The meaning of the 26th of July in Cuba

Tomorrow is Cuba's biggest holiday, the 26th of July, when in 1953, Fidel Castro led a successful revolution of Cuba's people to topple the Fulgencio Batista Regime backed by the USA which had brought great ruin to the masses of Cuban people.

Fulgencio Batista was born in Cuba in January 16, 1901 and died in August 6, 1973. He was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944, and as its U.S.-backed military dictator from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution. In 1958, In 1940, Batista suspended the Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans. Eventually it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land in Cuba. As such, Batista's repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with both the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts.

To quell the growing discontent among the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions. These were horrible time for the vast majority of the Cuban people. These murders mounted in 1957, as Fidel Castro gained more publicity and influence. Many people were killed, with estimates ranging from hundreds to about 20,000 people killed.

Catalyzing the resistance to such tactics, for two years (December 1956 – December 1958) Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and other nationalist rebelling elements led an urban and rural-based guerrilla uprising against Batista's government, which culminated in Batista's eventual defeat by rebels under the command of Che Guevara at the Battle of Santa Clara on New Year's Day 1959. (Batista immediately fled the island with an amassed personal fortune to Portugal, and then Spain where he was staying at the time of his death from a heart attack on August 6, 1973.)

Cuba then implemented socialist policies of great benefit to its peoples especially in light of the oppression and exploitation of the previous years. The country's leadership continues to work to improve these policies.

While US relations improved drastically with Cuba under the Obama Administration and many Cubans hoped for an end to the US-led trade embargo against Cuba which sent it in to crises when its primary trading partner, the USSR collapsed in about 1993, the Trump administration continues to support the US led trade embargo against Cuba while allowing some USA tourism to Cuba. This US led embargo against Cuba provides that any country that trades with Cuba cannot then enter US waters afterwords.

As well, Cuba has carried out, and continues to carry, international solidarity projects that have improved the lives of millions of people in the poorest countries in the world, now including sending Cuban doctors to many countries around the world to defeat the Coronavirus. Cuba has also sent many Cuban agroecologists to assist farm and food movements in many countries around the world including in Africa, the Carribean and Latin America. Cuba played a major role in the defeat of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

While like all our human societies including my and our own American society which is in a variety of severe crises as I write, (We humans have much more in common than we do different despite capitalism versus socialism!!!!!) Cuba still faces many challenges, yet the good of Cuba's revolution in ousting a brutal dictatorship backed by a foreign power and many other accomplishments, including the nation's Agroecology and family farmer movement must be acknowledged, applauded, supported and learned from by we, its global power neighbor to the North.

Viva Cuba's revolution. May the Cuban people prosper and find peace. love, neighborliness and support with their northern and all neighbors. In truth, at the most profound level, are we not all one and is not the fate of our sisters and brothers in Cuba, our fate as well?