The betrayal thesis is an interpretation of the Cuban Revolution that supposes that the revolution was the culmination of a democratic resistance to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. After the success of the revolution in 1959, the rebel leader Fidel Castro began to consolidate political power, and associate with communist officials. This political turn is considered a "betrayal" of the original ethos of the revolution, according to proponents of the betrayal thesis.
The betrayal thesis was developed in the early 1960s, in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. It was propagated by Cuban exile organizations such as the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, and the Cuban Revolutionary Council.[1] The thesis was also famously propagated by anti-Stalinist historian Theodore Draper.[2]
- ^ Bustamante, Michael (2021). Cuban Memory Wars Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 74–80. ISBN 9781469662046.
- ^ Welch, Richard (October 2017). Response to Revolution The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959-1961. University of North Carolina Press. p. 141. ISBN 9781469610467.