Abstract
It has been argued that the sense of ‘having failed’ to resolve national problems and the subsequent transfer of blame between generations produced a fragmented political tradition which offered few guidelines for the future. This led to disillusionment with the ineffectual promises of impotent and venal governments and frustration which often manifested itself in futile political violence. However, there are certain sustained elements of an ongoing national political project which can be detected at each stage of struggle against the status quo. Recognition of such continuity has been an enormous part of revolutionary iconography. The 1953 attacks on the Moncada and Bayamo garrisons echoed Antonio Guiteras’s 1931 plan to assault Moncada and his actual attack on the San Luis barracks whilst Castro’s 1956 defence speech was overtly influenced by Martí. The Sierra Maestra Manifesto of July 1957, which called on all Cuban patriots to unite behind the Rebel Army, was a conscious allusion to the challenge made by Manuel de Céspedes to the Spanish Empire in 1868. Amongst the constituent parts of an evolving counter-discourse have been the desire for freedom from Spanish and American domination; the trade union, anarchosyndicalist and communist activism of the first half of the twentieth century and calls for empowerment by Afro-Cubans and Cuban women. Underpinning all of these elements was a commitment to egalitarianism, personified by José Martí, as well as a perception that these things would be gained through struggle and personal sacrifice. Viewed in this
... the generation of 1930 blamed that of 1895 for failing to win true independence; and Fidel’s generation, that of 1953, blamed the 1930 group for the failure to consolidate reform.1
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Notes
T. C. Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, revised edn (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001), p. 6.
A. Kapcia, ‘Western European Influences on Cuban Revolutionary Thought’ in A. Hennessy and G. Lambie (eds). The Fractured Blockade. West European-Cuban Relations during the Revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), p. 76.
R. Saumell-Muñoz, ‘Castro as Martí’s Reader in Chief in J. Rodríguez-Luis (ed.). Re-reading José Martí [1853–1895]. One Hundred Years Later (New York: Albany State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 99.
G. E. Poyo, ‘José Martí: Architect of Social Unity in the Émigré Communities of the United States’ in C. Abel and N. Torrents (eds), José Martí. Revolutionary Democrat (London: Athlone Press, 1986), p. 28.
J. Martí, ‘The Monetary Congress of the American Republics’ in P. S. Foner (ed.). Inside the Monster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), pp. 371–3.
J. Ibarra, ‘Martí and Socialism’ in Abel and Torrents (eds), José Martí, p. 99.
M. Caballero, Latin America and the Comintern, 1919–1943 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 48.
Born Nicanor MacPhelland of Scottish-Santo Dominican parents, Mella went into exile in Mexico where he worked for the Mexican communist newspaper. El Machete. Increasingly at odds with the Comintern which accused him of Trotskyism because of his contacts with Andrés Nin and other members of the Left Opposition, he was hunted down by Machado’s agents who assassinated him on 10 January 1929. There is a need for a proper biography of Mella. Details of his life can be found in the biography of his lover, M. Hook, Tina Modotti. Radical Photographer (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993).
A. de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), p. 80.
S. B. Liss, Fidel! Castro’s Political and Social Thought (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), p. 17.
Fidel’s political identity is discussed by M. Azicri, ‘Twenty-Six Years of Cuban Revolutionary Politics: an Appraisal’ in S. Jones and N. Stein (eds). Democracy in Latin America. Visions and Reality (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1990), pp. 177–8.
There are many accounts of the revolutionary war. Guevara’s Episodes of the Revolutionary War (New York: Pathfinder, 1996) is the most famous. It has recently been criticized for providing the official view which tended to exaggerate the guerrilla army’s role.
See J. E. Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2002).
E. Galeano, Days and Nights of Love and War (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 59.
Quoted by R. Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 241.
A. Kapcia, Cuba: Island of Dreams (Oxford: Berg, 2000), p. 196.
J. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: the Latin American Left after the Cold War (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 80.
The Armed Forces of National Liberation and the Revolutionary Army of the People of Argentina. Both Marighela in For the Liberation of Brazil (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1971) and Guillén (Strategy of the Urban Guerrilla: Basic Principles of Revolutionary War (Montevideo: Ediciones de Liberación, 1966)) argued that urban warfare brought guerrillas into a direct assault upon state power whereas rural focos ran the risk of isolation and annihilation by regular armies.
‘Revolutionary Ideas are not Obsolete’, quoted in G Mina, An Encounter with Fidel Castro (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1991), p. 263.
J. I. Domínguez, To Make A World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Harvard, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 250.
M. Piñeiro, Che Guevara and the Latin American Revolutionary Movements (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2001), p. 40.
‘Mensaje a los pueblos del mundo a través de la Tricontinental’ in E. Guevara, Obras, 1957–1967, 2 vols (Paris: Maspero, 1970), pp. 584 and 598 [author’s translation].
A stimulating account of the break between the Old and New Lefts is given by J. Rodríguez Elizando, Las Crisis de las Izquierdas en América Latina (Caracas: Editorial Nueva Sociedad, 1990). The dichotomy between the two lefts was as much about style and generation as it was about revolutionary strategy. The romantic image of the Cuba of the 1960s fitted perfectly into the New Left’s Utopian vision.
Malcolm was sceptical of the Cubans’ enthusiasm for the empowerment struggles of African-Americans, although other militants, such as Stokeley Carmichael, were more impressed. Fidel’s speech to the UN stressed that Cuba and Africa were linked by slavery, underdevelopment and decolonization and that it was Cuba’s duty to support national liberation movements there. Carlos Moore contends that such rhetoric was directed more to forging a spurious national integration at home and was, thus, hypocritical (C. Moore, Castro, the Blacks and Africa (Los Angeles: UCLA, Center for Afro-American Studies, 1988), pp. 88–91).
H. Béjar, Perú, 1965. Apuntes sobre una Experiencia Guerrillera (Lima: Editorial Campodónico-Moncloa, 1969), p. 51 [author’s translation].
Debray’s role in Che’s murder has long been an issue for the Cubans. His daughter, Aleida Guevara, is convinced that Debray’s naivety was indirectly responsible for leading the Bolivian army to her father because of comments he made after his own capture. See C. Vilas, ‘Fancy Footwork: Regis Debray on Che Guevara’, NACLA Report on the Americas, XXX: 3 (November/December 1996).
Quoted in G Reed, Island in the Storm (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1992), pp. 78 and 89.
Useful assessments of the dependency writers are offered by R. A. Packenham, The Dependency Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992)
I. Roxborough, Theories of Underdevelopment (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1994).
E. Guevara,’ speech given at the closing session of a seminar on “Youth and Revolution”’ cited by C. Tablada, Che Guevara. Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism (New York: Pathfinder, 1987), p. 163.
Che later admitted that although the government had been correct to concentrate upon income distribution and social needs, it had done so without’ sufficiently taking the state of our economy into consideration’. Quoted by C. Brundenius, Revolutionary Cuba: the Challenge of Economic Growth with Equity (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984), p. 107.
K. Cole, Cuba from Revolution to Development (London and Washington: Pinter, 1998), p. 29.
R. L. Harris, Marxism, Socialism, and Democracy in Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), p. 146.
R. Fagan, ‘Continuities in Cuban Revolutionary Politics’ in P. Brenner, W. M. Leogrande, D. Rich and D. Siegel (eds). The Cuban Reader: the Making of a Revolutionary Society (New York: Grove Press, 1989), p. 57.
L. M. Smith and A. Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 85.
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© 2004 Geraldine Lievesley
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Lievesley, G. (2004). Generations of Protest. In: The Cuban Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403943972_4
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