Fidel Castro: Encyclopedia II - Fidel Castro - Early years in power

Fidel Castro - Early years in power

On January 1, 1959, Castro's forces entered Havana and on January 5 the liberal law professor José Miró Cardona created a new government with himself as prime minister and Manuel Urrutia Lleó as president. On January 8 Castro himself arrived in Havana and assumed the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In February, however, Miró resigned and Castro assumed the role nearly a month later after initially rejecting the offer; and in July, Urrutia resigned and was replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, a lawyer more sympathetic to Castro's ideology.

Initially the United States was quick to recognize the new government. On April 15 Castro went on a famous twelve day unofficial tour of the US, where he met Malcolm X, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru while staying in a cheap hotel in Harlem - an example of his tendency to 'mix with the people', as he later also did in Panamá, where he used the service entrance of the hotel more than the front door. He subsequently visited the White House and met with Vice President Richard Nixon. Sometime during this period Castro spoke for his first time to members of the Council of Foreign Relations.

Castro's economic policies had caused some concerns in Washington that Castro was a Communist with an allegiance to the Soviet Union. Supposedly, President Dwight D. Eisenhower snubbed Castro, giving the excuse that he was playing golf, and left Nixon to speak to him. Following the meeting, Nixon remarked that Castro was "either incredibly naïve about Communism or under Communist discipline — my guess is the former. " Castro spent two days in Canada, initiating a friendship with future Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Friction with the US soon developed when the new government began expropriating property owned by major US corporations (United Fruit in particular), proposing compensation based on property tax valuations which, for many years, the same companies had managed to keep artificially low. In May, following Eisenhower's ban on the importation of Cuban sugar into the US, Cuba nationalized some $850 million worth of US property and businesses. Castro consolidated control of the nation by nationalizing industry, expropriating property owned by Cubans and non-Cubans alike, collectivizing agriculture, and enacting policies which he claimed would benefit the population. These policies alienated many former supporters of the revolution among the Cuban middle and upper-classes, who made up roughly half of the Cuban population. 7% later migrated to the US, forming a vocal anti-Castro community in Miami, Florida.

In February 1960 Cuba signed an agreement to buy oil from the USSR. When the US-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, they were expropriated, and the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Castro government soon afterwards. To the concern of the Eisenhower administration, Cuba began to establish closer ties with the Soviet Union. A variety of pacts were signed between Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, allowing Cuba to receive large amounts of economic and military aid from them.

Fidel Castro - Bay of Pigs

On April 15, 1961, the day after Castro described his revolution as socialist, four Cuban airfields were bombed by A-26s bearing false Cuban markings. These bombing runs were the beginning stages of the Bay of Pigs invasion. The United States staged an unsuccessful attack on Cuba on 17 April 1961. Assault Brigade 2506, a force of about 1,400 Cuban exiles, financed and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, and commanded by Cuban Manuel Artime and CIA operatives Grayston Lynch and William Robertson, landed perhaps a hundred miles south-east of Havana, at Playa Girón on the Bay of Pigs. The CIA assumed that the invasion would spark a popular uprising against Castro; the operation itself was expected by Castro, however, and in anticipation the government rounded up perhaps 100,000 (Lynch reports 250,000) anti-Castro Cubans -at least 20,000 in Havana alone (Priestland, 2003), executed some and imprisoned the others under threat of death should the invasion succeed. Led by Black Cuban Erneido Oliva, most of the 1,200 men invasion force made it ashore; however, reserve ammunition in two US supplied support ships, the Houston and the Río Escondido, sunk by Castro Airforce Seafury propeller-driven aircraft and T-33 Jets, was lost. President Kennedy was influenced by some State Department officials including Roy Rubottom and especially his assistant William Weiland who had been involved in Castro related matters since the Bogotazo and in Cuban matters 1933 as assistant to Sumner Welles. Kennedy withdrew support for the invasion at the last minute, by cancelling several bombing sorties that could have crippled the entire Cuban airforce. The cancellation also prevented US Marines waiting off the coast from landing in support of the Cuban exiles. After three days of ferocious fighting in which about 100 invaders and perhaps 2,000 militia, perhaps 5000 according to Lynch, more died (most trapped in buses on the courseways), the rest of the invaders were captured [24]. At least nine invadors were formally executed in connection with this action, however, a number died of suffocation in an unventilated truck trailor, while Castro attributed the defeat of the invasion to his leadership.

In a nationally broadcast speech on 1961-12-02, Castro declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism. On February 7, 1962, the US imposed an embargo against Cuba, which included a general travel ban for American tourists.

Fidel Castro - October Crisis

Tensions between Castro and US heightened during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which nearly brought the USSR and the US to direct confrontation. Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to a US invasion. After consultations with his military advisors, he met with a Cuban delegation led by Raúl Castro in July in order to work out the specifics. It was agreed to deploy Soviet R-12 MRBMs on Cuban soil; however, American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance discovered the construction of the missile installations on 15 October 1962 before the weapons had actually been deployed. The US government viewed the installation of Soviet nuclear weapons 90 miles south of Miami as an aggressive act and a threat to US security. As a result, the US publicly announced its discovery on 22 October 1962, and implemented a quarantine around Cuba that would actively intercept and search any vessels heading for the island.

In a personal letter to Khrushchev written on 27 October 1962, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike against the United States if Cuba were invaded, but Khrushchev rejected any first strike response (pdf). Soviet field commanders in Cuba were, however, authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if attacked by the United States. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US commitment not to invade Cuba and an understanding that the US would remove American MRBMs targeting the Soviet Union from Turkey and Italy.

Fidel Castro - Relations with the outside world

Following the establishment of diplomatic ties to the Soviet Union, and the Cuban Missile Crisis,, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military and economic aid. Castro was able to build a formidable military force with the help of Soviet equipment and military advisors. The KGB kept in close touch with Havana, and Castro tightened Communist Party control over all levels of government, the media, and the educational system, while developing a Soviet-style internal police force.

Castro's alliance with the Soviet Union caused something of a split between him and Guevara, who took a more pro-Chinese view following ideological conflict between the CPSU and the Maoist CPC. In 1966, Guevara left for Bolivia in an ill-fated attempt to stir up revolution against the country's government.

On 23 August 1968 Castro made a public gesture to the Soviet Union that reaffirmed their support in him. Two days after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to repress the Prague Spring, Castro took to the airwaves and publicly denounced the Czech rebellion. Castro warned the Cuban people about the Czechoslovakian 'counter-revolutionaries', who "were moving Czechoslovakia towards capitalism and into the arms of imperialists". He called the leaders of the rebellion "the agents of West Germany and fascist reactionary rabble." In return for his public backing of the invasion, at a time when many Soviet allies were deeming the invasion an infringement of Czechoslovakia's sovereignty, the Soviets bailed out the Cuban economy with extra loans and an immediate increase in oil exports.

On November 4, 1975, Castro ordered the deployment of Cuban troops to Angola in order to aid the Marxist MPLA-ruled government against the UNITA opposition forces, which gained the support of the government of South Africa. Moscow aided the Cuban initiative with the USSR engaging in a massive airlift of Cuban forces into Angola. On this, Nelson Mandela has remarked "Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom, and justice." [25] Cuban troops were also sent to Marxist Ethiopia to assist Ethiopian forces in the Ogaden War with Somalia in 1977. In addition, Castro extended support to Marxist Revolutionary movements throughout Latin America, such as aiding the Sandinistas in overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979.

When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in 1989, the close relationship between Moscow and Havana was strained by Gorbachev's implementation of economic reforms. "We are witnessing sad things in other socialist countries, very sad things," stated Castro in November 1989, in reference to the reforms that were sweeping such communist allies as the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland. [26] The Soviet Union had subsidized the Cuban economy for decades, paying $1.23 per pound for sugar while the world market price of which had been steady between 17 and 22 cents per pound. According to Castro, "the sun vanished from the horizon when the Soviet Union collapsed." Cuba entered what it called the "Special Period". [27]. The effects were immediate and devastating.

Fidel Castro - Remaining as president

Castro's leadership of Cuba has remained unchallenged throughout the years due to the legality of a one-party system. His supporters claim this is because the population believes Castro is responsible for improved living conditions. Castro's opponents believe his continued leadership is due to the coercion, repression and jailing of dissidents.

In 2005, American business and financial magazine Forbes listed Castro among the world's richest people, with an estimated net worth of $550 million.

As a result of Forbes accusations, Castro is considering filing a lawsuit against the magazine, claiming the accusations are false and the article was meant to defame him.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early years in power", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki