http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#From_Batista_to_Castro
From Batista to Castro
The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and running a distant third was Batista, who was seeking a return to office. When it became apparent that Batista had no chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952 and held power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army and of the Communists, as a “provisional president” for the next two years. In 1954, under pressure from the U.S., he agreed to elections. The Partido Auténtico put forward ex-President Grau as their candidate, but he withdrew amid allegations that Batista was rigging the elections in advance. Batista could now claim to be an elected President. His regime was marked by severe corruption and poverty. Batista's police force was well-known for their harsh tactics and violence against the population.
This changed in 1956, when a party of rebels, mostly idealistic young nationalists, including Fidel Castro, landed in a boat from Mexico and tried to start a resistance movement in the Sierra Maestra Mountains (Castro had gone to Mexico after being released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for his part in a 1953 rebel attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba). Batista’s forces killed most of the rebels, but enough survived to maintain a low-level insurgency in the mountains. In response, Batista made the mistake of launching a campaign of repression against the opposition, which only served to increase support for the insurgency.
Through 1957 and 1958 opposition to Batista grew, among the middle class and the students, in the Catholic Church and in the rural areas. The United States government imposed an arms embargo on the Cuban government on March 14, 1958. The urban trade unions, however, were under the control of either Communists or the mafia, both strong supporters (for different reasons) of Batista’s regime and attempts to organise general strikes against Batista always failed. By late 1958, the rebels had succeeded in breaking out of the Sierra Maestra and launched a general insurrection, joined by hundreds of students and others fleeing Batista’s crackdown on dissent in the cities. When the rebels captured Santa Clara, east of Havana, Batista decided the struggle was futile and fled the country to exile in Portugal and Spain. Castro’s rebel forces entered the capital on 1 January 1959.
Cuba Following Revolution
Fidel Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba in February 1959 and has held effective power in the country ever since. (As of 2006 he is the world’s longest-ruling current head of government.)
He was a constitutional liberal and nationalist, even if a radical one and his victory was generally welcomed both in Cuba and in the U.S., although the summary execution of about 500 police officers and others accused of being agents of the Batista regime, aroused immediate disquiet. During 1959 Castro’s government carried out popular measures such as land reform, the nationalization of public utilities and the ruthless suppression of corruption, including closing down the gambling industry and evicting the American mafiosi.
Unbeknown to most outsiders, however, was the powerful influence within Castro’s government of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentinian Marxist and one of Castro’s closest advisers. Guevara formed an alliance with Castro’s ambitious brother, Raúl to persuade Fidel Castro to align himself with the Communists and thus with the Soviet Union. Guevara also played the key role in persuading the Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca Calderío to abandon his hostility to Castro and work instead to gain control of the revolutionary government from within. Roca was persuaded and he informed the Soviet leadership of the possibility of winning Castro over. The Soviets at once seized the chance of gaining a political foothold in the Americas and promised unlimited aid and support if Castro declared himself for Communism.
Meanwhile, attitudes towards the Cuban revolution in the U.S. were changing rapidly.
While the Eisenhower administration had initially welcomed Batista’s fall, the nationalization of U.S. owned companies (to an estimated value of US$1 billion) and the expulsion of many political conservatives with influential friends in the U.S., aroused immediate hostility and the Cuban exiles soon became the powerful lobby group in the U.S. that they have been ever since.
Although Castro himself was not believed to be a Communist, the U.S. was well informed about the role of Guevara and the rapid warming of relations between Castro and the Cuban Communists. Thus the U.S. became increasingly hostile to Castro during 1959. This in turn served to drive Castro away from the liberal elements of his revolutionary movement and into the arms of the Communists.
In October 1959 Castro declared himself to be friendly towards Communism, though not yet a Communist himself, and the liberal and other anti-Communist elements of the government were purged, with many who had initially supported the revolution fleeing the country to join the growing exile community in Miami. In March 1960 the first aid agreements were signed with the Soviet Union. In the context of the Cold War, the U.S. saw the establishment of a Soviet base of influence in the Americas as intolerable and plans were approved to remove Castro from power (see The Cuban Project). In late 1960 a trade embargo was imposed, which naturally drove Castro further towards the Soviet alliance. At the same time the administration authorized plans for an invasion of Cuba by Florida-based exiles, timed to coincide with an anti-Castro rising. The result was the Bay of Pigs Invasion of April 1961—the rising did not take place and the invasion force was routed. This prompted Castro to clearly declare Cuba a socialist republic, and himself a Marxist-Leninist, which he did in May 1961.
