Forty years ago on New Year's Day, dictator Fulginio Baptista fled Havana.

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GCSE History

IT has been a triumph in the face of overwhelming odds. Forty years ago on New Year's Day, dictator Fulginio Baptista fled Havana. Fidel Castro and his band of fighters entered the Cuban capital to be ecstatically greeted by the people as liberators. With Castro were his comrades-in-arms, Che Guevara and Camilio Cienfuegos. The three were involved in many a famous battle that led up to the revolution.

Castro first launched his armed struggle against Batista on July 26, 1953 with an attack on the Moncada Barracks. Many of his comrades were killed in this heroic attack and Castro himself was arrested. Batista later granted a general amnesty in which Castro and other revolutionaries were freed. They then left for Mexico and returned clandestinely a year later along with 82 revolutionaries.

After some initial setbacks, Castro and his band took refuge in the Sierra Maestra Mountains and launched the struggle, which liberated the island in three years. Many of the battles they fought are now part of revolutionary folklore. The decisive victory in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara under the leadership of Che included the capture of an armoured train packed with anti-aircraft and machine guns. The victors comprised a few hundred highly motivated fighters facing a full-fledged government army. The capture of Santa Clara cleared the way for the revolutionary army to move into Havana.

AP
Cuban leaders walk arm-in-arm at the head of a March 5, 1960 funeral procession for the victims of the La Coubre explosion, blamed by the Cuban Government on a United States bomb attack on the ship, La Coubre, in the Havana harbour. (From left) Fidel Castro, Osvaldo Dortico, the first President of post-Batista Cuba, and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara with Ministers and other revolutionaries. 

Cuban President Fidel Castro said last fortnight in a speech to mark the historic occasion: "More than three and a half centuries of colonialism and 60 years of hateful Yankee neo-liberal domination began to be definitively annihilated on that first of January, and Cuba became from that time and forever a free country." At the time of liberation, U.S. control over Cuba's agricultural, industrial and financial affairs was total. This was buttressed by growing investment by U.S. mafia groups in the island. Washington had imposed a government on Cuba in 1898 after hijacking the struggle for freedom led by the great Cuban patriot, Jose Marti. When the Cubans were on the verge of victory in the war against the Spanish colonialists, the U.S. stepped in.

Washington has still not given up its efforts to dominate the island, 200 km off the Florida coast. Ever since Castro took over, successive U.S. administrations have tried to subvert the will of the Cubans. Within a year of the revolution, the U.S. imposed a partial economic embargo on Cuba - the only country professing socialism in the region.

In January 1961, Washington broke diplomatic relations with Havana. Three months later, Cuba declared itself a socialist state. Another struggle had started - this time for the defence of socialism and sovereignty. Che Guevara had been given the important assignment by Castro to develop ties with countries of the socialist bloc and other friends. In fact, it was Che's vision that initially saved Cuba from a dire economic predicament. Che as head of the National Bank of Cuba learned that Cuba's gold reserves were held in Fort Knox in the U.S. He ordered that the gold be immediately sold in the international bullion market and converted into hard currency. When in early 1960 Washington froze all of Cuba's assets in the U.S., Che's bold move saved the country from immediate bankruptcy. As Castro's emissary to the socialist bloc, Che had also secured guarantees of financial and political support from Moscow and Beijing.

Three days after Cuba was declared a socialist state, the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion was launched. About 1,300 Central Intelligence Agency-backed Cuban counter-revolutionaries landed on Cuba's southern coast. Ninety of them were killed and the rest were captured. Wealthy Cuban exiles in the U.S. backed by the CIA paid the Cuban Government $53 million in food and medicine to secure the release of the prisoners apprehended after the Bay of Pigs misadventure. At Washington's initiative Cuba was expelled from the Organisation of American States (OAS) in January 1962 and the U.S. imposed a total economic blockade on Cuba, which continues till this day. This was followed by the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, which brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. U.S. President John F. Kennedy's brinkmanship forced Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev to blink first. The Soviet leader withdrew its missiles from Cuba without consulting the rest of that country's leadership.

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Although the Cuban Government was unhappy with the Soviet Union's handling of the missile crisis, economic ties between the two countries were further strengthened in the process. But at no time did Cuba become an appendage of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, many of the initiatives the Cuban leadership took in the 1960s and 1970s to show solidarity with the countries of the Third World were independent ones. Che's secret departure to Africa to initiate popular uprisings in some countries is an illustration. He first went to the Congo to fight against the puppets of colonial powers such as ...

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Forty years ago on New Year's Day, dictator Fulginio Baptista fled Havana.
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