Fidel Castro and M-26-7 successfully seized power from the Cuban government in 1959, after years of fighting. The nationalist M-26-7 movement succeeded in ousting the corrupt leader Fulgencio Batista, and in 1961 Castro officially considered the revolution to be Marxist in nature. During his 40-year tenure as president, Castro did not allow his revolution to stall, but rather allowed it to progress and adapt as it saw fit. In relation to Castro's revolution in Cuba there was another revolution, that of Cuban women. Castro himself described the changes in women's public and private lives as "a revolution within a revolution." In a true system of equality, such as what Castro considers his ideal, equality reaches all people across all lines, whether race, class, or gender. Throughout Castro's campaign, starting in 1953 with the failed Moncada attack, Castro used historical references to appeal to the Cuban population. Castro's most cited historical figure is none other than national hero José Martí. While Martí's views on women are questionable, his opinion on equality is very clear. Martí once said: "Respect for the freedom and ideas of others, even the most miserable beings, is my fanaticism. When I die, or if I am killed, it will be for this." The crux of this prophetic quote was borrowed by Castro on a broader level when he achieved power and based his entire social structure on equality. Women in pre-revolutionary CubaGender differences were enormous in Cuba before the Cuban revolution. According to an important journalist of the revolution, Mirta Rodríguez Calderón, the prototypical woman of the ancient republic was Yina, the prostitute. A poor woman......middle of paper......kingdom against the colonizers who exterminated the native population, the interventionists who tried to take over our island, the dictators and governments in power under the shameful servitude of transnational mandates that impoverish the country. Resolute and courageous patriot women engaged in every necessary period of the national liberation war. When the people took power, women identified the initial revolution as their own Revolution, which immediately established free education and medical care services for all without distinction, land and urban reforms, measures of great popular benefit made clear what the revolution he intended to make. to do, and therefore they immediately embraced each other, participating intensely in all the construction and defense works of the new society which opened its doors with all the rights and opportunities that they had never had before.