Cuba: the Successful Insurgency

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Azrael
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Cuba: the Successful Insurgency

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Cuba: the Successful Insurgency
U.S. Army War College Military Studies Program Paper

Excerpt below:

The Cuban Revolution of the 1950's was a war fought literally for
the hearts and minds of the people. One man, Fidel Castro, understood
this; the other, Fulgencio Batista, did not. Although the terminology
"hearts and minds of the people" was made trite with our own experience
in the Viet Nam War, it does represent the basis for legitimate rule
and, hence, the success of the Cuban Revolution.

The legitimacy of Batista's right to rule the people of Cuba
constituted his political and military center of gravity. His inability
to secure the urban area infrastructure against insurgent attacks; the
failure of the Army to defeat a small paramilitary organization; the use
of police and military terror against civilians and rebels alike in
attempting to combat the revolution; and, the government's unwillingness
to implement the economic reforms called for in the nation's
constitution, all combined to destroy Batista's center of gravity and
invalidate his right to rule the nation of Cuba. By way of analysis, I
will briefly review some of the actions taken by both Batista and Castro
that led to this destruction.

Fidel Castro based the legitimacy of his revolt not on some remote
humanist, agrarian, or even Marxist philosophy but on the Cuban
Constitution of 1940
. Although Fulgencio Batista was the duly elected
president of the government which formalized aad instituted the 1940
Constitution, his capricious revocation of that Constitution in 1953
initiated the demise of democracy in Cuba and eventually led to his own
fall from power. The Constitution's provisions of land reform, state
provided health care, free education, and basic human rights were the
foundations upon which the Cuban people had based their expectations for
the future.
cultivate a white rose
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