"THIS DAY IN CUBAN HISTORY....."'
Raúl Castro Ruz, younger brother of Fidel and fifth in the family, was born June 3, 1931. His education was at the same Jesuit schools and at the University of Havana, where his interest in politics became evident. He never finished his college education. In 1953 as a member of the Juventud Socialista (youth branch of Cuba's Communist Partido Socialista Popular) he participated in the World Youth Congress in Vienna and visited the Communist capitals of Bucharest, Budapest, and Prague. On his return he joined Fidel in his fight against Batista, saying “the government must be overthrown so that the revolution can begin,” and agreeing that reform in Cuba could not be achieved constitutionally. Captured with his brother in the Moncada attack, he was sentenced to 13 years, but released in the general amnesty of May 1955. He then accompanied Fidel to Mexico and on the subsequent expedition aboard Granma. Escaping together into the Sierra Maestra, the Castro brothers gained support, and Raúl, on February 27, 1958, achieved the rank of major. He then took some supporters and established a second front, named for Frank País in the Sierra Cristal. There he gained a reputation as “the most hot-headed, impetuous and violently anti-American” of the rebels, and for possessing a killer instinct. He reportedly matched Batista “terror for terror.” In the summer of 1958, when his force had reached a strength of several hundred, he kidnapped 47 Americans and 3 Canadians, ranging from engineers employed at the Moa Nickel Company to U.S. servicemen stationed at Guantánamo. Fidel reportedly disapproved and ordered the hostages released. Raúl refused, knowing that Batista would not attack his camp as long as he held Americans there. He released them when the U.S. government accepted his demands, July 18, 1958. The kidnaping made world headlines, and new accusations of communism were hurled at Raúl.
With the triumph of the Revolution of 1959, Raúl decided to marry his fiancée, Vilma Espín, who had fought with him in the mountains. Then he began to punish Batista supporters. Made head of the armed forces on February 15, 1959, he directed the execution of nearly 100 officers and men of the defeated army and had them buried in a mass grave near Santiago de Cuba. The same year he was named minister for the Revolutionary Armed Forces, with cabinet rank and complete control in reorganizing the armed forces. He built the army up into a highly professional modern military establishment closely modeled on that of the Soviets and armed with the latest Soviet equipment. Its motto was “At your orders, commander-in chief, for no matter what, no matter where, and under all circumstances.” He introduced compulsory military service and sent thousands of young officers for training in the USSR. In 1969 he completed an advanced course taught by Soviet experts. In March of that year he asked that soldiers be trained “to exhibit friendship with the sister armies of socialist countries, especially the Great Soviet Army, whose representatives work at the side of our officers and also harvest the fruits of our common efforts.”
As commander of Cuba’s two military intelligence organizations, he directly thwarted numerous counterrevolutionary activities. It was he who led the land forces against the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. He called the presence of the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base a “cancer” and a permanent focus of provocation. During the 1960s it was he who played a major role in transforming the framework of Cuban government into a “soviet-like single political party” structure. His power was consolidated with his positions as second secretary of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) and vice-premier. He arranged for the deployment of the Soviet long-range missiles that led to the Missile Crisis of 1962. In the 1970s and early 1980s he visited the USSR and Eastern Europe and was an observer of the Warsaw Pact maneuvers. In the early 1970s he was promoted to first vice-premier and made a comandante de division, a new rank equivalent to that of major general. He also became member of the politburo. He was one of the principal figures in the move to a more Sovietized bureaucracy and long enjoyed Moscow’s confidence as a politically reliable Cuban leader and competent administrator. In 1981 he was given the Soviet Union’s Order of the October Revolution
When Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006, he assumed the Presidency and became first Secretary of Cuba’s Communist Party. He introduced very limited economic changes, continued repressive actions against all opposition and negotiated with the Obama Administration a normalization of diplomatic relations. In April 2018, he ceded the mostly ceremonial Presidency to Miguel Diaz-Canel, remaining as Secretary General of the Party in complete control of the government.
*Jaime Suchlicki is Director of the Cuban Studies Institute, CSI, a non-profit research group in Coral Gables, FL. He is the author of Cuba: From Columbus to Castro & Beyond, now in its 5th edition; Mexico: From Montezuma to the Rise of the PAN, 2nd edition, and of the recently published Breve Historia de Cuba.
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