July 26th Movement

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Flag of the Movement of July 26th
Flag of the Movement of July 26th in Cienfuegos

Movimiento 26 de Julio ( German  Movement of July 26th, abbreviation M-26-7 ) is the name of the organization led by Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution .

The name goes back to the date of the attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953 . The attack led by Fidel Castro failed, but this date is considered the starting point for the victorious Cuban revolution against the authoritarian Batista regime. July 26th is still a national holiday in Cuba.

historical development

precursor

Before founding the July 26th Movement, Fidel Castro first put together his underground group, with whom he carried out the failed storms of the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba and the Céspedes barracks in Bayamo on July 26, 1953. The aim was the mass capture of arms for a popular uprising against the Batista government. This first group, the majority of which came from the area around Havana, was known as the “Generación del Centenario” (“Generation of the 100th Anniversary”).

Founding and role in the uprising against Batista

Although they were sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years, the Moncadistas were released after a massive campaign for their release on May 15, 1955 as part of a general amnesty after less than two years in prison. While still in Cuba, the supporters of the revolutionary movement around Fidel Castro reorganized on June 12, 1955 as the July 26th Movement. The strategy was armed struggle through small secret underground cells scattered across the country.

Frank País , as the national leader of the Action and Sabotage subgroup, became the leader of the underground in Cuba; other activists who stayed in the country were Armando Hart , Celia Sánchez , Haydée Santamaría and Vilma Espín . Fidel Castro and other Moncadistas initially went into exile. On July 7, 1955, Fidel Castro arrived in Mexico , where he planned and prepared the armed expedition back to Cuba. There he also met Ernesto Guevara , later known as el Che . On November 26, 1956, 82 revolutionaries broke - including 20 Moncadistas such as Fidel and Raúl Castro , Juan Almeida , Mario Chanes and Ramiro Valdés ; newly added u. a. the later Comandantes Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos - from Tuxpan (Mexico) with the yacht " Granma " to Cuba, where they arrived on December 2, 1956.

The movement was sponsored with $ 125,000 from former Cuban President Carlos Prio , who went into exile in Miami in 1952. The weapons with which the movement fought against the numerically far superior Batista army, which was supported by the USA, were partly supplied by the US mafia , partly out of very solid financial interests, partly as reassurance: the mobsters had a lot in the The casinos , drug trafficking and nightclubs of Havana invested and wanted to ensure that if the 26th of July Movement were victorious, it would not stand in the way of continuing its business. After more than two years of guerrilla warfare, the dictator Batista fled Cuba on January 1, 1959.

In the course of 1957, the name rebel army was also used for the guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra .

From a pro-democracy movement to a communist unity party

During the struggle against Batista's rule, the July 26th movement was not yet Marxist in orientation, but consisted of various, even strong, bourgeois currents with the common goal of restoring a democratic constitutional state, including the goals of a far-reaching land reform formulated in the 1940 constitution and the Combating social inequality. Only immediately after the victory of the revolution did Fidel Castro and the strong left wing (Raúl Castro, Che Guevara and others) begin to work together with the Socialist People's Party ( Partido Socialista Popular , PSP) led by Blas Roca , the then Communist Party of Cuba, and one on the Soviet To introduce a model-based one-party dictatorship. This was initially done covertly and in stark contrast to Castro's public distancing from communism. However, the gradual change of course resulted in several resignations or forced dismissals of leading liberal M-26-7 representatives, including Pedro Díaz Lanz , Huber Matos and Faustino Pérez in 1959 . In the years that followed, numerous former guerrilla fighters decided to take up armed struggle again on July 26th in order to overthrow their former leader, Fidel Castro, by whom they felt betrayed: These included Manuel Ray , Raúl Chibás and the first prime minister of the revolutionary government , Humberto Sorí Marín . She and other former M-26-7 members founded the covert resistance group “Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo” (“People's Revolutionary Movement”, MRP) in 1960, which clearly distanced itself from right-wing counterrevolutionary groups.

In July 1961, the July 26th Movement, which in the meantime hardly appeared as an independent political force in the shadow of the revolutionary leader Castro, merged with the PSP and the Revolutionary Directory of March 13th (led by Faure Chomón ) to form the so-called Integrated Revolutionaries Organizations of Cuba ( Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas , ORI). On March 26, 1962, the ORI became the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution ( Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista de Cuba , PURSC), from which the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) emerged on October 3, 1965 .

Historical parallels to the Society of December 10, Napoleon III described by Marx .

In 2007, the French author Serge Raffy, in his Castro biography Castro, l'infidèle, pointed to clear parallels between the July 26th Movement and the “Society of the.” Organized a century earlier in France by Louis Napoléon Bonaparte for the purpose of gaining unrestricted rule December 10 ”, which suggested a conscious imitation. Just a few months before founding his organization, Castro had carefully studied Karl Marx 's analysis of The Eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte in prison , in which Marx detailed the tactical approach of Bonaparte (later Emperor Napoléon III) and the crucial importance of society of the 10th century. December in his coup d'état of December 2, 1851. Castro enthusiastically praised the book in letters written while he was still in prison and, fifty years later, referred to it as one of two or three works by Marx that impressed him the most and from which he had made the most use. By bypassing the traditional parties, a core group loyal to a charismatic leader was formed in France and Cuba, which initially acted covertly, knew how to dominate street parades and exercise social control, and after eliminating the established representative institutions - such as parliament and parties - as " the people “legitimized his unrestricted executive power in direct dialogue with the leader. A central role was played by the poor small farmers who, as beneficiaries of the new system, were organized, transported to mass marches and integrated into the armed forces, whose previous pillars were neutralized as a power factor. From January 1959 onwards, July 26th, which was entirely geared towards Castro , achieved these goals even in a shorter time than the historical forerunner Society of December 10th . Without mentioning December 10th, the Cuban-US American political scientist Samuel Farber also emphasizes the central importance of July 26th, which is completely under his control , for Castro's “revolutionary Bonapartism ” according to Marxist doctrine .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Movement of July 26th  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Kaiser : The Road to Dallas. The Assassination of John. F. Kennedy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2008, pp. 28-31.
  2. ^ Serge Raffy: Castro, l'infidèle. Fayard, Paris 2003 (3rd edition, 2013), p. 295f
  3. ^ Leycester Coltman: The Real Fidel Castro. Yale University Press, 2003, p. 93
  4. Fidel Castro, Deborah Shnookal, Pedro Alvarez Tabío: My early years. Ocean Press, 2005 p. 176
  5. Ignacio Ramonet and Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. Scribner, New York 2008, p. 90
  6. ^ Serge Raffy: Castro, l'infidèle. Fayard, Paris 2003 (3rd edition, 2013), pp. 295–298
  7. ^ Samuel Farber: Revolution and Reaction in Cuba 1933-1960. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown 1976, pp. 203-204, 212-213