feminist, and chemical engineer. She helped supply and organize the 26th of July Movement as an underground spy, and took an active role in many branches of the Cuban government from the conclusion of the revolution to her death. Espín helped found the Federation of Cuban Women and promoted equal rights for Cuban women in all spheres of life.
Radio Rebelde is a Cuban Spanish-language radio station. It broadcasts 24 hours a day with a varied program of national and international music hits of the moment, news reports and live sport events. The station was set up in 1958 by Che Guevara in the Sierra Maestra region of eastern Cuba, and was designed to broadcast the aims of the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro.
A guerilla foco is a small cadre of revolutionaries operating in a nation's countryside. This guerilla organization was popularized by Che Guevara in his book Guerilla Warfare, which was based on his experiences in the Cuban Revolution. Guevara would go on to argue that a foco was politically necessary for the success of a socialist revolution. Originally Guevara theorized that a foco was only useful in overthrowing personalistic military dictatorships and not liberal democratic capitalism where a peaceful overthrow was believed possible. Years later Guevara would revise his thesis and argue all nations in Latin America, including liberal democracies, could be overthrown by a guerilla foco. Eventually the foco thesis would be that political conditions would not even need to be ripe for revolutions to be successful, since the sheer existence of a guerilla foco would create ripe conditions by itself. Guevara's theory of foco, known as foquismo, was self-described as the application of Marxism-Leninism to Latin American conditions, and would later be further popularized by author Régis Debray. The proposed necessity of a guerilla foco proved influential in Latin America, but was also heavily criticized by other socialists.
The Cuban Revolution was the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's regime by the 26th of July Movement and the establishment of a new Cuban government led by Fidel Castro in 1959.
Felipe Pazos Roque was a Cuban economist who initially supported the Cuban Revolution of Fidel Castro, but became disillusioned with the increasingly radical nature of the revolutionary government. Born in Havana, Pazos earned a doctorate from the University of Havana in 1938. He was a member of the Cuban delegation to the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. In 1946, he joined the staff of the fledgling International Monetary Fund that had been established at the Bretton Woods conference. He worked there for three years before returning to Cuba in 1950 to head the newly established National Bank of Cuba for two years at the behest of Cuban President Carlos Prío Socarrás.
Carlos Rafael Rodríguez Rodríguez was a Cuban Communist politician and economist, who served in the cabinets of presidents Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro.
Efigenio Ameijeiras Delgado was a Cuban military commander affiliated with Fidel Castro from the 1950s. Son of Manuel Ameijeiras Fontelo, a native of Pontevedra (Spain) and the Cuban María de las Angustias Delgado Romo, from Corral Falso, in Matanzas. At the age of four, his father disappeared, so his mother had to take care of her children alone.
Melba Hernández Rodríguez del Rey was a Cuban politician and diplomat. She served as the Cuban Ambassador to Vietnam and to Cambodia.
Eulogio Amado Cantillo Porras was a major general in the Cuban Army. General Cantillo served as Chief of the Joint Staff during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, but did not participate in the military coup that brought Batista to power. During the Cuban Revolution, he led Cuban soldiers in the fight against Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement. After President Batista fled the country at 3:00 A.M. on January 1, 1959, he was left to serve briefly as the de facto Head of State in the early hours of January 1, 1959 until the official proclamation of the President of the Senate of Cuba, Anselmo Alliegro y Milá, as the Interim President of Cuba later that day. On January 2, 1959, the eldest judge of the Supreme Court, Carlos Manuel Piedra, was appointed as the Interim President by a junta led by him in accordance with the 1940 Cuban Constitution. However, the appointment of Piedra, the last president to be born under Spanish Cuba, was met with opposition from Castro, who believed that Manuel Urrutia should be appointed. After the Cuban Revolution, he was tried by the Revolutionary tribunals and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released early in the mid-1960s, and went into exile in Miami where he died on September 9, 1978.
The Cuban communist revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro took part in the Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Following on from his early life, Castro decided to fight for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's military junta by founding a paramilitary organization, "The Movement". In July 1953, they launched a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, during which many militants were killed and Castro was arrested. Placed on trial, he defended his actions and provided his famous "History Will Absolve Me" speech, before being sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment in the Model Prison on the Isla de Pinos. Renaming his group the "26th of July Movement" (MR-26-7), Castro was pardoned by Batista's government in May 1955, claiming they no longer considered him a political threat while offering to give him a place in the government, but he refused. Restructuring the MR-26-7, he fled to Mexico with his brother Raul Castro, where he met with Argentine Marxist-Leninist Che Guevara, and together they put together a small revolutionary force intent on overthrowing Batista.
Haydée Santamaría Cuadrado was a Cuban revolutionary and politician, regarded as a heroine in post-revolutionary Cuba. She participated in the assault on Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, an action for which she was imprisoned along with Melba Hernández. She was a founding member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and one of the first women to join the PCC. She maintained a high position in its leadership throughout her life. Having participated in the attack on the Moncada Barracks, Haydée Santamaría is among a relatively small group of people who were involved in every phase of the Cuban Revolution, from its inception to its fruition.
Delsa Esther Puebla Viltre, known by the nom de guerreTeté Puebla, is a Cuban politician and former guerilla fighter. She is the head of Cuba's Office of Veterans' Affairs and a member of Cuba's parliament, the National Assembly of People's Power, representing Havana. During the Cuban Revolution, Puebla fought as one of Fidel Castro's guerillas in the Sierra Maestra mountains as part of the Mariana Grajales Women's Platoon. In July 1996 she was promoted to brigadier general in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, becoming the first female general in the nation's history.
The attack on El Uvero was an armed confrontation between the 26th of July Movement and the Cuban military on May 28, 1957, part of the Cuban Revolution. It was the first major confrontation between the 26th of July Movement, led by Fidel Castro, and the Cuban military, led by Fulgencio Batista, since the latter settled in Sierra Maestra.
↑ Cederlöf, Gustav (2023). The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba. Critical environments: nature, science, and politics. Oakland, California: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-39313-4.
↑ Schmid, Alex; Jongman; Albert (1988). Political Terrorism: A new guide to actors, authors, concepts, data bases, theories and literature. Amsterdam, New York, North-Holland, New Brunswick: Transaction Books. p.528.
↑ Guerra, Lillian (2019). "Searching for the Messiah: Staging Revolution in the Sierra Maestra, 1956–1959". The Revolution from within: Cuba, 1959–1980: 68–69.
↑ Guerra, Lillian (2019). "Searching for the Messiah: Staging Revolution in the Sierra Maestra, 1956–1959". The Revolution from within: Cuba, 1959–1980: 71.
↑ Guerra, Lillian (2019). "Searching for the Messiah: Staging Revolution in the Sierra Maestra, 1956–1959". The Revolution from within: Cuba, 1959–1980: 79–80.
↑ Cushion, Stephen (2016). A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerillas' Victory. New York City: New York University Press. p.108. ISBN978-1-58367-584-7.
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