Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Goff, Brendan

Area of Concentration

History and Economics

Abstract

This thesis attempts to analyze the Cuban Revolution and emergence of Communism in Castroism through the lens of capital concerns and international relations. Batista, once a close US ally, lost the faith of his northern partners over the course of 1958 as his inability to stop the Revolution became clear. Cuban and American businesses called for the United States to remove or reform the dictator before it was too late. Fearful of possible Communist infiltration on the island, US capital worked with the State Department to undermine Batista in an attempt to replace him with a reformer before Castro could. When this failed, but Castro seemed to stabilize the island, the same community proclaimed the legitimacy and good faith of the new government. Fidel Castro and his Movimiento 26 de Julio were once outspoken anticommunists. Revolutionaries called for the removal of batistiano corruption more than US influence on the island, and many were left adrift after the country turned to the USSR for support. This took place due to a worsening relationship between the Revolution and capital. Having preserved the Revolution through 1959, its most vulnerable time, American business began to push for the removal of Castro. His expropriations had gone too far, and recompense was slow-coming. It was after these largest US-Cuban investors turned on the new government that the United States began to make war against the island, economically, diplomatically and, in 1961, militarily. Through US Department of State and Justice documents, the rise of Communism in Cuba can be understood more clearly; not as a sinister project of the governing cadre from the start, but as reaction.

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