What if Batista did not release Fidel Castro from prison in 1955, but Castro made a comeback later?

raharris1973

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After his arrest for the Moncada Barracks attack of 1953, Fidel Castro was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

In a moment of confidence having won the Presidential election unopposed, and also seeking some respectability, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista released him and several other of Castro's fellow prisoners in May 1955. He fled to Mexico and then returned to Cuba to lead an ultimately successful guerrilla movement starting in 1956.

Although non-Castro Cubas are not something I have seen much of, and could make an interesting storyline in their own right, what I'm most interested would be the impact of a delayed Cuban revolution and how it might change the texture and events of the 1960s. Since Fidel died a short time ago and his bro is still alive, he's got plenty of time for comebacks if he does not roll the dice and win in the 1950s.

In other words, I'm more interested in looking at the consequences of a late Castro rather than a dead or forever-out-of-business Castro.

For instance, had Castro served his full prison term, he would have been released in 1968.

It's a bit mechanical, but lacking anything better, a timeline like OTLs, but just 13 years later might see Castro might see Castro starting a a guerrilla movement in 1969 or 1970, and taking power in 1973.

There would be some interesting Cold War divergences by that point if there is no Communist Cuba through the 1960s, but it pops up in 1973.

As an alternative, if you think it unrealistic for him not to be released until his full-term was served, than what if he were released after 7 years time served, 1960? I would think it is plausible that he could be released in some intermediate timeframe between OTL's outcome and the end of his sentence, if prisoner amnesties were a frequent or occasional occurence in Cuba, or political change in Cuba brought about the release of the Moncada attackers.

So, using the same method above, a Castro released in 1960, starts an insurgency in 1961 and takes power in 1964.

Even that has major effects on the events of the Kennedy administration.

This premise raises some other questions. If Castro were not released until 1960 or 1968, would Batista even still be in power when Fidel walks? Or would Batista have been overthrown or retired, exiled or bought out in the meantime?

It's hard to say, although I don't think any Cuban regime pre-Castro last more than a decade.

Could Castro have come to power via a legitimate political path, and either held on to it dictatorially, or yielded it peacefully via electoral politics? That could be interesting. Maybe his revolutionary youth could have been an advertisement for a later electoral campaign, like Hugo Chavez's coup was for him by the time he ultimately got elected.

Your thoughts on any of the above?

To resummarize, the multiple lines of thought above, they are:

a) Cuban revolution pretty similar to OTL 13 years later

b) Cuban revolution pretty similar to OTL just 5 years later

c) Castro's career if the Batista dicatorship were out of power for non-Castro reasons by the time Castro was released (indeed, Batista losing power, if it happens before 1968, could quite likely be the occasion for Castro getting released)
 
Castro getting released from prison when he did never really made sense to me. Batista was a sonofabitch and crooked as hell. But once Castro was in power and somebody tries the same thing odds are they get shot for their troubles
 
There were all sorts of people other than the Castro brothers trying to overthrow Batista--ex-President Prio, various military factions, the Revolutionary Directorate https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-1957-cuban-revolution.429786/#post-15954827 etc. My guess is that Batista wouldn't survive in power much longer than in OTL, and whoever would replace him would free the Castro brothers, who would be ready to take advantage of any unpopularity the new regime would (almost inevitably, eventually) run into. Seeing the freeing of the Castros as a mortal error is based on a retrospective sense that they were the chief menace to Batista--which at the time did not seem true at all. (Indeed, it took some quite incredible good luck for them to prevail when they did.)
 

raharris1973

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So what then David T, Batista is ousted by somebody else before 1960 is over, the new government gets an initial honeymoon but becomes unpopular, and Castro comes to power by election, Chavez-style?
 
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So what then David T, Batista is ousted by somebody else before 196o is over, the new government gets an initial honeymoon but becomes unpopular, and Castro comes to power by election, Chavez-style?

Certainly a possibility. Anyway, if Batista didn't free the Castro brothers in 1955, he would probably do so within a couple of years anyway. He was always trying to divide the opposition by getting at least some of them to go along with him, and the minimum condition opposition politicians would set for a dialogue would probably include amnesty for political prisoners, including Fidel and Raul Castro.
 

raharris1973

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Castro getting released from prison when he did never really made sense to me. Batista was a sonofabitch and crooked as hell. But once Castro was in power and somebody tries the same thing odds are they get shot for their troubles

I really don't understand the Batista "system" such as it was. On the one hand, I don't think capital punishment was a thing, at least not for political crimes. On the other, you hear about extrajudicial brutality. Maybe in this culture, the old regime was harsher cracking down on the grassroots supporters of revolution but easier on the leaders, maybe because of the family connections of the latter.
 

raharris1973

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Is there any way Castro could have won at the time of Moncada 1953 and lucked into national power at that time?
 

raharris1973

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Indeed I did!

As it turns out, you said:

"One final note: suppose Moncada had indeed somehow led to Castro's taking over all of Cuba in 1953? He may or may not already have been a "Marxist-Leninist" at the time (he has given contradictory accounts of this) but in any event he did favor a program of radical social reform going well beyond anything the Ortodoxo party (of which he was at least nominally a member) had previously proposed. ...This would mean a confrontation with the US, and in 1953 it is unlikely that Castro could have survived such a confrontation. Castro himself later said, "I think that if we had liquidated Batista in 1953, imperialism would have crushed us; because between 1953 and 1959, the world witnessed a change in the 'correlation of forces' that was very important. The Soviet state was still relatively weak in this epoch. For us, the Soviet state which helped us so decisively later, in 1953 could not have done it." (Geyer, pp. 123-124)

And I said:

"The mechanics of imperialism crushing an early Castro would be interesting to see however. A strong, institutional Cuban military would not be there, as it was in Guatemala, to launch a coup. Does Eisenhower order an open occupation by US ground force reserves in 1953, 54 or 55 before slashing ground forces? Does he just batter Cuba with exile invasions, embargoes, assassination attempts until a "Contra" rebel faction gets established and eventually wins over a period of a few years? In '53 and '54 is the post-Stalin Soviet Union so cautious that it simply does not extend any aid, and this has detrimental knock-on effects undermining Castro's resource base.

Random thought: In the absence of Soviet patronage, might Juan Peron's Argentina develop an affinity with and provide aid to Castro's Cuba?"
 
Indeed I did!

As it turns out, you said:

"One final note: suppose Moncada had indeed somehow led to Castro's taking over all of Cuba in 1953? He may or may not already have been a "Marxist-Leninist" at the time (he has given contradictory accounts of this) but in any event he did favor a program of radical social reform going well beyond anything the Ortodoxo party (of which he was at least nominally a member) had previously proposed. ...This would mean a confrontation with the US, and in 1953 it is unlikely that Castro could have survived such a confrontation. Castro himself later said, "I think that if we had liquidated Batista in 1953, imperialism would have crushed us; because between 1953 and 1959, the world witnessed a change in the 'correlation of forces' that was very important. The Soviet state was still relatively weak in this epoch. For us, the Soviet state which helped us so decisively later, in 1953 could not have done it." (Geyer, pp. 123-124)

And I said:

"The mechanics of imperialism crushing an early Castro would be interesting to see however. A strong, institutional Cuban military would not be there, as it was in Guatemala, to launch a coup. Does Eisenhower order an open occupation by US ground force reserves in 1953, 54 or 55 before slashing ground forces? Does he just batter Cuba with exile invasions, embargoes, assassination attempts until a "Contra" rebel faction gets established and eventually wins over a period of a few years? In '53 and '54 is the post-Stalin Soviet Union so cautious that it simply does not extend any aid, and this has detrimental knock-on effects undermining Castro's resource base.

Random thought: In the absence of Soviet patronage, might Juan Peron's Argentina develop an affinity with and provide aid to Castro's Cuba?"

Two things to remember: (1) Peron wouldn't have that much time to help a Castro who took power in 1953--he himself would be overthrown in 1955; and (2) in any event Argentina had its own economic probems and Peron was trying to improve relations with the US following Milton Eisenhower's visit in 1953 (though he also reached a trade agreement with the USSR). https://books.google.com/books?id=dtA3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT41
 

raharris1973

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Two things to remember: (1) Peron wouldn't have that much time to help a Castro who took power in 1953--he himself would be overthrown in 1955; and (2) in any event Argentina had its own economic probems and Peron was trying to improve relations with the US following Milton Eisenhower's visit in 1953 (though he also reached a trade agreement with the USSR). https://books.google.com/books?id=dtA3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT41

Good points on Peron.

As for whether the "correlation of forces" in the early 1950s means the US inevitably overthrows Castro as he seemed to assert, I think some other discussions I've been in relate to this. For instance @David T, you seem to be a skeptic of the idea that any President would lightly redeem a failure at Bay of Pigs with an outright invasion. You also seem skeptical of the theory that only the Cuban missile crisis deterred the US from invading Cuba in Kennedy's first term [the idea being that without that show of Soviet commitment, the US would inevitably escalate Operation Mongoose shenanigans into a full invasion within a year or two.] The relative power of the US towards the USSR, especially in intercontinental atomic delivery, is even more lopsided in the US favor in 1953-1955 than it was during the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, so it's an easy conclusion that the US would be less inhibited in the earlier period about invading a Cuba that was perceived as going Communist.

However, are the things that make the optics of invading Cuba bad in the 1960s from a diplomatic and political standpoint all that different in the 1950s? In material terms, is there vastly less that the USSR could provide a Cuban ally in 53-55 than in 60-62? And is that of enough significance to be the difference maker in terms of Castro regime survival. In US material terms the US has a larger combat experienced ground force and tactical air force from the Korean War in 1953 than it would in 1960-1962, but the US is also more war-weary.

This is also related to the other discussion thread of whether the US would react to a failure of the anti-Arbenz coup in Guatemala with an open invasion, or just adopt the alternatives of low-level harassment or live-and-let-live. I suspect that if one thinks the US would invade Guatemala rather than tolerate the pink or hot pink there, then invading a hot pink or red Cuba would be likely. But if the US would balk at open invasion in one case, it probably would in the other.
 
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