IB History Castro: How Was Authoritarian Rule Maintained? Key Definitions

A nationwide mobilisation in which thousands of young volunteers were sent to teach reading and writing in rural Cuba, reducing illiteracy from around 23.6 percent to around 3.9 percent within a year.

Cuba's formal socialist constitution, adopted in 1976, which established the Communist Party as the leading force in society and formalised the structures of one-party rule.

A failed CIA-backed invasion of Cuba in April 1961 by Cuban exiles attempting to overthrow Castro. Its failure strengthened Castro's position domestically and pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union.

Argentine revolutionary and close ally of Castro who fought in the Cuban Revolution and became a central figure in its propaganda and international image before his death in Bolivia in 1967.

Neighbourhood-level organizations established in 1960 to defend the revolution. CDRs organized community services (vaccination drives, blood donations, literacy programmes) but also monitored political loyalty and reported dissent. By the mid-1960s, around 80% of Cuba's adult population belonged to a CDR.

A law passed by Castro's government in May 1959 that capped individual landholdings at around 400 hectares, redistributed the surplus to landless and small farmers, and nationalised much land owned by large domestic and foreign, especially American, sugar companies. It was the first major legal step in dismantling Cuba's pre-revolutionary landowning elite and provoked early US diplomatic protests over compensation.

The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, founded in 1959 as the state's film production body and a key instrument of revolutionary cultural propaganda.

The process by which a government takes ownership of privately owned businesses, industries, or property. In post-1975 Vietnam, the Communist government nationalized private enterprises as part of its transition to a socialist economy.