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The 26th of July Movement, a socialist-nationalist campaign led by a young Fidel Castro in 1953, culimanted in the overthrow of Cuban President GeneralFulgencio Batista January 1st 1959. Comprised of Cuban political exiles, Castro, among others including Che Guevara, waged a highly publicized armed revoltagainst Batista's army using guerrilla tactics based out of the heavily forested Sierra Maestra mountains.
Aided by a highly organized student and labor movement, as well as having the support of many subsistence communities in the countryside, a two-part militaryoffensive and general strike prompted Batista to flee the island of Cuba in 1959.
The revolutionary government set up by Castro and his cadre instituted a series of land reforms, nationalizing industry (~99% of Cuban industry was U.S. ownedprior to the invasion), and infrastructure construction and modernization (roads, schools, hospitals, universities).
Castro's Cuba became almost entirely dependent on trade with the Soviet Union following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuban missile crisis, and theensuing trade embargo. The following Sovietization, or structuring of Cuba's economic and social structures similar to the Soviet Union's model,provided some benefits to Cuban citizens by increasing representation of labor, Afro-Cubans, and women in civic and social life. However, socializing allsectors of Cuban society hampered local commerce, freedom of the press, and mobility of men (but particularly women) in the Cuban political sphere.
While today many Americans remain unaware of the history of the staunch socialist republic 90 miles off our coast, I find Cuba and its revolution to be afascinating example of resistence to U.S. imperialism in the 20th century.
