Hello! I have suspected autism and just like lesbiancheguevara, an immense fixation on the Cuban Revolution so I hope I am qualified for this. Prepare yourself for a long yap :)
You didn't mention which aspects you wanted to know about so you're gonna get everything from the start of the Revolution to its consolidation @cinnamonqrl
We'll start at the beginning, with Batista as the dictator of Cuba. In 1940 he was elected to presidential office and finished his term in 1944. In 1952 he ran for office again, but defeat was imminent so he led a coup and established a brutal dictatorship. You probably know this already but he aligned himself with landowners, the mafia, and the US bourgeoisie. He received immense support from the US, and established massive gambling and prostitution industries for the benefit of rich foreign (usually USAmerican) tourists. Plus most land in Cuba was foreign-owned; they were a US neo-colony
All the while working Cubans were living in conditions of near starvation and facing severe repression. In 1953, as discontent was growing and Batista used his secret police (the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities) to crack down on protestors, Fidel Castro gathered a group of revolutionaries to launch an attack on the Moncada barracks. Unfortunately they failed miserably
Many of them were killed, and the survivors were arrested (some were tortured). Pressure from the Cuban people eventually led to the revolutionaries being released in 1955, for publicity benefits, really. The revolutionary movement was named the 26th of July Movement, after the date of the attack on the Moncada barracks. Some time later Fidel and his brother Raúl fled in exile to Mexico, where they met Che Guevara who joined the movement (initially as a doctor)
After training and preparing in Mexico, 82 revolutionaries travelled back to Cuba on the Granma yacht in late 1956. The landing went horribly, as the new rebel army was ambushed and most of them were slaughtered. I've seen it said in different sources that 12 and 20 rebels survived, so idk which is the accurate figure but suffice it to say they were now a tiny force
Still, Fidel was like okay guys let's lock in and win now, and so they began a guerrilla war against Batista's forces. I'm not sure how much detail you want about that, but it lasted until the 1st of January, 1959. Che Guevara ended up an outstanding soldier, and he was the first person aside from Fidel to gain the rank of commander. For context, Che was an Argentine doctor who had witnessed the CIA coup of Arbenz in Guatemala and he was always an internationalist which is why he became so dedicated to the Cuban Revolution. He was also very close friends with Fidel :)
During the fighting, there were allegations that Fidel was a communist but he consistently denied it. Che and Raúl were both known communists, which didn't help, but for the most part Fidel was perceived as a left-wing nationalist with perhaps, susceptibility to communist influence. He had already been reading communist theory for a long time though, and had Marxist perspectives. Fun fact, he read Lenin's The State and Revolution while in prison
The revolutionary movement at this stage was made up of a coalition of different groups and political tendencies, all led by Fidel. The largest portion of the fighting happened in the Sierra Maestra and other mountain ranges but there was also an urban network that provided support
When Batista eventually fled Cuba and the revolutionaries seized power, the US was skeptical but not yet opposed to Fidel. They wanted to make sure he wasn't a communist and would cooperate with their interests, but because Batista's forces had killed up to 20,000 people and starved so many more, the atmosphere in Cuba was violent. Ordinary Cubans wanted vengeance, and the new government began revolutionary tribunals overlooked by Che at La Cabaña. That's why anti-communists and anti-Castroists gave him the nickname 'the Butcher of La Cabaña', although he was actually very fair in the sentencing. Several hundred people were eventually sentenced to death, for crimes like mass murder and torture. A former CIA agent actually claimed that the reason the US was so outraged about the executions was because a significant amount of the people being killed were CIA agents (source is Fidel: The Untold Story)
Eventually the tribunals stopped, because Fidel sought to appease the US, but it was too late. Cuba-US relations only deteriorated from there, resulting in the infamous embargo / blockade. That was disastrous for the Cuban economy, because they had had an underdeveloped plantation economy reliant on sugar exports to the US. But because of these trade restrictions, they would eventually be pushed into trade dependency on the Soviet Union
But going back a bit, in 1959 was when they began nationalising property and pissing off the US and bourgeoisie even more. At this stage Fidel was the prime minister, but not the president, although functionally he held pretty complete power over the president. In mid 1959 he resigned as prime minister as an act of protest against the anti-communist president, and hundreds of thousands of his supporters demanded the resignation of the president. It worked, and Fidel was restored to his position as prime minister soon after
By the end of 1959, even previously high ranking revolutionary leaders were becoming concerned about the influence of communism. For instance, Huber Matos attempted a counterrevolution but was arrested and imprisoned. Over the next few years, counterrevolutionaries were arrested and press censorship policies were implemented, driven by the emerging propaganda offensive against them as well as Che's experience with the United Fruit company's propaganda assisting in the coup of Arbenz
At the same time, the US was developing intelligence networks in Cuba and launching terror attacks against civilians and infrastructure. They were killing even young student volunteers as Fidel's government undertook massive efforts to educate the population and provide them with healthcare. The Revolution also abolished racial segregation and provided a "revolution within the revolution" for women
Fidel established the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in 1960, in response to the growing prevalence of terror attacks and sabotage (by the CIA)
In 1961, he declared that the Revolution was socialist. Che at this time had become a politician and diplomat, and he was crucial in Cuba's attempted economic industrialisation and their deepening relationship with the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of Cuba was created in 1965 to be the sole political party, and in 1976 the government established a new constitution that institutionalised Cuba's Marxist-Leninist structure and commitment to socialism. It had been approved by 99.02% of voters (with 98% turnout), possibly because so many rich people had left earlier lol
The Cuban Revolution and Fidel's leadership remained immensely popular with the workers and peasants of Cuba. Che had left Cuba to instigate revolution elsewhere, and in 1967 he was killed in Bolivia with CIA support. Fidel remained head of state of Cuba until 2008
Feel free to ask questions about anything specific, since this is pretty general. But if you want sources, then I have compiled a list here
