In July 1960, Cuba seized the American oil companies and nationalized them the next month. In October 1960, the United States imposed an economic embargo on Cuba and banned all imports (which constituted 90% of all Cuban exports) from Cuba. The restriction included sugar, which was Cuba’s biggest source of revenue. In January 1960, the United States ended all official diplomatic relations with Cuba, closed its embassy in Havana, and banned trade to and forbid American private and business transactions with the island country.
(Taken from Cuban Revolution – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)
Start of the Revolution On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led over 160 armed followers, which included his brother Raul, in an attack on the army garrisons in Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo, both located at the southeast section of the island. The plan called for seizing weapons from the garrisons’ armories and then arming the local civilian population to incite a general uprising. The attack was foiled by the military, however, with the Castro brothers and many other rebels being captured, imprisoned, and subsequently charged for treason. Three months later, on October 16, the Castro brothers were handed down long prison terms, together with their followers who were given shorter prison sentences. The trials gained national attention, with Fidel Castro, who acted as his own defense attorney, gaining wide public recognition. While serving time in prison, Fidel renamed his organization the “26th of July Movement” or M-26-7 (Spanish: Movimiento 26 de Julio), in reference to the date of the failed attacks.
Then in March 1955, President Batista, who had been elected president a month earlier, believed that his regime was secure and issued a general amnesty for jailed political enemies. Many political prisoners were freed, including the Castro brothers. After their release, the Castros, and in particular Fidel, were received enthusiastically by supporters. In June, however, a wave of violence broke out in Havana, and with the Cuban authorities moving to arrest political enemies, the Castro brothers fled from Cuba and settled in Mexico, which at that time was a haven for leftist elements.
In Mexico, Fidel Castro organized anti-Batista exiles into an armed group as part of M-26-7, with funds solicited from wealthy émigrés belonging to the Cuban political opposition in the United States and Latin America. Just outside Mexico City, Fidel Castro’s group secretly began training for rural guerilla warfare, which Fidel Castro planned to launch upon his return to Cuba. The Castro brothers befriended Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine medical doctor and hard-line Marxist-Leninist, who joined and then became one of the leaders of the M-26-7 organization.
By the autumn of 1956, Fidel Castro was ready to restart the revolution in Cuba. Early on the morning of November 25, 1956, he, Raul, Guevara, and 79 other rebels set off from Tuxpan on the Gulf of Mexico (Map 27) aboard the crudely refurbished yacht, Granma, for their 1,200 mile voyage to Cuba. The trip was scheduled to take five days, in time for Fidel Castro and his men to meet up with the M-26-7 rebels in southeastern Cuba and then to jointly launch a coordinated attack against civilian and military targets in Oriente Province.
However, the voyage encountered many problems: the yacht’s engine broke down and had to be repaired, the boat’s hull sprung a leak and water had to bailed out by hand while the pumps were repaired, a man fell overboard (but was located and rescued). Furthermore, the vessel had a capacity to hold only twelve persons, but was dangerously overloaded with over 80 men, including weapons and supplies. On November 30, the scheduled day of the joint attack, Fidel and his men were yet out at sea. The M-26-7 rebels in Cuba launched their attacks on several towns in Oriente Province, but government forces threw back the attackers after two days of fighting.
In November 1956, Fidel Castro and 81 rebel followers set out from Tuxpan, Mexico aboard a decrepit yacht for their nearly 2,000 kilometer trip across the Caribbean Sea bound for south-eastern Cuba
On December 2, 1956, Fidel Castro and his men arrived in southeastern Cuba, with their vessel hitting a sandbar close to the mangrove shoreline of Playa Las Coloradas. The Cuban military, having recently increased its operations in the region because of the recent M-26-7 attacks, spotted the landing and fired on the Granma. Fidel Castro and his men made it to shore, but were forced to abandon most of their weapons and supplies still on board the vessel. While making their way to the Sierra Maestra Mountains, they were ambushed on December 5 by a large army contingent. Eventually, less than 20 of the original 82 rebels met up deep in the forested highlands; the survivors included the group’s leaders Fidel and Raul Castro, Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos, while most of the rebels had been killed or captured.
Fidel Castro soon established his headquarters in the Sierra Maestra, and in the following months, launched attacks against army patrols and isolated outposts, and on government and public infrastructures, thereby gaining control of much of the mountainous region and later expanding the revolution’s “liberated zones”. He increased the size of his force by recruiting from nearby villages and from urban volunteers who were drawn to his cause. The revolution was boosted greatly by the “escopeteros”, local supporters who served many auxiliary roles: as armed irregulars to the M-26-7 main force, as informants providing the positions and movements of army units, and as porters carrying supplies across the mountains.
By 1957, many other anti-Batista rebel organizations had emerged, the most potent being the Revolutionary Directorate, or DR (Spanish: Directorio Revolucionario), which on March 13, 1957, launched an attack on the Presidential Palace in Havana with the aim of assassinating President Batista. The assault was foiled by government forces, killing 40 of the attackers. Subsequently in February 1958, some members of the DR moved to and reorganized in the Escambray Mountains as the 13th of March Movement, which formed a second guerilla front (to its urban base of operations) against the Batista regime.
President Batista even faced growing opposition from his staunchest backer, the Cuban Armed Forces. On September 5, 1957, junior Navy officers who opposed President Batista’s appointees to high-ranking Navy positions launched a mutiny at Cienfuegos, a city located at the south central coast of the island. The leader of the mutiny also supported Fidel Castro’s objective of overthrowing the national government. President Batista used the army and air force to crush the Cienfuegos Mutiny, causing some 300 fatalities across the city and forcing some of the mutineers to flee to the Escambray Mountains, where they reorganized as another branch of the M-26-7 movement.