Abstract
Even though the government in Havana and the FAR may make rather too much of it, the claim that the Cuban armed forces are, in their deepest being, and in their perception of themselves, a “revolutionary” force is still a powerful one. This is not merely a result of their having carried on and won a revolutionary war against the Batista dictatorship. Nor is it just about their subsequent participation in a process of “export” of revolution. It is because their roots lie in a revolutionary tradition that, while almost entirely overturned from 1898 until 1958, found itself again with Castro’s revolution of 1953–1959.1
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Notes
Juan B. Amores, Cuba y España, 1868–1898: el final de un sueño, Pamplona, Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 1998, pp. 35–52. See also Gloria García, Conspiraciones y revueltas, Santiago, Editorial Oriente, 2003.
Diana Abad, De la Guerra Grande al Partido Revolucionario Cubano, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 1995, pp. 207–209; and in John Kirk, José Martí: Mentor of the Cuban Nation, Tampa, University Presses of Florida, 1983, pp. 79–85.
See Jorge Ibarra, José Martí: dirigente político o ideôlogo revolucionario, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 1980.
and Antonio Martínez Bello, Martí: antimperialista y conocedor del imperialismo, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 1986.
Francisco Pérez Guzmán, La Aventura cubana de Colôn, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 1992, pp. 18–23.
See Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, New York, Harper and Row, 1971, pp. 1512–1513.
For the higher figure see Eduardo Torres-Cuevas and Oscar Loyola Vega, Historia de Cuba, 1492–1898: Formaciôn y liberaciôn de la naciôn, Havana, Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 2001, pp. 13–26.
Francisco Pérez Guzmán, La Habana: Clave de un imperio, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 1993.
César García del Pino, El Corso en Cuba: Siglo XVII, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2001, pp. 9–38.
Francisco Castillo Meléndez, La Defensa de la isla de Cuba en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII, Sevilla, Padura, 1996.
César García del Pino, Toma de La Habana por los ingleses y sus antecedentes, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2002, pp. 91–116.
See Allan J. Kuethe, Cuba 1753–1815: Crown, Military and Society, Memphis, University of Tennessee Press, 1986.
For a case study of a closely connected colonial military experience, see Christon Archer, The Army in Bourbon Mexico, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1977.
Jaime E. Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 7–14, 50–59.
This influential event is described in Ramón J. Sender, Tzipac Amaru, Barcelona, Destino, 1973.
See Julio Mario Luqui Lagleyze, El Ejército realista en la Guerra de Independencia, Buenos Aires, Sanmartiniano, 1995.
Gustavo Eguren, La Fidelísima Habana, Havana, Letras Cubanas, 1986.
Francisco O. Mota, Piratas y corsarios en las costas de Cuba, Madrid, Gente Nueva, 1984, pp. 96–99.
Margarita González, Bolívar y la independencia de Cuba, Bogotá, Ancora Editores, 1984.
For those in Cuba and Spain halting progress, see Maria del Carmen Barcia, Élites y grupos de presiôn: Cuba 1868–1898, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 1998.
Rodolfo Sarracino, Inglaterra: sus dos caras en la lucha cubana por la aboliciôn, Havana, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1986.
For a Marxist view of political debate in Spain over Cuba during this period see Aurea Matilde Fernández, España y Cuba 1868–1898: revoluciôn burguesa y relaciones coloniales, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 1988, pp. 28–64.
Gonzalo Fernández Reyes, Estrategia militar en la Guerra de los Diez Años, Santiago de Cuba, Editorial Oriente, 1983, p. 29.
See Jorge Ibarra Cuesta, “El Final de la Guerra de los Diez Años,” Revista Bimestre Cubana, XCI, 16, January–June 2002, pp. 100–135, especially pp. 100–107.
Francisco Pérez Guzmán, Herida profunda, Havana, Ediciones Unión, 1999.
See the classic expression of this view throughout in Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, Cuba no debe su independencia a los Estados Unidos, Havana, Editorial La Tertulia, 1960.
For the diplomatic side of this, see Miguel D’Estéfano, Dos siglos de diferendo entre Cuba y Estados Unidos, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2000, while for economic, social, and cultural elements Louis Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Jorge Ibarra Cuesta, Máximo Gómez frente al imperio 1898–1905. Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2000, pp. 69–70.
The main means to ensure that the very numerous black and mulatto veterans remained underrepresented in the Rural Guard was the requirement for new recruits to buy their own uniforms and mounts. Few could contemplate any such expense. See José M. Hernández. Cuba and the United States: Intervention and Militarism, 1868–1933, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1997, pp. 109–115.
Marilû Uralde Cancio, “La Guardia Rural: un instrumento de dominación neocolonial (1898–1902),” in Mildred de la Torre et al., La Sociedad cubana en los albores de la República, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2003, pp. 255–279 at p. 257.
Aline Helg, Lo que nos corresponde: la lucha de los negros y mulatos por la igualdad in Cuba 1886–1912, Havana. Imagen Contemporánea, 2000.
See also Silvia Castro Fernández, La Masacre de los Independientes de Color en 1912, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2002.
Lars Schoultz, “The Blessings of Liberty: The United States and the Promotion of Democracy in Cuba,” Journal of Latin Amercian Studies, XXXIV, 2, May 2002, pp. 397–425, at pp. 404–405.
Zaballa Martínez, La Artillería en Cuba en el siglo XX. Havana, Verde Olivo, 2000.
Elvira Díaz Vallina, “Prólogo,” in María del Pilar Díaz Castañón (Ed.), Ideología y revoluciôn: Cuba 1959–1962, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2001, pp. IX–XVII, at p. XII.
This context is well discussed in the early sections of Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994.
This issue is handled in an interesting fashion by Claudia Furiati. Fidel Castro: la historia me absolverk, Barcelona, Plaza Janés, 2003, pp. 154–155.
For the story of this party and of Chibás as political leader, see Elena Alavez Martín, La Ortodoxia en el ideario americano, Havana, Ciencias Sociales, 2002.
Fidel Castro. La Historia me absolverk. Havana, Radio Habana Cuba Press, 1970.
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991.
The story of this period of urban opposition to Batista is well told in Julia Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 12–47.
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© 2005 Hal Klepak
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Klepak, H. (2005). Mambises Still? The Revolutionary Tradition in the Cuban Armed Forces. In: Cuba’s Military 1990–2005. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980601_2
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