On September 5, 1957, Cuban President Fulgencio Batista violently quelled a revolt by junior Navy officers at Cienfuegos, a city located at the south central coast of the island. The revolt came after President Batista appointed certain officers to high-ranking Navy positions The leader of the mutiny also supported Fidel Castro’s ongoing rebellion to overthrow the national government (Cuban Revolution). President Batista used the army and air force to crush the Cienfuegos Mutiny, inflicting 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, Fidel Castro’s insurgent organization.
(Cuban Revolution – Taken from Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)
By early 1958, Castro’s insurgency was destabilizing Oriente Province, especially in the rural areas which had come under the control or influence of the rebels. Furthermore, four other anti-Batista armed groups operated in the province, spreading thin the operational capability of the Cuban Army. Other insurgencies also had emerged in Camaguey and Pinar del Rio Provinces, as well as in the Escambray Mountains.
In February1958, Fidel Castro sent a contingent led by his brother Raul to the Sierra Cristal Mountains, located in northeastern Oriente Province, where the M-26-7 subsequently opened a second front. On April 1, 1958, Fidel Castro declared total war against President Batista, which was a largely propaganda move that was ignored by the other rebel groups, but underscored the supremacy of the M-26-7 in the Cuban revolution.
Background of the Cuban Revolution In March 1952, General Fulgencio Batista seized power in Cuba through a coup d’état. He then canceled the elections scheduled for June 1952, where he was running for the presidency but trailed in the polls and faced likely defeat. Having gained power, General Batista established a dictatorship, suppressed the opposition, and suspended the constitution and many civil liberties. Then in the November 1954 general elections that were boycotted by the political opposition, General Batista won the presidency and thus became Cuba’s official head of state.
President Batista favored a close working relationship with Cuba’s wealthy elite, particularly with American businesses, which had an established, dominating presence in Cuba. Since the early twentieth century, the United States had maintained political, economic, and military control over Cuba; e.g. during the first few decades of the 1900s, U.S. forces often intervened directly in Cuba by quelling unrest and violence, and restoring political order.
American corporations held a monopoly on the Cuban economy, dominating the production and commercial trade of the island’s main export, sugar, as well as other agricultural products, the mining and petroleum industries, and public utilities. The United States naturally entered into political, economic, and military alliances with and backed the Cuban government; in the context of the Cold War, successive Cuban governments after World War II were anti-communist and staunchly pro-American.
President Batista expanded the businesses of the American mafia in Cuba, where these criminal organizations built and operated racetracks, casinos, nightclubs, and hotels in Havana with relaxed tax laws provided by the Cuban government. President Batista amassed a large personal fortune from these transactions, and Havana was transformed into and became internationally known for its red-light district, where gambling, prostitution, and illegal drugs were rampant. President Batista’s regime was characterized by widespread corruption, as public officials and the police benefitted from bribes from the American crime syndicates as well as from outright embezzlement of government funds.
Cuba did achieve consistently high economic growth under President Batista, but much of the wealth was concentrated in the upper class, and a great divide existed between the small, wealthy elite and the masses of the urban poor and landless peasants. (Cuban society also contained a relatively dynamic middle class that included doctors, lawyers, and many other working professionals.)
President Batista was extremely unpopular among the general population, because he had gained power through force and made unequal economic policies. As a result, Havana (Cuba’s capital) seethed with discontent, with street demonstrations, protests, and riots occurring frequently. In response, President Batista deployed security forces to suppress dissenting elements, particularly those that advocated Marxist ideology. The government’s secret police regularly carried out extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances, as well as arbitrary arrests, detentions, and tortures. Some 20,000 persons were killed or disappeared during the Batista regime.
In 1953, a young lawyer and former student leader named Fidel Castro emerged to lead what ultimately would be the most serious challenge to President Batista. Castro previously had taken part in the aborted overthrow of the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo and in the 1948 civil disturbance (known as “Bogotazo”) in Bogota, Colombia before completing his law studies at the University of Havana. Castro had run as an independent for Congress in the 1952 elections that were cancelled because of Batista’s coup. Castro was infuriated and began making preparations to overthrow what he declared was the illegitimate Batista regime that had seized power from a democratically elected government. Fidel organized an armed insurgent group, “The Movement”, whose aim was to overthrow President Batista. At its peak, “The Movement” would comprise 1,200 members in its civilian and military wings.