No Cuban Revolution: Effects on Latin America?

Vendaval

Vendaval

The Cuban Revolution was sort of an incredible feat. The Castros and ~80 other dudes were packed like sardines on the old and shabby Granma, only to miss their intended landing spot by almost fifteen miles and were immediately spotted by air patrols. Not even half of the original ~80 survived the first few days. The fact that that the Castros' landing party went on to overthrow Batista's dictatorship, even after so many things went wrong, is vastly impressive.

So, let's say something else went wrong. Suppose that the Granma sank between its voyage from Mexico to Cuba, killing nearly everyone on board.

It's safe to say that the 1959 Cuban Revolution and Castro's dictatorship changed the course of Latin American affairs and that it inspired many aspiring revolutionaries in the region. With this in mind, what would have been the effects and consequences of no Cuban Revolution or Castroist Cuba on Latin America?
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

Havana would be the party spot for North America. Would Lost Wages.. er Vegas even take off while Havana was still a vacation paradise?
 

SactoMan101

The Kiat said:
Havana would be the party spot for North America. Would Lost Wages.. er Vegas even take off while Havana was still a vacation paradise?
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I think Las Vegas would not have experienced a major growth spurt in the 1960's if the Cuban Revolution had not happened--most of the money invested in casinos would have ended up in Cuba, since it is easier to reach Cuba from the large popular centers along the US East Coast.
 

OnlyAlb

There could be less communist guerrillas or communist insurgency around Central America and South America.

I also assume that no Cuban Revolution would butterfly away the Missile Crisis and the Invasion of Grenada.
 

The Ubbergeek

OnlyAlb said:
There could be less communist guerrillas or communist insurgency around Central America and South America.

I also assume that no Cuban Revolution would butterfly away the Missile Crisis and the Invasion of Grenada.
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The corrolary may be stronger rightwing movements and dictatures in some cases..
 
Plumber

Plumber

The Ubbergeek said:
The corrolary may be stronger rightwing movements and dictatures in some cases..
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The American people initially welcomed Castro. After Castro, they became much less trusting of any Latin American leftist. Without a Cuban Revolution, the United States and local elites will view the left without nearly as much alarm.
 

The Ubbergeek

OnlyAlb said:
So would the Argentina Junta remain in power under this scenario? Or does that all depend on the outcome of the Falkland war?
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Without a reds-win precedent, I can see the old stuff going on.

One can argue this created a maccharthist paranoia in some states around, fear of 'red contagion'... Excuses for USA interventionism...
 

Admiral Brown

OnlyAlb said:
There could be less communist guerrillas or communist insurgency around Central America and South America.
.
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This. There would still be many people with leftist ideas, maybe as much as IOTL. Latin America is a place where wealth is very unevenly distributed, and in such situations, naturaly, leftist ideas flourish.

But IOTL many people with leftist ideas wrongly thought that what happened in Cuba could be easily replicated elsewhere: all you needed was to train a few guys, form a guerilla, go to the forested areas of the country and began fighting, and that would make the government fall. Many did that without establishing any link with the local population, and where uterly defeated by armed forces. But even though these guerillas without any substantial support were never a serious threat for most governments, they were easily used by right wingers in the armed forces to justify their taking control of the government in order to defeat this comunist guerillas who they accused of posing an existential threat to the nation as a whole. A lot of people died because of the above explained misconception.

So, if establishing a small guerilla isn't seen as a viable way of getting into power, leftists will try other means of achieving that goal, depending on the country: winning elections were possible*, as in Chile; trying to get support among the unions, and then calling for massive strikes and demostrations; trying to win the support of the military, which was common in other parts of the third world (namely Africa, the Arab world or parts of Asia), but very rare in Latin America, were the military was mostly right wing.



* In many countries there weren't regular elections, or, if they where, communists and socialists couldn't participate. In those countries, leftists wouldn't be able to try to get into power by winning elections, and would have to try other options.
 
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Admiral Brown

OnlyAlb said:
So would the Argentina Junta remain in power under this scenario? Or does that all depend on the outcome of the Falkland war?
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The Ubbergeek said:
Without a reds-win precedent, I can see the old stuff going on.

One can argue this created a maccharthist paranoia in some states around, fear of 'red contagion'... Excuses for USA interventionism...
Click to expand...

Without Fidel success, there might have been less guerillas in the 70ies, and the Junta might have never got into power in 1976. If it did,it might be a different junta, repressive as all dictotorships, but with much less use of torture, and no disapearences.

If, however, it was the same junta as IOTL, with the same characteristics, no Cuban revolution wouldn't change anything. It will still fall if the economy crumbles and it is defeated in a foreign war. Remember the Junta wasn't defetead by Cuban-inspired Communist guerrillas: those were few and had already been brutaly defeated by the military between 1976 and 1979, using the cruelest methods, including all sorts of war crimes. It fell because the vast majority of the population, and the major political parties -then illegal, but still meeting in the shadows- were against it and had lost their fear to show their discontent.
 
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GiantMonkeyMan

Banned
I think without a revolutionary Cuba, the US wouldn't be so quick to fund and arm right-wing movements in the rest of Latin America. So I think you'd see a revolutionary movement elsewhere, whether successful or not is another matter but it wouldn't face so organised a reaction without heavy anti-communist US involvement.
 

Rich Rostrom

OnlyAlb said:
I also assume that no Cuban Revolution would butterfly away the Missile Crisis and the Invasion of Grenada.
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No, no, NO!

The 1962 Missile Crisis (and the Communist presence on Grenada and the U.S. intervention) were direct, predictable consequences of the Cuban Communist takeover. If it doesn't happen, they don't happen, nor anything like them.

They were not unpredictable events subject to trivial influences. The conception and birth of Barack Obama, which happened after Castro's takeover, would be "butterflied", since it was dependent on one particular sperm out of millions fertilizing an egg. Barack sr. and Stanley Dunham might not even meet and marry; if they have a child, that child would be different - possibly not even the same sex. That's a butterfly effect, which eliminates the entire OTL career of Obama.

In an ATL, some consequences of a PoD can be predicted. Sometimes the consquences are obscure. For example: in 1968, Richard Nixon appeared on Laugh-in!, which helped counter Nixon's existing image as stuffy and humorless. In That Wacky Redhead, Lucille Ball does not sell Desilu Productions to Gulf&Western; some TV production figures have predictably different careers. One of them does not become a producer for Laugh-in! and so does not invite Nixon on the show, which in the author's opinion changes the very close outcome of the 1968 election.

But "tight" predictability collapses more than a generation out, because none of the personalities conceived after the PoD will exist. Other, similar people will - but not the same. That's butterflying.
 
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NothingNow

Banned
Eh, it depends on the POD. Sinking the Granma in 1956 won't really change much. The former (and still legitimate) president Carlos Prio Socarras is in Miami, and can more than likely raise enough money to fund another go at it, while you've got vocal opponent and former President Ramón Grau San Martín in Cuba actively leading the domestic political opposition.

After all, Batista had previously weathered Conspiración de los Puros led by Colonel Ramón Barquín in April of 1956, was almost Assassinated in an attack orchestrated by University of Havana students in March 1957, and was pretty much constantly under siege.
Eventually, someone was gonna get lucky.

Actually thinking about it, it'd be funny to run things through if the Conspiración de los Puros hadn't been betrayed by a Lieutenant, and had succeeded in removing Batista from office on 6-7 April 1956. There'd be a nice bit of irony to be had if Ramón Grau San Martín had been nominated to be the interim President of Cuba and finish out Batista's Term.

Under such circumstances the M-26-J would probably just return to Havana and disperse, and Fidel Castro might simply return to being a lawyer with political aspirations. Che however, would probably end up in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic with some other rebel group.

Admiral Brown said:
But IOTL many people with leftist ideas wrongly thought that what happened in Cuba could easily be replicated elsewhere: all you need is to train a few guys, form a guerilla, go to the forested areas and began fighting, and that will make the government fall.
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Which is a massive misreading of the situation. The M-26-J was nothing without it's allied organizations in Urban areas, and when combined with the notorious unpopularity of the Batista regime, pretty much led to the situation where a few hundred guerrillas (with support from the local populace,) managed to score massive victories against a government that consistently over-estimated their strength, and using the momentum built up from said victories, and numerous defections, succeeded in taking over the country.

Che, for all the other things that are said about the man, at least understood that much, which is why foquismo admits that the vanguard itself can't really do much save bolster the populace' morale, and needs conventional military support to actually seize the apparatus of power. Urban Guerillas have a much better chance of developing the sorts of networks, and popular support needed to really make for a successful revolution.
 

Paul V McNutt

Banned
Latin America would get less attention in the US. When I was studying Latin American history in the 80s, I noticed there was a wave of books published in the 60s and the 80s.
 
Stolengood

Stolengood

Banned
Plumber said:
The American people initially welcomed Castro. After Castro, they became much less trusting of any Latin American leftist. Without a Cuban Revolution, the United States and local elites will view the left without nearly as much alarm.
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You're forgetting Guatemala and Iran, both of which caused alarm (both of which also having been manufactured by the CIA, but that's beside the point).
 

OnlyAlb

Could one of the POD be a US intervention into Cuba to assist the Cuban government in defeating the Communist rebels? By military intervention, I mean US troops fighting alongside Batista.
 
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