The Battle of Guisa and the Cuban Revolution
On this day, 66 years ago, Castro's forces won a relatively unknown but crucial battle during their revolutionary struggle.
“Guisa, twelve kilometers from the military port of Bayamo, is now free Cuban territory.” – Fidel Castro, December 1 1958.
Guisa is a small agricultural town in the Caribbean Island nation of Cuba – but it's more than just that.
Sixty-six years ago, this little town home to less than 50,000 people was at the centre of events that changed the course of history; events so significant that years later, they brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war – for the capture of Guisa by Fidel Castro and the revolutionary 26th of July Movement was the final nail in the coffin of Fulgencio Batista's brutal American-backed dictatorship.
The Cuban Revolution
I'm not going to summarise the entire Cuban Revolution here. There are academics who have spent their whole lives dedicated to the topic. I am, however, going to contextualise the nature and extent of inequalities under Batista's repressive dictatorship, which gave rise to the popular movement led by Castro to overthrow it.
Long story short, in 1952, Fulgencio Batista overthrew Cuba's nascent democracy to consolidate power in an American-backed coup d’état. In the years that followed, his military-dictatorship saw brutal repression of Cuba's ethnic minorities, the working class and any dissent, and also saw unfettered corruption become US-sanctioned state policy as the US Government continued to exercise imperialist control over Latin America – the US' Backyard – something that continues to persist, to this day.
I could write thousands of words about the extent of brutality Cubans were subjected to during the Batista years, but instead, I'll leave you with this excerpt from 27-year-old Fidel Castro's courtroom speech while he was on trial for an attack he led against Batista with his brother Raul:
“85 per cent of the small farmers in Cuba pay rent and live under constant threat of being evicted from the land they till. More than half of our most productive land is in the hands of foreigners.
400,000 families in the countryside and in the cities live cramped in huts and tenements without even the minimum sanitary requirements. 2.2 million of our urban population pay rents, which absorb between one-fifth and one-third of their incomes. 2.8 million of our rural and suburban population lack electricity. The State sits back with its arms crossed, and the people have neither homes nor electricity.
In any small European country, there are more than 200 technological and vocational schools; in Cuba, only six such schools exist, and their graduates have no jobs for their skills. The little rural schoolhouses are attended by a mere half of the school-age children – barefooted, half-naked and undernourished – and frequently, the teacher must buy necessary school materials from their own salary.
90 per cent of the children in the countryside are consumed by parasites which filter through their bare feet from the ground they walk on. Society is moved to compassion when it hears of the kidnapping or murder of one child, but it is indifferent to the mass murder of so many thousands of children who die every year from lack of facilities, agonising with pain.
Public hospitals, which are always full, accept only patients recommended by some powerful politician who, in return, demands the votes of the unfortunate one and his family so that Cuba may continue forever in the same or worse condition.
Only death can liberate one from so much misery.”
These words have since become immortalised, with Castro's two-hour-long courtroom speech, History Will Absolve Me, becoming the manifesto of the 26th of July Movement.
It was these conditions that led to the Cuban Revolution, which saw Fidel Castro eventually overthrow Batista's government.
On 1 January 1959 – Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, but not before moving $300 - 400 million of Cuban money to his bank accounts in New York, Florida and Switzerland – exactly a month after his troops suffered a comprehensive defeat in The Battle of Guisa.
The Battle of Guisa
After years of guerrilla warfare carried out by Castro and his forces, the Revolution's victory became an inevitability – a matter of when, not if.
On the morning of 20 November 1958, a convoy of Batista's soldiers began its usual journey from Guisa. However, shortly after it left the town, the rebels attacked the caravan, commencing the fight for the town.
The town of Guisa was of strategic significance because it was a mere 12 kilometres away from Batista's Command Post, located on the outskirts of the city of Bayamo.
Despite being heavily outnumbered by the Batista army, the Revolution was successful in liberating the small town after ten days of fighting. The Batista army suffered 160 casualties, and the Revolution seized 35,000 bullets, 14 trucks, a T-17 tank, and other supplies.
On the night of 30 November, Castro and his combatants entered Guisa, which was also strategically significant because of its location on the foothills of the Sierra Maestra mountain range of Cuba. This was when the writing on the wall became clear to everyone in Batista's army.
"The triumph of the Battle in Guisa was an irreparable blow for the tyrant's troops. From it, officers and soldiers were fully convinced of their future defeat," wrote the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde in their 2007 retrospective of the Battle of Guisa.
A month later, Batista's regime fell, and he fled. Almost two years later, on 19 October 1960, the US placed an embargo on exports to Cuba except for food and medicine after Castro re-nationalised the island's oil refineries.
This embargo has only extended and become more stringent in the years since. It is illegal, and every year since 1992, the United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution demanding the US to end this inhumane economic siege on Cuba. The US and Israel are the only countries in the world to consistently vote against this UN resolution.
Cuba After the Revolution
In the two-thirds of a century since the Battle of Guisa and the Cuban Revolution, Cuba has become an example of egalitarian, progressive governance, in spite of the consequences the US embargo has had on the Caribbean Island nation.
The country boasts a higher average life expectancy than the United States. It also has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. All healthcare is free, and Cuban doctors play a monumental role in international healthcare missions, aiding global healthcare efforts. In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eliminate HIV transmission from mother to child – and this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Caribbean island's post-revolution achievements in healthcare.
Before the Revolution, Cuba had only three medical schools, which were exclusively for wealthy Cubans. Today, there are 23 medical schools that educate not only Cubans but overseas students, too – all free of charge. The result is that Cuba now has one of the highest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world: more than eight for every 1,000 citizens – twice as much as the rate in the US and the UK.
This has led to an ironic turn of events where, as a result of burgeoning tuition costs in the United States, some vociferous critics of Castro and the Revolution among the diaspora, who fled Cuba for Florida, have started sending their children back to Cuba for university education in medicine.
On the education front, things are even more impressive. In 1958, under the Batista dictatorship, half of Cuba's children did not attend school. Today, Cuba has a literacy rate of 99.7 per cent. In fact, Cuba's literacy rate grew to 96 per cent by just 1962, as one of Castro's first initiatives after the Revolution was a nationwide literacy drive to uplift those who faced the brutality of Batista's corrupt neoliberal dictatorship.
The Cuban Revolution has also seen the Caribbean Island nation turn into an Olympic powerhouse. The country has more Olympic medals than any other Latin American country despite its small population of roughly 11 million. For comparison, Brazil, which has a population of over 200 million, has fewer Olympic medals than Cuba – as does every other country in the region.
Cuba's Olympic successes find their roots in the fact that the Revolutionary government guarantees free and universal access to sports schools for every citizen, despite the limited access to facilities and equipment as a result of the US embargo.
Earlier this year, wrestler Mijaín López became the first athlete to win gold in five consecutive Olympic Games. He has dedicated his medals to Castro and the Revolution. “In our country, sports is a consequence of the Revolution,” he said.
More impressive than even these achievements is Cuba's Family Code, which is the most progressive in the world. As of 2024, not only is Cuba one of 36 countries in the world that codifies same-sex marriage, but it also goes further. The Cuban Family Code places obligations – responsibilities – on parents towards their children rather than just custody and also includes significant protections for women and caregivers, which, among other things, include free, on-demand contraception, access to abortion, and gender-affirming healthcare for transgender people.
These laws, codified in 2022, were developed over three years, with the participation of the entire Cuban society, through thousands of neighbourhood meetings, edits, and public approval – they were approved by 67 per cent of the 75 per cent of voters who turned out.
Cuba's constitution also guarantees that once additional rights are granted, they cannot be taken away – in any condition. Contrast this to the Empire just 150 kilometres north of Cuba, where federal protections guaranteed decades ago continue to erode at an unprecedented pace, with marginalised communities facing the brunt of the consequences.
There's plenty more that I could look at, including the Revolution's committed support for decolonial independence movements abroad; however, I don't want this piece to become needlessly convoluted, so I'll leave you with this: Cuba has transformed from dictatorship defined by inequalities, oppression, racism, poverty and privatisation under Batista to a genuine example of progressive governance – all while navigating a merciless, illegal embargo which leaves the island with shortages every year, which have become even more severe since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Dissidents and Critics
It's worth spending a little bit of time writing about those who were fervently critical of Castro and the Cuban Revolution, as this is what makes up the crux of Western coverage of Cuba. "How is Cuba a beacon for progressivism if people risk their lives to flee to Florida?"
Firstly, it's worth mentioning that the exodus in 1959, as Batista's dictatorship fell, predominantly saw the privileged elite, who were beneficiaries of the repression, leave Cuba – much like the privileged white South Africans who left the country when Apartheid rule was dismantled.
The US welcomed those leaving Cuba with open arms because they supported Batista and could aid them in their fight against communist revolutionary movements during the Cold War. Many of these exiles were trained by the US to try and return the pre-revolution status quo to Cuba through the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
In the years since, and especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, many more have left Cuba – often in rafts – to make it to Florida, predominantly because of food shortages, which undoubtedly make life in Cuba difficult. However, as I have already mentioned, these shortages are a consequence of a vicious and illegal blockade.
I sympathise with many of those who make the difficult journey to Florida. When you're faced with food shortages and find that a country welcomes you because of their apathy for your government – even as they separate families and put children in cages fleeing from other nearby countries – you put your needs and the hopes of a better life first. And with the nature of the Western media's coverage of the Revolutionary government, apathy towards the Revolution by many in the diaspora makes sense, yet that does not take away from the reality that Cuba was a hellhole before the Revolution, and now, despite an illegal embargo, it is a place where people can live.
If you want a more comprehensive look into the Cuban Revolution and the embargo that has plagued the country since, I would recommend listening to Season 2 of Blowback. It is meticulously researched and details the crucial events of the Revolution, framing them amidst the geopolitical and Cold War realities at the time.
Back to the Battle of Guisa
What is really cool about the Battle of Guisa is that, even now, it remains virtually unheard of, even among those who are well-versed with the history of the Cuban Revolution.
That is why I thought it would be a great part of the revolution to write about for this site. This site is, among other things, all about diving into cool, unique stories and perspectives you don't see or hear very often.