Democracy in the Americas, the Revolutionary Way
Ernesto Semán, assistant professor of leadership studies, discusses Fidel Castro's embrace of revolutionary violence and its implications for today.
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The life of Fidel Castro spanned almost a century, but the decisive event that would seal his fate and that of the Americas occurred over the course of a few weeks in 1948, amidst popular riots in Bogotá and the vicious reaction against them during the Ninth Pan American Conference. Castro arrived in Colombia believing that mobilization and populist reforms in the country offered a space for the expansion of economic and political rights. They did not. And 1948 would be the last time Castro believed that they could. Embracing armed struggle against those who proclaimed the ideals of freedom and equality in order to attain those ideals was not an abrupt authoritarian turn but a logical conclusion that situated him within a regional tradition dating back to the Haitian Revolution between 1789 and 1804. In Latin America, mass movements adopted revolutionary violence not against democracy, but as the only way to put it into practice.
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