Castro and the Cuban revolution
By Paul Hampton Paul Hampton assesses Fidel Castro’s legacy — the nature of the 1959 revolution and the social and political changes Cuba is now experiencing. The overthrow of Batista in the last days of 1958 was a popular revolution that socialists and radicals everywhere supported. Batista had made Cuba a vassal of the US and held down the Cuban working class with repression and a compliant union bureaucracy. The opposition to Batista included Castro’s July 26 Movement (M26J), which had fought a guerrilla struggle for two years, the old bourgeois autentico and ortodoxo parties, the students...