In this volume, I have tried to present a fresh view of the complex sequence of causes and consequences that culminated in the Cuban Revolution’s eventual development to Communism. These events involved key aspects of the structure of Cuba’s economy, politics, and society in the first six decades of the twentieth century; the impact of revolutionary populist political leadership; and the decisive role of outside powers such as the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The structure of Cuba’s economy, society, and politics made a revolution possible—but not inevitable. The economics of U.S. imperial domination coupled with uneven development and the world depression of the 1930s produced serious economic crises that provoked strong working-class resistance and state regulation of the economy. These phenomena in turn created contradictory forces or “vicious circles” that led to overall economic stagnation.
While capitalism was the dominant economic system in prerevolutionary Cuba, the native capitalist class often could not exercise direct political rule on behalf of its own interests, particularly after the frustrated 1933 revolution.1 This situation led to the rise of Bonapartist political leaderships such as that of Fulgencio Batista that constituted part of a social and political system that included politically inarticulate social classes, weak political parties, and a fundamentally mercenary army substantially different from the oligarchic, ideologically conservative armies common in Latin America.
Second, this social and political situation created an environment advantageous to the dominance of populist politics in terms of style, orientation, and content. This populism responded to the great sense of frustration and demoralization caused by the failures of struggles as far back as the fight for national independence at the end of the nineteenth century and the degeneration of most of the revolutionaries of the 1930s into practitioners of a thoroughly corrupt politiquería if not outright gangsterism. Cuba’s neocolonial relationship with the United States led to a widespread sense of geopolitical fatalism among traditional and even nontraditional Cuban politicians, as expressed by the idea that nothing could be done in Cuba without U.S. consent.
Batista’s coup and dictatorship in the 1950s threw into sharp crisis what proved to be a very precarious sociopolitical system. Batista’s military regime never gained legitimacy in the eyes of the great majority of the population and was eventually blown apart by the rebels’ 26th of July Movement. Fidel Castro’s declassed political leadership, with few or no organizational or institutional ties either to the petty bourgeoisie or to any of the country’s other major social classes, constituted the other side of the coin of Batista’s decayed Bonapartism. In his fight against Batista, Fidel Castro allied himself with people supporting the interests of different social groups and classes at various times and did so by minimizing programmatic clarity and firm organizational commitments and maximizing his personal political control. Castro was also a masterful tactician who, while privately committed to the notion of pushing Cuba in a generally left-wing anti-imperialist direction, lacked a master plan. He was especially skilled at dealing with tactical situations, where he often managed to defeat his domestic enemies individually before they could unite against him. However, Castro was not merely a talented tactician, and he did have politics of a certain kind: a left-wing authoritarian populism that under existing circumstances evolved into a variety of Communist nationalism.
The characteristics of Castro’s leadership and the movement he headed led to a revolution from above. This does not mean that the revolution was not popular or that it did not involve a radical social and political change. It does mean that although the great majority of the population was encouraged to participate, it was not allowed to control or direct the revolution. Manipulation; plebiscitary politics; virtually complete state control over political, social, and economic life; and—whenever the revolutionary leadership found it necessary—all-out repression and massive incarceration substituted for many years for genuine discussion and meaningful democratic decisions from below.
Third, outside powers had a great impact on the direction of the revolution. Notwithstanding the abolition of the Platt Amendment in 1934, U.S. imperial power weighed heavily on Cuba’s economy, politics, and society. Although Fidel Castro relatively easily defeated internal opposition, such was not the case for the strong opposition put forward by U.S. interests. Although certainly hostile to the revolutionary leadership, U.S. business interests in Cuba were incapable of developing a united strategy to confront Castro on their own. The U.S. government was the only entity capable of devising a coherent strategy for overthrowing the revolutionary leadership, a policy that was structurally predetermined by the U.S. government’s commitment to the defense of U.S. economic and geopolitical interests in Latin America and the Caribbean. Fidel Castro’s political dissimulation prior to coming to power allowed him to take advantage of the element of surprise and to postpone a frontal clash with the United States. In addition, the rebels’ total defeat of Batista’s army and Castro’s political skill in handling the liberal elements of his government in 1959 deprived the U.S. government of the sort of allies that had worked so well on behalf of U.S. interests in the rest of Latin America. Nevertheless, Castro and the other rebel leaders eventually came face to face with the tremendous U.S. economic, political, and military power over Cuba and chose to confront it in a bold and radical manner. This choice was dictated in part by the objective structural circumstances that confronted the Cuban leadership and in part by the leadership’s political and ideological inclinations. I emphasize the agency of the revolutionary leaders. These leaders took advantage of highly favorable domestic circumstances to pursue independent political and ideological visions and not merely reacting to the policies of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.
Fidel Castro and his close political associates took power at a time when the power of the Soviet Union relative to that of the United States seemed ascendant in the struggle for world supremacy. This made the Soviet leadership under Nikita Khrushchev feel confident about challenging the United States even in its Western Hemisphere backyard. At the same time, the growing rift between China and the Soviet Union and the spread of polycentrism in the Communist world helped Castro and his close associates retain a certain degree of autonomy from the Soviet leadership on which they subsequently came to depend for survival.
The international situation combined with unexpected opportunities that occurred at home as a result of the collapse of the traditional army and the political weakness of the upper and middle classes. In such an environment, Fidel Castro and his associates chose the Communist road for Cuba. Rather than the outcome, as some would have it, of a conspiracy hatched before January 1, 1959, Castro’s—and Cuba’s—eventual political direction was most likely the result of a conjunctural choice made by the fall of 1959. This choice was fostered first by the potentially high political cost that Fidel Castro would incur by breaking with the pro-Soviet and pro–Partido Socialista Popular wing of the 26th of July Movement headed by Raúl Castro and Che Guevara and second by the affinity of Castro’s brand of authoritarian populism for the Soviet-type systems.2
The Cuban Revolution was one of the most important events in twentieth-century Latin America and had a major impact well beyond the Western Hemisphere. The establishment of Cuban Communism resulted from a democratic, multiclass revolution against a rather typical Latin American dictatorship. Although distinctive in some ways, the initial opposition movement against the Batista dictatorship had many similarities to other struggles of the 1950s against tyrannical Latin American regimes such as those in Venezuela, Peru, and Colombia. The opposition movements in Cuba and in other Latin American countries saw themselves as part of the same political struggle against military dictatorships and for democracy and constitutional government. This was particularly true of Venezuela, where the democratic political movement that overthrew the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in January 1958 provided substantial political and material support to the Cuban rebels in the Sierra Maestra.
Of course, the transformation of the Cuban multiclass democratic political revolution into a Communist social revolution and the development of a close alliance between Cuba and the Soviet bloc made this revolution unique. While subsequent political developments in such Western Hemisphere countries as Chile, El Salvador, Grenada, and particularly Nicaragua were influenced by and in some ways even resembled the Cuban experience, they never approximated the singularity of the Cuban Revolution.
Many of the issues addressed in this volume have been debated since the beginning of the Cuban revolutionary process, but the new political climate in both Cuba and abroad created by the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the 1990s and the resulting impact on Cuba have given new life to these debates. That Cuba will eventually undergo a transition beyond the mere replacement of Fidel Castro as the head of the Cuban state is highly likely. Some observers predict that after a short period of continuity meant to reassure Cubans and foreigners about the system’s stability, significant institutional changes in Cuban economic, social, and political life will occur. While much has been written about such likely changes in Cuba,3 much less discussion has concerned the changes in the ideological and political landscape that are likely to accompany such institutional transformations. Historical revisionism, for example, will inevitably accompany any socioeconomic transition.4 Any significant institutional change in Cuba will need to be supported and justified in political and ideological terms. This process will inevitably pose the question of why the revolution created the Cuba it did. In light of the strong procapitalist ideological tendencies that have developed in all post-Communist transitions and the existing tendencies in Cuban political thought that have been greatly strengthened since the 1990s, we can expect the renewed formulation of certain polemical positions regarding the background and early origins of the Cuban Revolution. Among the right and right-of-center opponents of the Cuban regime, this process has already involved a strong tendency to praise and exaggerate the supposed achievements of the prerevolutionary republic5 and the claim that a radical social revolution was neither necessary nor justified in the Cuba of the late 1950s. In addition, the rejection of social revolution has been marked by the failure to make the fundamental analytical distinction between radical social revolution in general and the particular social revolution that took place in Cuba. Not surprisingly, in claiming that Fidel Castro’s brand of Communism was the only possible alternative for Cuba, supporters of the Cuban regime fail to make the same distinction.
Fidel Castro’s death will also have a major impact on Cuba’s relations with the United States. A capitalist transition is highly likely to be led, as in the Soviet Union and China, by Cuban Communists and would restore, although not necessarily in the same form, much of the power that the United States lost in Cuba almost fifty years ago. Such renewed U.S. power would be ideologically and politically defended by procapitalist supporters of the transition and would likely include revisionist historical claims denying or at least minimizing the imperialist characteristics of U.S. policy before and during the revolution, with Cuban “moderate” supporters of the capitalist transition perhaps even rendering homage to U.S. Ambassador Philip Bonsal as a reasonable diplomat who could have resolved the conflict between the two countries. These interpretations will be challenged by those upholding the legacy of Fidel Castro as well as by those trying to create a new revolutionary and democratic Left in Cuba.