ABSTRACT
The island of Cuba, the largest of the Antilles, thrusts its western end intothe jaws of the Gulf of Mexico almost midway between the peninsulas of Florida and Yucatan, from which it is separated by channels about 160 km wide. Cuba is of all the West Indian islands the nearest to the mainland of north and central America. Its affairs have been a special concern of the United States from the middle of the nineteenth century. Its liberation from Spain at the end of the century proved to be no more than a change of masters, and it entered upon a period of colonial rule without the benefits of a colonial administration. Far ahead of its Caribbean neighbours in educational standards and facilities, and as well-endowed with a middle class as the most advanced Latin American country, it endured nevertheless a record of bad government uninterrupted from its liberation up to and including the Castro regime. The abrogation in 1933 of the Platt Amendment (see p. 676) coincided with the end of the odious rule of Gerardo Machado, which had rested to some extent on US support. Machado had transferred the presidency to Manuel de Cespedes but a revolt by noncommissioned officers (including Sergeant Fulgencio Batista) and students overturned the regime and inaugurated a period of 20 years during which a number of presidents held office. Batista, who ruled from 1940 to 1944, refrained at first from infringing a constitution which prescribed four-year terms with a ban on immediate re-election, but in 1952 he made himself permanent dictator and introduced a reign of terror. On 26 July of the next year, a date which gave its name to a movement, Fidel Castro led an attack on the Moncada barracks in an unsuccessful attempt to supplant Batista. After 18 months in prison, Castro emerged to prepare in Mexico a second attempt, and in 1956 he led an invasion band of 84 which was swiftly defeated. The survivors, who numbered only 12, escaped to the Sierra Maestra, where they turned from the tactics of a coup de main to guerrilla warfare which they waged for two years. In 1958 Batista attacked the growing forces of rebellion, but his campaign was a failure and served only to accelerate the disintegration of his regime. On 1 January 1959 it collapsed and Castro triumphed.
