Revolution: Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada

So far, we have looked at the politics and economics of the region in those societies which have tried to promote growth and development within capitalism. In this chapter, we examine how regimes which have attempted to promote development through different forms of socialist development have fared. For revolutionary regimes, winning power is only the first step on the path to the creation of a better society. The real battle, that to produce egalitarian development, is only then about to start. Fidel Castro, President of Cuba since the revolution, commented on the tenth anniversary of the Cuban revolution: ‘many people thought, on the first of January 1959, that they had entered the world of the rich. But the world they had entered in reality was one of opportunity — to create, amid the underdevelopment, the poverty, ignorance and misery, wealth and welfare in the future’ (Fagen 1986: 87).