This relationship with Batista did, in fact, allow the Communist Party to claim credit for some reforms, such as the labor protection clauses in the 1940 constitution, which provided a space within which the CTC could function. It should be said that the PSP was probably the only consistently honest force in Cuban politics during the 1940s.58 Nevertheless, their approach left the PSP dependent on its relationship with the state and, when Batista lost the election in 1944, the communists were dangerously exposed, particularly given the U.S. pressure to repress communism in the new atmosphere of the developing Cold War. They were eventually purged from the CTC leadership during 1947–48.
Therefore, the PSP could not be under any illusions that their previous good relations with Batista could be reestablished following his 1952 coup, which they immediately condemned placing the blame on U.S. imperialism.59 They called for the setting up of a frente democrático nacional (national democratic front) with the aim of uniting the whole opposition in a popular front to resist Batista by legal means. Unfortunately for them, the Havana leadership of most of the rest of the opposition was more anti-communist than it was anti-Batista and the call fell on deaf ears.60 This was not always the case in the provinces with, for example, the local newspaper in Santiago de Cuba publishing a joint declaration by all the political parties, including the PSP, condemning the coup.61 Generally speaking, such was the disillusion with politics felt by most Cubans that the only organized social group to actively oppose the coup were the students, with whom the PSP had little influence. Thus the party failed to see any significance in Fidel Castro’s attack on the Moncada Barracks.
Having been falsely accused of complicity in the Moncada attack, the PSP was included in the generally increased repression that followed the incident. Their newspaper Hoy was closed down; the party was formally banned; and the purge of the remaining communists in the CTC was intensified.62 In the widely circulated pamphlet entitled Carta Abierta a los Putchistas y Terroristas (Open Letter to the Putschists and Terrorists), they argued that individual action, such as the Moncada attack, disorientated the masses and gave the government an excuse for brutal repression.63 There were, however, some signs of disagreement within the party, although mainly confined within the leadership. The following year, a well-known member of the National Committee of the PSP, César Vilar, who had once been general secretary of the first national trade union federation, the CNOC, and had been both a National Assembly representative and a senator, was expelled for persistently criticizing the manner in which the party handled the situation.64
It is easy with hindsight, given the eventual victory of the MR-26-7, to think that the PSP made an avoidable political mistake in criticizing the Moncada attack. However, such an attitude does not take into account the real situation at the time. Fidel Castro was not the prominent figure he would become, and he did not have a track record of success. Indeed, there was considerable confusion as to who the actual attackers were. Juan Arauco, writing immediately after the events on behalf of the PSP in the New York Daily Worker, seemed to think that ex-president Prío was behind the attack and went on to criticize him for the loss of life and for giving the regime an excuse for repression.65 This last point is expanded in an open letter from the PSP national committee that lists the measures taken in the aftermath of the attack. Despite the regime being well aware that the PSP was not involved, the attack provided an excuse to arrest and harass communists, to close the party’s newspaper, to impose censorship on all the opposition press, and to implement wage cuts and redundancies.66 The footnotes of history are littered with forgotten glorious failures, and there was no way of knowing that Castro would be able to turn this apparent disaster to his immense political advantage. At the time, as far as militants in the workplaces were concerned, the attack must have seemed irrelevant to their struggle, if not positively dangerous.
By the end of 1953, the Communist Party had reorganized and adapted to underground operation in the increased repression following the Moncada attack. Its main tactic in 1954 was to appeal to the leaders of the “bourgeois opposition,” mainly through open letters published in the party’s clandestine press, for unity against the government.67 This initiative reached its most unlikely position when they proposed, at the end of May, a Frente Democrático Nacional, which was to include progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie and would oppose the provisions of the 1951 report from the World Bank, known as the Truslow Plan. It strains credulity to think that even progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie would oppose a report that called for increased productivity. However, by July 1954 the regime’s proposed elections in the coming November gave the PSP a more concrete slogan: “Voto negativo” (negative vote), a vote against Batista.68 The pages of Carta Semanal became increasingly dominated by this idea, while militants were urged to set up comités de voto negativo (committees for a negative vote) in their neighborhoods as the basis for a future union popular.69 Those other oppositionists who called for abstention were roundly attacked as playing Batista’s game, while the federation of university students, the Federación Estudiantil Universitaria (FEU), was accused of “petit-bourgeois desperation.”70 There were, however, inherent problems with this approach, not least in the naïveté displayed in believing that there was the slightest possibility that Batista would allow himself to lose the election; after all, the original coup was staged because he had no chance of winning an election honestly. This time the only opponent was Ramon Grau San Martín, who undercut the PSP’s strategy still further by withdrawing from the contest at the last minute, leaving Batista as the sole candidate, despite which his supporters still fraudulently increased his vote to a scandalous degree. Faced with this farce, the PSP national committee reassessed its position and, recognizing that there was little future in electoral politics for the foreseeable future, turned its attention to the working class.71
Under the slogan ¡Unión y Lucha, Obreros! (Workers, Unity and Struggle!), Carta Semanal would report in great detail the increased level of industrial disputes that followed the 1954 elections.72 The PSP’s new alignment to the working class, therefore, came at a propitious time and the November 1954 decision to set up locally based Comités de Defensa de las Demandas Obreras (CDDO, Committees for the Defense of Workers’ Demands) created a useful vehicle to intervene during 1955.73 The demands in the manifesto published on the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the party, under the title of “A Democratic Solution to the Crisis,” provide a useful resumé of PSP policies at this time:
• Defend workers’ and peasants’ incomes
• Eliminate the Truslow Plan
• 80 pesos/month for the unemployed
• Agrarian reform that gradually distributes the land to the peasants
• Nationalization of foreign-owned public services
• Control of bank credit in the interests of the country
• Protection of national industry
• Unrestricted sugar harvest
• Relations with the United States on the basis of mutual respect and equality
• Diplomatic relations with the socialist countries
• Eliminate racial discrimination
• Democratic rights, independence, and peace
• Establish a National Democratic Front74
The new approach would enable the party to develop a sufficient base in February 1956 to be able to organize a national conference to set up the Comité Nacional de Defensa de las Demandas Obreras