A resolute man who defied numerous CIA/MSM coup & assassination attempts...
Global Research, August 13, 2016
Fidel Castro, the revolutionary icon of the latter 20th century, is 90 today. Steven Walker looks back over his momentous life
Fidel Castro is 90 years old today, and unlike other
90-year-olds, this former Head of State will not receive much
acknowledgement in the mainstream media this year but his achievements
cannot be overstated.
The fact he is alive at all is testimony to his resilience and fortitude and the failed attempts by the CIA to assassinate him.
He is probably the most iconic revolutionary figure of the 20th
Century and the story of his fight to liberate Cuba from external
control and American mafia influence in the 1950’s is a shining example
of resistance and determination.
Castro decided to fight for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista’s
military junta by founding a paramilitary organisation known as The
Movement.
In July 1953, they launched a failed attack on the Moncado Barracks
during which many militants were killed and Castro was arrested.
Placed on trial, he defended his actions and provided his famous
“History Will Absolve Me” speech, before being sentenced to 15 years’
imprisonment.
Renaming his group the 26th July Movement (MR-26-7), Castro was
pardoned by Batista’s government in May 1955, who no longer considered
him a political threat.
Restructuring the MR-26-7, he fled to Mexico with his brother Raul,
where he met with Argentine Che Guevara, and together they set up a
small revolutionary force intent on overthrowing Batista.
In November 1956, Castro and 81 revolutionaries sailed from Mexico
aboard the Granma and crash-landed near to Los Cayuelos. Attacked by
Batista’s forces, they fled to the Sierra Maestra mountain range, where
the 19 survivors set up an encampment from which they waged guerrilla
war against the army. Boosted by new recruits that increased the
guerilla army’s numbers to 200, they co-ordinated their attacks with the
actions of other revolutionaries across Cuba.
The Cuban revolution was completed in January 1959 following the
final victory led by Che Guevara over government troops in Santa Clara.
Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday offers a chance to consider where he
drew inspiration from and the ideas which prompted his band of guerillas
to mount a campaign against overwhelming odds.
On the advice of those who noted his passion for argument, Fidel
enrolled at the University of Havana in 1945 to study law. A world
divided ideologically between Capitalism and Communism stimulated a
febrile political atmosphere in university. Two of his earliest
university friends belonged to the Communist Youth and he made his first
overtly political speech in 1946, criticising the dictatorship of
Gerardo Machado, Batista’s predecessor.
Fidel was aligned with two main political groupings at university –
the Movimiento Socialista Revolucionario (MSR) led by Rolando Masferrer
and the Union Insurreccional Revolucionaria (UIR) led by Emilio Trio.
This was where his revolutionary apprenticeship was refined, where he
learned much about the nature of Cuban institutions and how steeped in
corruption and violence they were.
The two groups jostled for prominence on campus, while outside the
corrupt President Ramon Grau San Martin — installed as an American
puppet in 1944 — was running Cuba.
Two of the key historical and political events dominating students at
Havana University and influencing their beliefs, ideas and perceptions
of Cuba’s past and future were the independence struggles of 1868 to
1898 led by Jose Marti, and the revolutionary movement of 1927 to 1933
involving former army officers, students and government officials that
had led to the overthrow of President Machado in 1933.
But Fidel recognised that these were incomplete shifts in fundamental
power — simply replacing varieties of colonial rulers and corrupt
American puppet dictators.
Fidel vowed to succeed in creating a truly independent Cuba, a proper
self-determining country led by those on the side of the many rather
than the few.
In early 1947 Fidel became increasingly politically active, openly
criticising President Grau and Batista for their failed leadership and
corruption. His political profile was growing and he was seen
prominently as a leading mourner at the funeral of the much-respected
communist labour leader Jesus Menendez, who had been shot dead by an
army captain in Manzanillo.
In 1948 the Cuban presidency passed to Carlos Prio, who with the
influential army officer Batista, gave unparalleled freedom to the
American Mafia who accelerated the degeneration of Cuba into what became
widely renowned as America’s brothel, where casinos, gambling and
gangsterism flourished and the proceeds of organised crime were stashed
away from mainland American tax authorities.
The pattern of Fidel’s journey to later succeed in overthrowing the Batista dictatorship in 1959 was being hardened.
What seems to have been of much more significance was to identify
with those fellow students and historical Cuban heroes, such as Jose
Marti, and satiate his appetite for revolution and insurrection.
Fidel was by now immersing himself in student politics and actively
supporting the fight for independence in Puerto Rico and demonstrating
solidarity with other student movements in Argentina, Venezuela,
Colombia and Panama, which were demanding an end to American colonial
rule via financed puppet dictatorships.
Eduardo Chibas left the Autentico, the Authentic Revolutionary Party
of Cuba, and in 1947 founded the Partido Popular Cubano (PPC- Cuban
People’s Party) quickly becoming better known as the Ortodoxo party.
Fidel joined immediately, finding in Chibas yet another hero, who he
followed with great enthusiasm, regarding him as a man of the future
destined to pave the way to Cuba’s independence.
The Ortodoxo party soon established itself as the first serious
opposition to the government, fully adopting the principles and values
of the revered nationalist martyr Jose Marti for anti-imperialism,
socialism, economic independence, political liberty and social justice.
Although the attack on the Moncado barracks in 1953 failed, the trial
in the Santiago de Cuba Palace of Justice began on September 21 1953
and ended on October 6 1953, after eleven sessions.
The Cuban civil code of justice, based on the Napoleonic code
practiced in Europe and Latin America, had the verdict determined by a
panel of three judges rather than by a jury of peers as under common law
in the U.S. and Great Britain.
After the accused heard the charges against them, they were called to
testify on their own behalf. The defendants were represented by 24
attorneys but Castro, a trained lawyer, assumed his own defence and lied
under oath to avoid implicating rebels on trial.
In May 1955 Fidel was released after pressure from his supporters.
Four years later he was in power and now, nearly six decades on, we
can raise a glass to him on his 90th despite all the efforts of the CIA.
---
Global Research, August 14, 2016
TeleSUR looks at a few of the anti-colonial and revolutionary
movements Castro has inspired and supported throughout his life, and his
ongoing legacy throughout the world.
1. Liberation of Southern Africa
While Angola won its independence from Portugal on Jan. 15, 1975,
inner political conflicts escalated between the leftist People’s
Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA, the National Liberation
Front of Angola, FNLA, and the National Union for the Total Independence
of Angola, UNITA.
According to declassified documents, the U.S. sought to gain hegemony
through a CIA operation which resulted in US$30 million in funding and
support for the FNLA and UNITA. Apartheid South Africa supported the CIA
operation by carrying out invasions, incursions and sabotages against
Marxist forces within Angola.
Under Fidel’s leadership, more than 25,000 troops and military
advisers were deployed to Angola during the war and ultimately helped
win the independence of the country.
In 1988, the MPLA, with Cuban support, finally defeated the South
Africans at the village Cuito Cuanavale after a six month battle. This
battle was so vital to South Africa that the apartheid government
considered using nuclear weapons against the MPLA and their Cuban
allies.
By defending the MPLA’s control over large parts of Angola and
supporting neighboring Namibia’s independence, Cuba curbed the ambitions
of white supremacist South Africa. And after the fighting, Cuba
continued to assist Angola with teaching programs like “Yes, I can,”
which has taught more than a million Angolans how to read and write, as
well as provided medical and exchange programs.
2. Apartheid South Africa
While he was still alive, Nelson Mandela
cited Cuban support for the war against C.I.A.-backed South Africa in
Angola as a great anti-apartheid victory. According to the iconic South
African leader, Castro’s Cuba helped destroy the myth of the
invincibility of the white oppressor and inspired the Black population
of his own country.
“We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their
independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious,
imperialist-orchestrated campaign,” Mandela said when he visited Cuba in
the early 1990s. “We, too, want to control our own destiny.”
It was for this reason that Cuba was the first country outside of the
African continent that Mandela visited after his release from prison.
“Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers,
agricultural experts, but never as colonizers. They have shared the same
trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment,
and apartheid,” said the legendary South African leader.
When Mandela visited the U.S.in June of 1990, he was criticized for
his support for Fidel by right-wing protesters from the Cuban-American
community. He was told that if he supported communism he should go back
to Africa. Mandela’s African National Congress party would never become
communist, but his affection toward Fidel and the Cuban Revolution, “a
source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people,” was unwavering.
Hundreds of Cubans have given their lives, literally, in a
struggle that was, first and foremost, not theirs but ours. As Southern
Africans we salute them. We vow never to forget this unparalleled
example of selfless internationalism.
3. Salvador Allende’s Chile
During the 1970s, the left-wing Salvador Allende took power in Chile
and began to transform the economic and social foundations of the
country, nationalizing natural resources, building homes for the poor and improving access to health and education.
In 1971, Chile under Allende defied the United States and an
Organization of American States protocol which prohibited states in the
western hemisphere from having diplomatic relations with Cuba.
This resulted in Fidel taking a month long journey to Chile where he
developed ties with Allende while also meeting workers, students,
peasants and attending left-wing rallies.
Later in 1973, Fidel told Allende to beware of fascism in Chile, warning him against placing too much trust in the military.
Castro had advised Allende to arm the workers. “If every worker and
every peasant had had a rifle like that in their hands, there would
never have been a fascist coup,” he remembered later. “That is the great
lesson to be learned for revolutionaries from events in Chile.”
It was around this time that Fidel famously gave Allende an AK-47,
which he would reportedly use to defend the La Moneda presidential
palace during the last moments of his life.
Fidel and Allende kept close correspondence up until 1973, when the
latter was deposed in the infamous C.I.A.-backed coup led by Augusto
Pinochet. The two wrote letters to each other on how to improve the
political process in their respective countries. Fidel is known to have
advised members of the Popular Union, Allende’s political party.
After the Sept. 11 coup that toppled Allende, Fidel delivered a
speech in which he praised the left-wing leader for having “more
dignity, more honor, more courage and more heroism than all the fascist
military together.”
4. Sandinistas Against Imperialism
The success of the Cuban revolution in the 1960s sparked a surge in
leftist social movements and guerrilla movements who fought against
right-wing dictatorships and U.S. imperialism in Central America. Many
of these groups were not only inspired by the Cuban example but received
direct support from Fidel’s Cuba including groups in the Dominican
Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Panama—and of course,
Nicaragua.
Formed in the 1960s, Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front
overthrew Anastasio Somoza’s U.S.-backed dictatorship in 1979,
instituting campaigns of mass literacy and health care and drastically
improving gender and economic equality in the country. But as with so
many other examples in Latin America, by the early 1980s the C.I.A. had
begun funding right-wing death squads in the country, known as the
Contras.
Fidel’s Cuba had begun assisting the Sandinistas in the late 1960s,
training guerilla leaders. In the post-revolution period, this support
increased to the spheres of education and health care. With U.S.
involvement and right-wing violence increasing, Cuba also provided arms
and logistical support to the Sandinistas in the fight against imperialism.
5. Bolivarian Revolution
Late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez helped bring Latin America into
the 21st century. After becoming president in 1999, Chavez was key in
the region’s so-called “Pink Tide,” delivering radical social policies
that transformed millions of lives while opposing U.S. imperialism
across the continent.
The Bolivarian Revolution led by Chavez spread rapidly throughout
Latin America, inspiring the world’s first Indigenous president in Evo
Morales and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, among other progressive leaders.
And crucially, Chavez once described Fidel as his “mentor.”
Today, Cuba and Venezuela have bilateral relations in virtually all
industries and sectors, from energy management to cooperation in social
programs in health, education and agriculture. One such program that
perfectly illustrates the ideals of the Cuban—and now
Bolivarian—revolution is Operation Milagro. Launched in 2004 by the
governments of both countries, Operation Milagro has provided free
medical treatment for people with vision impairment in both countries as
well as 34 others across the Global South.
“This is such a powerful mission, which has become so widespread
across the continent and beyond, including in Africa, that the goal set
by Fidel and Chavez of 6 million patients is a goal that we are close to
meeting,” said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro back in 2015.
In 2008, Maduro, then serving as foreign minister, echoed Chavez’s
sentiments when he described the Cuban Revolution of 1959 as influencing
“the path” for “real political, economic, social and cultural
independence” in both the 20th and 21st centuries.
Maduro made the comments as he led a delegation in Cuba as part of
the Cuba-Venezuela Political Consultation Body. “Our relation is a
profound, longstanding, strategic fraternity by which we have become a
single people, a single nation, as dreamed by the liberating fathers.”
The original source of this article is
teleSUR
