[Marxism] "Cubans Oust Batista Dictatorship" (The Militant, January 12, 1950)

["Walter Lippman" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(This is the first article in THE MILITANT about
the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
The only thing added has been indications of
bold, unbold and all caps in the printed text.)
===================================

THE MILITANT
Volume 23, Number 2
January 12, 1959

PHOTO CAPTION:
Dancing in the streets of Havana. Waving a rebel banner, a Cuban girl
dances in the streets of Havana to the cheers of throngs downfall of
the hated Batista dictatorship. Throughout the capital city and across
Cuba, mass demonstrations voiced popular demands for social and
economic reforms.

Cubans Oust Batista Dictatorship
by Lillian Kiezel

[bold] Cuba's hated Batista dictatorship was overthrown last week.
Fidel Castro, leader of the 26th of July movement that waged the
two-year guerrilla war against Batista, led his ragged forces in a
dramatic triumphal march to Havana. Washington recognized the
new liberal reform government headed Manuel Urrutia on January 7.

[unbold] Batista and other top government officials fled to the
Dominican Republic and the United States. Their escape touched
off protest demonstrations in Havana.

Batista claimed that Castro had superior arms. But Castro had
between 5000 and 10,000 troops when the civil war ended and this
was the largest force he ever had. Batista had the government army
of 50,000 troops. His troops with tanks, planes and heavy artillery
obtained from the U.S. and England. Castro's guerrillas were armed
with revolvers, rifles and even more primitive weapons.

[bold] 100 TO 1

[unbold] The ousted dictator told a Dominican newspaper editor
that Castro's guerrilla tactics were impossible to lick: "An army
would need 100 men for each guerrilla it fought. That was the case
of Tito in Yugoslavia and the Chinese government."

[bold] Bertram B. Johanssen of the Christian Science Monitor said
that Batista was right. Castro used the same tactics as were used by
Communist forces in Indochina, Yugoslavia and China "and 182 years
ago by colonial farmers in Concord and Lexington against the British
in the American Revolution."

[unbold] Johanssen reports how "local populations, especially in
rural areas, aided rebels enormously with their friendliness. They hid
them from Batista soldiers, gave rebels correct directions down
obscrure roads and passages, provided wrong directions, flavored with
sardonic humor, to government troops."

[subhead, caps, bold] LIVED IN TERROR
Since Batista seized power in 1952, Cuba's population had lived in
terror. The regime was notorious for its jailing, torture and murder of
political opponents. Abysmal pay, unemployment were the lot of
Cuba's 5,000,000 inhabitants. The victory demonstrators have been
depicted as "mobs of looters and gangsters." However, Johanssen
reports (January 3) "Generally, the New Year's Day mob rioters were
selective in their targets as they ransacked gambling establishments,
looted homes of Cuban millionaires who obviously had become rich
on political corruption. BOLD: The parking meters which the mobs
battered with sledgehammers and emptied of their small coins had
been installed by Batista relatives, who were suspected of reaping
huge profits from them."

[unbold] The Batista government was propped up all these years
by American big business interests and the U.S. State Department.
The resentment against American domination of Cuban life is
tremendous.

[subhead, bold] BIG INVESTMENTS
[unbold] American investments amount to $1 billion. This includes
$285 million in agriculture, largely sugar; $316 million in public
utilities and $51 in petroleum. The gambling syndicates, one of the
main sources of corruption, were particularly galling to the Cuban
people.

The financiers have worried over Castro's attitude toward their
interests in Cuba. The semi-feudal owners of the large sugar plan-
tations have been even more worried. In 1955 Castro's program
called for: nationalization of U.S.-operated and financed utilities in
Cuba; division of American owned sugar estates among Cuban peasants;
confiscation of all properties acquired through "corruption in government";
distribution of 30% of all industrial and utility enterprises to Cuban
workers;
ownership of land to be granted to tenant farmers occupying less than 170
acres.

[bold] The program has suffered considerable alteration. For the past year
Castro has sought in various ways to convince the State Department and
plantation owners that he has repudiated the aims announced in 1955 and
has no intention of nationalizing industry.

[caps, bold, subhead] DON'T WANT DEEP CHANGE

[unbold] Castro's movement is largely middle class. He is a plantation
owner himself. By and large the leadership of this movement, as personified
by Provisional President Urrutia, seeks a democratic reform government.
It doesn't want a fundamental social and economic change.

However, the State Department and the plantation owners have only recently
begun to understand Castro's real intentions. At the same time they
recognize
that he had the power to carry out his threat of destroying or preventing
the
harvesting of the crop of sugar cane. As a result, many plantation owners
shifted from Batista to support of Castro as did a section of the State
Department.

They are still cautious. Ed Cony of the Wall Street Journal (January 5)
reports:
"...State Department officials were understood to be watching for moves on
taxes and other potential obstacles to business operations...they figured
that
currently the chance was slight the new government might swing toward
nationalization of indistry."

[bold] In this connection Castro told UP reporter, Charles Schuman, a few
months
ago: "Let me make this clear. Ours is a special kind of revolution. It is
political,
not social. It is not a revolution of class against class, but of all social
classes
against the government -- against a small army group."

[unbold] He told Schuman last March: "With us, Cuba will have a stable
govenrment, without civil war. Industry will not have to pay us off as it
[did]
to the Batista government."

[subhead, bold] "FEAR FURTHER REVOLT"
[unbold] Despite this the State Department is watching the revolution with
reservations. What they fear is that Castro will not be able to control the
forces set loose. The youth (which has constituted the most revolutionary
wing of the movement, the peasantry and the workers, who were willing to
fight for Castro's 1955 program want more than just the ouster of Batista.

They want a social revolution to oust not only American financiers but the
home-grown oppressors as well -- all those who make possible the power
of dictators like Batista.

[bold] Freedom-loving people can rejoice that another dictator has been
kicked out.  The Cuban people now have a chance to choose the kind of
government they want.




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