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Today, the spirit of the revolution is still strong among the majority of
the Cuban people despite the hardships imposed by the US blockade, by the
collapse of their major trading partner, the Soviet Union, and by the US
Helms-Burton Act, which seeks to restrict other countries from trading with
Cuba.
The revolution has brought many gains to the population. Cuba is the only
Latin American country with a free health and education system, a social
security system which pays 60% of the normal wage and in which the people
have a real say in the way the country is run.
The United States unremitting policy towards Cuba over the past 37 years
has been to try to destroy the revolution. But the determination and
revolutionary spirit shown by those young Cubans in the attack on the
Moncada Barracks in 1953 has now inspire a whole nation.
 | During 1959, the CIA began monitoring the
telephone conversations of Cuban leaders. Subversive radio stations
transmitted to Cuba from Miami, the Bahamas and Central America.
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| At the end of the year, the CIA began to
land saboteurs in Cuba. |
| On 6 July, the US sugar quota from Cuba
was cut off. Castro nationalized US-owned sugar mills. |
| In July, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
recommended the President authorize a full invasion. |
| As the invasion force approached on 16
April, Fidel Castro announced the socialist character of the Revolution.
At 2am on 17 April a force of 1,500 Cuban counterrevolutionaries landed at
the Bay of Pigs. Castro personally directed the counterattack, using
Soviet-supplied weapons, while the workers and peasants of the Commities
for the Defence of the Revolution rounded up thousands of
counterrevolutionary sympathizers in the cities. |
| The invasion force was destroyed in less
than 72 hours. US imperialism was humiliated. |
| The gains of the national democratic
revolution had been preserved only by taking it forward to the socialist
revolution. Later that year, Castro explained: 'The anti-imperialist,
socialist revolution could only be one single revolution, because there is
only one revolution. That is the great dialectic truth of humanity:
imperialism, and, standing against it, socialism.' He thumped the table in
front of him and shouted, 'I am a Marxist-Leninist and I shall be a
Marxist-Leninist until the last days of my life.' |
| The US imperialists have used every means
at their disposal short of all-out war to strangle the Revolution:
economic sabotage, bacteriological warfare, the economic blockade, and
repeated attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. In the face of this
relentless pressure, still the Cuban people resist to defend the dignity
of life socialism has achieved.
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Today the Cuban people's determination to defend their revolution against
the US is a strength for people all around the world fighting for justice
and freedom.
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