emerges in this book is a lively and variegated picture of working-class activism that sheds new light on the struggles of workers, ranging from those employed in the more traditionally proletarian sectors of sugar, transport, textiles, and utilities to those in shops, department stores, and white-collar professions in offices and banks. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources including material from local and provincial archives, interviews with veterans of the labor and revolutionary movements, clandestine publications, leaflets, pamphlets, and other political ephemera encompassing previously unused collections from activists’ personal archives, the book offers a rich and detailed account of labor activism in 1950s Cuba. This activism, often undertaken at considerable risk to its protagonists, took multiple forms, from slowdowns, walkouts, and solidarity strikes to mass meetings and street demonstrations, to sabotage and the formation of clandestine cells that would form the basis of the workers’ section (sección obrera) of the guerrilla movement. Thus, for example, we see railway workers in Guantánamo developing the tactics of movimiento obrero beligerante (trade unionism on a war footing), which combined mass action with acts of sabotage, an approach that led telephone workers to cut phone lines, sugar workers to burn fields, and railway workers to derail strikebreaking trains during strikes. Further west, in Matanzas, we see a textile workers’ strike leading to the complete shutdown of the city, with female workers in the Woolworth’s store playing a central role in enforcing the ciudad-muerta (city-wide general strike) in defiance of state security forces who attempted to force them to reopen the store.3 And in Oriente Province, we see mass demonstrations and a general strike initiated in response to the murder of Frank País, one of the leaders of the Movimiento Revolucionario 26 de Julio (MR-26-7, Revolutionary Movement of July 26), which constituted probably the biggest public demonstration of opposition during the entire Batista dictatorship. As Cushion argues, this strike, so often characterized as spontaneous, suggests the existence of a high level of clandestine organization that was able to react quickly and seize an opportunity without requiring orders to do so.4
This attention to local contexts constitutes one of the many contributions of this book. Looking beyond Havana to consider actions right across the island, Cushion highlights the existence of an energetic and independent milieu of local labor activism, acting autonomously from, and indeed in defiance of, the central labor leadership. For example, sugar workers at the Delicias y Chaparra mills in Las Tunas undertook strike action on their own terms after the mujalista union officials melted away at the first sign of trouble. These workers organized themselves in the absence of their official leaders by holding daily mass meetings, despite the presence of Rural Guardsmen on horseback with drawn sabers.5 In Santiago, members of the local PSP, the communist Partido Socialista Popular (Popular Socialist Party), acted in defiance of direct instructions from the leadership in Havana, calling strikes to support the November 1956 Granma landing by MR-26-7 rebels, an action considered adventurist by the party’s national leadership.6 This attention to local traditions of activism, local networks, and solidarities, and local responses to national events, contributes to a more variegated picture of working-class activism that highlights the differences and tensions between and within the trade union and political leadership and the rank and file, as well as between the capital and the provinces. It also helps to explain the different outcomes across different sectors and regions, for example, contributing to our understanding of why strikes in some sectors succeeded in achieving their goals while others were defeated. Hence Cushion’s regionally differentiated analysis of the August 1957 strike suggests that it was more effective in areas where the M-26-7 and the PSP had a history of established collaboration.7
Taken together, the workers’ struggles provide a compelling account of how organized labor contributed directly and indirectly to help shape the course of revolutionary struggle in 1950s Cuba. As Cushion depicts so vividly here, workers provided valuable material support for the rebel guerrillas in a number of ways, including organizing significant strike action in support of the Granma landing and armed uprising in Santiago. Workers in shops, warehouses, and distribution depots proved valuable by large-scale pilfering of essentials, railway workers were able to move those supplies under the noses of the police, and bus drivers formed propaganda distribution networks, while telephone operators eavesdropped on police conversations, providing vital intelligence for those more directly engaged in the armed struggle.8 Others organized clandestine networks involved in acts of sabotage such as derailing an armored train carrying soldiers sent to protect the vital railway system, and helping disaffected soldiers to desert. Such actions depended on a high degree of organization that reached its apotheosis in the revolutionary general strike of January 1, 1959. Overlooked in much of the literature, this strike is reassessed here for its decisive contribution to the triumph of the revolution, securing the capital, heading off a potential army coup, and ensuring the victory of the revolutionary forces. This analysis aligns with Castro’s own estimation of the strike’s significance. Thus, for Cushion, the final victory of the revolutionary forces should be viewed as the result of a combination of armed guerrilla action and mass support.
Cushion’s analysis also casts a fresh eye on working-class politics in the period, assessing the relationship between organized labor and the two main organizations seeking to mobilize the working class: the PSP and the M-26-7. In so doing, he brings a new perspective to both, highlighting for example how local traditions of labor militancy directly contributed to the development of the M-26-7’s network of clandestine workplace cells (the secciónes obreras), and showing how mistakes made at the leadership level derived partly from their lack of experience of labor organizing, contributing to the failure of the general strike called for April 9, 1958. And though the PSP has often been considered a latecomer to the revolutionary struggle, Cushion underscores the immense contribution made by rank-and-file communists in sustaining levels of working-class discontent in areas where they had influence, often at considerable risk to their lives. Meticulously tracing the evolution of the relationship between the M-26-7 and the PSP, this book provides a much more nuanced picture of the internal debates within and between these two organizations, the points of commonality and difference in their respective approaches to confronting the Batista regime, and the local specificities informing the mixture of competition and collaboration that characterized relations between the two. Cushion’s detailed analysis of joint endeavors such as the Comités de Unidad Obrera and the Frente Obrero Nacional Unido (FONU) suggests that the coming together of the M-26-7 and the PSP started at the working-class base of both organizations. Local grassroots collaboration between PSP and M-26-7 members in the workplace provided a solid base for unity on which to construct the attempted national organization of a workers’ united front.9
In foregrounding the courageous struggles of Cuban workers and their families in the face of increasing state brutality, this rich and engaging book makes a welcome addition to the literature on the Cuban Revolution.
— KATE QUINN, Institute of the Americas, University College, University of London, June 2015
INTRODUCTION
The fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, in 2009, was marked by the appearance of two films: Che and Ciudad en Rojo.1 The first, described as “a grand Hollywood war movie,” depicts the revolution as the work of a band of heroic guerrillas with little or no reference to the ordinary people of the island.2 The second, a Cuban production, shows a day in the life of Santiago de Cuba during the final days of the Batista dictatorship. It portrays the brutal state terror, the organization of the underground resistance and its relationship with the rebel army, as well as the political disagreements and class tensions within the revolutionary movement. These two films represent divergent views of the Cuban insurrection: that of the heroic guerrilla struggle, which is the one most widely held, and that of the middle-class urban underground resistance, which has more recently come to the fore. However, archival research has revealed an additional dimension to the struggle that has been almost universally ignored, the participation of militant organized labor.
Over the years, the Instituto de Historia de Cuba (IHC)
