Why We Fight
As this is written, our armed campaign on Cuban soil against Cuba's dictatorial regime is entering its second year. Though it has been given many meanings and many interpretations, it is essentially a political struggle. In this struggle, we have sustained few reverses and a good many victories, while dictator Batista can point to a single successful achievement: he has effectively muzzled all public communications in our country, silenced TV, radio, and the press, and so intimidated our news publishers that not a single Cuban reporter has ever been assigned to our side of what is, in effect, a spreading civil war.
One of the unexpected results of this iron censorship, augmented by a military blockade around the combat zone, has been that our program--the aims, plans and aspirations of the 26th of July Movement-- has never been published or explained adequately. In obtaining and publishing this exclusive article--the only first-person story written by me since we landed in Cuba on December 2, 1956-- Coronet Magazine has given us the opportunity to state our aims and to correct the many errors and distortions circulating about our revolutionary struggle.
Though dictatorship, ignorance, military rule, and police oppression have spawned a great many evils among our people, all these evils have a common root: the lack of liberty. The single word most expressive of our aim and spirit is simply--freedom. First of all and most of all, we are fighting to do away with dictatorship in Cuba and to establish the foundations of genuine representative government.
To attain this, we intend to eject from office Fulgencio Batista and all his cabinet officers; to place them under arrest and impeach them before special revolutionary tribunals. To replace the unconstitutional Batista regime, we will aid in setting up a provisional government to be nominated by a special convention made up of the delegates of our various civic organizations: Lions, Rotarians, professional bodies such as the physicians' or engineers' guilds, religious associations, and so forth. This will be a break with established procedure, but we feel certain that it will prove workable. Once appointed, the provisional government's chief task will be to prepare and conduct truly honest general elections within twelve months.
The question has presented itself whether I aspire to the presidential office of this provisional government or the elected government which will succeed it. The truth is that, quite apart from my personal reluctance to enter the presidential competition so soon, our Constitution, as it now stands, would prohibit it. Under its age requirement clause, I am, at 31, far too young to be eligible for the presidency, and will remain so for another ten years.
We do have, however, a number of program points which might serve as a basis for action by the provisional government. They are the following:
I. Immediate freedom for all political prisoners, civil as well as military. Although the outside world knows little about it, Batista has imprisoned dozens of officers and hundreds of enlisted men from his own armed forces who have shown revulsion or resistance to his bloody suppression of political discontent.
2. Full and untrammeled freedom of public information for all communication media--broadcasting, TV, the daily and periodical press. Arbitrary censorship and systematic corruption of journalists has long been one of the festering sores of our nation.
3. We want to reestablish for all citizens the personal and political rights set forth in our much-ignored Constitution.
4. We want to wipe out corruption in Cuban public life. Those who have grown accustomed over the years to dealing with venal policemen, thieving tax collectors, rapacious army bosses here in Cuba may think this an optimistic resolution. But we intend to attack this problem at its very roots, by creating a career civil service beyond the reach of politics and nepotism and by making sure that our career functionaries get paid enough to be able to live without having to accept bribes.
5. We want to sponsor an intensive campaign against illiteracy. Though no one knows the exact number of our illiterates, they run into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even up to a million. Our farm children get little schooling at best; many of them get none at all. Hundreds of thousands of small farmers feed their families on roots and rice, simply because no one has ever taught them how to grow tomatoes, lettuce, or corn. No one has ever shown them how to utilize water. No one has ever told them how to choose a wholesome diet or how to protect their health.
6. We are in favor of land reform bills adjusting the uncertain owner-tenant relations that are a peculiar blight of rural Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of small farmers occupy parcels which they do not own under the law. Thousands of absentee owners claim title to properties they have hardly ever seen. The titles, in fact, have been seen by no one and it is often impossible to establish who actually owns a particular property. We feel that in settling the question of legal ownership, preferential treatment should be given to those who actually occupy and cultivate the land. We will support no land reform bill, however, which does not provide for the just compensation of expropriated owners.
7. Finally, we support speedy industrialization of our national economy and the raising of employment levels.
Apart from political misconceptions about my ambitions and those of our movement--we have been often accused of plotting to replace military dictatorship with revolutionary dictatorship--nothing has been so frequently misunderstood as our economic program. Various influential U.S. publications have identified me as a tool of big business as a dangerous radical, and as a narrow reactionary manipulated by the clergy. U.S. companies with business interests in Cuba have been repeatedly warned that I have secret plans in my pocket for seizing all foreign holdings.
Let me say for the record that we have no plans for the expropriation or nationalization of foreign investments here. True, the extension of government ownership to certain public utilities--some of them, such as the power companies, U.S.-owned--was a point of our earliest programs; but we have currently suspended all planning on this matter. I personally have come to feel that nationalization is, at best, a cumbersome instrument. It does not seem to make the state any stronger, yet it enfeebles private enterprise. Even more importantly, any attempt at wholesale nationalization would obviously hamper the principal point of our economic platform--industrialization at the fastest possible rate. For this purpose, foreign investments will always be welcome and secure here.
Industrialization is at the heart of our economic progress. Something must be done about the staggering mass of over one million unemployed who cannot find jobs during eight months out of twelve. They can hope to work only during the four months of the cane harvest. A million unemployed in a nation of six million bespeaks a terrible economic sickness which must be cured without delay, lest it fester and become a breeding ground for communism.
Fortunately, improvement is by no means as difficult as Cuba's present rulers would lead us to believe. Our country is rich in natural resources. What we need is an adequate canning industry to utilize our superb fruit crops; expanded industrial facilities for the processing of sugar and its important by-products; expanded consumer industries for the production of light metal, leather, paper, and textile goods which would go far toward improving our trade balance; and the beginnings of a long-range cargo fleet.
The state would not need to resort to expropriation to take a guiding part in such economic developments. By reforming its tax collection system, which now consists of paying off the revenue collector instead of paying the state, it could increase its budget many times and turn its attention to the sorely needed extension of our road network.
And with rising living standards and growing confidence in government will come rapid progress toward political stability under a representative, truly democratic government. That, ultimately, is what we are fighting for.
As long as we are forced to fight, however, our constructive projects must wait. Our immediate task is something entirely different: it is the burning of Cuba's entire sugar cane crop. It was a terrible decision, and now that we are about to carry it out, it is a terrible job. Sugar cane is Cuba's principal source of revenue; it contributes about one third of the total national income and employs two fifths of the labor force. Half of our farm income is dependent on sugar. Yet it is the very importance of the cane crop that compels us to destroy it.
If the cane goes up in flames, the army will grind to a standstill; the police will have to disband, for none of them will get paid; and the Batista regime will have to capitulate. What is more, we will gain this decisive victory with comparatively little bloodshed by expending this year's crop.
I well know the heavy personal losses involved. Mv family has sizable holdings here in Oriente, and my instructions to our clandestine action groups state clearly that our crop must be the first one to burn, as an example to the rest of the nation. Only one thing can save the cane, and that is Batista's surrender.
But even if the crop will have to burn down to the last single cane, the flames will set fire to the dictatorship which weighs heavily on us now. Once the tyranny has gone up in smoke, we will see the way to a decent, democratic future.
Sierra Maestra
Junio 5-58
Celia:
Al ver los cohetes que tiraron en casa de Mario, me he jurado que los americanos van a pagar bien caro lo que están haciendo. Cuando esta guerra se acabe, empezará para mi una guerra mucho más larga y grande: la guerra que voy a echar contra ellos. Me doy cuenta que ese va a ser mi destino verdadero.
Fidel
Sierra Maestra
June 5-58
Celia:
At seeing the rockets fired at the house of Mario, I have sworn to myself that the Americans are going to pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war ends, for me will begin a much longer and bigger war: the war that I am going to wage against them. I realize that that will be my true destiny.
Fidel
No. 54
Santiago de Cuba, February 21,1958.
REF
CA-6192, January 21,1958 on the same subject [2]
SUBJECT
Fidel Castro, 26 of July Movement
The following comments on the Cuban rebel leader, Fidel Castro and his 26 of July Movement are forwarded to the Department on the basis of an on-the-spot observation of conditions and events in the Province of Oriente during the past three years and conversations with numerous persons in all walks of life in this area. The reporting officer desires to emphasize that he does not know Fidel Castro or any member of his family personally.
Conditions and events in this country are dominated by two Cubans, bitter enemies, each apparently consumed by the desire to eliminate the other in a death struggle if necessary. These two men are President Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro, the subject of this despatch. Castro is, at the same time, the most loved, the most hated and the most controversial person on the Cuban political scene at the present time, depending on how the individual Cuban feels about him. Both men come from Banes, a small town on the north coast of Oriente Province which depends on [for] its existence on the United Fruit Sugar Company, an extensive subsidiary of the United Fruit Company.
President Batista acquired fame and fortune after he left Banes and he is a famous graduate of the school of experience. His life history is already well known to the Department.
Fidel Castro came from a family which was much higher on the social scale than Batista's relatives. His father is reported to have been a sugar plantation owner who was originally a manual laborer. He developed a personal fortune by hard work and good luck. According to an American citizen residing in Banes, Castro was a "bum and a ne'er-do-well" who married a nice girl belonging to the Diaz Balart family and then left her. He attended the University of Habana. The Embassy will provide information on Castro's activities while there. Castro is regarded locally as having wild ideas and varying from radical to liberal in his political philosophy. Present adherents are inclined to credit him with having reached political maturity and to having sobered up as he attained stature.
Fidel Castro first made local history when he and a band of young hotheads made a frontal assault on the heavily fortified Moncada Barracks in this city on July 26, 1953. He took the garrison by surprise and he nearly succeeded in capturing the fortress but the important thing now is that he failed then. He and the survivors were taken prisoners. His career would have ended there because the local populace regarded the attack on Moncada Barracks as something that only a fool would have attempted. The Castro legend started only through what is regarded by local residents as an act of brutality by the commanders and forces of the Barracks in slaughtering most of the survivors. Fidel Castro survived and was released in due course in a political amnesty.
Eventually Castro left Cuba to spend most of his time in Mexico.
Throughout most of 1956, the Castro legend grew as a series of abortive incidents attributed to his movement took place. Throughout the year, his supporters kept his flame alive locally with a promise that he would return to deliver Cuba from the "evils of the Batista regime". As the year's end approached, it was obvious to all Santiagueros that Castro would have to make good his boast of returning or they would lose faith in what was the only active and militant opposition to the Batista government. The reporting officer recalls that there was waning interest in his movement as December 1956 approached and Castro was now being regarded also as a braggart.
On November 30, 1956 the city of Santiago almost fell to a small band of young rebels held to be a local nucleus of the 26 of July Movement because of the identifying armbands. They could not have totaled more than 200 in number but their boldness almost carried the day and in fact the city was controlled by the rebels for about two hours that morning for the simple reason that the troops were garrisoned at Moncada Barracks when caught off-guard by the rashness of the young rebels.
This activity in Santiago de Cuba on November 30 must have been either poor timing or else it could have been a diversionary move to draw away Army strength from the landing that Fidel Castro and a band of some 80 men made on the isolated and rugged coastline on the western tip of the Sierra Maestra range two days later. Here again Fidel Castro appears to have been lucky because only a few of those men survived the landing but they fought their way up the unfriendly slopes of the Sierra. The survivors warded off half-hearted attempts by the Cuban Army to draw them out into more favorable terrain.
From this point on Fidel Castro skyrocketed to fame and it became increasingly evident that the Batista Government would not be able or willing to stamp him and his followers out. As this became obvious, his exploits were considered to be those of a latter-day Robin Hood. His successful defiance of the Cuban Army became the source of great delight and satisfaction to less daring Santiagueros.
While he became a symbol of resistance to the Batista Government, he became a hero to teenagers and young Cubans. His exploits provided vicarious pleasure to older and less daring Santiagueros and, as was inevitable, they became a headache eventually as Cuban youngsters began to disappear from their homes with the later knowledge that they had gone to the Sierra to join the Castro forces. As supplies and recruits began to filter through the porous Cuban Army lines, Castro's forces grew in strength and equipment. They began to make attacks and forays on isolated Army outposts and unarmed areas. They expanded their area of operations but always within the shadows of the Sierra Maestra. They knew that they could not defeat the Cuban Army in a pitched battle without artillery and motorized equipment, but they also knew that they were safe from annihilation so long as they remained within the shelter of the mountains where the terrain factor favored them.
At year's end, the Castro forces were reported to number between 500 and 1,000 well-armed, well-trained and rugged troops. They had not defeated the Cuban Army or toppled the Batista Government but they had harassed it and had seriously undermined its morale. In the eyes of the Santiagueros, the Castro forces were the one hope that remained for removing what they referred to as the "Batista yoke".
Enthusiasm for the Castro cause waned and wavered at the end of 1957 as the famous leader failed to make good on his boast to destroy the Cuban sugar crop by burning the canefields. Psychologically this was a bad move because it alienated many of his more effective supporters in the peasant and laboring classes who saw burning of canefields as removal of their livelihood. These were the people who had hidden his men, provided primitive transportation, fresh food and, of paramount importance, loyal guides to traverse the unfriendly terrain of the Sierra. In the cities and particularly in Santiago de Cuba the citizenry began to lose faith again as the attempt on the canefields failed and no successful militant activity was taking place. Santiago de Cuba returned to it most normal pace in two years. On paper the Castro group had disowned the Junta de Liberacion Cubana which had earlier formed a united front in a meeting in Miami. This was followed by the arrest of three rebel leaders, Dr. Santos Buch, Javier Pazos and Dr. Armando Hart while returning to Santiago from the Sierra during January 1958. All of these incidents contributed to the fortunes of the Castro movement reaching the lowest point of the past year.
During the past two weeks the combined militant opposition groups have returned to the fight with renewed vigor and strength, with numerous acts of terrorism and sabotage a daily occurrence. The Castro forces have returned to their tactics of wearing the Cuban Army down with the hope of having the enlisted men turn against the officers or causing such a split among the officer corps that a military junta will emerge upon removal of the Batista Government. In their campaign of destruction the rebels don't seem to discriminate and their recent targets have included a storage tank belonging to Sinclair Oil company which contained about 135,000 gallons of fuel. Two days ago a local branch factory of Cuban Air Products Corporation, an American owned company, was destroyed by flames. At the local level, the railroads and bus lines have sustained heavy losses through derailments, rolling equipment fires, etc.
The rebels' aim seems to be to cause enough destruction and enough damage to the Cuban economy to force a change of government.
Although apparently helpless to deal a death blow to the Batista Government, the Castro Movement and other opposition forces are far from discouraged and continue to nibble away at the Armed Forces. They have managed to maintain a steady pressure on Batista and the man on the street might well wonder how long the bloodshed will continue on both sides. As of this writing, acts of violence have increased throughout the island and there seems to be evidence of greater unity and determination of purpose than ever before by the opposition. It might appear that the Batista Government can only hope for a containing operation in order to survive.
Fidel Castro and his 26 of July Movement appear to have grown from an annoying thorn in the side of the Batista Government to a slowly spreading cancerous tumor. Through persistence and the benevolent attitude of several American reporters and the American press, this man and his movement have managed to become sentimental favorites in the United States to such an extent that the Batista Government is now on the defensive. The Government has made no attempt at the local level to curry favor with the Cuban public, choosing the more direct expedient of recourse to force to maintain itself in power, a move which has only strengthened the opposition's charges of dictatorship. The Fidelistas, too, have resorted to force but, in the main, they have confined their violence to the Armed Forces and the "chivato", a term applied to an informer in the pay of the Government. The Government, instead of apprehending these obvious lawbreakers and submitting them to due process and trial in Cuban courts, applies its own system of justice which is swift, effective and without appeal. As a daily occurrence bodies of young men are found hanged or lying along the roadside with as many as 40 bullet holes.
In Santiago de Cuba, Fidel Castro and his 26 of July Movement are anything and everything to anyone and everyone. The reporting officer has seen a Catholic priest intimately connected with the local youth movement of the Church go into a nervous rapture when the discussion switches to Fidel Castro. Castro, he will say, represents the thwarted aspirations of Cuban youth and he can do no wrong. He will provide Cuban youth with a better and safer Cuba where every Cuban can look at his fellow citizen straight in the eye. Is Castro a dangerous radical or communist? No, this priest will say, Fidel has one or more priests in the Sierra now and more may be on the way. This priest has blessed a number of medallions which were forwarded to the men with Castro.
The reporting officer has seen Army officers go into a blazing rage when Fidel is mentioned. To them Castro is the vilest, lowest form of humanity. They report that Castro and his brother, Raul, are either communists or the nearest thing to it.
The Castro movement has an unusual appeal to all sectors of Cuban society, either legitimate or convenient. Monetary support for Castro and his movement comes from the wealthier classes of this city, many Santiagueros having been quite generous with their pocketbooks. Many of them have hidden newspapermen and free lance writers in their homes while arrangements were being made for completion of their journey to or from the Sierra.
To the youth of Oriente Province, Fidel Castro is not unlike a Pied Piper beckoning to them. He has provided a continuing headache for sober minded parents in this area because their youngsters either want to go to the Sierra with Fidel or want to contribute to the cause at the local level through sabotage, arson, etc. The Consulate is accosted daily by frantic parents who want to get their youngsters to the United States because the local authorities are looking for them or else think that they are.
Perhaps of equal importance to the Department and its observers in evaluating the ultimate outcome in this deadly struggle between Fidel Castro and President Batista, is the future status of the youth of this country. This may well turn out to be the lost decade for Cuban youth in one sense although Cuban youth may argue that their's is a righteous cause. Those youngsters who desire to remain aloof from the present strife cannot remain in this country. Where they or their parents can afford it, they have gone to Europe or the United States. Others have had to flee and are scattered throughout the United States and Latin America biding their time and waiting. The Cuban Universities have been closed or inoperative for the past two years thereby affecting all sectors of Cuban society willfully or otherwise. In some cases the losses arising from this academic paralysis may be irreparable.
Because of an apparent lack of centralized control over these youthful groups, they have not been organized into effective brigades which could strike at the Army. Instead they have struck out blindly and futilely with the result that they are cut down singly with mounting losses as the days go by. Many of these youngsters have been killed as a result of actions and deeds that were pure stupidity.
These youngsters will present another problem which is long range in nature. Many of them have grown accustomed to violence, to hit and run tactics, and to the effective use of weapons and firearms. They may be hard to keep in line when the present civil strife comes to an end and many of them are potential criminals.
It is a foregone conclusion that the average Cuban is remarkably naive when it comes to politics and he prefers to be guided by his emotions than by reasoning. Most of the Cubans that the reporting officer has talked to will not own up to the possibility that the Castro movement might be infiltrated with communists. They will say that such a thing is unthinkable and preposterous. They will state that Castro is Cuban to the nth degree and that he would never allow this to happen. The reporting officer has asked Cubans to comment on allegations that one of Castro's trusted lieutenants, Dr. Ernesto Guevara, an Argentine, is a communist or a sympathizer. Invariably they will counter with vehement denials but will admit that they know nothing of his background and will prefer to dismiss the conversation with suggestions that Dr. Guevara is an idealistic adventurer.
The presence of an estimated one thousand men in the Sierra is a natural opportunity for communist infiltration. Fidel Castro's men must be tired, lonely, living close to nature and facing death at every turn. As such, they must have become bitter against society and with such a frame of mind they could conceivably provide ready reception to Russian agents. This is one of the dangers of the continuing struggle between Fidel Castro and the Batista Government.
While many of the Santiagueros revere Fidel Castro and his Movement, some of them have begun to experience sobering reflections about the rebel leader. They have detected a recent tendency on Fidel Castro's part to behave and to issue instructions with a definite autocratic attitude. With certain misgivings, they are beginning to wonder whether he will be willing to settle for his role as the so-called liberator of Cuba in the final settlement of accounts. Many of them are beginning to fear that Fidel Castro might emerge as the new strong man of Cuba. Many of them are beginning to think that Cuba faces a grim and uncertain future with no political peace in sight.
Oscar H. Guerra
NOTES:
1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 737.52/2-2158. Confidential. Drafted by Guerra.
2. This circular airgram, sent to Santiago de Cuba, Havana, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Mexico City, San Jose, and San Salvador, reads in part as follows:
"In order to assist the Department in arriving at an objective and positive evaluation of Fidel Castro and his 26th of July movement it would be greatly appreciated if the addressees would make a special effort to provide information regarding this man and his party. The information now available is contradictory, inconclusive and of.inadequate detail. More knowledge concerning Castro's past associations, past activities and anything which might shed light on his ideology and that of those closest to him is needed. It is suggested that [less than I line not declassified] be utilized whenever appropriate." (Ibid., 737.52/1-2158)
