Civic Activism and the Legitimation of Armed Struggle Against Batista, 1955–1956

This chapter looks at how José Antonio Echeverría, president of the Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios (Federation of University Students, FEU), prepared the public to back the violent overthrow of the regime that he and his FEU allies were secretly plotting by appealing to Cubans with the claim that an armed challenge to Batista's power could only renew and refresh the national collective union. Castro and his supporters took this argument several steps further, couching their own movement's already proven commitment to violence in discursive histrionics of “making love, not war” in defense of la patria. In adopting the prose and pose of reluctant revolutionaries who loved rather than hated, Echeverría, Castro, and their respective movements attempted to undercut the very claims Batista had made all along, since the very day of his coup.

Cuba on the Verge: Martyrdom, Political Culture, and Civic Activism, 1946–1951

This chapter argues that the reason for Eddy Chibás's appeal—indeed, the reason he was seen as a selfless loco or madman amid hordes of self-interested hypocrites—lay in the crushing weight of nationalist consciousness and anti-imperialist sentiments among Cubans at the time. Consequently, when Chibás founded La Ortodoxía as a movement in 1947, his rivals in the ruling Auténtico Party simply could not control a stage increasingly crowded by average citizens committed to this task. From the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, government-sanctioned violence and widespread corruption characterized Cuba's brief “democratic moment,” but so did civic activism, unarmed struggles for political liberty, and a flourishing, expanding media.

Revolutionary Cuba: December 1958 and Beyond

This concluding chapter emphasizes how deeply the values of democracy are ingrained in Cuban political culture: the right to protest, the right to enjoy an uncensored press, the demands for racial justice and greater gender equality defined what it meant to be Cuban for most citizens of the 1940s and 1950s. Moreover, the mandate for government accountability formed a common foundation of shared morality. Just as important was the belief that Cubans who fought tyranny or simply opposed it any way that they could were everyday heroes, would-be martyrs in their own right. While today Cubans have surely abandoned all faith in political messiahs, they believe—perhaps more than ever—in themselves and the power of the individual to turn the tide of history and forge an unexpected tomorrow. However much Cuba may have changed, these ideas remain the core of who Cubans were, are, and will be.

Clandestinos, Guerrillas, and the Making of a Messiah in the Sierra Maestra, 1957–1958

This chapter argues that Castro's image as a selfless, Christ-like redeemer with similarly altruistic followers owed its origins as much to the actions of the clandestinos who withstood the brunt of the violence and constructed Fidel's messianic portrayal for Cubans and for the outside world as it did to the political strategies of the guerrillas themselves in the Sierra Maestra. Unknown but central to the guerrillas' importance was the way that they, like the clandestinos, sought to “humanize” war and violence by inviting citizens to see their actions as defensive efforts to reunite a Cuba that Batista—not the insurrectionists—had divided.

Complicit Communists, Student Commandos, Fidelistas, and Civil War, 1956–1957

This chapter reveals how many Cubans increasingly associated support for the armed opposition with anti-Communism and disdain for the Partido Socialist Popular (Popular Socialist Party, PSP) with hatred of Batista for two reasons. First, Cuba's Communists continued other traditional political parties' pattern of fighting bullets with words; and second, Batista exercised an apparent double standard in allowing the PSP to operate more freely than mainstream opponents. Rather than threatening Batista's dictatorship, the PSP actually facilitated its continuation in the eyes of many citizens and key opinion makers among the organized opposition. Yet this was not just a matter of public perception; it appears to have been a matter of some fact, at least at the national level.

Los Muchachos del Moncada: Civic Mobilization and Democracy’s Last Stand, 1953–1954

This chapter examines a surge in civic consciousness after Batista betrayed hopes by resorting to fraud and intimidation to win the election in 1954. Disappointment in the outcome enervated citizens' belief in both electoralism and constitutional democracy as paths to freedom. By the beginning of 1955, civic pressures appeared to be succeeding. Protests on the street, in the media, and in private garnered both an important cessation of censorship as well as the release of all political prisoners, including “los muchachos del Moncada” (the kids of Moncada) as Fidel and his followers became known. In fact, the release of political prisoners in the early spring of 1955 represented a new beginning in the public's unification behind a common discourse of unarmed struggle, despite the disunity of partisan opponents even within their own parties.

El Último Aldabonazo: Fulgencio Batista’s “Revolution” and Renewed Struggle for a Democratic Cuba, 1952–1953

This chapter shows that partisan fragmentation characterized Cuba's political scene in the years after Chibás's death. Foremost among its causes was General Batista's unexpected seizure of power on March 10, 1952. With the near full support of Cuba's armed forces, Batista's coup led to the subsequent cancellation of the election that, by all accounts, the Ortodoxos would have won by a landslide. Indeed, Eddy Chibás's final public words were a prophecy: “el último aldabonazo” turned out to be the blow to democracy that the coup represented. Batista's actions quickly became a wake-up call to fight for what generations had longed for and believed in: a different, better, socially just, and more egalitarian Cuba.

A History That Dare Not Be Told: Political Culture and the Making of Revolutionary Cuba, 1946–1958

This introductory chapter briefly illustrates Cuba's underground revolutionary culture and the challenges it faced during Fulgencio Batista's regime. It argues that the “New Cuba” that allegedly emerged in January 1959 did not rise from the ground up. The seeds of revolutionary Cuba were not just planted in the years before, they had sprouted and flourished. This Cuba began to flourish in the late 1940s and came to fruition in the last months of 1958 when Cubans consumed, constructed, and helped craft the image of a generous, accountable, morally pure, and messianic revolutionary state that Fidel Castro was committed to lead. In addition to this, the chapter also delves into the political culture of 1940s Cuba.