Cuban revolutionaries, including Fidel Castro (far left) and Che Guevara (center), in Havana in 1960.
On this day in 1959, U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country following the victory of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) at the Battle of Santa Clara, marking the successful conclusion of the Cuban Revolution.
The 26th of July Movement takes its name from the date of with a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, however, the movement bearing this name was not formally organized until the attackers were released from prison in 1955. Public resistance continued sporadically until November 1956, when 80 members of the M-26-7 returned from exile.
Soon after landing on the island, a separate revolutionary group, the "Directorio Revoluncionari Estudiantil" (DRE), unsuccessfully attempted an attack on the Presidential Palace in Havana.
Throughout 1957, armed resistance from groups such as the DRE and M-26-7 would escalate. After a failed offensive by the government against rebels in the summer of 1958, the rebels launched a major counter-offensive.
On December 28th, 1958, after a fraudulent election in favor of Batista, revolutionary forces reached the city of Santa Clara. Seizing equipment from an armored train intended to transport government reinforcements, the rebels quickly captured the city, prompting Batista to panic and flee to the Dominican Republic with a personal fortune of more than $300 million.
In the following days, revolutionary forces entered Havana with no resistance, and Castro established a provisional government. The 26th of July Movement later reformed along Marxist–Leninist lines, becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965.
Batista later settled in fascist Spain, dying there in 1973 at the age of 72.
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Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto "Ché" Guevara
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To the U.N. General Assembly, The Problem of Cuba and its Revolutionary Policy by Fidel Castro
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i know i've been LOTR posting a lot lately and i know LOTR has a lot of reactionary dimensions, but idk, its themes of finding your courage despite being one of the small, seemingly insignificant people of the world & finding goodness through intercultural collaboration & the value of selflessness and appreciation for life's inherent beauty vs. the evil of ambition and self enrichment have been giving me motivation and comfort of late and i think that has value.
outside of the woke criticisms of it (which again do have merit, i'm nothing if not woke
) i think it also gets shat on for being mawkish and morally simplistic, but the age of gritty and (at least on the surface) more amoral media in the late 2000s and 2010s feels like it doesn't resonate in the same way in the current moment and something with a sincere moral vision and almost childlike sincerity resonates with me more. it's part of why i enjoyed last year's Superman movie as well.
I've only watched the trilogy once in 2021 and never read the books, but when seeing it I really felt "dude having clear unambiguous heroes rocks, maybe not every story should have cynical anti-heroes." Admittedly almost all my favorite movies are in that amoral category, but there's some like RRR, Bahubali, Conclave (which is explicitly about rejecting liberal lesser evilism and amoralism), and Ip Man that are heroes' journeys with very clear moral themes that also capure that feeling from LOTR.
Sidenote: I tried to think about one of these movies where a woman is the clear heroine, but I'm having trouble coming up with any. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon kinda works, but then there's movies like Tár and Lady Vengeance that do the opposite.
Edit: and the Handmaiden but that's very far from the usual hero's journey style
It's slop but I guess hunger games? I don't think there was ever much to Katniss except unambiguous heroism
But it does The Swerve on book 3
yeah i love gritty and dark shit when done well, a lot (if not most) of my favorite media is in that vein, but i'm feeling that same refreshingness wrt unambiguous heroes reading through the book/rewatching the trilogy as you did when you watched it.
Check out the Wandering Earth movies they're also like this and they're Chinese. But they're so anti-cynical they didn't even make the Israelis or Americans the villains.