Batista's Rise To Power

The context of Cuba’s social, economic, and educational standings stems largely from the country’s rich history. Following the Spanish-American War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, Cuba became an independent country and was occupied by the United States military shortly after. Throughout the next three decades, Cuba operated as a free nation while the U.S. maintained close supervision. In 1933, Fulgencio Batista headed a revolt that overthrew Gerardo Machado’s authoritarian rule and Batista assumed power. Beginning in 1934, Batista maintained control of Cuba through a chain of puppet presidents until he was elected President in 1940. Batista served for four years and then moved to the United States. However, Batista returned to Cuba to run for president yet again and, certain that he would be defeated by a reform party, staged a coup d’état where he was able to seize power and establish himself as a dictator. During Batista’s reign, the economy was controlled by the U.S, poverty and poor education were
abundant, and the government was glaringly corrupt.
It is then that Fidel Castro began his rebellion against the Batista regime. After a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, Castro was exiled and traveled to Mexico where he formed the revolutionary group he eventually led in the Cuban Revolution. After overthrowing Batista in 1959, Castro seized military and political power in Cuba. In the years following the revolution, Castro converted Cuba’s government into a communist one-party system, and their relationship with the U.S. deteriorated quickly as Cuba allied with the Soviet Union.
During his regime, Batista backed the richest landowners who owned the largest and most successful sugar plantations while paying the laborers very little. This widened the gap between the upper and lower classes tremendously. The poor, which consisted of mostly black impoverished peasants and underpaid workers, became the largest class and could hardly afford to support themselves while the relatively small white upper class were thriving with their sugar mills. The Cuban middle class was fairly large and was composed of many white and mestizo professional and industrial workers. Fidel Castro aimed to reverse what Batista did by abolishing the middle and upper class while also bringing the lower class out of poverty. Castro’s policies that confiscated land from the rich led the majority of the upper class and some of the middle class to leave the country. During the post-revolution time period, Black Cubans began to make gains both economically and socially and were able to leave the lower class. The Cuban Revolution and Castro’s government put every ethnicity on a near-equal playing field. Today, the population of Cuba numbers around 11,087,330, with 65.1% of the population shown to be white (primarily of Spanish descent), 24.8% mulatto or mestizo, and 10.1% black. (Gall & Gleason, 2012, pg. 202). Class differentiation has become far less evident, despite the recent emergence of the privileged class of white Cubans. Even with this, the gaps between varying social levels have greatly shrunk since Castro took power.
After seizing the country, Castro nationalized nearly all of the businesses in Cuba and the state became the regulator of the economy. The sugar industry was still flourishing and continued to be the backbone of the economy. Cuba, who relied heavily on economic assistance from the Soviets, entered a recession after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which forced Cuba to alter its policies. In 1993-1994, Castro introduced reforms which “loosened control of the markets, allowed people to own their own businesses, allowed foreign ownership within Cuba, encouraged tourism, created a tax system, and legalized U.S currency” (Lang-Tigchelaar, 2002, pg. 140). Following these reforms, tourism exceeded sugar in terms of revenue brought in from foreign countries. Over the next decade or so, sugar production fell in mass amounts as the Cuban economy began to rely less and less on sugar, and more on other industries including nickel mining, tobacco, and coffee. Today, tourism and nickel mining have become the country’s highest profiting exports along with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
Illiteracy was prevalent during Batista’s dictatorship.
When Castro came into power, he countered this issue by making education a high priority. Education is free and it is required by law for children ages 6-11 years to attend primary school for six years. Secondary school lasts three years and afterwards students may choose to go to a three-year university or technical school. Castro also implemented several agricultural and technical programs to the curriculum of secondary schools along with the “work-study” principle which integrates schooling and labor. According to Gall & Gleason (2012), “One hundred percent of age-eligible children were enrolled in pre-primary education in 2010. Primary school enrollment in 2009 was estimated at about 99% of age-eligible students. The same year, secondary school enrollment was about 83% of age-eligible students.” Cuba’s literacy rate, as of 2002, is about 99.8%, one of the highest in the
world. Despite Fidel Castro assuming power in a similar manner as Batista, Castro managed to completely transform, in a positive way, Cuba with his policies and reforms that paved the way for the current social, economic, and educational statuses of the country.