How does Winn approach the subject of Latin American History? What is the author’s disciplinary background and academic training? Do

THIRD EDITION

PETER WINN

In P eru , the M aoist Sendero Luminoso o r Shinin p by expan ding its "People's W: ,, . ' . g ath, defi ed pos t-Cold War trends

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' en ensta control of their cell blocks.

THIRTEEN

Making Revolution

In the cold clear morning of the Andean highlands, the peasant partisans

of the Shining Path were drawn up in ranks against an azure sky. Their

faces were brown and weather-beaten, their features and clothing

marked their Indian ancestry. Their weapons were primitive, in many

cases just sickles attached to long sticks. To the historian, they seemed an

evocation of revolutions in China or Russia whose time had come and

gone. Yet, here they were, in April 1992, after the collapse of communism

on other continents, chanting its slogans, talking with confidence and de-

termination about the inevitable triumph of their revolution under the

banner of their Communist party and the Maoist ideology of the leader

they idolized as "President Gonzalo." "The old society was unjust. There

were landlords who oppressed and exploited the people," asserted Com-

missar Francisco. "We have learned much from the Party. With the

People's War we have swept away the landlords, using a broom of steel

as taught to us by President Gonzalo."1 The fire of communism may have

gone out elsewhere, but in the Peruvian Andes the flame of socialist rev-

olution burned brighter than ever.

Viewed from North America, Latin America and the Caribbean seem

lands of social unrest and political turmoil, where bullets are more com-

mon than ballots and revolutionaries are always waiting in the wings. Re-

526 I Americas

hellions have been common in the region, but successful revolutions-

the seizure of power in order to transform politics and values, restructure

economies, and redistribute wealth, status, and opportunity-have been

rare. Between the Haitian revolution of 1791 and the Mexican revolution

of 19rn, more than a century went by without a profound social revolu-

tion shaking the Americas. Another half century would elapse before the

Cuban revolution of 1959 would successfully challenge the hemispheric

status quo, inaugurating three decades of revolutionary upheaval that

would bring the Sandinistas to power in Nicaragua and guerrilla move-

ments to much of the region. In the 1990s, with the disintegration of the

Soviet Union, the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas, the peace processes

in El Salvador and Guatemala, and the economic crisis in Cuba, this cycle

of revolution seemed to be coming to an end. But the rebellions of the

Shining Path in Peru and the Zapatistas in Mexico raised the question :

Is a new revolutionary cycle beginning?

Predictions of imminent revolution have been frequent in Latin

America and the Caribbean during this century, in response to condi-

tions that afford ample justification for rebellion. Certainly, if poverty

and oppression, economic inequality, and unrepresentative government

were sufficient causes for revolution, it would be far more common in the

Americas. But revolutionary upheavals have generally required some-

thing more. Paradoxically, the roots of revolution have often been nour-

ished by economic progress. The integration of the region into the world

order has also generated vulnerable economies, social dislocations, and

political tensions, while raising popular aspirations and democratic ex-

pectations. The costs of this "progress" and the frustration of these ex-

pectations contributed to the success of revolutionary movements in

Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua-and to revolutionary ferment through-

out the region.

In all three successful revolutions, the identification of the old regime

with foreign interests added the flag of nationalism to the banner of re-

bellion. This helped persuade some members of the elite and middle

classes to lead the rebellions and others to support them. Its narrowed

Making Revolution I 5 2 7

base of support weakened the old order, and this weakness was as im-

portant to the rebels' victory as their own strength.

But the overthrow of the old regime and the destruction of its army

did not end the struggle for power. Revolutionary movements are often

coalitions, united in their opposition to the status quo, but divided by

varying visions of the new order to erect in its place. The fall of the old

order has often led to new conflicts over power and policy, which were

won by those who mobilized the greatest military and political support.

In these contests, foreign powers also played a role, as backers of revolu-

tionary factions or as symbols of external interference used by revolu-

tionary leaders to rally popular support. The resolution of these power struggles-and the promises made dur-

ing their course-shaped the character of the revolutions that followed.

Despite their differences, the Mexican, Cuban, and Nicaraguan revolu-

tions all redefined the language of politics and altered their countries'

economic and social policy agendas. Moreover, revolutionary regimes in

all three countries conferred on their citizens an enhanced sense of na-

tional pride and personal self-worth by promoting a nationalistic popu-

lar culture and by standing up to the United States.

Revolutions in the Americas pose special problems for the United

States, the hemisphere's principal power. Challenges to the status quo in

its sphere of influence are unwelcome in Washington, particularly as

U.S. dominance in the region often gives revolutionary nationalism an

anti-American cast. The stirrings of radical unrest in the region have

often led the United States to intervene in defense of its perceived strate-

gic, economic, and political interests. They have also focused the atten-

tions of the United States on a region that it has often taken for granted,

impelling it to rethink its policies and even to recast its hemispheric re-

lations. Viewed from the United States, revolutions in Latin America and

the Caribbean carry the special urgency of revolutions in its sphere.

The Mexican, Cuban, and Nicaraguan revolutions also had a major

impact on the rest of the region. They were viewed as models to emulate

and as symbols to sustain elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean.

528 / Americas

But what did it mean to be a revolutionary in the 1990s? It was a ques-

tion answered differently in El Salvador, where an armed struggle took

an electoral course, in Peru, where a Maoist movement mounted a vio-

lent challenge to the old order, and in Mexico, where Indian peasants

staged a post-Communist revolt.

REVOLUTIONARY ECHOES

"Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees," a dying Mexican

rebel is said to have scrawled with his blood on a Cuernavaca wall. It

might have been the motto for his country's epic revolution. In 1910,

landless peasants, dispossessed ranchers, and ill-paid laborers rose up

against General Porfirio Diaz's oppressive regime, which had forced

them to pay the social costs of Mexico's integration into the global econ-

omy, with its stress on exports and foreign investment, while excluding

them from a fair share of its economic benefits and political participation.

The Mexican revolution was the century's first mass upheaval, and it

would have a major impact on the rest of Latin America.

Viewed from up close, the Mexican revolution seemed an unlikely

model to emulate. Its factions exhibited little social or ideological co-

herence and fought each other with a ruthlessness that belied their once

common cause. Its leaders ranged from dissident oligarchs, frustrated en-

trepreneurs, and provincial teachers to labor organizers, village chiefs,

and cattle rustlers. During the years that followed their military triumph

in 1920, the ruling "northern dynasty" of revolutionary generals seemed

more concerned with consolidating power than with transforming their

society-though Education Minister Jose Vasconcelos did promote rural

literacy and a nationalistic popular culture that reevaluated Mexico's In-

dian heritage. The Depression of the 1930s did bring to power Lazaro

Cardenas, a revolutionary populist who delivered on the revolution's

long-delayed promise ofland reform, backed labor unions in their strug-

gles with foreign-owned corporations, and expropriated U.S. oil compa-

nies and utilities. Cardenas also promoted a "Mexican socialism," a na-

Making Revolution I 529

tionalistic blend of socialist ideas with images of an idealized pre-

Hispanic past such as the ejido, or agrarian reform community, whose

beneficiaries, peasants like Marfa Luz Ojeda in Zacatecas, still venerated

Cardenas half a century later. But after World War II the revolutionary

pendulum swung back to the right, with a corrupt and repressive regime

promoting industry and export agriculture in partnership with Mexican

entrepreneurs and U.S. corporations. By 1991, when President Carlos

Salinas buried its last vestige, the agrarian reform-by allowing ejido

lands to be sold and large estates to be formed-the Mexican revolution

was long dead. In Zacatecas, angry peasants protested that this meant a

"return to the old hacienda system, with a few large landowners" and that

"the peasant will go back to being a slave, like before the revolution."

Yet, for revolutionaries elsewhere in the region, the Mexican revolu-

tion was a source of inspiration. Mexico's labor unions might be corrupt,

but Augusto Cesar Sandino, who worked in the Tampico oil fields dur-

ing the 1920s before returning to Nicaragua to take up arms against U.S.

intervention, came away from Mexico excited by its favoring the rights

of workers in their struggles with foreign companies. Nor was Sandino

alone in seeing solutions to his country's problems in Mexico's revolu-

tionary model. Land reform, the demand of peasant leader Emiliano Za-

pata, and the transformation most associated with the Mexican revolu-

tion, became an obligatory banner of every subsequent revolution in

Latin America and the Caribbean. Mexico's commitment to its Indian

peoples may have been more rhetorical than real, but its ideology of in-

digenismo resonated in countries with large indigenous populations, such

as Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala. Vasconcelos's faith in popular education

as the solution for his country's poor would also find imitators elsewhere,

while the legacy of the nationalist popular culture that he promoted

would be painted on the walls of Allende's Chile and Sandinista

Nicaragua long after Mexico's own revolutionary murals had become

mere tourist attractions.

But it was Cardenas's bold economic nationalism that made the deep-

est impression on the rest of the Americas. After the Mexican revolution,

530 I Americas

neither foreign investment nor private property seemed sacrosanct in

Latin America, and the issue of nationalization was on the political

agenda of the revolutions that followed. Moreover, after World War II,

Mexico's rulers compensated for the freezing of revolution at home by a

prorevolutionary stance in their foreign policy. Fidel Castro was one of

many Latin American revolutionaries who found a refuge in Mexico.

From there he set sail in 1956 for Cuba on a voyage that led to a revolu-

tion whose radicalism, evangelical fervor, and hemispheric impact would

exceed Mexico's own.

REVOLUTIONIZING CUBA

It was 1985 and Fidel Castro's beard was flecked with gray. The once

young guerrilla leader was now pushing sixty and he no longer smoked

his trademark Cohiba cigars, but the Comandante's energy and enthusi-

asm were still unflagging and his charisma was much in evidence. It was

after midnight, the hours in which he read, wrote-and gave interviews.

"Revolutionaries are not born, they are made," he stressed, "by poverty,

inequality, and dictatorship."

Like the Mexican revolution, the Cuban revolution of r 959 was a seis-

mic historical event. It not only transformed the Caribbean's largest is-

land, but also had a major impact on the rest of the Americas, revealing

the new limits of U.S. hegemony and catalyzing a reshaping of hemi-

spheric relations. As in Mexico, the roots of Cuba's revolution were nour-

ished by the island's reincorporation into the world order that began in

the late nineteenth century. A Spanish colony until 1898, Cuba-like

Panama-became a republic under U.S. auspices, which limited its in-

dependence but assured its modernization. With Washington guaran-

teeing political stability and a good investment climate, U.S. capital

poured into the island, ensuring Cuba's position as the world's leading

sugar producer.

Enormous sugar mill complexes were created, factories in the field

that consumed huge quantities of land and labor, converting Cuban

Making Revolution I 5 3 r

landowners into dependent farmers and peasants into proletarians.

Cuba's prosperity came to depend on sugar, which accounted for 80 per-

cent of its export earnings, but was vulnerable to fluctuating world

prices. The result was a dizzying pattern of boom and bust-such as the

"dance of the millions" in 1920-21, when sugar prices soared over

twenty-two cents a pound only to plunge below four cents a pound-in

which fortunes were made and lost, while U.S. control of sugar produc-

tion and processing grew. Cuba's sugar industry never recovered its dy-

namism after the Depression of the 1930s, and by the 1950s depended

on its privileged access to a subsidized U.S. market. At the same time, the

sugar industry's monopolization of land and labor made it difficult for

Cuba to feed itself, creating the paradox of a fertile island living on food-

stuffs imported from Florida at an inflated cost.

This was not the only Cuban paradox. National statistics showed

Cuba to be one of the wealthiest countries in the region-whether the

measure was income, doctors, or telephones-but these benefits were

unevenly distributed socially and geographically, with poor rural Cubans

the most deprived. Fidel Castro was not the only critic to charge that

Cuba was "a rich country with too many poor people."

The overweening U.S. presence in Cuba was another source of re-

sentment. By 1928, U.S. investors controlled three quarters of Cuba's

sugar, as well as strategic sectors from banking to utilities. Three decades

later they accounted for 8 5 percent of all foreign investment, and the

United States for two thirds of Cuba's exports and three quarters of its

imports. It was little wonder that "Cuba for the Cubans" was a cry of re-

formers from the 1930s to the 1950s and would prove a popular revolu-

tionary goal in the 1960s.

This economic dominance was reinforced by a political ascendancy

that had begun with the Spanish-American War, which freed Havana

from Madrid but turned Cuba into a U.S. protectorate. Under the no-

torious Platt Amendment of 1901 that Washington imposed on the new

republic, the United States had the right to intervene in Cuba's internal

affairs. During the two decades that followed, it landed troops four times

5 J2 / Americas

and sent proconsuls on other occasions. A flicker of reform in 1933 was

snuffed out by U.S. opposition. The Platt Amendment was finally re-

nounced in 1934, but U.S. hegemony remained. Earl Smith, the last U.S.

ambassador before Castro's revolution, described himself as "the second

most important man in Cuba"-after the dictator, General Fulgencio Batista.

If Cuba's stagnant economy and unequal society provided the kindling

for Castro's revolution, and U.S. domination the flame of resentment it '

was Batista's dictatorship that sparked the conflagration. The extended

U.S. political tutelage had aroused Cuban expectations of democracy

without laying the foundation for its consolidation. From the 1920s on,

Washington supported pro-U.S. strongmen over nationalistic democ-

rats. Our final man in Havana was General Batista, who seized power for

the last time in 1952 in a military coup that prevented an election he was

sure to lose and reformers were favored to win. This frustration of dem-

ocratic aspirations would ignite the revolt.

Among the leaders of this rebellion was a young lawyer named Fidel

Castro, who led a quixotic attack on the Moncada army barracks, the

country's second largest, on July 26, 1953; it was a military failure but a

political success, capturing the popular imagination and founding a rev-

olutionary movement. At his trial, Castro turned the tables on his ac-

cusers, placing the regime on trial for violating Cuban civil liberties and

political rights in an electrifying courtroom defense that concluded:

"Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me."2 He was

sentenced to prison, but released in a 1955 amnesty and exiled to Mex-

ico. There he prepared the rebel force that landed in eastern Cuba in De-

cember 1956. Plans to coordinate this landing with a popular insurrec-

tion in Santiago, Cuba's second city, went awry, but a few survivors made

their way to the nearby Sierra Maestra, where they began guerrilla war-

fare . Two years later they would enter Havana in triumph.

Castro's victory was based on a growing mastery of guerrilla warfare,

increasing peasant support, and a strong urban underground. But most

of all, Castro's success stemmed from Batista's weakness: his lack of com-

Making Revolution I 533

mitted support. When victory eluded the dictator, his troops deserted,

his civilian backing faded, and the United States abandoned him. As rebel

columns streamed toward Havana in late 1958, Batista's army disinte-

grated and the "strongman" fled the country.

The rebellion was over, but the revolution had just begun. When

Fidel Castro and his bearded young guerrillas descended from the Sierra

Maestra and made their way across Cuba to Havana in January 1959, few

among the millions who cheered their triumphal procession could be

certain what their victory portended. Within the rebel ranks were vary-

ing visions of the path that their "revolution" should take. Many were

middle-class moderates, like Mario Llerena, a rebel emissary abroad,

whose notion of revolution was confined to the establishment of politi-

cal democracy and some mild social reforms, and who believed that

"there was no desire, no expectation, and no need for a radical revolu-

tion."l Others, including some of Castro's closest companions, such as his

brother Raul and the Argentine Ernesto "Che" Guevara, were Marxists

who equated revolution with socialism. Still others, including Castro

himself, were influenced both by the revolutionary humanism of Jose

Marti, Cuba's independence hero, and by their own experience of Cuba's

underdevelopment and inequalities. Their ideology might not be fixed,

but they were determined "to revolutionize Cuba from the bottom up."

The contest among these factions was at once a struggle for power and

a battle between rival revolutionary visions.

It was a struggle that Castro and the radicals won easily, a victory that

reflected Castro's own ascendancy within his movement and control of

the rebel army. It also stemmed from his ability to rally the overwhelm-

ing majority of Cubans to his side. They responded to Castro's charisma

and they identified their revolution with him: "If Fidel is Communist,

then so are we" became the refrain. But they also responded to the rad-

ical thrust of his revolution, which implemented an agrarian reform,

raised real wages, eliminated illiteracy, promoted social programs, and

stood up to the United States, eventually expropriating more than one

billion dollars in U.S. properties. Many Cubans opposed Castro's radi-

534 / Americas

calism. Over ro percent of the population of six million went into exile,

most to the nearby United States, but many to other countries of the

Americas. Their departure eased Castro's path to power.

Castro won the struggle for power in increasingly close alliance with

Cuba's Communist party, which had opposed Castro initially and played

little part in the rebel victory, but which enjoyed sizable support among

organized labor. For the Communists, Castro offered access to power

and the opportunity to make the socialist revolution they themselves had

never been able to win. For Castro, the Communist alliance provided

disciplined working-class support at a time when his radicalism was

alienating his original middle-class political base. It also helped him se-

cure the backing of the Soviet Union, which he needed in order to sur-

vive his growing confrontation with the United States.

For the United States, Castro's increasing Communist ties were as

worrying as his agrarian reform, whose major targets were U.S. sugar

companies. By mid-1959, the Wall Street Journal was warning that "the

Revolution may be like a watermelon. The more they slice it the redder

it gets."4 As actor and as symbol, the United States played a central part

in Cuba's internal power struggle. This reflected the traditional U.S. role

as the ultimate arbiter of Cuban politics, plus Washington's distrust of

Castro and his revolution. Though the United States had pressured

Batista to leave office in late 1958, it had also tried to prevent Castro

from assuming power by arranging a military alternative. When this

failed, Washington threw its support to the moderates within Castro's

own movement, which the Cuban leader used to discredit them. Their

defeat left the United States with the stark choice of accepting Castro's

victory and coming to terms with his radical vision of a new Cuba, or else

trying to overthrow him. Predictably, with a revolution on its doorstep,

Washington chose confrontation over compromise.

But the emergence of the Soviet Union as a rival superpower and al-

ternative patron for Cuba meant that the economic and diplomatic pres-

sures that had persuaded Havana to follow the U.S. lead in the past were

no longer sufficient. Washington's final option was force. Covert inter-

Making Revolution I 5 3 5

vention had undermined the leftist Arbenz government in Guatemala in

1954, and the CIA was given a chance to repeat that success. The CIA

recruited and trained an exile army, confident that its landing would det-

onate a popular rebellion against the man the U.S . viewed as a Commu-

nist dictator. But this strategy came to grief in April 1961 at the Bay of

Pigs, "a perfect failure," which revealed Castro's political support and

military strength to be far greater than Washington had believed.

In the wake of his Bay of Pigs victory, Castro consolidated both his

personal power and his revolution's socialist definition, wrapping both in

the mantle of nationalism. On the eve of the invasion, one million

Cubans gathered in Havana's Revolution Square to hear Fidel declare

their revolution socialist. As a mock coffin of Uncle Sam was passed from

hand to hand, Castro asked the crowd to "vote" for or against socialism.

A thunderous roar of approval gave him the answer he wanted: Cuba was

now in the socialist camp. The missile crisis of the following year only

confirmed that reality. President John F. Kennedy may have faced down

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and forced Moscow to withdraw its

offensive missiles from Cuba, but in return the U.S. gave assurances that

it would not invade the island. At the time, Castro was outraged at

Khrushchev's failure to consult him, but he later admitted that

"Khrushchev was right." The resolution of the missile crisis meant the

consolidation of his revolution.

But revolution is a process that unfolds over time. During the next

three decades, Castro steered his revolution on a gyrating course. A 1961

campaign based on student volunteers that succeeded in virtually wiping

out illiteracy in one year underscored for Castro the power of revolu-

tionary consciousness and mass mobilization to overcome seemingly in-

surmountable obstacles. He followed the same strategy in his drive to de-

velop Cuba economically while creating a heterodox Utopian socialism

based on moral-not material-incentives, which would refute both

U.S. laws of capitalist economics and the Soviet model of socialist stages.

Its proof was to be a ten-million-ton sugar harvest by 1970, almost dou-

ble Cuba's previous record, and Castro mobilized his nation to meet this

536 I Americas

symbolic goal. When that harvest failed to reach ten million tons, and led

to widespread economic dislocation and political disillusionment, Castro

took personal responsibility for the debacle. Years later he excused these

mistakes of his youth as "errors of idealism: We wanted to build com-

munism without first passing through socialism."

For much of the 1960s, Cuban economic strategy followed Fidel Cas-

tro's changing enthusiasms-for and against sugar and industry, cattle

and coffee-and the joke was that "his checkbook was Cuba's budget" in

a system of "unplanned planning" with "more checks than balances." Be-

ginning in the 1970s, Castro embraced Communist orthodoxy, moved

closer to Moscow, and adapted Soviet institutions and models to Cuban

conditions. By 1989, a synthesis of Soviet and Cuban experience seemed

consolidated in Cuba, and a postrevolutionary society had emerged. A

balance of three decades of revolution could be drawn up.

Revolution had created far greater changes in Cuba than in Mexico.

Few private enterprises remained and the economy was guided by cen-

tral planning. A one-party Communist state had been established with

unprecedented power to mobilize resources and reshape society. The old

class structure had been leveled and Cuba claimed the most equal soci-

ety in the Americas, although new status distinctions had emerged, based

on revolutionary roles and political connections. Literacy and education

were universal, medical care was free, and life expectancy approached

U.S. levels.

Rural Cuba had benefited most. Bayamo, the Sierra Maestra province

where Castro had established his guerrilla headquarters, was one of

Cuba's poorest and least developed regions in 1959. Twenty-five years

later, its modest rural homes sprouted television antennas and pastel-

painted schools dotted its hillsides, including innovative coeducational

boarding schools where students worked half the day in the fields. In the provincial capital, where a Nestle dairy had been the sole ind1,1stry,

thirty-five factories provided employment, and local citizens prided

themselves on their medical clinics and cultural centers. Unlike many

rural areas in Latin America and the Caribbean, Bayamo had held its

Making Revolution I 5 3 7

population in the interim, as the revolution's heavy investment in the

countryside stemmed the tide of migration inundating cities in the rest

of the region. People spoke of the difference that the revolution had

made in their lives and in those of their better fed, better dressed, and

better educated children. Yet, for all the dramatic changes, some of the salient features-and

problems-of prerevolutionary Cuba remained, albeit in new guises. In- dustry had made significant strides, but sugar still accounted for the bulk

of the country's exports. The revolution had recorded impressive gains

in education and public health, but their quality was debatable and many

Cubans found their material aspirations unfulfilled. Mass organizations

and local "popular power" institutions gave Cubans greater political par-

ticipation than before the revolution, but not the Western-style democ-

racy and civil liberties that many Cubans desired. The seamy side of the

Cuban revolution was hidden behind the prison walls where political dis-

sidents languished. Social conformity was enforced by revolutionary

block committees and shoddy Soviet goods were part of the price for

Cuba's dependence on Moscow's trade and aid.

Although Castro's Cuba was no longer dependent economically on

the United States in 1989, it seemed to have exchanged that dependency

for a niche in COMECON, the Soviet bloc common market. This was

the source of Cuba's comparative prosperity during the 1980s crisis that

hit other

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