The Militant - January 26, 2015 -- Cuban toilers’ victory at Bay of Pigs shows power of revolution

Vol. 79/No. 2 January 26, 2015

(Books of the Month column)
Cuban toilers’ victory at Bay of Pigs
shows power of revolution

Below is an excerpt from Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, based on two talks given by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes in March 2001, commemorating the 40th anniversary of Cuba’s victory over Washington’s mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The piece here is from the chapter titled, “There Will Be a Victorious Revolution in the United States Before a Victorious Counterrevolution in Cuba,” a point made by Fidel Castro in a March 1961 speech. Copyright © 2001 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY JACK BARNES
The most common rationalization in bourgeois circles for the U.S. defeat at the Bay of Pigs is that [President John] Kennedy vacillated on the eve of the invasion by canceling a second round of air strikes on the morning of April 17. At the time, [CIA official Richard] Bissell had been among the most fervent advocates of these “D-Day” strikes, which were supposed to take out Cuba’s remaining combat planes. But in his memoirs, published shortly after his death in the mid-1990s, Bissell dismisses critics who “blame the whole thing on the president’s last-minute decision to cancel the air strike.” That decision alone “would not have ensured success,” he says. “No one could say it would have.”

Yes, “no one could.” Especially since even the initial air strikes — when the U.S.-instigated forces held the element of surprise — succeeded in destroying only two of Cuba’s twelve combat planes. By the time the April 17 raids were to have been attempted, the Revolutionary Air Force was already on maximum combat alert, its planes had been further dispersed, and antiaircraft batteries and other defensive measures had been reinforced around all Cuban airfields.

Fidel Castro made the right strategic decision on the first morning of the invasion ordering the air force to focus on sinking the mercenaries’ ammunition and supply ships, a mission the pilots carried out with stunning success. It’s a myth, however, that by the final day of the battle the gusanos had nothing left to fight with but their fingers and fists. They certainly had more weapons and ammo than the Rebel Army ever had during the revolutionary war against Batista!

“What was our ammunition reserve?” during those years, Fidel asked in his April 23 report on the victory at Playa Girón. “The peasants used to go along the country roads picking up the stuff dropped by the enemy forces, and then brought the ammunition to us to fight with.”

By comparison, Fidel said, all the Cuban people had to do was go down to Havana’s Civic Plaza to look at the captured “antitank guns, mortars of all kinds, bazookas, automatic weapons, ammunition, communications equipment, all in enormous quantities.”

As the foreword to Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs: Washington’s First Military Defeat in the Americas] concludes, “The invading forces lost the will to fight before they ran out of bullets. During three days of battle, they could never even get off the beaches, and additional U.S. air or naval support would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome.” The great bulk of the brigade’s cadres and officers had individually scattered into the woods three hours or more before the final surrender late in the afternoon.

It was the class character of the forces and of their cause that made the difference at Playa Girón, not air strikes or ammunition. Some of the mercenaries may have convinced themselves they had enlisted in a noble crusade, and many used high-sounding words to drape their goal of taking back “their” factories, plantations, casinos, exclusive schools, country clubs, beaches, and servants. But in the last analysis, as Che pointed out, modern armies don’t fight selflessly and to the death over the restoration of capitalist property.

The cadres of the people’s militias, the Revolutionary National Police, the Rebel Army, and the Revolutionary Air Force, on the other hand, were fighting for something worth giving everything for at Playa Girón — something that was transforming the life of the great majority. They were fighting to defend what they had accomplished through two and a half years of a deeply popular revolution, and the ways they were changing themselves in the process. They were fighting to defend the redemption of Cuba’s national sovereignty and dignity from U.S. imperialism and its exploiting factory owners, landlords, and brothel and casino operators. To defend the land reform; the literacy campaign and universal public education; the enforcement of laws against racial discrimination; the slashing of housing rents and utility rates; the steps to draw women and youth, together with the workers and peasants, more deeply into all aspects of economic, social, political, and military life; the internationalist solidarity with struggles by toilers throughout Latin America and the world.

That is the kind of army that can withstand big sacrifices and fight to the death. That is the kind of army that won’t develop self-destructive doubts about what it is fighting for. That is the kind of army the enemy slowly but surely comes to realize won’t stop doing battle, no matter what.

That’s what’s so telling about Fidel’s story, in the 1961 May Day speech, about meeting with captured mercenaries a few days after the battle and asking if any of them had ever worked cutting sugarcane. Only one raised his hand.

Under certain circumstances, of course, overwhelming force with an unjust cause can overrun a small force with a just cause. The point is not to dismiss material realities. But not under conditions of a strengthening and consolidating socialist revolution, based among a toiling population that is armed and ready. That’s why the invaders “lost” the will to fight. It was beaten out of them.

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