Just five days after the tyrant's flight following the Rebel Army's victory, the nascent Revolutionary Government dissolved the Congress of the Republic and declared the appointments of mayors, governors, and council members null and void, thus initiating the long-promised social reforms.
On January 5, 1959, from the position of Prime Minister, which he had assumed due to popular demand, Commander Fidel Castro Ruz began the transformation of political power, aiming to eradicate the elements complicit with the overthrown dictatorship that controlled social life and kept the people oppressed for corrupt interests.
On that same January 5th, the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) was created in Cuba. This Cuban state institution brings together thousands of men and women with the mission of safeguarding order, discipline, and the state's economic interests in the face of a growing wave of terrorist actions. Previously, in the pseudo-republic created by the intervention of the United States government in 1902, a National Police had existed, but this force became deeply discredited due to the crimes committed during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and it was always synonymous with corruption.
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, constituted the prelude to a truly revolutionary process due to the numerous transformations it brought about, in the interest of fulfilling the commitments made to the people in "History Will Absolve Me."
Among these initial measures was the promulgation of the Fundamental Law of the Republic on February 7, 1959, which retained most of the articles of the 1940 Constitution, promulgated to regulate the institutional life of the Revolution.
This was followed by the creation of the National Institute of Savings and Housing on February 17, designed to promote savings and begin addressing the acute housing problem. This initiative would later be complemented by provisions to eliminate the concentration of housing in private hands, lower rents, and grant homeownership to hundreds of thousands of families.
Other measures benefiting the people were approved in March, including the nationalization of the Cuban Telephone Company, the creation of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), and the National Printing Office of Cuba, all aimed at promoting the country's cultural development.
On May 17, 1959, Fidel Castro signed the long-promised agrarian reform law in the Sierra Maestra mountains, aiming to eliminate the large landholdings that kept the country's main agricultural lands idle and constituted the most acute structural problem in Cuban society. With this measure, he distributed land to dispossessed peasants, eradicating the exploitation to which the peasantry and agricultural workers were subjected.
The law created the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), which initiated a process of expropriations, nationalizations, and confiscation of ill-gotten gains that severely impacted the national upper bourgeoisie and some American and foreign companies. The revolutionary government offered compensation, but the United States refused to accept it.
The families who owned the plantations and sugar mills, along with a considerable segment of the middle class, left the country and settled in the United States, joining many henchmen and corrupt officials of Fulgencio Batista's government who emigrated after December 31, 1958, taking with them millions of dollars from the Cuban treasury.
Before the revolutionary triumph, 85 percent of small farmers had to pay rent to large landowners and lived under the constant threat of eviction from their plots. With the Agrarian Reform in 1959, some 150,000 small farmers became landowners.
However, the living conditions of the peasants remained bleak. Eighty-five percent of their homes lacked running water, 90 percent had no electricity, less than eight percent of the rural population received free medical care in public hospitals near their homes, and even then, access was only possible with the recommendation of a politician who demanded the vote of the peasant and their entire family. There were more than 500,000 peasant children without access to schooling, and more than one million illiterate people over the age of ten.
On December 23, the first year of the Revolution, the legal framework and regulations for the Comprehensive Educational Reform were approved. This reform constituted a first step toward the creation of a new Cuban educational system, headed by Minister Armando Hart Dávalos.
The Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR) was officially established on October 16, with Commander Raúl Castro Ruz as Minister, to strengthen the country's defensive military preparedness against counterrevolutionary subversive actions.