On July 23, 1952 King Farouk was overthrown in a coup led by the Free Officers Movement, headed by an Army General Naguib. Gamal Abdul Nasser subsequently emerged as the leader of this movement and the eventual head of state, though General Naguib ascended to the presidency immediately upon the abdication of the King who was permitted to go into exile. The political trajectory of Egypt was thus set upon a decades long path with Nasser selecting his successor Anwar Sadat who in turn chose Hosni Mubarak. Has this trajectory come to an end? Sadat of course did alter course by establishing relations with Israel, but his will was followed by the military which backed his protege Mubarak’s rise to power after his own assassination.

March 10th, 2011 marked 59 years since a seminal event in Cuban history: el golpe de estado, or coup d’etat of the 10th of March 1952 of Fulgencio Batista.  This action paved the way for the 26th of July Movement to come to power.  In the late 1980s, lecturing at Florida International University, Doctor Carlos Marquez-Sterling, Cuban historian, professor of law and of history, former Minister of Education and the head of the 1940 Constitutional Assembly in Cuba, stated that if the Batista coup of 1952 had never happened, Fidel Castro would never have come to power.  His exacts words were, “Fidel nunca hubiera bajado de la Sierra Maestra.” Fidel would never have come down from the Sierra Maestra.  Marquez-Sterling organized a political party and ran for president against the Batista candidate in the tainted elections of 1958.  He believed in and used non-violent political means to oppose the dictatorship of Batista, but to no avail.