How The Economist reported on the Cuban revolution and America’s reaction to it Part 2: 1958-59 Castro’s triumph Part 2: The Cuban revolution—and America’s reaction to it By 1958 Cuba’s civil war was intensifying. The rebels were using guerilla tactics such as bombings and kidnappings to undermine Fulgencio Batista’s regime. The dictator, clearly rattled, became only more oppressive. Corruption had hampered his attempts to diversify the economy, and American industries still dominated the island, holding sway over mining, railway-building and the sugar trade.

At the same time, public outrage was growing in the United States over its government’s support of a violent dictatorship. In March, Dwight Eisenhower’s administration suspended shipments of weapons to Batista over his failure to hold elections. Just nine months later Fidel Castro would march into Havana, declaring a rebel victory and the dawn of a new Cuba.

The second part in our archive series on the Cuban revolution examines how Castro triumphed—and why America struggled to assess what the uprising meant for its relationship with the island nation. The Economist’s reporting from 1958-59 shows the tenacity that propelled the rebels to power, and the uncertainty that followed. It also highlights the geopolitical questions raised by the revolution, which would soon lead Cuba to become a crucial front in the cold war. Nearly 70 years later, Cuba remains central to America’s interests in the region as Donald Trump attempts to loosen the grip of the communist regime Castro left behind.

Our coverage of this climactic period begins with an article on April 19th 1958. We examined not just the course of the fighting, but also what the rebels planned to do if they won power. At this point Castro was not yet an out-and-out communist; his ideological views were still ambiguous, and he regularly seemed to change his political agenda. We noted, for instance, that he had recently reneged on his previous calls for mass nationalisations and free trade unions.

The lack of clarity meant he was “struggling to show what alternative to the existing dictatorship” he could offer, we wrote. “Some sarcastic Cubans are saying that Señor Castro is only distinguished from General Batista by his beard.”The Economist’s assessment of Castro had not changed much by November 1958, when Batista held sham presidential elections in a bid to stave off growing political pressure at home and abroad.

Batista’s hand-chosen candidate, Rivero Aguero, was falsely declared the winner. We observed that “strict censorship obscured the proceedings” and “soldiers were much in evidence around the polling booths”. But we also argued that the “opposition in Cuba has not yet found its leader”. Although Castro was “extending his operations from the mountains of Sierra Maestra as far west as Las Villas province” (see map), he lacked the support of the trade unions. We wondered if might be supplanted by his brother, Raúl, who was less of a “weathercock” and was achieving success for the rebels in Oriente province.

Whatever The Economist’s misgiving about Castro, his fighters were notching up successes on the battlefield. A breakthrough came in Santa Clara, a city in central Cuba, on December 27th. Rebel forces, led by Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine revolutionary and one of Castro’s closest allies, successfully attacked an army garrison and captured a critical supply train. The victory was a sign that Batista’s hold over the armed forces, so long the fulcrum of his power, had weakened; government troops had lost the will to fight.

In the early hours of January 1st 1959 Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, and later to Portugal and Spain, where he would die in exile in 1973.

The Economist reported on Batista’s departure on January 3rd 1959. Castro was then more than 500 miles away from the capital, leading his fighters in the island’s south-east. Batista, we reported, had handed power to a military junta. Castro refused to work with it. He wanted to put in place Manuel Urrutia, a liberal judge, as provisional president. But Castro also needed to stamp his authority on the disparate forces that had risen up against Batista. We wondered whether liberals who had joined Castro’s cause could persuade him to “come to terms so that Cuba can make a fresh start with a degree of unity”.

Alas, unity was not on the minds of the victorious guerrilleros. By the time Castro entered Havana on January 8th, after a week-long victory tour across the country, his forces had begun a campaign of arrests and executions of those accused of links to the Batista regime. With Urrutia installed as president, Castro became head of Cuba’s armed forces and later also prime minister, roles that made him the country’s de-facto ruler.

The Trump administration has accused the Cuban regime of waging “political, ideological and institutional warfare” against America. It frets about the government’s links to rival powers such as China and Russia. But in early 1959 the revolution’s geopolitical consequences seemed less certain to American officials. Some in Eisenhower’s administration were convinced that Castro was anti-American and communist. Others thought the revolutionary leader might prove malleable to American pressure. This view is thought to have been prevalent at the CIA (some historians have even alleged that the CIA secretly funded the rebels during the war to try to gain their favour).

Eisenhower decided to recognise the new government swiftly. Our article on January 17th 1959 explained that the rapid decision was probably intended to quash any suggestion that America would have preferred Batista to stay in power. Pro-Batista sentiment, we noted, was especially high among American industrialists with investments on the island. In contrast, Eisenhower’s brother and advisor, Milton, and the vice-president, Richard Nixon, wanted to pursue a new foreign policy in Latin America in which America would forge closer relations with democrats rather than dictators.

But the violence of Castro’s early days in power suggested that Cuba was not headed for liberal democracy. His promises to hold elections never came to fruition. In May he announced sweeping agrarian reforms which split up large estates and stripped foreign owners of their land. In July he forced out Urrutia and other liberal ministers from the government, clamping down on any criticism of communism. America’s worst nightmare, a socialist enclave on its doorstep, was becoming a reality. ■