Castro, Fidel 1926-

ENTERING POLITICS

ARMED REVOLUTIONARY

REVOLUTIONARY IN POWER

RADICALIZATION OF THE REVOLUTION

NUCLEAR GAMBLE AND RELATIONS WITH SOVIETS

SPECIAL PERIOD

REVOLUTIONARY LEADER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fidel Castro, a first-generation Cuban, was born August 13, 1926, to a wealthy farming family in the eastern region of Oriente. Their 11,000 hectares produced wood, sugarcane, and cattle. His father had migrated from Galicia, Spain, while his religious peasant mother had been born in Cuba of Spanish parents. Both parents learned to read and write although neither went to school. Fidel Castro was one of six children.

When Castro was three years old, the worldwide economic depression hit rural Cuba. From 1929 to 1933 the island experienced widespread social and political upheaval, culminating when Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973), a sergeant, led a military revolt that put a radical government in power. Batista, at the behest of the American ambassador, then overthrew it and continued to dominate Cuban politics until 1959.

Castro initially went to a small rural school. At age six, in 1932, he left for a private Catholic elementary boarding school in Santiago de Cuba. Later he went to the leading elite Jesuit secondary school, Colegio Belén, in Cuba’s capital city of Havana. From the Spanish priests he learned self-discipline. In 1943 he earned an award as the country’s best secondary-school athlete. During school breaks, he visited the family farm and read newspaper reports about the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) or World War II (1939–1945) to his parents and workers. In the Spanish conflict, his family supported Francisco Franco (1892–1975).

ENTERING POLITICS

In September 1945, at the age of nineteen, Castro entered the University of Havana. The campus was his springboard to national politics. Just the previous year, national elections had allowed the Partido Revolucionario Cubano (PRC), also known as the Auténtico Party, to set up a government. The PRC promised major social reforms and greater national independence. Castro immediately became involved in the tumultuous politics of the time. Students and professors transformed courses into discussions of Cuba’s social, economic, and political problems.

In 1947 he participated in setting up a new populist political party, the Partido del Pueblo Cubano, or Ortodoxo Party, which had separated from the PRC. The Ortodoxos shared the same values as the PRC but claimed the Auténtico government had failed to deliver on its promised reforms and instead had become thoroughly corrupt.

Early in his life Castro had absorbed anticapitalist ideas based on Catholic counter-reformation conservative thought. While attending high school, he discovered the nationalist, anti-imperialist revolutionary writings and biography of the Cuban patriot José Martí (1853–1895). At the University of Havana he became acquainted with radical works, including those of the German political philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) and the Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924). He claims that in those days he became a utopian socialist and cites Martí as his primary influence.

During his university years, from 1945 to 1950, Castro was a political activist. In September 1947 he joined an armed expeditionary force composed of Cubans and exiles from the Dominican Republic intending to oust the government of the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (1891–1961). The invasion was never launched. The next year, in April 1948 as a representative of the Law Students Association of Cuba, Castro went to a Latin American University Students Congress in Bogotá, Colombia, which coincided with the United States’ initiation of the Organization of American States and the advent of civil war in Colombia. The populist leader of the opposition was assassinated. For two days Castro participated in some of the early armed skirmishes, and then he returned home. Both incidents indicate that he, like many contemporaries in Cuba, identified with political struggles in the region. He was also involved in a political organization promoting the independence of Puerto Rico. By then he had acquired lifelong contacts with Latin American progressive political parties and leaders.

He graduated in 1950 with a law degree, having specialized in international law and social sciences. His main interests were politics, sociology, history, theory, and agriculture. As a student leader, radio commentator, and investigative political journalist, he developed a significant following among young people. The Ortodoxo Party recognized his oratorical and organizational skills and nominated him for the planned June 1952 national congressional election. However, on March 10, 1952, the military, led by Batista, carried out a second coup d’état, ending hopes that electoral politics could reform the island and throwing Cuba’s constitutional system into a crisis.

ARMED REVOLUTIONARY

Like many other political reformists, the young Ortodoxos became committed revolutionaries, clandestinely organizing to oust the new military rulers. On July 26, 1953, civilians led by Castro attacked Santiago de Cuba’s Moncada army barracks, the second largest in the country. It ended in failure. Some men were killed in the confrontation; others were captured and then assassinated. The survivors ended up in prison. From the summer of 1953 to May 1955, Castro was imprisoned at the Isle of Pines, but he continued to organize his associates inside and outside prison. He also read about political, economic, and social matters. In mid-May 1955, the Moncadistas were granted a political amnesty. Batista hoped such a move would earn him legitimacy. It did not. Meanwhile, by serving time, Castro had become one of the primary national opposition leaders in Cuba.

He spent May 1955 to November 1956 in exile in Mexico, where he organized and trained a guerrilla force. On December 2, 1956, eighty-two men who had embarked from the Mexican port of Tuxpan days earlier landed in Cuba in the southern portion of the Oriente. The guerrilla insurgency had begun. The guerrillas gained control of significant portions of territory, launched an agrarian reform, recruited peasants, and created an alternative set of political institutions. Castro broadcast daily from a rebel shortwave radio station. From the Sierra Maestra Mountains, he coordinated the military and political struggle. From 1957 to 1958 the guerrillas were able to build a multi-class popular front against the dictatorship.

On December 31, 1958, the Batista military regime and political machine collapsed. This was a first in Latin America: a rural insurgency that defeated a regular military force supported by the U.S. government.

REVOLUTIONARY IN POWER

On January 1, 1959, less than six years after the initiation of open opposition to the Batista regime, Castro’s revolutionary forces seized power. The Cuban revolution was about to begin. The fundamental questions of how the society’s institutions would be organized and what the relationship would be with the United States and Latin America soon became paramount issues as the multi-class alliance that had supported the guerrillas fractured. Portions of the bourgeoisie and the middle classes wanted a return to a constitutional government without affecting social and economic institutions. However, landless peasants and the seasonally unemployed, among others, favored radical changes.

Moreover, the Cuban revolutionaries were aware of the political processes unfolding in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. While the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the cold war, third-world countries were addressing the pressing problems of national independence, integration, decolonization, and socioeconomic development. Some of the same issues needed to be addressed in Cuba.

Even before the guerrillas left the Sierra Maestra, the U.S. government tried to prevent them from seizing power. Also, the United States gave political refuge to Batistianos, allowing them to plunder Cuba’s national treasure. In January 1959, right-wing Batista forces in exile in the United States began hit-and-run attacks by air and sea, but the U.S. government turned a blind eye. Foreign relations between the two governments deteriorated rapidly.

Moderates and radicals within the new revolutionary regime immediately discovered the interconnection of domestic and foreign policy. Attempting to distribute land to the landless created confrontation with the United States because the best land was owned by American corporations. Increasing wages also affected American-owned corporations. Import-export policy impinged on the businesses that did precisely that, mostly American ones. Moreover, the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) had no intention of forfeiting American privileges enjoyed since 1898.

Nevertheless, the Cuban nationalists sought to bring about unprecedented independence. Any attempt to reform Cuba’s social, economic, and political institutions would create confrontation between the two countries. American opposition only contributed to the radicalization of the revolutionary process.

Cuba had a mono-export economy, with one major buyer (the United States), yearly cyclical high unemployment, and much social inequality. Cuba was a poor and underdeveloped country, although different in one respect from other nation-states in the Caribbean. With Cuban capitalism so closely connected to American investments, nationalist efforts to control the country’s resources easily became equated with anticapitalism. Cuban businesses did not come to the fore to defend their interests by differentiating themselves from U.S. interests. Rather, Cuban capital attached its politics and fate to the U.S. government.

RADICALIZATION OF THE REVOLUTION

The early Cuban revolutionary regime developed a threefold strategy: a progressive redistribution of income, a radical change in the property system, and a lowering of major daily costs (such as food, rent, transportation, and public services) to benefit the lower classes. This resulted in broader political support among the lower classes and a reduction of the income and wealth of the upper classes, thus diminishing their available resources for counterrevolutionary activity.

As this radicalization advanced, the moderates within the revolutionary coalition joined the opposition or went into exile. Many members of the professions did the same. As the country lost skilled personnel, the state further centralized political, administrative, and economic resources. Facing a shortage of expertise, the revolutionary regime relied on the politically trustworthy, usually people who were radical, including Communists. Such trends further exacerbated the political climate and relations with the U.S. government.

By March 1960, the United States had begun formal covert programs to overthrow the government and kill its leaders. In April 1961, a Cuban exile invasion (Bay of Pigs) was organized, trained, financed, and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The fact that it was defeated by the Cubans reinforced the United States’ commitment to oust the revolutionaries. The John F. Kennedy administration (1961–1963) further retaliated by organizing a second expeditionary force and imposing an economic embargo in February 1962.

NUCLEAR GAMBLE AND RELATIONS WITH SOVIETS

Havana and Moscow replied by surreptitiously installing tactical nuclear weapons on the island in 1962. Interestingly, Castro urged the Soviets to announce to the world that missiles were going to be installed as a matter of sovereign right on the part of Havana. The Soviet premier, however, did not listen to his advice.

Between April 1961 and March 1962, Castro removed key pro-Soviet Communists from critical positions in the government and the economy while negotiations with Moscow on missile installations were conducted. After October 1962, because of the way the Soviets handled the resolution of the Missile Crisis (Cubans were not informed of the negotiations), relations cooled. Havana made numerous moves to publicly assert its independence. The Soviets put up with Cuba questioning their position on the Sino-Soviet conflict, on the electoral politics of Communist parties in Latin America, the methods of building socialism, and the importance of politics based on moral rather than materialist perspectives. Havana, in other words, was to the left of Moscow. Such were the tense relations until 1972.

From 1972 to 1985, on domestic matters Cuba followed policies that were in accord with the Soviet model, but Castro constructed a foreign policy that challenged the Soviets. This was the case in Angola (1975), Ethiopia (1977), Nicaragua (1979), and an international organization called the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM; 1979). In 1980, Moscow informed Havana that it would not defend the island if U.S. military forces were to attack. Cuba had to develop its own military doctrine and structure from that point on. Thereafter, the political and ideological distance between the two countries grew, even though the island depended on Soviet economic subsidies.

From 1985 to 1990, Castro elaborated a critique of the old Soviet model while rejecting the reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The government in Moscow responded by further reducing assistance.

SPECIAL PERIOD

The demise of the Soviet bloc from 1989 to 1991 had major domestic implications in Cuba. It initiated the most difficult economic period in the history of the island—the so-called Special Period.

The United States took advantage of that juncture to increase Cuba’s economic isolation. It was an extraordinary accomplishment that Castro’s regime adapted its policies and survived. Moreover, by 2000 the island had slowly begun to regain the economic standards it had enjoyed in the early 1980s.

To break away from American-imposed isolation policies while distancing itself from the Soviets, Cuba developed a global foreign policy. Castro cultivated a personal relationship with key political, social, and cultural leaders from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His close friends have included such nationalist progressives as Nelson Mandela (b. 1918; South Africa), Lázaro Cárdenas (1895–1970; Mexico), Omar Torrijos (1929–1981; Panama), Juan Bosch (1909–2001; Dominican Republic), Salvador Allende (1908–1973; Chile), Daniel Ortega (b. 1945; Nicaragua), Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974; Argentina), Sékou Touré (1922–1984; Guinea), Ahmed Ben Bella (b. 1918; Algeria), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (b. 1945; Brazil), João Goulart (1918–1976; Brazil), Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980; Yugoslavia), Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964; India), and many others. The closest of all associations has been between Castro and Hugo Chávez (b. 1954), the president of Venezuela beginning in 1999. The older man recognized the revolutionary qualities of the Venezuelan as early as 1994. The two have similar national histories with a heavy reliance on mass mobilization. Chávez, however, attained and has maintained political power through electoral politics. Moreover, while the younger man respects the elder statesman, there is a unique reciprocity of respect and influence. Castro provides political and tactical advice, and Venezuela’s economic resources have permitted Chávez to help Cuba surmount the economic crisis that began in 1991. Radical and revolutionary ideas and organization have been extended by their alliance beyond anything that Castro could have imagined.

In 1961 the Non-Aligned Movement was established in Belgrade, Serbia. Cuba was the only country from Latin America that was a founding member. In 2007 the NAM had 118 third-world countries. Twice Castro has been elected to lead the organization, an explicit mark of esteem for the political example and strategic perspectives of the Cuban revolutionary. Thus, Cuba has become identified with selfless internationalism, sending assistance, for example, to Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Grenada, Venezuela, Algeria, North Vietnam, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Haiti.

Once the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies were gone, the government in Havana devised more activist policies toward the third-world nations, providing them with the human capital the island had been so successful in creating, particularly teachers, doctors, dentists, and technical people. In January 2007, Cuba had diplomatic relations with 183 countries.

Relations between the United States and Cuba have gone through different periods, but they have never been friendly. Full diplomatic relations were broken by the United States in January 1961. Thirteen months later, normal economic transactions were terminated by Washington. Only during the administration of President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) was there a brief period during which some diplomatic ties were restored and travel between the two countries resumed. However, during the administration of George W. Bush (starting in 2001), travel to the island from the United States was highly restricted, including family and academic travel. Cuba cannot use the U.S. dollar in any international transaction, receive international credits, or use any banking institution tied to U.S. capital. Third parties outside the United States are also pressured not to engage in trade with the island. The degree of U.S. financial support to the opposition has increased, and the economic blockade/embargo has been heightened. Every year, the United Nations’ General Assembly overwhelmingly votes against the U.S. policy, but the policy remains.

REVOLUTIONARY LEADER

Castro has been the paramount strategist, executive officer, ideologist, and macromanager of the revolutionary regime. He has been the revolution’s main leader, spokesman, and coalition builder. Relying on historical reference, example, and metaphor, he has taught that action is the best educator. A radical nationalist, he integrated Martí and Marx. His political thought is rooted in ethical values rather than materialist theory. He has synchronized socialist European traditions with third-world customs while recognizing that each country must find its own way. He has dealt with development theory, nation building, internationalism, foreign debt, globalization, sustainable development, social justice, party building, and human psychology. Since the 1950s his political strategy has stressed unity among revolutionists. Mass mobilization has been a constant instrument and has included the literacy campaign, childhood vaccination, the creation of a territorial militia, and anticorruption campaigns.

Since 1959 resources have been concentrated in the rural areas and small towns, and the city of Havana has suffered. An ideology of inherent rights and entitlements has developed with a system that provides universal education, health and dental care, child care, and burial service free of charge. The state also assumes the responsibility of providing employment or giving the unemployed financial support. Cuba is one of the most educated countries in the third world, with a life expectancy of 77.5 years and an infant mortality rate of 6.5 per 1,000 live births (as of January 2007). Education and health claim 23 percent of the gross internal product. The number of libraries, schools, hospitals, and dams increased dramatically from1959 to the mid-1980s. Food has been subsidized since 1962, but it has been rationed as well. Just as libraries lend books, there are also centers that lend musical instruments at no cost. Every municipality has computer clubs where access is free. Thirteen percent of the population benefits from universal social security, and 4.2 percent receives social assistance checks.

The political system has changed from its original high dependence on charismatic leadership based on mass popular organizations (1959–1976) to a formal institutionalized political regime where officials are directly elected by the population, with no campaigning or Communist Party–proposed candidates. Still, charismatic authority continued to operate to balance and control the administrative state. Castro’s contact with the population, which began in 1959 through mass rallies, has been preserved. He has been the unifying and integrating force among disparate factions in the revolutionary family.

Cuba does not permit alternative political parties or a political opposition to openly publish political materials. However, thirty-two Catholic publications do express positions that are opposed to the government, although in a subtle fashion. The political leadership maintains, based on Federalist Paper No. 8 by the U.S. founding father James Madison (1751–1836), that the external threat posed by the U.S. government’s policies—including confrontation, isolation, invasion, financial assistance to opponents within the island, and an economic embargo that has lasted more than four decades—do not provide much space for a political opposition.

By the end of July 2006, Castro had transferred political power, in a provisional manner, to his brother and other individuals in what constitutes the establishment of a collective leadership. The question for most foreign observers is whether the Cuban revolution will survive the death of its leader. History will tell.

SEE ALSO Authoritarianism; Bay of Pigs; Bush, George H. W.; Bush, George W.; Chavez, Hugo; Cuban Missile Crisis; Cuban Revolution; Franco, Francisco; Guerrilla Warfare; Khrushchev, Nikita; Leninism; Madison, James; Marx, Karl; Marxism; Reagan, Ronald; Revolution; Socialism; Spanish Civil War; Third World; Totalitarianism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buch, Luis M., and Reinaldo Suáez. 2004. Gobierno revolucionario cubano, primeros pasos. Havana, Cuba: Editorial Ciencias Sociales.

Furiati, Claudia. 2003. Fidel Castro: La historia me absolverá. Barcelona, Spain: Plaza Janés.

Gott, Richard. 2004. Cuba: A New History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Guerra, Dolores, Margarita Concepción, and Amparo Hernández. 2004. José Martí en el ideario de Fidel Castro. Havana, Cuba: Centro de Estudios Martianos.

Liss, Sheldon B. 1994. Fidel! Castro’s Political and Social Thought. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Lockwood, Lee. 1967. Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel: An American Journalist’s Inside Look at Today’s Cuba. New York: Macmillan.

Martin, Lionel. 1978. The Early Fidel: Roots of Castro’s Communism. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart.

Mencía, Mario. 1986. Tiempos precursores. Havana, Cuba: Editorial Ciencias Sociales.

Minà, Gianni. 1991. An Encounter with Fidel. Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press.

Prada, Pedro. 2001. La secretaria de la República. Havana, Cuba: Editorial Ciencias Sociales.

Ramonet, Ignacio. 2006. Fidel Castro: Biografía a dos voces. Madrid, Spain: Debate.

Nelson P. Valdes

Fidel Castro Ruz

Fidel Castro Ruz (born 1926) was Cuban prime minister and first secretary of the Communist party of Cuba. A lawyer by training, Castro led the Cuban Revolution and transformed the island into the first Communist state in the Western Hemisphere.

Fidel Castro was born on Aug. 13, 1926, on his family's prosperous sugar plantation near Birán, Oriente Province. His father was an immigrant from Galicia, Spain. Castro studied in Jesuit schools in Oriente and in Havana, where one of his high school teachers, Father Armando Llorente, recalled him as "motivated, proud, different from the others…. Fidel had a desire to distinguish himself primarily in sports; he liked to win regardless of efforts; he was little interested in parties or socializing and seemed alienated from Cuban society."

Became Campus Activist

In 1945 Castro entered law school at the University of Havana, where student activism, violence, and gang fights were common occurrences. Protected by its autonomy, the university was a sanctuary for political agitators. Castro soon joined the activists and associated with one of the gangs, the Unión Insurreccional Revolucionaria. Although police suspected him of the murder of a rival student leader and other violent actions, nothing was proved. Castro acquired a reputation for personal ambition, forcefulness, and persuasive oratory. Yet he never became a prominent student leader. On several occasions he was defeated in student elections.

In 1947 Castro temporarily left the university in order to join in an expedition led by writer Juan Bosch to overthrow the government of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, but the coup was called off during the ocean voyage to Dominica. The 23-year-old Castro jumped into the shark-infested waters and swam to shore carrying a gun over his head.

The following year he participated in one of the most controversial episodes of his life, the Bogotazo—a series of riots in Bogotá, Colombia, following the assassination of Liberal party leader Jorge E. Gaitán. Castro, who was attending a student meeting in Bogotá supported by Argentine dictator Juan Perón that was timed to coincide with—and disrupt—the Ninth Inter-American Conference, was caught up in the violence that rocked Colombia after the assassination. Picking up a rifle from a nearby police station, he joined the mobs and roamed the streets, distributing anti-United States propaganda and inciting the populace to revolt. Enrique Ovares, one of his student companions, denies that Castro was a Communist but claims that it was "a hysteric, ambitious, and uncontrollable Fidel who acted in those events." Pursued by Colombian authorities, the Cuban students sought asylum in the Cuban embassy and were later flown back to Havana, where Castro resumed his law studies at the University of Havana.

While still a student, Castro married Mirta Díaz-Balart, a philosophy student whose wealthy family had political ties to powerful Cuban military leader Fulgencio Batista. The couple would have one son, Fidelito, in 1949, but because Castro had no income with which to support his family, the marriage eventually ended.

At the university Castro was exposed to different ideologies. The authoritarian ideas of fascism and communism were widely discussed, but above all, the nationalistic program of Cuba's Ortodoxo party—economic independence, political liberty, social justice, and an end to corruption— captured the imagination of many students. The party's charismatic leader, Eduardo Chibás, became their idol, and Castro developed into his devoted follower, joining the Ortodoxo party in 1947. While he would graduate three years later and and begin to practice law in Havana, his interest in the law soon gave way to his passion for politics.

Assumed Leadership of Revolution

Early in 1952, in preparation for upcoming elections scheduled for June, Castro began campaigning for a seat in congress as a replacement for Ortodoxo party leader Chibás, who had publicly killed himself the previous summer. However, elections were never held. On March 10 General Batista and a group of army conspirators overthrew the regime of Cuban president Carlos Prío Socarrás. For Castro, violence seemed the only way to oppose the military coup. He organized a group of followers and on July 26, 1953, attacked the Moncada military barracks in Oriente Province. Castro was captured, tried, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. During his trial he delivered a lengthy defense in what would become his most famous speech, La historia me absolverá, attacking Batista's regime and outlining his own political and economic ideas, most of them within the mainstream of Cuba's political tradition.

After being released by an amnesty in 1955, Castro was exiled to Mexico City, where he began organizing an expedition against Batista dubbed the 26th of July Movement. On Dec. 2, 1956, Castro, his brother Raul, and 80 other men landed in Oriente Province. After encounters with the army, in which all but 12 of his men were killed or captured, Castro fled to the Sierra Maestra, forming in these mountains a nucleus for a guerrilla operation.

At the same time, urban opposition to the militaristic Batista regime increased. An attack on the Presidential Palace on March 13, 1957, led by students and followers of deposed President Prío, nearly succeeded in killing Cuba's new dictator. By 1958 a movement of national revulsion against Batista had developed. Castro emerged as the undisputed leader of the anti-Batista opposition, and his guerrillas increased their control over rural areas. On April 9, 1958, Castro called a national strike, which was called off after Batista ordered strikers to be shot on sight, causing massive shootings. Finally, defections in the army precipitated the fall of the regime on December 31.

Revolution Changed Course

On Jan. 1, 1959, Castro and his July 26th movement assumed power, proclaimed a provisional government, and began public trials and executions of "criminals" of the Batista regime. On February 15 Castro replaced José Miró Cardona as prime minister and appointed his own brother commander of the armed forces. A powerful speaker and a charismatic leader, Castro began exerting an almost mystical hold over the Cuban masses. As previous revolutionaries had done, he lectured the Cubans on morality and public virtue. He also emphasized his commitment to democracy and social reform and promised to hold free elections. Denying that he was a Communist, Castro described his revolution as humanistic and promised his followers a nationalistic government that would respect private property and uphold Cuba's international obligations.

Attempting to consolidate his support inside Cuba, Castro introduced several reforms. He confiscated wealth "illegally" acquired by Batista's followers, substantially reduced residential rents, and passed an agrarian reform law that confiscated inherited property. Although the avowed purpose of this law was to develop a class of independent farmers, in reality the areas seized developed into state farms, with farmers becoming government employees. By the end of 1959 a radicalization of the revolution had begun to take place. Purges or defections of military leaders became common, and their replacement by more radical and oftentimes Communist militants was the norm. Newspapers critical of these new leaders were quickly silenced.

This internal trend toward a Communist agenda was reflected in foreign policy too. Castro accused the United States of harboring aggressive designs against the revolution. In February 1960 a Cuban-Soviet trade agreement was signed, and soon after Cuba established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and most Communist countries. Several months later, when the three largest American oil refineries in Cuba refused to refine Soviet petroleum, Castro confiscated them. The United States retaliated by cutting the import quota on Cuba's sugar. Castro in turn nationalized other American properties, as well as many Cuban businesses. On Jan. 3, 1961, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower broke relations with Cuba.

Declaration of a Socialist State

In April 1961 anti-Castro exiles, supported by the United States under the leadership of its newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, attempted an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The failure of that invasion consolidated Castro's power, and the Cuban leader declared his regime to be socialist. Economic centralization increased. Private schools fell under government control and educational facilities increased. There was a nationwide literacy campaign. Sanitation and health improved with the establishment of rural hospitals and clinics. Confiscation of private property brought virtually all industrial and business enterprises under state control. Religious institutions were suppressed and clergymen expelled from the island.

In December 1961 Castro openly declared himself to be a Marxist Leninist. He merged all groups that had fought against Batista into the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, changed it later into the United Party of the Socialist Revolution, and transformed it into the Communist Party of Cuba—the island's only ruling party—in 1965.

In foreign affairs Castro moved closer to the Soviet Union, although the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 severely strained Cuban-Soviet relations. Castro had allowed the U.S.S.R. to install within Cuba's borders medium-range nuclear missiles aimed at the United States, ostensibly for the defense of Cuba. When President Kennedy protested and negotiated the missiles' removal directly with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Castro felt humiliated. Shortly thereafter, pro-Soviet Cuban Communists were eliminated from positions of power. By 1964 the Organization of American States had ended all diplomatic relations with Cuba, effectively isolating that country in South America and increasing its dependence on the U.S.S.R.

Until the end of 1964 Castro had attempted to maintain a position of neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute. But following the 1964 Havana Conference of pro-Soviet Latin American Communist parties, the Soviet Union pressured Castro into supporting its policies. Cuba's relations with China deteriorated, and early in 1966 Castro denounced the Peking regime. By supporting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he demonstrated his dependence on the Soviet Union as well as his determination to move closer to the Soviet camp.

Spread of the Revolution

Another source of conflict in Cuban-Soviet relations was Castro's determination to export his revolution. After the 1964 Havana Conference the Soviet Union was temporarily able to slow down Castro's support for armed struggle in Latin America. But by 1966 Castro founded in Havana the Asia-Africa-Latin America People's Solidarity Organization to promote revolution on three continents. In July 1967 he formed the Latin American Solidarity Organization, specifically designed to foster violence in Latin America. Castro's efforts, however, were mostly unsuccessful, as evidenced by the failure of Che Guevara's guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in 1967. Nevertheless, Castro's efforts in this regard continued through the 1970s.

Repression Culminated in Boat Lift

Despite the improvements that he brought to Cuba— the country boasted a 94 percent literacy rate and an infant mortality rate of only 11 in 1,000 births in 1994—Castro was constantly condemned for human rights abuses. Political prisoners crowded Cuban jails, while homosexuals, intellectuals, political dissidents, and others were constant victims of government-sponsored violence. In 1989, perceiving him a threat, Castro authorized the execution of former friend General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez on trumped-up drug smuggling charges.

One of Castro's goals was to remove opposition to his rule, which he accomplished not only with executions and imprisonments, but through forced emigrations. The largest of these, the Mariel Boat Lift, occurred in response to a riot outside the Peruvian Embassy in Havana. In mid-April of 1980, Castro opened the port of Mariel to outsiders, particularly exiled Cubans living in Miami, FL., who sailed into port to claim their relatives. Taking advantage of the situation, Castro loaded boats with prison inmates, long-term psychiatric patients, and other social undesirables. During the government-directed exodus, over 120,000 Cubans left their homeland for sanctuary in the United States, causing a small crisis upon reaching Miami.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Castro's revolution began to lose momentum. Without support from its Soviet allies, who had subsidized much of Cuba's economy via cheap petroleum and a large, ready market for the country's all-important sugar industry, unemployment and inflation both grew. In addition to adopting a quasi-free market economy, encouraging international investment in Cuba, and developing a tourist industry designed to draw foreign currency into his country, Castro began pressing the United States to lift the trade embargo it had imposed upon Cuba since the revolution. The U.S. government remained firm, however, refusing to negotiate with Cuba on trade matters until Castro ended his dictatorial regime. In 1994, the U.S. Congress even tightened the embargo. "This country can only be ruled by the revolution," Castro responded, according to U.S. News & World Report; he reaffirmed his determination to retain control by threatening further emigrations of Cubans to Miami. Still, U.S. Cuban relations had begun to show signs of warming by the latter part of the 1990s: Castro visited the United States in 1996, and invited Cuban exiles then living in the United States to return to their homeland and start businesses. Resolute in his determination to preserve some form of socialism in his country, Castro prepared to groom a new generation of Cuban leaders while also effectively restoring stability to the Cuban economy and regaining support among its people.

Further Reading

There is extensive literature on Castro. Herbert L. Matthews's sympathetic Fidel Castro (1969) contains valuable insights into Castro's personality. Jules Dubois, Fidel Castro: Rebel— Liberator or Dictator? (1959), has much information on Castro's early life and on his struggle against Batista. For the historical conditions of the events see Wyatt MacGaffey and Clifford R. Barnett, Twentieth Century Cuba: The Background of the Castro Revolution (1965); and Earle Rice, The Cuban Revolution (1995).

Other recommended titles on Castro include Marta Harnecker, Fidel Castro's Political Strategy: From Moncada to Victory (1987); Sebastian Balfour, Castro (1990; 2nd edition, 1995); Georgie Anne Geyer's Guerilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro (1991); Robert E. Quirk's Fidel Castro (1993); Warren Brown, Fidel Castro: Cuban Revolutionary (1994); and Esther Selsdon, The Life and Times of Fidel Castro (1997). Recommended for background on the revolution are Robert Taber, M-26: Biography of a Revolution (1961); Theodore Draper, Castroism: Theory and Practice (1965) and Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities (1962); Bruce D. Jackson, Castro, the Kremlin, and Communism in Latin America (1968); Jaimie Suchlicki, University Students and Revolution in Cuba, 1920-1968 (1969); and Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (1971). See also Lee Lockwood, Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel: An American Journalist's Inside Look at Today's Cuba in Text and Picture (1967; revised edition, 1990). □

Castro, Fidel (1927–) a Cuban statesman, Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976, and President since 1976 born near Birán, Cuba. In 1953 he organized a rebel force to remove Gen. Fulgencio Batista from office, and he was arrested when the force attacked the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26. He was sentenced to a fifteen-year imprisonment but was released in 1955 in a political amnesty. In December 1956 he landed on the coast of Oriente province, Cuba, with an armed expedition, most of whom were killed or captured. Castro and the remaining force retreated to the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, where they organized a guerilla campaign that eventually overthrew the Batista regime on January 1, 1959. Castro became the commander in chief of the armed forces of the new Cuban government, and in February 1959 he became premier. He nationalized Cuba's private commerce and industry, instituted land reforms, and expropriated U.S. businesses and agricultural estates. In April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Castro defeated an attack by Cuban exiles equipped by the U.S. government to overthrow his government. In the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962–63), the Soviet Union withdrew its nuclear weapons from the island in exchange for a U.S. pledge that included and end to attempts to overthrow Castro's regime.