This history of Cuba is part of the history of the Americas. The history of the Cuban revolution is part of a long history of struggle. Many African were enslaved and transported as labour and made to work in brutal conditions. The history of slavery is also the history of constant rebellion and struggle. The Haitian revolution (1791-1804) and the creation of the first Black Republic under Toussaint Louverture shook the consciousnesses of America and the world. The oppressive system of slavery in Haiti was producing 40% of the sugar imported in Europe. After Haiti was liberated, European colonialists decided to make Cuba the center of a sugar empire. Slavery was central to the development of capitalism and an exploitative world system. 

Read more...

"But my harsh peal,

but my deep voice,

summons blacks and whites,

who dance to the same son,

men with brownish skins and blackish souls

caused more by blood than by the sun,

for who on the outside are not night,

have already darkened on the inside.

Let the finest of you here

answer when I call you.

from The Song of the Bongo (1930), Nicolás Guillén

The rebellion of enslaved Africans was one of the first organized resistance against Spanish colonialism. One of the largest such rebellions was the uprising at the Triumvirato sugar mill in Matanzas Province in 1843, led by Carlota Lucumi, a West-African slave. 'Talking drums' called rebels to battle. Carlota's bravery inspired and deepened a growing anticolonial and abolitionist movement among the enslaved proletariat in Cuba's plantations, as well as free people of color, including poets and thinkers. Although she was brutally murdered, and the uprisings violently crushed  in the Year of the Lash, Carlota's memory  is carried by the Cuban nation as a glowing symbol of courage and resistance. 

Fidel: "But we must tell the Yankees to bear in mind that we are a Latin-American nation and a Latin-African nation as well. African blood flows freely through our veins. Many of our ancestors came as slaves from Africa to this land. As slaves they struggled quite a great deal. They fought as members of the Liberating Army of Cuba. We're brothers and sisters of the people of Africa and we are ready to fight on their behalf!"

Later, Cuba's operation in Angola would be called Operation Carlota. 

"Whoever attempts to seize Cuba will gather only the dust of its soil soaked in blood, if he does not perish in the struggle." Antonio Maceo

In 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes launched the Ten Years' War by issuing the Grito de Yara. Declaring Cuba's independence from Spain, he simultaneously freed the enslaved people on his estate. In doing so, he united the causes of national independence and the abolition of slavery, establishing a principle that would define the Cuban revolutionary tradition.

The principles proclaimed by Céspedes found their most principled defender in Antonio Maceo. At the end of the Ten Years' War in 1878, Maceo met with the Spanish Governor-General Arsenio Martínez Campos at Baraguá. Rejecting the Pact of Zanjón, which ended the war without granting either Cuban independence or the complete abolition of slavery, Maceo refused to surrender and asked for freedom for all the slaves in Cuba. His famous declaration—"No, no nos entendemos" ("No, we do not understand one another")—became a symbol of principled resistance and unwavering commitment to revolutionary ideals. .  The Principle of No Surrender is still remembered in Cuba and was invoked after the Collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European Communism.

Read more...

Fidel: "In other words, what the Cubans proposed with the protest of Baragua was an initial objective. They first wanted to make their disagreement official and break the pact--that was the No 1 political objective and then to tell them that they were breaking the pact because they did not accept peace without independence. But they probed the Spaniards and asked them: Since you say that you cannot grant independence, why do you not commit yourselves to grant liberty to the slaves? In other words, the two great demands in the protest of Baragua were independence for Cuba and, as a last resort, if there were no independence for Cuba, let there be liberty for the slaves...And this is very important since the Zanjon Pact not only called for independence [as heard] but also, at the last minute, at least the liberty of slaves or we would continue fighting. This gives it a magnitude which may not have been stressed in the past by the bourgeoisie, who limited themselves only to the point of independence, because slavery was the most important social problem and the liberation and end to slavery, was one of the more just demands of the revolutionaries in arms from a social viewpoint."

The struggle for Cuban independence found its greatest spiritual and ideological guide in the poet, philosopher, journalist, and revolutionary thinker José Martí (1853–1895), revered in Cuba as the Apostle. His lifelong commitment to Cuba's freedom and the unity of Latin America led to his imprisonment by the Spanish colonial authorities at the age of sixteen and to decades of exile, when he Lived and travelled through Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela. Marti spent many years living in the United States and studying its conditions.

In 1891, Martí published his most celebrated political essay, Nuestra América (Our America), an ode and a manifesto for the political and cultural unity of Latin America. Martí begins the essay by emphasizing that it is ideas that are the most important weapon in the struggle for Latin American unity and 

"Fortifications built of ideas are more valuable than those built of stone. No armored prow can smash through a cloud of ideas. A vital idea brandished before the world at the right moment like the mystic banner of Judgment Day can stop a fleet of battleships."

Martí argued that governance in the new republics must arise from the continent's own historical experience rather than by copying French, Spanish or North American traditions. Latin America must have its own universities and understand its own history.

“The European university must yield to the American university. The history of América from the Incas to the present must be taught in its smallest detail, even if the Greek Archons go untaught. Our own Greece is preferable to the Greece that is not ours: we need it more.”

Martí laid forth a vision for a new Latin America, that would be united, that would know itself, that would accept and synthesize the Native American and African contributions to its civilization and that would have no place for racism. 

"Our feet upon a rosary, our faces white-skinned, and our bodies a motley of Indian and criollo, we boldly entered the community of nations." 

He saw Cuba's freedom as inseparable from the liberation of Latin America and, more broadly, proclaimed “Homeland is Humanity.”  Much like Rabindranath Tagore, Martí believed that the task was for the world's people to know each other but that each nation and people must be grounded in their own tradition. 

“Nations that remain strangers must rush to know one another, like soldiers about to go into battle together...Let the world be grafted onto our republics, but we must be the trunk.”

Impotantly, Martí was far-sighted and understood the imperial designs of North America beyond the immediate struggle with Spanish colonialism. 

“The disdain of the formidable neighbor who does not know her is the greatest danger that faces our América.”

In 1895, Martí returned to Cuba to help launch the final War of Independence. Only weeks after landing, he was killed in battle at Dos Ríos on 19 May 1895. Although he did not live to see Cuba's liberation, his writings became the ideological foundation of the Cuban revolutionary tradition. 

Fidel would always refer to the importance of Martí to the Cuban revolution. Like Martí, he would speak of ideas as the most important weapon of struggle in the Battle of Ideas campaign.

Fidel: "Martí taught us his ardent patriotism, his passionate love of liberty, the dignity and decency of man, his rejection of despotism, and his unlimited faith in the people. In his revolutionary preaching lay the moral foundation and the historical legitimacy of our armed struggle. That is why we said he was the intellectual author of the 26th of July. "

After thirty years of struggle for national liberation, as Cuban victory over Spain loomed on the horizon in 1898, the United States intervened, and helped to defeat Spain in the Spanish–American War occupying Cuba from 1898 to 1902. Cuban revolutionary forces were excluded from the peace negotiations that determined their country's future. 

Fidel: "The Republic-in-Arms was absent; it was not allowed to participate in those negotiations. Then we were occupied for four years by the U.S. Army. They disarmed the Liberation Army, dissolved Martí's Party, and established a pseudo-republic through the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States the constitutional right to interfere in Cuba's internal affairs." 

Although the military occupation formally ended in 1902, granting political independence to Cuba, in return for the withdrawal of troops the Platt Amendment granted Washington the right of military intervention, control over Cuban foreign policy, and established the permanent naval base at Guantánamo Bay, which continues to be under U.S. control today

The American flag on Morro Castle (Jan 1, 1899)

Born in Birán, eastern Cuba, Fidel Castro grew up on his father Ángel Castro's sugar estate, where he witnessed the stark contrast between the wealth generated by the sugar economy and the poverty of the rural workers who sustained it. Entering the University of Havana Law School in 1945, he immersed himself in student politics and anti-imperialist activism, taking part in the Cayo Confites Expedition (1947), an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and witnessing the Bogotazo uprising in Colombia in 1948—experiences that deepened his understanding of revolutionary struggle in Latin America.

Graduating with a Doctor of Laws in 1950, Fidel established a legal practice in Havana dedicated largely to representing workers, tenants, and the rural poor. He joined the Partido Ortodoxo (Orthodox Party) under the leadership of Eduardo Chibás, whose campaign against corruption and foreign domination inspired a generation of young nationalists.

Fidel was selected as a candidate for the House of Representatives in the elections scheduled for June 1952. However, on 10 March 1952, General Fulgencio Batista seized power in a military coup, suspended the Constitution of 1940, and cancelled the elections. Fidel responded by filing a constitutional suit before Havana's Court of Urgent Constitutional Guarantees, demanding Batista's arrest and prosecution for violating the Constitution. When the court rejected his petition, Fidel concluded that constitutional means alone could no longer secure Cuba's freedom from tyranny.

Read more...

On 26 July 1953, Fidel Castro led 160 young revolutionaries in an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Barracks in Bayamo. Although the operation failed militarily, with captured revolutionaries brutally tortured and executed and Fidel imprisoned, it marked a watershed moment for the Cuban Revolutionary Movement. 

Acting as his own defense lawyer, Fidel transformed the courtroom into a platform to indict the Batista dictatorship and defend the constitutional right of the Cuban people to resist tyranny. His speech on October 16, later published as History Will Absolve Me, became the political manifesto of the 26th of July Movement, outlining a programme of agrarian reform, education, healthcare, industrial development, democratic rights, and national sovereignty rooted in the unfulfilled ideals of Martí and the Constitution of 1940.

"When a people reach the stage where even the courts sanction the violation of the law, where constitutional guarantees no longer exist, and where usurpation is imposed by force, there is no remedy but to appeal to the legitimate right of resistance."

The speech concluded with the powerful words, 

"Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me."

Read more...

Released under a political amnesty in May 1955, Fidel Castro travelled to Mexico to organize and train rebel forces for armed struggle against the Batista dictatorship, where he was joined by the young Argentine doctor Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Other revolutionary leaders included Camilo Cienfugos and Raul Castro. On 2 December 1956, Fidel and 81 revolutionaries landed in Cuba aboard the yacht Granma. After suffering heavy losses at Alegría de Pío, a small group of survivors retreated into the Sierra Maestra, from where they launched the guerrilla struggle that would grow into a nationwide revolutionary movement.

Read more...

On 1 January 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba. Fidel proclaimed the triumph of the Revolution and called for a nationwide general strike. The Caravan of Freedom reached Havana on 8 January, after a 550-mile journey through Cuba's major cities, during which Fidel proclaimed the goals and vision of the revolutionary government. At every stage of the journey, the rebels were greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm by the Cuban people.

When I see and touch myself,
I, Juan with Nothing only yesterday,
and Juan with Everything today,
and today with everything,
I turn my eyes and look,
I see and touch myself,
and ask myself, how this could have been.

from Tengo (I Have), Nicolás Guillén (1964)

On 17 May 1959, the First Agrarian Reform Law abolished the great landed estates, limited individual land ownership to 402 hectares (1,000 acres), and redistributed land to peasants while expropriating vast foreign-owned sugar plantations.

In 1961, the National Literacy Campaign was launched as a prerequisite for the full participation of the masses in the Revolution. The campaign mobilized hundreds of thousands of volunteers, many of them between the ages of 10 and 18, to serve as literacy brigadistas in the countryside; over half were girls and young women. Beyond teaching reading and writing, the young volunteers lived and worked alongside the rural poor, embodying the slogan,"You will learn more than you teach."  In a tremendous victory for democracy, Cuba declared itself a "Territory Free of Illiteracy" on 22 December 1961, making universal education one of the Revolution's defining achievements.

Read more...

I have, let's see,
that I have learned to read,
to count,
I have that I have learned to write,
and to think,
and to laugh.
I have… that now I have
a place to work
and earn
what I have to eat.
I have, let's see,
I have what I had to have.

from Tengo (I Have), Nicolás Guillén (1964)

In September 1960, Fidel travelled to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, delivering the longest speech in UN history. Denied accommodation in New York hotels during the visit, Fidel and the Cuban delegation were welcomed to stay at Harlem's Hotel Theresa. Besides meeting Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, and Malcolm X, Fidel received an unannounced visit from Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on September 26, 1960, who explained simply: "I wanted to meet you for many reasons, above all, because you are a very brave man."  India had opened its diplomatic mission in Cuba earlier that year, and the meeting between Nehru and Fidel inaugurated a long and enduring tradition of India–Cuba friendship. 

Read more...

Reflecting on this historic encounter years later, Fidel recalled:

"The first person who came to see me was Prime Minister Nehru. I can never forget his magnificent gesture. I was 34 years of age, not widely known. I was tense. Nehru boosted my morale. My tension disappeared."

On 16 April 1961, at the funeral for victims of U.S. air raids on Cuban airfields, Fidel Castro proclaimed, 

"What the imperialists cannot forgive us is that we have carried out a socialist revolution right under the nose of the United States."

Read more..

The very next day, a CIA backed force of Cuban exiles landed at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) in an attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government whose socialist character Fidel had publicly asserted. Within 72 hours, the invasion was decisively defeated by the Revolutionary Armed Forces and hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, and militia members mobilized in defense of the Revolution. The victory at Playa Girón was a historic first as the first military defeat of a U.S. sponsored invasion in Latin America. The failed invasion intensified U.S. efforts to overthrow the Cuban state, including sabotage, assassination attempts, and Operation Mongoose.

Read more...

In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis, triggered by the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war for 13 days. In the eventual settlement between the United States and the Soviet Union, Cuba was excluded from the talks. In response, Fidel refused UN inspection of the dismantling of missiles unless the Kennedy administration also accepted inspection of dismantling of the exile training camps preparing attacks on Cuba. He issued his Five Points of Dignity in a public statement on October 28.

“The revolutionary government of Cuba declares that the guarantees of which President Kennedy speaks–that there will be no aggression against Cuba–will not exist unless, in addition to the elimination of the naval blockade he promises, the following measures among others are to be adopted: 1) Cessation of the economic blockade and all the measures of commercial and economic pressure which the United States exercises in all parts of the world against our country; 2) Cessation of all subversive activities, launching and landing of arms and explosives by air and sea, the organization of mercenary invasions, infiltration of spies and saboteurs, all of which actions are carried out from the territory of the United States and some other accomplice countries; 3) Cessation of the pirate attacks which are being carried out from bases existing in the United States and Puerto Rico; 4) Cessation of all the violations of our air and naval space by North American war planes and ships; and 5) Withdrawal of naval base of Guantanamo and the return of the Cuban territory by the United States.”

On 3-16 January, 1966, Havana hosted the First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, better known as the Tricontinental Conference, bringing together over 500 delegates from 82 countries. One of the largest anti-imperialist gatherings in history, the conference celebrated the new world being born through the national liberation struggles of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and called for principled unity against the neocolonial and warlike designs of a dying white-supremacist hegemonic order. The conference gave birth to the Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL), and firmly established Cuba as a leading centre of revolutionary internationalism.

A powerful expression of Cuban internationalism was its unwavering commitment to the liberation of Vietnam. At a mass rally in Havana marking the seventh anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and welcoming delegates to the Tricontinental Conference, Fidel proclaimed:

"For Vietnam, Cuba is willing to shed even its own blood."

Cuba became the first country to establish full diplomatic relations with the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (1963). In 1973, while the war was still raging, Fidel Castro became the first—and remains the only—foreign head of state to cross the 17th parallel into the newly liberated zone of Quảng Trị. During the final years of the war (1973–1975), Cuba extended its solidarity beyond diplomacy by sending civilian and military engineering units equipped with heavy machinery to widen, pave, and rebuild key sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, construct the Bến Tắt Suspension Bridge, and help restore infrastructure destroyed by years of U.S. bombing.

On 5 November 1975, just days before Angola formally declared independence, Fidel Castro launched Operation Carlota and deployed Cuban troops in Angola to halt an invasion by apartheid South Africa, in response to a request from the pro-socialist MPLA government and president Agostinho Neto. By March 1976, the invading South African Defence Force (SADF) had been driven back across the Namibian border. Over the following years, hundreds of thousands of Cuban soldiers, doctors, teachers, and engineers served in Angola 

Cuba also trained fighters of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) in their struggles against apartheid and colonial rule. Between 1977 and 1978, Cuba deployed 17,000 troops to Ethiopia to help repel the Somali invasion of the Ogaden, as part of its broader commitment to African liberation.

The decisive turning point came during the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale (1987–1988). Cuban troops, air force pilots, and heavy armour halted the advance of the South African Defence Force, leading to the 1988 Tripartite Accords, which secured the independence of Namibia and dealt a decisive strategic blow to the apartheid regime. When Nelson Mandela visited Havana in July 1991, only months after his release from prison, he publicly acknowledged Cuba's contribution to African liberation:

"We come here with great humility. We come here with great emotion. We come here with a sense of a great debt that is owed to the people of Cuba. What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations with Africa?

The decisive defeat of the apartheid aggressors broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors!

The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa!

Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organisations would not have been unbanned!

The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today!

Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation!

Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!

Long live the Cuban Revolution! Long live Comrade Fidel Castro!"

From 3–9 September 1979, Havana hosted the 6th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, with Fidel Castro assuming its chairmanship (1979–1983). The conference brought together representatives of 92 nations in principled unity against imperialism and neocolonialism in defense of national liberation and sovereignty, economic justice, and peaceful development and coexistence. Asserting that peace demanded not merely the absence of war but the transformation of an unjust international economic system that condemned billions to poverty and illiteracy, the Havana Declaration adopted the struggle for a New International Economic Order as an integral part of the Movement's goals and aspirations.

On 12 October 1979, Castro presented the resolutions of the Sixth Summit before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where he demanded the cancellation of the crushing external debt burden imposed on developing countries, declaring that it was "unpayable." He argued that humanity could no longer tolerate an international order that prioritized military spending over human development, and in which the wealth of the few depended upon the poverty of the many.

Fidel: "Enough of the illusion that the problems of the world can be solved by nuclear weapons. Bombs may kill the hungry, the sick and the ignorant; but bombs cannot kill hunger, disease and ignorance. Nor can bombs kill the righteous rebellion of the peoples. And in the holocaust, the rich, who have the most to lose in this world, will also die.

Let us say farewell to arms, and let us, in a civilized manner, dedicate ourselves to the most pressing problems of our times. This is the responsibility, this is the most sacred duty of all the leaders of all the world. This, moreover, is the basic premise for the survival of humankind."

In March 1983, Fidel travelled to New Delhi for the Seventh Non-Aligned Movement Summit, where he formally handed over the chairmanship to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Fidel: "Today, while handing over, after more than three years, the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement to our admired Indira Gandhi and to India, which she in her historic right represents, we can affirm that we have a movement whose unity was not weakened, whose vigour has grown, whose independence has been preserved despite all the challenges it faced.

The maturity of India, its unconditional adherence to the principles which lay at the foundation of the Non-Aligned Movement give us the assurances that under the wise leadership of Indira Gandhi, the non-aligned countries will continue advancing in their inalienable role as a bastion for peace, national independence and development."

Fidel Castro and Indira Gandhi were instrumental in the moral authority carried by the Non-Aligned Movement on the world stage. The friendship between India and Cuba, initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru, was carried forward and deepened by Indira Gandhi— a friendship founded on principled unity in the struggle against imperialism, and a shared commitment to human freedom, justice and peace.

Read more...

The collapse of the Soviet Union plunged Cuba into a grave and prolonged economic crisis beginning in 1991 that extended well into the 2000s, known as the Special Period. Cuba lost nearly 80% of its foreign trade, while fuel, food, medicines, and industrial inputs became desperately scarce. Yet, in the spirit of Antonio Maceo's Protest of Baraguá, Cuba refused to surrender its socialist project despite the collapse of the world communist movement. In 1993, Fidel launched the Third Agrarian Reform, reorganizing large state farms into worker cooperatives (UBPCs), expanding urban agriculture, and encouraging local food production.

On 15 November, 1999, Cuba founded the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), offering free medical education to students from developing countries and underserved communities around the world on the understanding that they would return home to serve those most in need. ELAM became one of the clearest expressions of the Revolution's conviction that education, science, and international solidarity are indispensable weapons in the struggle for human dignity.

The immediate spark for the Battle of Ideas was the United States' refusal to return six-year-old Elián González, who had survived a shipwreck while being taken illegally to the United States, to his father in Cuba. The campaign to reunite father and son gave rise to the largest popular mobilization in the country's history, beginning on 5 December 1999, through mass rallies, public forums, and political education. On 19 February 2000, Fidel proclaimed the Baraguá Oath at the historic site where Antonio Maceo had rejected the Pact of Zanjón, transforming the struggle that began on 5 December into what he called "a colossal Battle of Ideas."

Fidel: "What would the simple return of this child be worth if tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, any day of any week, any month or any year, another Elián, dozens of Eliáns, hundreds of Eliáns, thousands of Eliáns, may disappear among the turbulent waters, be taken to the United States illegally, separated from one or both parents without their authorization or any possibility of recovering them legally?"