November 25, 2016
by Tariq Ali
Fidel Castro, Cuba’s
leader of revolution, has died aged 90. Here is an extract from Tariq Ali‘s
introduction to The
Declarations of Havana, Verso’s collection of Castro’s speeches.
On 26 July 1953 an angry young
lawyer, Fidel Castro, led a small band of armed men in an attempt to seize the
Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, in Oriente province. Most of the
guerrillas were killed. Castro was tried and defended himself with a masterly
speech replete with classical references and quotations from Balzac and
Rousseau, that ended with the words: ‘Condemn me. It does not matter. History
will absolve me.’ It won him both notoriety and popularity.
Released in an amnesty in
1954, Castro left the island and began to organize a rebellion in Mexico. For a
time he stayed in the hacienda that had once belonged to the legendary Mexican
revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. In late November 1956 eighty-two people
including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara set sail from Mexico in a tiny vessel,
the Granma, and headed for the impenetrable, forested hills of the Sierra
Maestra in Oriente province.
Ambushed by Batista’s men
after they landed, twelve survivors reached the Sierra Maestra and began the
guerrilla war. They were backed by a strong urban network of students, workers
and public employees who became the backbone of the 26 July Movement. In 1958
the guerrilla armies began to move from the mountains to the plains: a column
led by Fidel began to take towns in Oriente, while Che Guevara’s irregulars
stormed and took the central Cuban city of Santa Clara. The day after, Batista
and his Mafia chums fled the island as the Rebel Army, now greeted as
liberators, marched across the island into Havana.
The popularity of the
Revolution was there for all to see. Castro’s victory stunned the Americas. It
soon became obvious that this was no ordinary event. Any doubts as to the
Revolution’s intentions were dispelled by the First Declaration of Havana,
Castro’s declaration of total Independence from the US made in public before a
million people in Revolution Square. Washington reacted angrily and hastily,
trying to cordon off the new regime from the rest of the continent.
This led to a radical response
by the Cuban leadership. It decided to nationalize US-owned industries without
compensation. Three months later, on 13 October 1961, the United States severed
diplomatic relations; subsequently, it armed Cuban exiles in Florida and
launched an invasion of the island near the Bay of Pigs. It was defeated.
President Kennedy then imposed a total economic blockade, pushing the Cubans in
Moscow’s direction.
On 4 February 1962, the Second
Declaration of Havana denounced the US presence in South America and called for
the liberation of the entire continent. Forty years later Castro explained the
necessity for the Declarations:
At the beginning of the
Revolution … we made two statements, which we called the First Declaration of
Havana and the Second Declaration of Havana. That was during a rally of over a
million people in Revolution Square. Through these declarations, we were
responding to the plans hatched in the United States against Cuba and against
Latin America – because the United States forced every Latin American country
to break off relations with Cuba … [These declarations] said that an armed
struggle should not be embarked on if there existed legal and constitutional
conditions for a peaceful civic struggle. That was our thesis in relation to
Latin America …
While they were in the Sierra
Maestra, the direction that the revolution would take was still not clear –
even to Castro. Until that point, he had never been a socialist, and relations
with the official Cuban Communist Party were often tense. It was the reaction
of that noisy and powerful neighbour from the north that helped determine the
orientation of the Revolution.
The results were mixed.
Politically, the dependence on the Soviet Union led to the mimicking of Soviet
institutions and all that that entailed. Socially the Cuban Revolution created
an education system and health service that remain the envy of much of the
neo-liberal world.
History will be the final
judge, but Fidel Castro has already been elevated by a vast number of Latin
Americans to the plinth occupied by those great liberators Bolívar,
San Martín, Sucre and José Martí.
Tariq Ali is the author
of The Obama Syndrome (Verso).
