User:Wlw713/26th of July Movement

Rural Activities
The M-26-7 divided its operations between the rural guerillas, who were based in the Sierra Maestra mountains, and the urban underground, which was comprised mostly of middle-class and professional Cubans living in towns and cities. Castro focused his efforts in the rural countryside on fighting Batista's soldiers and liberating and governing increasing amounts of territory taken from Batista's control. The M-26-7 incorporated large numbers of peasant men and women into the ranks of the M-26-7 where they served as soldiers, collaborators, and informants to fight Batista's regime. Many peasant leaders were also affiliated with the PSP and used their connections with Communist Party members and sympathizers to recruit support for the M-26-7. Most notably, the Campesino Association, which had been an active Communist organization since 1934, allowed the M-26-7 to access and build on the network of peasant political organizing. The leaders of the Authentic Party (PA) and Orthodox Party and their constituents of small, medium, and wealthy landowners supported M-26-7 as well through funding and protection from Batista's forces, although Castro's platform of agrarian reform would lead to the eventual break between wealthy farmers and landowners and M-26-7.

As they occupied increasing large parts of the rural countryside, the M-26-7 provided public services to local peasants ranging from elementary schooling and literacy education, setting up hospitals and medical services, maintaining toll roads, providing protection from bandits, and enacting laws and decrees. In return, the M-26-7 taxed the peasants under its control and enforced prison sentences and fines against those convicted of tax evasion as well as other crimes including banditry, the cultivation, possession, and use of marijuana, and cockfighting. Castro created bureaucratic organizations to administer the rebel-controlled territories including the Administración Civil para los Territorios Liberados (ACTL) in September 1958, which was active in the Sierra Maestra, and the Agrarian Bureau, which was created to oversee the Oriente province on August 3, 1958.

Urban Activities
In 1955, Castro designated Frank País as chief of action of the Oriente province after País merged his organization, Oriente Revolutionary Action (ARO), with the M-26-7. As the head of the M-26-7's urban underground, País centralized its operations under a core leadership known as the National Directorate and moved the M-26-7's headquarters from Havana to Santiago. He also created six separate sections of the M-26-7 which were responsible for organization, labor outreach, civic resistance among the middle class, sabotage activities and an urban militia, propaganda, and a treasury to raise funds. País attempted to support Castro's landing from the Granma with a failed armed uprising in Santiago on November 30, 1956, and after Castro and the surviving guerillas regrouped in the Sierra Maestra, the guerillas depended on their urban counterparts for medicines, weapons, ammunition, food, equipment, clothing, money, propaganda production, and domestic and international publicity. In addition, the urban underground organized worker strikes as well as patriotic clubs for Cuban exiles in the United States, which provided funds for the purchasing of arms and ammunition. The M-26-7 frequently coordinated its actions with other urban-based anti-Batista groups such as the PSP, the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE), and the Organización Auténtica (OA), but by May 1957, the arrests and killings of large numbers of the DRE and the OA and the history of the PSP's collaboration with the Batista regime led the M-26-7 to be the dominant anti-Batista force in the cities.

Frank País's assassination by Santiago police in July 1957 prompted mass demonstrations and worker strikes in the city that quickly spread across the island, leading to a nationwide general strike on August 5, 1957. Though the strike saw limited success, the M-26-7 believed that the speed at which the strike spread and its popularity meant that a future nationwide strike could destabilize Batista's regime enough to lead to his overthrow. However, a subsequent national strike held on April 9, 1958 ended up being a failure for the M-26-7 due to the preparedness of Batista's forces for such an event and poor communication between the M-26-7 and labor groups as to the time of the strike. Many M-26-7 members were also killed in firefights with the police and army as they tried to stage an armed uprising during the chaos.

Political and Military Action
Sabotage and the dissemination of propaganda were key parts of the M-26-7's strategy in both the urban and rural theaters of operation and were used to generate an atmosphere of crisis and to destabilize the public and economic order of the Batista regime. In the countryside, guerillas burned sugar cane fields and oil refineries, blocked bridges and trains, and attacked Batista's soldiers, while in the cities, M-26-7 members cut telephone lines, coordinated strikes, kidnapped public figures, bombed government buildings, and assassinated government officials. The M-26-7 ran its propaganda operations to portray the violence of its actions in a positive light, and notable propaganda efforts included the broadcasting of Radio Rebelde beginning on February 24, 1958 and the invitation of foreign journalists and reporters, such as New York Times war correspondent Herbert Matthews and U.S. military intelligence agent Andrew St. George. Both domestic and international propaganda efforts were aimed at informing audiences of the goals and policies of the M-26-7 and glorifying the lives and exploits of the guerilla fighters to generate sympathy for the movement.

Post-1959
Despite the support that the M-26-7 received from many Catholic students and priests during the fight against Batista, the movement's victory in 1959 created a split between the M-26-7 and Catholic Church, which resisted the agrarian reform program and what members of the Church saw as Castro's turn to Soviet Communism. Following the National Catholic Congress's protest against the lack of Catholic values in the policies of the M-26-7 and a July 17, 1959 riot in front of the Cathedral of Havana involving representatives of the Catholic Church and pro-Castro protestors, Castro publicly denounced the leadership of the Roman Catholic church on August 12. On January 6, 1960, M-26-7 militants then occupied Catholic seminaries, churches, and schools across Cuba and arrested the leaders of the Young Catholic Workers (JOC). After the Bay of Pigs invasion, the M-26-7 closed more churches and detained a number of priests and bishops on April 17, 1961, and the Catholic Church was expelled from Cuba on May 1 in the wake of the nationalization of all private colleges and the expulsion of foreign priests from the island.

Legacy
During the struggle against Batista, the M-26-7 portrayed itself as a unifying movement for all Cubans that would bring about democracy and social justice after Batista's overthrow, particularly for women and the Afro-Cuban minority. Despite only making up 10% of the Cuban workforce, women disproportionately participated in the M-26-7 during the Revolution in a number of capacities that included the manufacturing of propaganda and demonstrations and picketing. In addition, the Mariana Grajales was established in September 1958 as an all-female military unit in the M-26-7. After the Revolution, the revolutionary government, controlled by the M-26-7, established the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) to integrate women into Cuban political, social, and economic life and to eradicate prostitution. Castro and the M-26-7 also emphasized racial integration as a key platform of the movement, and after Batista's overthrow, the M-26-7 quickly desegregated public spaces and implemented reforms, such as the redistribution of land and improved government education and medical services, that disproportionately benefited the Afro-Cuban population. However, the M-26-7's racial policies have been criticized for repressing black political organization and for emphasizing pre-Revolution rhetoric that devalues racial consciousness and asserts that racism in Cuba has been ended by the Revolution despite the lingering presence of prejudiced and discriminatory attitudes on the island.

Since 1959, July 26 has been celebrated as a national holiday in Cuba. Celebrations involving community mobilizations and programs, reenactments, and recitations occur on the local and national level each year to honor the Moncada Barracks attack and the role of the M-26-7 in overthrowing the Batista regime. From 1967 to 1973, three museums were also opened in Santiago, Villa Blanca, and Moncada to commemorate the Moncada Barracks assault and the actions of the M-26-7.