Cuba Pt. 1: Before the Revolution w/ Manolo De Los Santos

Jan 29, 2026

Manolo De Los Santos, founder of the People’s Forum and researcher at Tricontinental, offers a concise mini bio as a scholar of Cuban and Latin American leftist politics. He traces Indigenous resistance and the island’s role in plantation slavery. He examines the 1902 pseudo-independence, Batista-era inequality and U.S. domination. He outlines the social conditions that set the stage for revolution.

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ADVICE

Talk About Cuba To Counter Demonization

Discussing Cuba now matters because U.S. aggression and sanctions have intensified recently.
Educate domestically about Cuba to counter demonizing propaganda and defend sovereignty.

ANECDOTE

Hatuey And A Constitution Inspired By Resistance

Indigenous resistance, personified by Hatuey, runs as a continuous thread in Cuba's identity.
Cuba's constitution even opens by honoring indigenous people who refused submission.

INSIGHT

Haiti's Revolution Reshaped Cuban Slavery

The Haitian Revolution spurred a sugar boom in Cuba by driving planters and plantation methods to the island.
That boom massively increased the trafficking and brutal exploitation of enslaved Africans in Cuba.

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In this episode, part 1 of our new series on Cuba, Manolo De Los Santos joins us to explore Cuba before the Cuban revolution. Manolo De Los Santos is a founder of the People's Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the co-editor Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War, Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro, and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez.

The conversation opens with an exploration of Cuba's Indigenous peoples and their culture and practice of resistance to European colonialism which continues to this day. We then talk about the early history of the Caribbean and Cuba's position in the Atlantic slave trade and early industrial plantation capitalism as well as some of the many rebellions led by enslaved Africans on the island of Cuba. Manolo also tells us about Cuba's "independence" in 1902, or what he refers to as a false independence and the imposition of US imperialism on the island.

We then introduce Fulgencio Batista and the period of dictatorship beginning in the 1930s which inaugurated an era of "paradise" in Cuba—paradise for US corporations and for the political and military elites surrounding Batista. We talk about the social inequality and repression in Cuba during this period as well as the development of the tourism industry which was a model that was later exported across the world. We conclude with the lead up to the Cuban Revolution and the material conditions which led to it. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, ¡Viva la Revolución, where we'll take a deep dive into Cuba's revolution.

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Intermission music: "Que Salga el Sol" by El Guajiro

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