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GLOBAL STUDIES 611 JOHN ALAN SUTHERLAND 2980775 DR. DEBAL SINGHAROY SEPTEMBER 12th 2011 REVISED RESEARCH ESSAY

MOBILIZING THE MARGINALIZED RURAL POOR AND PEASANTS FOR REVOLUTION: FIDEL CASTROS JULY 26TH SIERRA MOVEMENT IN ORIENTE PROVINCE

Peasant Humanism Without the support of the rural peasants of the Oriente mountains Fidel Castros Cuban Revolution would never have succeeded in toppling the dictatorship of Batista nor have even survived its initial setbacks. But why did these rural peasants-many of whom were illiteratesupport Castro and his July 26th movement, in spite of great personal risk to themselves from the oppressive police and army of the dictator? The answer I suggest lies in the fact that collectively as a group and individually peasants constitute the party of humanity (Wolf, 1969) because they believe in the basic qualities of humanism. Humanism as a universal quality is closely linked with peasants (Heyman, 2005). Whenever peasants engage in rebellion or revolution it is as an agent (Wolf, 1969) of forces larger than themselves and the revolutions are usually won by non-peasant men of statist vision (Wolf, 1969) who in turn implement policies that disrupt and even harm the peasants. The peasants role is essentially tragic: his efforts to undo a grievous (existing) present only usher in a vaster, more uncertain future (Wolf, 1969). A peasant believes that that the solutions to the age old problems of hunger and disease and the ancient monopolies of power and received wisdom will yield to human effort to widen participation and knowledge (Wolf, 1969). To the extent peasants join revolutions based on these hopes their effort is not just tragic but to that extent theirs is the party of humanity (Wolf, 1969). When Castros small band of rebels were able to convince peasants that their revolutionary goals were humanistic they gained their support. There was no social movement among the Oriente peasants in the theoretical sense of an ideology strong enough to collectively mobilize a large force of peasants to rise up and rebel. Peasants came to support Castro as individuals and not as a group. Castro was the charismatic leader who needed the help of the peasants to survive in a hostile environment and by showing the humanist side of his rebellion to

peasants as a group he was able to gain their support. He showed the humanist side of his July 26th movement by accepting and later putting into policy universal goals common to all peasants and marginalized people- the demand to redress injustices and alleviate poverty through a fairer distribution of the countrys wealth including land reform. The Initial Goals of Castros Rebels What were the aims of Castros rebels when they arrived in Oriente province? How was Castro able to bring his goals in line with those of the peasants? On December 2nd , 1956 Fidel Castro and his July 26th group of dedicated revolutionaries, after crossing from Mexico, left their shipwrecked ship Granmaon the south coast of Oriente Province, Cuba. The groups social identity consisted almost entirely of intellectuals, professionals, students, liberals and other urban activists and idealists whose main goal was to liberate Cuba from the repressive dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista; the former army sergeant who had seized power in Cuba in 1952. Castro and his followers identified themselves with other dissident segments of the Cuban population whose main aims were to restore democracy to the country and return civil rights to Cubans. These other groups known as the opposition of the lowlands or llano were urban based either in Cuba or within Cuban exile groups in the United States. None of these groups addressed the poverty of the rural labour and peasant proletariat. Even Castro and his group did not realize at the time that the only way they would be able to eventually drive out the dictator would be by mobilizing the support of the large rural proletariat (Wolf, 1969) marginalized not only by the dictatorship of Batista but by the preceding liberal democratic bourgeoisie governments. The Communist Party had refused to support Castros movement labelling it a Blanquist strategy involving a relatively small number of resolute ,well organized men seeking to seize the helm of state and hold it by energetic and unrelenting action until they had succeeded in drawing the mass of the

people into the revolution by marshalling them around a small band of leaders (Wolf, 1969, p. 269). The events which unfolded in Oriente after the landing forced Castro and his followers to seek the support of the rural peasants simply in order to survive and to establish a base from which to operate. This interaction between the urban rebels and the rural peasants would transform the identity of the Castro led revolution to one focusing on addressing the marginalization of the Cuban rural poor. The eventual result would be an evolvement of Castros July 26th sierra movement from a proletarian leadership of a bourgeois-democratic revolution to a proletarian leadership of an alliance with the peasantry and other exploited groups (Forgacs, 1988, p. 422). It was this alliance which ultimately led to the paramountcy of Castro and his force over the other revolutionary movements within and outside Cuba. The Significance of Che Guevara The ideology of Che Guevara aided the Castro sierra movement to shift from an elite band centered on defeating a dictator to a movement with economic, social and political policies designed to attract peasant support. Guevara had been previously involved in a social movement to help the poor through his participation in the short lived popular government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. That government had been freely elected with the goals to deal with the problems of rural and urban poverty (Guevara, 2009). It was eliminated by an American CIA backed military coup when it sided with the poor. Guevara, an Argentinean doctor, would later record the changes of the July 26th movement in Oriente from an elite group of conspirators to a full fledged social movement exhibiting its own collective mobilization of the rural peasants under the charismatic leadership of Fidel Castro with an ideology close to that of

Marxism/Leninism. Guevara was familiar with Antonio Gramscis Letters from Prison which were published in 1950 in Argentina by Editorial Lautaro which was associated with the Communist Party of Argentina (PCA) (Burgos, 2002). Gramsci had predicted that the proletariat can only become hegemonic, a ruling class, if it can overcome its economic selfinterest and win the support of the poor peasantry (Forgacs, p. 422). It was only when they had accepted the principles that the guerrilla fighter is fighting for the masses; that he or she is a social reformer, who takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors; and fights to change the social system that keeps all his brothers in ignominy and poverty (Deutschmann, 1997) did the poor peasant and marginalized classes support Castros revolutionary movement. Geographic and Economic Isolation of the Oriente Peasants Why had Castro and his rebels sought Oriente as the place to start their revolution? Oriente, with its major city of Santiago, is located at the most easterly end of the island of Cuba. It is separated from Havana and the rest of the country by the Sierra Maestra, a massif rising along the south coast, running eighty miles on a west-east line and some thirty miles at its broadest north-south stretch. The spine of that mountain range averages 4,500 feet in altitude and its highest point is over 6,000 feet. Its terrain is forbidding mountain peaks and valleys, forest and boulders, rivers and creeks-even today the region is sparsely populated. In 1956 it had no paved highways and the dirt roads were often impassable because of drenching rains that turned them into ribbons of deep, red mud (Szulc, 1986, p. 378). In short a perfect place from which to launch a rebellion. Many of the rebellions against the Spanish in the 1800s had been started in Oriente because of its isolation from the rest of the country.

The Need for Land Reform The peasantry of the Oriente mountain area was economically and culturally distinct from the rural proletariat of the sugar plantations in the Cuban plains (Blackburn, 1963). The Sierra Maestra served as a refuge to all those poor rural workers who struggled daily against the landlords. They came to the Oriente as squatters on land belonging to the state or some landowner, searching for a piece of land which will bring them some wealth. They had to fight continuously against the exactions of the soldiers, always allied with the land owners. The landowners didnt let anyone else work the land: it was all theirs and the peasants had no way out without a revolution (Szulc, p. 389). The Need to Survive But first the Castro rebels had to reach the mountains from the coast and then find a way to survive in this mountainous area. The plans made by the rebels while they organized in Mexico seemed to be unravelling fast following their landing. There was no mass uprising of dissidents in Oriente, as expected on news of the rebel landing. To the contrary police and army forces of the dictator Batista had been alerted to Castros landing and quickly began a search for him and his group. Cubans had known Castro for years as a loud and ineffectual plotter, a loser (Szulc, p. 19) especially after his abortive attack on the Moncada army barracks on July 26, 1953 (Wolf, 1969, p. 268) . There was a feeling that this adventure might also end in failure. The goal of these mainly urban rebels had been to start a revolution from a base as far away as possible from Havana where the dictator Batista had his base of power including the headquarters of his army and police . The rebel groups belief (and that of its fledgling national directorate in Cuba)

was that the population of this distant province would rise up in armed rebellion once the landing was made known because of widespread dislike, among the young and educated classes, of Batistas policies of crushing human rights and suspending democratic freedoms. The rebellion almost ended before it even began when Batistas troops ambushed the rebels on December 6th as they left the coast, killing or capturing all except Castro, his brother Raul, Che Guevara and a handful of others who were fortunate to escape with peasant help into the mountainous terrain of the Sierra Maestra. Castro and the Elite Class Faced with the reality that to survive they would have to rely upon support from the areas peasant class Castro and the other members of his movement sought to mobilize the peasants of the Sierra Maestra to support his movement. While many believe that peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain (Fanon, 1963, p. 48) there was nothing in the background of Fidel Castro to suggest that he had previously considered the Cuban peasantry as the backbone of his revolutionary plans. In fact little in Castros life to that point showed an interest in leading a peasant backed revolution to bring about changes to the Cuban political, economic and social systems. His father was a Spanish immigrant who had established himself initially as a small farmer and then as a labour boss supplying labour to neighbouring ranches and sugar cane fields. Fidel learned from his father how to be an enforcer, able to mobilize impoverished men to work in brutal conditions for long hours and criminally low pay (Symmes, 2007, p. 87). Angel Castro, on one occasion, when imported Haitian workers went on strike refusing to cut sugar cane at the price offered, rode in among them on horseback beating them with the flat of his machete (Symmes, p. 88). By the 1940s the elder Castro had acquired control of 26,000 acres of ranch lands, the second biggest

landholding in Oriente. He had become rich enough to send his three sons to the very conservative Jesuit school in Santiago, Oriente-the Colegio de Dolores (Symmes, p. 88). Castro and his rich ranching family were products of a economic system which saw control of the agricultural economy in Cuba held by large landowners including many American enterprises. Since a large proportion of American-dominated agricultural economy lay in the cultivation and refinement of sugar which was a seasonal crop, Cuban farm labourers were subject to the seasonal and market fluctuations of a spasmodic employment (Tanter, 1967). These factors created a large rural labour class who were dependent on low wages, seasonal employment and subsistence farming of marginal lands for survival. The Rebellion seen as a Conspiracy Most scholars have described Castros Cuban Revolution as an example of the conspiracy model and an illustration of processes by which conspiracy can develop into an internal war (Gurr, 1970, p. 344). Some have described it as a conspiratorial coup detat, the planned work of a tiny elite fired by an oligarchic, sectarian ideology (Stone, 1966, p. 163). Certainly in the middle 1950s those who were most intensely discontented with the Batista dictatorship were the students and the bourgeoisie who had been deprived of political liberties and conventional means of political participation by the military coup. Castro himself, a lawyer in Havana at the time, had planned to run as a candidate for one of the old line liberal bourgeoisie parties ( the Ortodoxo party) (Wolf, p. 268) but the Batistas coup prevented that election. Almost all of the rebel force that accompanied Castro on the Granma were members of this politically discontented bourgeoisie. It was small in number but highly organized and tightly disciplined. It is clear that neither the expressed goals of the Castro rebels to topple the Batista

dictatorship and restore democratic rights nor their middle class background would be enough to attract the support of the peasant population of Oriente province. Castro as a Reformer The only inclination that Castro might be a reformer for the benefit of the poor and marginalized classes was his speech in his defence at his trial in 1953 after the movements failed attempt to seize an army barracks by force. He spoke then of the 500,000 farm labourers who live in miserable shacks, who work four months of the year and starve the rest, sharing their misery with their children, who dont have an inch of land to till and whose existence would move any heart not made of stone (Castro, 1975, p. 69). He spoke of the one hundred thousand small farmers who live and die working land that is not theirs, looking at it with the sadness of Moses gazing at the promised land, to die without ever owning it, who like feudal serfs have to pay for the use of their parcel of land by giving up a portion of its produce , who cannot love it, improve it, beautify it nor plant a cedar or an orange tree on it because they never know when a sheriff will come with the rural guard to evict them from it (Castro, p. 69). Yet despite these utterings his movement was opposed by the Communist Party of Cuba, the main voice at that time of the poor and marginalized, until after the abortive general strike of 1958. Steps to Gain Peasant Support How then did Castro gain the marginalized rural poor and peasant support? The answer to that question has often been framed to suggest that as the guerrilla activity became more successful it prompted stronger and more repressive political policies and terroristic tactics by the police and military of the Batista regime (Gurr, p. 345). This increased the political and economic discontent among those who principally bore the brunt of this repression; the rural

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poor and the peasants in the Sierra Maestra. With the support if not passive neutrality of these marginalized segments of the Oriente rural society in the mountains the rebel guerrilla movement gradually increased the scope of its control in rural areas. The 1500 man rebel force with tactical brilliance relative to the tactics of the Batista regime which its declining morale and loyaltyeffectively was able to advance towards Havana in December of 1958 aided by the flight of the dictator on New Years Eve. Within the short space of two years Castro and his rebel force had helped spread discontent against Batista among most of the Cuban population; concentrated an effective armed dissent force outside the regimes sphere of control; shifted the balance of power between the regime from one favouring Batista to one of at most equality and rapidly swinging in favour of the rebels. Organization and Mobilization of Peasants It took the organizational ability and determination of Castro and his July 26th movement to direct and control the mobilization of the rural poor and peasantry. In general the peasantry has proved no match for smaller, closely knit, better organized and technically superior groups and has, time and time again, been double-crossed or suppressed politically and by force of arms (Shanin, 1971, p. 256). Frequently peasant political action is guided by an external uniting power-elite which in this case was Castros rebel movement. Such a group provided the peasantry with the missing factor of unity on a wide scale (Shanin, p. 257). The existence of a closely knit group of activists , having its own impetus, specific organizational structure, aims and leadership- a group for which the peasantry is an object of leadership or manipulation (Shanin, p. 257). The peasantry may be used or led to achieve its own aims: yet the very definition of aims is in the hands of qualitatively distinct leaders. The peasantrys weak influence on such leaders seems to make the elite groups dynamics appear in purer form. On the

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other hand peasant action may take the form of passivity. The influence of conservative peasant apathy has also many times proved decisive for the victory of the establishment over the revolutionaries (Shanin, p. 258). Army and guerrilla actions play a crucial role in the political life of the peasants. These actions represent the peasantry as class-for-itself. The professional rebels, nationwide ideological and organizational cohesion, their stability and zeal and their ability to work out a long term strategy may enable them to unite the peasantry, sometimes transforming its revolt into a successful revolution (SinghaRoy D. K., 2004, p. 32). Guevara referred to the small group of elite rebels who pushed the peasant mass into revolution as the foco. To him the guerrilla fighter must be a social reformer who fully dedicates himself to destroy an unjust social order to replace it with something new (Moreno, 1970). Guerrilla War as a Tool of Social Reform Guerrilla warfare is the most suitable form for the expression of armed peasant action because of its ability to dissolve itself into the sympathetic peasant mass (Shanin, p. 260). Its weaknesses : segmentation; lack of crystallized ideology and aims; and lack of stable membership; all may be overcome by an injection of a hard core of professional rebels, making the revolt into a guided action. The professional rebels nationwide ideological and organizational cohesion, their stability and zeal and their ability to work out a long term strategy may enable them to unite the peasantry, sometimes transforming its revolt into a successful revolution. Under what circumstances do peasants become revolutionary or what roles different sections of peasantry play in revolutionary situations? A peasant who owns a tiny patch of land , but depends for his livelihood mainly on sharecropping or on working as a labourer is classed as

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a poor peasant (Alvai, 1973) while a middle peasant is one who employs casual labour occasionally to cope with peak operations but does not exploit the labour of others as a rich peasant does. Agrarian Reform in Oriente The Castro rebels came to recognize that to be successful they had to take up the cause of the rural peasant whose demands are aimed primarily and almost exclusively at changing the social form of land ownership; in other words the guerrilla fighter is above all an agrarian revolutionary. He interprets the desires of the great peasant masses to be owners of the land, of their means of production, of their livestock , of all they have yearned for over the years, of what makes up their lives and will also be their grave (Deutschmann, p. 69). But the peasants will only support the revolution if the guerrilla struggle appears to them to be the expression of their class struggle. For this to happen , it is therefore necessary that the armed action of the guerrilla fighter be an echo of the social protest of the people against their oppressors, and of the aspirations of the great mass of peasants who want to change the agrarian regime. In other words, the people must understand the political significance of the guerrilla struggle and make it their own (Lowy, 1973). Castros Just Society How did the Castro rebels show that they were one with the goals and aspirations of the rural peasant poor? Firstly they had the foresight to recruit early to their cause in the sierra a peasant, Guillermo Garcia (Szulc, p. 385), a cattle buyer, who was respected by the rural poor and communities throughout the region. He was put in charge of all the peasants who joined up with the rebels. This gave a known face to the rebel cause. Secondly they established a system of

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laws in the areas they controlled meting out justice to oppressors of the poor , those who tried to use the revolution for their own ends and those who committed crimes against their own people. As well within their area they encouraged the growing of crops, the dissemination of religion by their own priest who was part of the movement. I was very moved by the warm reception that greeted me when I re-joined the column. They had just completed a peoples trial in which three informers had been tried and judged (Guevara, p. 67). The peasants fears of the rebels disappeared once Castro and his men were able to demonstrate the guerrillas kinship with them (Szulc, p. 403). Castro enforced rigid discipline among the rebels and was quick to apply revolutionary justice even to members of his own rebel group. Thirdly they brought medical aid to the areas in which they operated. I was still working as a doctor and in each little village and place I set up a consultation area. I had little medicine to offer and the clinical cases in the Sierra Maestra were all more or less the same: prematurely aged and toothless women, children with distended bellies, parasites, rickets, general vitamin deficiencies-these were the stains of the Sierra Maestra (Guevara, p. 67) poverty. Fourthly the rebels set about maintaining public order. Experience in the territory we occupy has taught us that maintaining public order is an important problem for the country (Guevara, p. 221). Overall Castro and his men tried everything to earn the confidence of the rural poor and peasants, helping them and not mistreating them. These actions were the direct opposite of the treatment the peasants received at the hands of Batistas rural guard (Szulc, p. 390). As they mobilized the rural poor and peasants to support them the July 26th movement in the sierra changed its political focus and goals. Our revolutionary war was already beginning to acquire new characteristics. The consciousness of the leaders and the combatants was growing. We were beginning to feel in our flesh and blood the need for an agrarian reform and for

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profound, essential changes in the social structure that were vital to cleanse the country (Guevara, p. 167). Overall Castro relied upon his own personal magnetism and imagination to keep the morale of his own men high and to expand the guerrilla war. This brand of subjectivism was very much alive and it worked in the mountains (Szulc, p. 403). In the free zone of the sierra which gradually expanded as the rebels became more successful the rebels gave peasants land to work. This mini land reform along with protecting peasant families from the landowners overseers and the Rural guard, applying revolutionary justice to criminals within the area of control and opening a schools and clinics they loomed as friends of the rural poor. As Guevara remarked we came to overthrow a tyrant but we discovered that this immense peasant zone, where our struggle is being prolonged is the area of Cuba thaqt needs liberation the most (Szulc, p. 433). In effect the marginalized rural poor had gained empowerment as through their alliance with the Castro rebels they were able to be involved in the formulation, implementation and evaluations of decisions determining the functioning and well being (SinghaRoy D. , 2001) of their society. Conclusion As a result of its actions to win peasant support to ensure the survival and growth of the July 26th revolutionary movement the rebels were forced to confront the basic issues of humanism of the rural poor in Cuba and to restructure their priorities to make paramount the issue of agrarian land and other social measures to empower the poor. By doing this it won the support of individual peasants which spread to a mobilization behind the Castro sierra movement of the rural and urban poor.

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