revolution

Cuba. Twenty years ago yesterday, a Cuban lawyer and an Argentinian doctor led a ragged band of 86 freedom fighters in an attack on a fortress in dictator Fulgencio Batista's Cuba. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara lost the battle for the Moncada garrison, and both were imprisoned for some time. Six years later, they led their small guerrilla army into Havana and began to implement a socialist revolution.

Cuba today bears little resemblance to the country that rolled out the welcome mat for American imperialism before the revolution. No longer do the rich American businessmen sit smoking cigars in the Havana nightclubs and divide up Cuban production. No longer are Cuban peasants illiterate peons whose only reason for existence is American sugar interests.

Cuba's illiteracy rate is the lowest of any country in Latin America, and new schools and hospitals dot the country. The rich businessmen and the suffering they brought have been banished from the island. The Cuban people have gained a sense of purpose, a growing feeling of dignity, and the rest of Latin America looks to the country as a beacon marking the path out of the swamp of underdevelopment and oppression caused by imperial exploitation.

Fidel Castro is older now, and the euphoria of revolution dims before the ongoing tasks of socialist construction. But the romantic aspects of revolution live on, in Cuba perhaps more than elsewhere. The sense that revolution is joyous as well as arduous will never really die there.