Meanwhile, internal opposition to Castro was growing as government repression increased. Bands of counterrevolutionary guerrillas had set up a front in the Sierra Escambray. Many former Castroite supporters fought against him when they realized that he had turned Communist caudillo and that a personality cult was being erected. The Lucha Contra Bandidos (Struggle Against Bandits) lasted until 1966 before finally being eradicated.

Castro, with his highly efficient intelligence operation, knew that the CIA was plotting an invasion of Cuba by exiles. In mid-1960 he began to suppress the press. He also established the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs)—a countrywide information network for “collective vigilance.” Cuba’s State Security began a nationwide sweep against suspected “counterrevolutionaries” and opponents.

On April 15, 1961, Cuban exiles strafed Cuban airfields as a prelude to a CIA-sponsored invasion. Castro turned the funeral for the seven persons killed into a stirring call for defiance: “What the imperialists cannot forgive us for… is that we have made a socialist revolution under the nose of the United States.” It was his first public characterization of the Revolution as socialist. The debacle thus created the conditions by which socialism became acceptable to a nation on the brink of invasion.

President Kennedy was assured that the Cuban people would rise up in arms. They did, and within 72 hours they had defeated the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961. The Bay of Pigs, or Playa Girón as Cubans call it, brought a new sense of unity to Cuba. United States ambassador Bonsal declared that the Bay of Pigs “consolidated Castro’s regime and was a determining factor in giving it the long life it has enjoyed.” As Castro admitted: “Our Marxist-Leninist party was really born at Girón; from that date on, socialism became cemented forever with the blood of our workers, peasants, and students.”

The debacle not only solidified Castro’s tenure but also provoked a repressive house-cleaning of anyone thought to be too independent or deviant. As Castro saw it, you were either for the Revolution or against it. By 1965, at least 20,000 political prisoners—including homosexuals, practicing Catholics, and other “social deviants”—languished in jails.