Fidel Castro used his subsequent trial as a platform for defending himself as a committed Cuban patriot fighting for the liberty of the Cuban people. In a memorable phrase, he claimed 'History will absolve me', words he later used as the title of a pamphlet in which he developed the ideas he had expressed in his trial speech. Cuba, he claimed, needed to:
• restore the constitution destroyed by Batista
• redistribute land to the people
• extend education to all the people
• end corruption in politics and in business
• grant 30 per cent of the profits of industrial enterprises to the workers
• cut wasteful government arms expenditure.
Given that he had been the leader of the attack, Castro was treated surprisingly leniently. He had expected to be executed. His survival was due less to his captors' clemency than to Batista's wish not to turn the rebels into martyrs. There had been an angry reaction from Cubans and foreign observers at the ferocity with which those captured in the rising had been treated. Perhaps ten had been killed in the actual engagement but over 60 were summarily shot after the fighting had ceased. To lessen the tension this had caused, Castro, rather than receiving the expected death penalty, was sentenced to a fifteen-year prison term. This was later commuted under an amnesty and he was released in 1955 after serving less than two years.
World History
