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 and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in court, Fidel Castro organized an armed attack on the Cuban military's Moncada Barracks on July 26th, 1953. The rebels were arrested and while in prison formed the 26th of July Movement. 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 Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil.
Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán was a Cuban revolutionary born in Havana. Along with Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Juan Almeida Bosque, and Raúl Castro, he was a member of the 1956 Granma expedition, which launched Fidel Castro's armed insurgency against the government of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. He became one of Castro's top guerrilla commanders, known as the "Hero of Yaguajay" after winning a key battle of the Cuban Revolution. His signature weapons were a M1921AC Thompson and a modified M2 carbine.
The 26th of July Movement was a Cuban vanguard revolutionary organization and later a political party led by Fidel Castro. The movement's name commemorates its 26 July 1953 attack on the army barracks on Santiago de Cuba in an attempt to start the overthrowing of the dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Alberto Bayo y Giroud was a Cuban military commander of the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War. His most significant action during the war was the attempted invasion of the Nationalist-held islands of Ibiza and Majorca at the Battle of Majorca. He was also a poet and essayist.
Operation Verano was the name given to the summer offensive in 1958 by the Batista government during the Cuban Revolution, known to the rebels as La Ofensiva. The offensive was designed to crush Fidel Castro's revolutionary army, which had been growing in strength in the area of the Sierra Maestra hills since their arrival in Cuba on board the Granma yacht in December 1956. The offensive was met with resistance, notably at the Battle of La Plata and the Battle of Las Mercedes, and failed in its objective. The failure left the Cuban army dispirited and demoralized. Castro viewed it as a victory and soon launched his own offensive.
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.
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.
The Battle of Santa Clara was a series of events in late December 1958 that led to the capture of the Cuban city of Santa Clara by revolutionaries under the command of Che Guevara.
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.
The military history of Cuba begins with the island's conquest by the Spanish and its battles afterward to gain its independence. After the Communist takeover by Fidel Castro in 1959, Cuba became involved in many major conflicts of the Cold War in Africa and the Middle East, where it supported Marxist governments and fought against Western proxies. Castro's Cuba had some 39,000–40,000 military personnel abroad by the late 1970s, with the bulk of the forces in Sub-Saharan Africa but with some 1,365 stationed in the Middle East and North Africa. Cuban forces in Africa were mainly black and mulatto.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.
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.
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.
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, who no longer considered him a political threat. 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.
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.
Uvero, also known as El Uvero, is a Cuban village and consejo popular of the municipality of Guamá, in Santiago de Cuba Province. In 2011 it had a population of 2,581.
Eduardo "Lalo" Sardiñas was a combatant of Cuban Revolution, and a member of the 26th of July Movement, led by Fidel Castro during 1958 and 1959.
Manuel Piti Fajardo Rivero was a Cuban revolutionary physician and fighter of the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra.
The Battle of Guisa was a relevant event in the history of Cuba. One of the major victories of the Rebel Army in the Liberation War (1956-1958) sustained against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba.
Republic of Cuba 
26th of July Movement