The origins of the Cuban Revolution reconsidered by Samuel; Farber

Author:Samuel; Farber [Farber, Samuel;]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2006-09-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

The Driving Force of the Cuban Revolution

From Above or From Below?

THE INTERNAL SITUATION IN CUBA

What was the nature of Cuba’s internal situation as the country’s relationship with the United States was rapidly changing in the late 1950s and early 1960s? How was the transition from an antidictatorial political movement to a far more radical project possible, and why did it occur at that particular point in time?

In contrast to those analyses that portray the Cuban leaders as merely reacting to U.S. policies and actions, I maintain that these leaders were actors greatly influenced by their own political predispositions and ideological inclinations. The minds of the Cuban leaders were made up not primarily as a result of U.S. Cuban policies in the late 1950s and beginning of the 1960s but rather as a reaction to earlier U.S. policies in Cuba and elsewhere. The events leading up to the U.S.-supported military takeover in Guatemala in 1954 had a big impact; even more important was, of course, U.S. foreign policy related to Cuba in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This is not to deny that U.S. policy at the time of the revolution played a significant role, but these actions must be placed in their appropriate political and historical context. Thus, it may well be that U.S. policy in this period was not very important in forming the mind-set of the more radical elements of the Cuban leadership, whether pro-Soviet or not. Instead, U.S. policy may have provided further evidence confirming what these radicals already knew or expected about the United States. Many revolutionary leaders were aware of the systemic policy limitations and constraints imposed by imperial capitalism. That does not mean that the revolutionary leaders may not have misunderstood or miscalculated the extent of U.S. power—for example, assuming that the United States could not easily dispense with the purchase of Cuban sugar. Perhaps the most important effect of U.S. Cuban policy was to undermine and diminish the influence of the significant although not decisive pro-U.S. liberal elements in the Cuban revolutionary government in 1959 and to radicalize the great majority of the population.

The transition from political to social revolution that began with Fulgencio Batista’s overthrow on January 1, 1959, brought about a social and political project that was fundamentally incompatible with the interests of the United States and of Cuba’s propertied classes. It is thus not surprising that a radicalizing process of measures and countermeasures between the United States and Cuba came into play. However, this process should not be assumed to be identical to the related but different idea that the objective obstacles encountered by the revolutionary leaders rather than their politics constituted the primary factors in the radicalization of the Cuban Revolution. Morris H. Morley communicated this idea in his study of U.S.-Cuban relations, arguing that “any attempt at economic transformation when U.S. companies dominated Cuba was bound to engender conflict, and it was the incapacity of political revolutionaries to institute partial changes in the face of

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