amassed a collection of leaflets, pamphlets, clandestine newspapers, and similar agitational material from the 1950s, most of which were produced by typing directly on thin paper stencils for duplication by a mimeograph machine such as a Gestetner or Roneo. These evoke images of small groups of militant workers, perhaps aided by revolutionary students, meeting in the home of one of their number, secretly producing a few hundred copies of a leaflet to be passed from hand to hand at work, scattered from the windows of passing cars, or left on the seats of public transport. The written content shows a lively working-class political milieu, where the way forward was hotly debated between different tendencies, where strikes and demonstrations were commonplace, and where ordinary workers played an active part in shaping their own destiny. The number of leaflets to have survived is in itself astonishing, given that such material could be a death sentence if discovered during a police raid or at an army checkpoint. As yet no one had made a systematic examination of this remarkable collection.
The center of such action was in all likelihood not Havana, but rather Oriente Province, which was distant from the seat of power and the heartland of the guerrilla struggle. I chose, therefore, to explore in particular detail the provincial archives in Manzanillo, Guantánamo, and Santiago de Cuba. These largely untapped reservoirs of locally produced material testify to a revolutionary process far from the capital in which party political lines often counted for less than workplace and neighborhood solidarity. The written documents from these and other holdings form the bedrock of this study, yet they required contextualizing, and this came from interviewing surviving veterans in different parts of the country. It was an honor to speak to these remarkable men and women; I hope I have done justice to their story.
This book will examine the activities of the organized working class in the period leading to the victory of the Cuban revolutionary forces in 1959. An analysis of these activities in the Cuban case can add to the wider debate about the relationship between working-class mass action and the armed struggle in the context of opposition to an authoritarian regime. The political economy of Cuba in the 1950s will be examined to determine the extent to which economic considerations affected the course of the revolution. The book will analyze why some groups of workers supported the rebels from an early stage, while others stayed loyal to their official leaders or to the Communist Party. The role of the Communist Party has been shrouded in an ideological mist arising from the Cold War. An examination of the party’s public statements and details from primary sources about the manner in which party members applied these policies paint a more nuanced picture than is usually given.
It is not my intention here to deny the importance of the guerrillas or the middle-class underground in the fight to overthrow Batista, but rather to argue that neither view presents a complete picture, that there was a third arm to the rebel forces, a revolutionary labor movement. The findings of my research clearly suggest there has been a silencing of this third dimension, intentional or otherwise. One obvious reason for this is that the story of a few heroic guerrillas overcoming seemingly impossible odds makes for a romantic story, whereas the recounting of dogged labor activity does not have the same appeal. In the early days of revolutionary Cuba, this romance was a weapon in the hands of the more radical elements in the leadership in their battles with those, often associated with the urban underground, who wished to slow the pace of change. From the other end of the political spectrum, the idea that the Cuban Revolution was the work of a few individuals without mass support also suited its enemies in the United States, and this helps explain their apparent belief that the death of Fidel Castro was all that was required to reverse the changes.
This book therefore challenges the notion that the revolution emerged from a rural guerrilla struggle in which the organized working class played no role and that the workers who did participate did so as individual citizens rather than as part of an organized labor movement. It will document substantial labor organizing, which played a pivotal role in key places and times in the 1950s, especially outside Havana and markedly in eastern Cuba. It is my intention to give organized labor its due credit for the role it played in the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship.
By focusing on the period from 1952 to 1959, my emphasis is on the insurrection rather than the outcome of the Cuban Revolution and thus the eventual effect on the structure of the state, the economy, and society. Nevertheless, understanding the social forces involved in the insurrection phase of a revolution is essential to an understanding of the subsequent changes in the structure of society. It is a question of examining the level of participation of workers in the events of the time, acting collectively rather than as individual citizens, and analyzing how workers’ class interests fitted into the wider class structure, national politics and the economy.
A picture emerges of a vibrant clandestine milieu in which working-class militants debated, collaborated, and competed for influence, but always in the context of organizing active opposition to the dictatorship. In order to recount the events considered vital to the analysis of the role of the Cuban working class in the insurrection, this narrative is organized on a chronological basis. Such an approach requires a periodization in order to be intelligible and, in terms of working-class politics and activity, we can divide the Batista years into distinct periods, divided by qualitative changes in the level of state repression. Tony Kapcia, writing about fifty years of the Cuban Revolution, punctuates this account by the various crises affecting Cuban society.3 This approach also proved useful as a method of dividing the period leading up to the rebel victory. Of course, it may be argued that the period was one of continual crisis, but within this, there were peaks and troughs that provoked changes and turns in the tactics of both the government and the rebels.
From Batista’s coup in March 1952 until the fraudulent elections of November 1954, little changed from the days of Batista’s predecessor, President Carlos Prío Socarrás. The fall in the price of sugar caused a crisis in the economy, and from the end of 1954 until the end of 1956, there was a concerted effort by the government and the employers to increase productivity by reducing workers’ wages and decreasing staffing levels. This was achieved by a combination of collaboration with the trade union bureaucracy and relatively low levels of state repression, with police habitually beating workers with clubs and dousing them with fire hoses but with very few deaths. The arrival of the Granma and the start of the rebel insurgency was a crisis for the regime, whose approach changed in early 1957 as the forces of the state began to confront the armed guerrillas in the mountains. From this point in time, the regime used death squads, routine torture, and “disappearances” in an attempt to make organized resistance cower to its rule. April 1958 proved to be a crisis point for the rebels as their attempt at a general strike failed disastrously. This crisis caused both the Movimiento Revolucionario 26 de Julio (MR-26-7, Revolutionary Movement 26 of July) and the communist Partido Socialista Popular (PSP, Popular Socialist Party) to rethink their tactics and their relationship with each other. It also gave increased confidence to the government and, during the summer and autumn of 1958, Batista launched a full-scale military attack on the rebels in their mountain strongholds. The failure to destroy the rebel army was the regime’s final crisis and created a situation in which a successful general strike would force the dictator from office. The chapter structure follows this periodization, with chapters 1 and 2 forming an introductory background, chapters 3 and 4 examining the period 1954 to 1956, chapters 5 and 6 dealing with 1957 to mid-1958, chapter 7 the second half of 1958, and chapter 8 taking the history into the first year of the revolutionary government.
Chapter 1 examines the nature and history of the Cuban working class, its political and industrial organization, informed by
