Editing Understanding Fidel Castro (section)

== Cuban Autonomy ==
 
Martí only ever saw Cuba the island colony, and he died before a Cuban ever governed the island. Yet Cuban autonomy was a consistent objective of his ideology. When Cuban finally did win independence from Spain with the aid of the United States, the U.S. quickly extended its hand to Cuban nationals expecting reciprocity. Given the subsequent growth of the North American presence on the island, in the forms of corporations, military bases and gangsters, one might have argued that Martí, who died for Cuban autonomy, actually died in vain. Many of Cuba’s subsequent leaders seemed more attached or even loyal to the U.S. than Cuba—four out of the first ten elected presidents left Cuba after their terms ended and died abroad: Gerardo Machado, José Miguel Gomez, Carlos Prío Socarrás and Fulgencio Batista.  While almost all scholars agree that Bautista was an Americam puppet, some Traditionalists still assert that Castro contradicted Martí’s vision of Cuban autonomy in engaging in armed struggle to depose another Cuban because subsequently he instituted communism.    They speculate that Martí would have rejected the resultant relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union. Revolutionary theorists, though, speciously argue that Martí embraced Marxism in order to justify Castro’s rhetorical use of Martí. Yet Castro’s decision to create a strong geopolitical rift between Cuba and the United States by adopting Communism in alliance with the Soviet Union, demonstrates that he followed Martí’s guidance in finally establishing a Cuba ideologically aloof Washington, its policy makers and the Consensus. Therefore, while the issue of Marxism  pre-occupies domestic policy debates comparing Martí to Castro, both revolutionaries saw the United States as hindering a Cuban struggle for freedom and are linked in their devotion to armed struggle and a trincheria (barricade) de ideas.
Martí wrote a manifesto known as El Manifiesto de Montecristi where he urges Cubans to rise up against the colonial powers to protect the patria. Softening for readers the tone of his decree with the rhetorical technique explained in next last section of this essay, Martí clearly outlines his own intentions to stage a violent revolt. Readers are even able to see, if a few proper nouns like Batisita and Los Estados Unidos are added, the narrative of Castro’s struggle to depose an American puppet fits right into Martí’s original decree. An excerpt from the document co-written by General Máximo Gómez reads: 
“En las formas que se dé la revolución, conocedora [del] de su desinterés, [de sus hijos] no hallará sin duda pretexto de reproche la vigilante [timidez] cobardía, que en los errores formales del [la patria] país naciente, o en [la] su poca suma visible de república, [buscase] pudiese procurar razón [para] con que negarle la sangre que le adeuda… La guerra sana y [robusta] vigorosa desde el nacer con que hoy reanuda Cuba, con todas las ventajas de su experiencia, y la victoria asegurada a las determinaciones finales, el esfuerzo excelso, jamás recordado sin unión, de [los primeros] sus inmarcesibles héroes, no es sólo hoy el piadoso anhelo de dar vida plena al pueblo que, [en] bajo la inmoralidad y ocupación crecientes de un amo inepto [Los Estados Unidos], [y codioso] desmigaja o pierde su fuerza superior en la patria sofocada o en [el] los destierros esparcidos.” 

To readers familiar with Castro and the Bautista regime that he claims provoked him, the Martí excerpt anticipates Fidel’s actions. Martí died at the beginning of the independence war between the Cuban nationalists and the Spanish loyalists (integristas). Based on the manifesto, other documents and his own fate, Martí thought he was fighting for a land which he owed his blood and that others should do the same. 
So Castro staged an attack against Batista in 1953, following Martí’s direction. The year is significant here because it signifies Castro’s love for Martí, as Martí was born 100 years before. It is well known that Castro said Martí was the “intellectual author” of the plan of attack on the Moncada Barracks in his defense speech, La Historía Me Absolverá. Less known, though, in various parts of the speech, including where he outlines what would have been his revolutionary reforms, Castro declares that many foreign holdings are rightfully Cuban. He, too, like Martí, charged Cubans to rise up against a new tyrant: “[S]omos cubanos, y ser cubano implica un deber, no cumplirlo es un crimen y es traición. Vivimos orgullosos de la historia de nuestra patria... Se nos enseñó a venerar desde temprano el ejemplo glorioso de nuestros héroes y de nuestros mártires… [por ejemplo] Martí.”  The parallels between the men’s thoughts and actions are clear, as they both fought to inch Cuba closer to autonomy. Martí and Castro both also knew that Cuba could not force the U.S. to leave on its own.
In “Nuestra América”, probably Martí’s most widely read work during his lifetime, Martí charged Latin Americans to block themselves from the US domination with ideas, and Castro did just that in shifting the Cuban economic system to Communism. In the last sentence of the first paragraph, Martí wrote, “Trincherias de ideas valen más que trincheras de piedra.”  Seventy years later, in 1961, Castro saw an opportunity to establish the barricade of ideas when he realized that transforming Cuba into a communist state would align him with the USSR, the U.S.’s greatest enemy. In reaction, President John F. Kennedy codified a symbolic barricade when he declared in 1962 that “the present Government of Cuba is incompatible with the principles and objectives of the Inter-American system… [I] hereby proclaim an embargo upon trade between the United States and Cuba.”  In other words, Castro’s switch in ideas, consequently allying Cuba with the Soviet Union, parted the waters between the island and North America—along ideological lines. And though Castro may have made some neo-colonialist concessions to the Soviets in welcoming a Soviet military presence and committing to a Soviet sugar quota, the resultant relationship made the Cuban Communist system viable without any North American presence whatsoever. Castro realized Martí’s most disseminated writing when he instituted communism and linked Cuba geopolitically to the Soviets, thereby establishing a blockade of ideas against the United States. 
Still, many scholars that oppose the Marxist revolutionary regime have claimed that Castro simply replaced North American colonialism with Soviet colonialism, in contradiction to Martí.  This critique seems to ignore the central goals of Martí, those of Castro, and the reality of the Cuban-Soviet relationship. The two Cubans wanted to free the island of American domination. And the Soviets, who desperately needed a Western Hemispheric vantage point, wanted an ally of the Cubans. Historian Samuel Farber best depicts the global political climate at the time: “To explain the Soviet Union’s willingness to make a substantial commitment to the unfolding Cuban Revolution, it is necessary to understand the causes of the prevailing perception that the international balance of power was shifting in favor of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and early 1960s.”  He goes on to write that powerful groups worldwide thought the United States could be surpassed by the Soviet Union. The Communist revolution of the late 1950s physically drove the U.S. off the island, and it also brought the Soviets to prop up the would-be failing economy. Had Castro faced a different political climate, he might have acted differently, but the barricade of ideas he established through a Soviet-communist framework do not contradict Martí as many have claimed.