Castro Becomes Premier: Cuba Turns Communist

Six weeks after his guerrilla army rolled into Havana in olive drab fatigues, Fidel Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba on February 16, 1959, beginning a 49-year hold on power that would outlast ten American presidents, survive the Bay of Pigs invasion, a nuclear crisis, an economic embargo, and the collapse of his Soviet patron. No leader in the Western Hemisphere has ever exercised such absolute authority for so long. Castro’s revolution began in failure. His first attack, on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, was a disaster that killed most of his fighters and landed Castro in prison. Released in 1955, he fled to Mexico, recruited Argentine doctor Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and returned to Cuba in December 1956 with 82 men on a leaky yacht called the Granma. The landing was another catastrophe — the army was waiting, and only a dozen revolutionaries escaped into the Sierra Maestra mountains. From that remnant, Castro built a guerrilla force that exploited Fulgencio Batista’s corruption, American ambivalence, and rural Cuban resentment. Batista’s army, demoralized and poorly led despite American weapons, crumbled in late 1958. Batista fled on New Year’s Day 1959, and Castro entered Havana on January 8 to delirious crowds. He initially appointed Manuel Urrutia as president, but real power was never in doubt. On February 16, Castro assumed the premiership and began consolidating control. Within two years, Castro had nationalized American-owned businesses, eliminated political opposition, and aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union, bringing the Cold War to America’s doorstep. The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 only strengthened his position. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 nearly destroyed the world. The American trade embargo, imposed in 1962, lasted into the 21st century. A lawyer who started a revolution with twelve survivors in a mountain range created the only communist state in the Western Hemisphere and held it for half a century through sheer force of will.