By the 1950s, Cuba looked rich on paper. Sugar exports and American tourist dollars poured in.
But most Cubans never saw that money. This gap between wealth and poverty is exactly why a small guerrilla band could topple a government with an army.
Use the concept: causation: A Paper 3 essay never lists causes — it weighs them. Ask which factor was the trigger (Batista's coup) versus which created the deeper conditions for revolt (US economic control, inequality). Political, economic and social causes constantly reinforced each other.
- Political factor — Batista's 1952 coup — Fulgencio Batista, a former army sergeant who had already ruled Cuba in the 1930s–40s, seized power again in a military coup just before scheduled 1952 elections, cancelling democracy and ruling as a dictator dictator.
- Political factor — corruption and repression — Batista's government was riddled with bribery and worked closely with American organized-crime figures who ran Havana's casinos. His secret police tortured and murdered opponents, which turned even moderate Cubans against him.
- Economic factor — US domination — American companies owned roughly 40% of Cuba's sugar land, plus most of its utilities, mines and railways. Profits flowed to US shareholders, not Cuban workers, and the US government backed Batista because he protected those investments.
- Economic factor — one-crop dependency — Cuba's economy relied almost entirely on sugar. When world sugar prices dropped, unemployment and rural poverty spiked, especially in the 'dead season' when cane cutters had no work for months at a time.
- Social factor — inequality and neglect — Havana had glittering hotels and casinos, but the countryside (the campesinos campesinos) lacked schools, clinics and land ownership. This political-economic mix made rural Cubans natural recruits for a revolution promising land and dignity.
So which cause mattered most? Political scientists and historians usually argue economic dependency on the US made Batista's corruption unbearable — but you could equally argue that without Batista's specific brutality after 1952, no revolt would have organized so fast.
A strong essay picks a side and defends it with evidence.
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Fidel Castro was a young lawyer, not a career soldier. His first attempt to overthrow Batista — an attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953 — was a disaster and he was jailed.
'History Will Absolve Me': But prison gave him a platform, and his 1953 trial speech, 'History Will Absolve Me', became the revolution's manifesto.
1953 — Moncada attack
Castro leads roughly 135 fighters against the Moncada army barracks in Santiago. It fails badly, and Castro is captured and imprisoned, but the attempt makes him a symbol of resistance.
1955–56 — Exile and return
Released in an amnesty, Castro flees to Mexico. There he meets Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, an Argentine doctor turned revolutionary theorist. In late 1956 they sail back to Cuba on the small boat Granma with 82 fighters.
1956–58 — Guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra
Nearly wiped out on landing, the survivors regroup in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Using hit-and-run guerrilla guerrilla tactics, they slowly win over peasant support and grow their forces.
1958–59 — Collapse of Batista's regime
Guevara leads a column that captures the city of Santa Clara in late December 1958, cutting the island in two. Batista, realizing the war is lost, flees Cuba on 1 January 1959, and Castro's forces enter Havana in triumph.
Moncada fails → Mexico exile → Granma landing → Sierra Maestra guerrilla war → Santa Clara falls → Batista flees.
Guevara's role wasn't just military: Che Guevara also shaped the revolution's ideology, pushing it toward Marxism and pan-Latin American revolution. His theory of foco foco — that a small dedicated guerrilla group could ignite revolution without waiting for a 'ready' population — became hugely influential across Latin America.
Argument: revolution was primarily political
- Batista's coup destroyed the constitutional path to change, leaving armed revolt as the only option
- Castro's own goals in 1959 were framed as restoring democracy and the 1940 constitution, not communism
- The regime's use of torture and censorship, not just poverty, drove the middle class to support Castro
Argument: revolution was primarily economic/social
- Guerrilla support came overwhelmingly from poor campesinos promised land reform, not urban liberals
- US corporate control of sugar, utilities and mines made genuine reform impossible under Batista
- Castro's most popular early promises (land, wages, housing) were economic and social, not constitutional
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Winning a guerrilla war is one thing. Ruling a country for over 45 years is another.
How Castro survived: Castro's Cuba survived a US-backed invasion, a nuclear crisis, and the collapse of its main ally — largely because his policies rewarded loyal groups while crushing any organized opposition.
Political and economic policies
- One-party communist state — By 1961 Castro declared Cuba a socialist state; by 1965 the Communist Party of Cuba was the only legal party, with Castro as First Secretary controlling government, military and party together.
- Nationalization nationalization — Sugar mills, banks, and US-owned companies were seized, mostly without compensation, which triggered a US trade embargo in 1960 that pushed Cuba economically and militarily toward the USSR.
- Soviet alliance and subsidy — Moscow bought Cuban sugar above world prices and supplied cheap oil, effectively subsidizing the economy for three decades. This support collapsed when the USSR fell apart in 1991, causing Cuba's severe 1990s 'Special Period' economic crisis.
- Central planning — The economy shifted to Soviet-style five-year plans and state control of nearly all production, which gave the government full command of jobs, wages and food distribution — and full control over who benefited.
Social policies and Cuban nationalism
Castro's most genuinely popular policies were social. A massive 1961 literacy campaign sent young volunteers into the countryside and cut illiteracy from around 25% to near zero within a year.
Free universal healthcare and education followed, along with land redistribution to peasants who had never owned soil before. These policies built real, lasting loyalty — especially among the rural poor.
Nationalism as a political tool: Castro constantly framed his rule as Cuban nationalism Cuban nationalism standing up to 'Yankee imperialism.' Surviving the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion (a failed CIA-backed exile landing) and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis let him present himself as the small island that defied the world's superpower — a narrative that boosted domestic support for decades.
Treatment of opposition
Alongside the popular reforms sat a harsh security state. Independent media was shut down, elections beyond party-approved candidates ended, and the secret police (G2) monitored dissent through neighbourhood-level Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
Thousands of political prisoners were jailed, and over a million Cubans eventually left the island rather than live under the regime — most famously during the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
| Tool of control | How it worked | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Committees for the Defense of the Revolution | Neighbourhood watch groups reporting 'counter-revolutionary' behaviour | Made organized opposition extremely risky at a local level |
| Censorship | State control of newspapers, radio and TV | Removed platforms for criticism or alternative views |
| Political imprisonment | Arrest and long detention of dissidents, journalists, some LGBT Cubans | Silenced or exiled outspoken critics |
| Mass emigration | Legal exits like Mariel (1980) and illegal rafts | Let discontented Cubans leave rather than organize at home |