9781422279816

still maintaining its tight grip on political power? Or would Castro’s reform program inevitably cause the upending of Cuba’s repressive, one-party political system? The Cuban Revolution Though independent since 1902, Cuba has had very little expe- rience with democratic governance. Instead, dictatorships have been the rule. Cuba’s lone period of sustained and stable democracy, which began in 1940, ended just 12 years later. In 1952, Fulgencio Batista—the former chief of staff of the Cuban army—seized power in a coup and cancelled upcoming elections. Initially, Batista enjoyed the support of the United States. He was extremely corrupt, skimming vast sums of money from the Cuban budget and even taking a cut of the profits generat- ed by the American organized-crime families he permitted to operate in Havana. But Batista maintained a friendly climate for foreign businesses, and American corporations had large holdings in Cuba. These included sugar mills, cattle ranches, oil refineries, mines, banks, hotels, stores, and more. Overall, Cuba was relatively prosperous. It had a sizeable middle class, in addition to an upper class consisting of busi- ness executives, large landowners, and the like. But hundreds of thousands of Cubans—mostly landless people in rural areas—lived in desperate poverty. Batista’s coup sparked a failed uprising in 1953. It was led by Fidel Castro, a lawyer by training. After serving a brief prison sentence, Castro planned another uprising, which began in December 1956. Castro and a small group of revolutionaries

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The Opening of Cuba, 2008-Present