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Description
Flashcards by eloisa.mora, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by eloisa.mora
almost 8 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| Learning objectives: | Understanding how and why does Cuban revolution occurred. Having a background for understanding Castro´s Authoritarian State |
| Instructions: Study the flashcards. Write notes and do the activities indicated. | |
| Fulgencio Batista | On march 1952, Batista among some high-ranking officers, took the city of Columbia and made contact with the different leaderships of towns. With the exception of a protest in Santiago de Cuba, all leaderships accepted the military coup and follow the orders of Batista. |
| Cuba before the revolution 1 | -By the late '50s, U.S. financial interests included 90 percent of Cuban mines, 80 percent of its public utilities, 50 percent of its railways, 40 percent of its sugar production and 25 percent of its bank deposits—some $1 billion in total. -Between 1952-1954 the price of sugar declined, triggering the first of a series of recessions in the Cuban economy. - The effects of the 1934 treaty with the USA, which removed tariffs, greatly contributed to the ability of Cuban industry to develop. Consequently there was growing unemployment. |
| Assault on Moncada Barracks 1 | Castro tried to bring Batista to court to answer for the takeover, but failed, so he decided that legal means of removing Batista would never work. Castro began plotting an armed revolution in secret, attracting to his cause many other Cubans disgusted by Batista’s flagrant power grab. Castro knew that he needed two things to win: weapons and men to use them. The assault on Moncada was designed to provide both. |
| Assault on Moncada Barracks 2 | On July 26, 1953, at 6:00AM, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul led a group of approximately 120 rebels (with an additional 40 intending to take the barracks at Bayamo) in an attack on the second largest military garrison in Cuba. Despite the meticulous organization, the operation was a fiasco almost from the start. The net result of these events was the rebels being outnumbered more than 10 to 1. Nine rebels were killed in combat and eleven wounded. A handful of rebels, including Fidel Castro, escaped into the nearby countryside but were apprehended shortly thereafter. |
| “History Will Absolve Me” | The Castros and surviving rebels were put on public trial. Fidel, a trained lawyer, turned the tables on the Batista dictatorship by making the trial about the power grab. Basically, his argument was that as a loyal Cuban, he had taken up arms against the dictatorship because it was his civic duty. He made long speeches and the government belatedly tried to shut him up by claiming he was too ill to attend his own trial. His most famous quote from the trial was “History will absolve me.” He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, but had become a nationally recognized figure and a hero to many poor Cubans. In May of 1955 the Batista government, bending to international pressure to reform, released many political prisoners, including those who had taken part in the Moncada assault. |
| Activity | Try finding the complete speech of Castro, write in your notebook a quote from it. |
| Granma Yacht | Fidel and Raul Castro went to Mexico to regroup and plan the next step in the revolution. There they met up with many disaffected Cuban exiles who joined the new “26th of July Movement,” named after the date of the Moncada assault. Among the new recruits were charismatic Cuban exile Camilo Cienfuegos and Argentine doctor Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. In November, 1956, 82 men crowded onto the tiny yacht Granma and set sail for Cuba and revolution. |
| In the highlands | Batista’s men had learned of the returning rebels and ambushed them: Fidel and Raul made it into the wooded central highlands with only a handful of survivors from Mexico; Cienfuegos and Guevara were among them. In the impenetrable highlands the rebels regrouped, attracting new members, collecting weapons and staging guerrilla attacks on military targets. Try as he might, Batista could not root them out. The leaders of the revolution permitted foreign journalists to visit and interviews with them were published around the world. |
| Activity | Search for the interview made to Fidel while he was in the Highlands. Who did the interview and in what media was it published? |
| Movement gains strength | As the July 26th movement gained power in the mountains, other rebel groups took up the fight as well. In the cities, rebel groups loosely allied with Castro carried out hit-and-run attacks and nearly succeeded in assassinating Batista. Batista decided on a bold move: he sent a large portion of his army into the highlands in the summer of 1958 to try and flush out Castro once and for all. The move backfired: the nimble rebels carried out guerrilla attacks on the soldiers, many of whom switched sides or deserted. By the end of 1958 Castro was ready to deliver the knockout punch. |
| 26 July Movement popular support | It was mainly from rural areas, because of the rebel policy of treating the peasants with respect, paying for food and helping with harvest, besides execution of the peasant´s most brutal prosecutors. Support spread to urban areas where both the working class and student movements increasingly became involved in the urban resistance. Castro´s movement also gained support amongst large sections of the middle classes and the intelligentsia. Castro used the media wisely, he often staged publicity stunts and regular broadcasts by their own Radio Rebelde. |
| Cuba before the revolution 2 | “a country known mainly for dance, music, prostitutes, cigars, abortions, resort life, and pornographic movies.” -Cubans had fought vehemently for independence from Spain from the 1860s to the 1890s, but by the 20th century, the country had become beholden economically to the United States. --Not only was the economy weakening as a result of U.S. influence, but Cubans were also offended by what their country was becoming: a haven for prostitution, brothels and gambling. |
| Castro Tightens the Noose | In late 1958 Castro divided his forces, sending Cienfuegos and Guevara into the plains with small armies: Castro followed them with the remaining rebels. The rebels captured towns and villages along the way, where they were greeted as liberators. Cienfuegos captured the small garrison at Yaguajay on December 30. Defying the odds, Guevara and 300 weary rebels defeated a much larger force at the city of Santa Clara on December 28-30, capturing valuable munitions in the process. Meanwhile, government officials were negotiating with Castro, trying to salvage the situation. |
| Victory for the Revolution | Batista and his inner circle, seeing that Castro’s victory was inevitable, took what loot they could gather up and fled. Batista authorized some of his subordinates to deal with Castro and the rebels. The people of Cuba took to the streets, joyfully greeting the rebels. Cienfuegos and Guevara and their men entered Havana on January 2nd and disarmed the remaining military installations. Castro made his way into Havana slowly, pausing in every town, city and village along the way to give speeches to the cheering crowds, finally entering Havana on January 9. |
| Activity 3 | Make a graphic organizer in your notebook, identifying the causes of Cuban Revolution. After that, answer this question in your notebook:: *How does Cuban revolution compare with Russian revolution? identify its similarities and differences. |
| Activity 4 | Try finding some information about the general strike of 1958. |
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