ABSTRACT
There was little in Castro's family background to suggest he would become a rebel. His father was a self-made man who had emigrated from Spain towards the end of the nineteenth century after participating in the last independence war in Cuba as a conscript in the Spanish army. Moving to the Mayarí region in Oriente, the easternmost province of Cuba, he had started his working life as a labourer laying the tracks for the railway of the local employers, the American United Fruit Company. Shortly afterwards, he had become a pedlar, selling lemonade to the plantation workers and then a variety of goods to local families. Like many Spanish immigrants, he was a hard worker and a determined saver, and with his savings he had leased land from the United Fruit Company and begun to plant sugar cane to sell to the American-owned mills. By dint of hard work and careful accounting, he had become a wealthy planter.
