Consolidation and maintenance: Castro's use of force Notes

Use of force

1. After Batista’s fall in 1959, Castro used summary trials and executions to consolidate power.
2. 500+ officials executed in the first year, often without due process.
3. Many Cubans saw this as justified retribution, but international critics condemned it as human rights abuse.
4. Revolutionary tribunals: Run by military and committees, bypassed legal institutions to suppress dissent.
5. Targeted counter-revolutionaries, CIA suspects, and Escambray insurgents (1960–66).
6. Many faced imprisonment, torture, or execution, branded as enemies of the revolution and imperialist agents.

Exile, Dissent, and Forced Labor

1. MININT (Ministerio del Interior, or Ministry of the Interior in English) & State Security:
   1. Key tools of control; monitored citizens, infiltrated dissidents, managed political prisons.
   2. By the 1970s, thousands of political prisoners faced torture, solitary confinement, and forced labor.
2. Exile/emigration: Dissidents forced into exile or denied re-entry. Mass emigrations (e.g., Mariel boatlift 1980) used to expel opponents.
3. Authoritarian vs. Totalitarian: Cuba is seen as authoritarian, with less force than totalitarian states, but still used forced labor camps (UMAPs).
4. UMAPs (1965–68): Detained 30,000–35,000 men in Camagüey, including conscientious objectors, LGBTQ+, Jehovah’s Witnesses, clergy, intellectuals, and dissenters.
5. Conditions: Harsh agricultural labor (10–12 hours daily) in overcrowded, unsanitary barracks. At least 72 died under torture, 180 suicides, and 507 sent to mental institutions.
6. Methods: Deceptive conscription notices, street round-ups, and surveillance via Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs) to identify “antisocial” individuals.
7. International criticism: OAS (1967) condemned UMAPs as “inhumane,” citing torture, forced labor, and psychiatric abuse.

Repression Through UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción)

1. Public portrayal: UMAPs presented as rural army service supporting sugar production.
2. Historians’ view: Part of a social-engineering project to shape the “New Socialist Man” and punish nonconformity, especially targeting homosexuals.
3. International reaction: Reports by journalists (e.g., Paul Kidd, 1966) and testimonies from escapees exposed abuse, despite Cuban press propaganda.
4. Closure: Castro later admitted “great injustice.” Under domestic and international pressure, UMAPs were shut down in 1968.