60th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution
In 2019, Cuba marked sixty years since the triumph of the Revolution. Six decades after Fidel Castro and his guerrillas entered Havana, the anniversary carried a different weight.
Many of the men and women who had taken part in the struggle were still alive, now elderly and often affected by the limitations and illnesses of old age. They belonged to a generation that had witnessed the transformation of the island and, for many of them, had spent their entire adult lives defending the political system born in 1959.
A caravan travelled from Santiago de Cuba toward Havana, retracing the route taken by the revolutionary forces after the fall of Fulgencio Batista. The streets and celebrations brought together a new generation of soldiers and civilians alongside some of the few remaining veterans of the struggle. Their presence gave the anniversary a sense of passing time: the Revolution was being celebrated by people who had inherited it rather than fought for it, while those who had carried it out were gradually disappearing.
The anniversary also came at a moment of political transition. For the first time since 1959, Cuba was led by a president who was not a member of the Castro family.
Miguel Díaz-Canel had assumed the presidency in 2018, marking the beginning of a new chapter for a political system that had experienced remarkably little change at its highest levels for decades. In February 2019, Cubans voted in a referendum on a new constitution, as the government sought to present a renewed political framework while maintaining the socialist character of the state.
The celebrations therefore carried two realities at once. Cuba was looking back at the generation that had made the Revolution while confronting a future in which its original leaders were no longer there to define it.
At the same time, the country remained under the long-standing U.S. embargo, which restricted American trade and financial relations with the island and made it difficult for Cuba to access U.S. markets, investment and banking services.
The restrictions also affected transactions involving foreign companies and banks when they had connections with the United States, extending the reach of the embargo well beyond the two countries. For the Cuban government, the measures were a central part of the country's economic difficulties and a symbol of decades of confrontation with Washington.
Sixty years after 1959, the Revolution remained firmly at the centre of Cuban life, but the people who had created it were entering the final years of their lives, leaving the country to confront an uncertain future shaped both by its own political legacy and by the pressure that had surrounded the island for generations.
