The Yaran Revolution of 2021 occurred when a coalition of left-wing revolutionary groups led by the Movimiento Libertad ousted the far-right authoritarian dictator Anton Castillo from power after a protracted guerrilla struggle. While Castillo's overthrow put an end to the True Yaran Party's dictatorship, the Castillo family's corrupt hold on power, and the use of the spraying of the toxic PG-240 spray over Yara's Viviro-producing tobacco plantations, it failed to unify the country as the rebels squabbled over power and the remnants of Castillo's Fuerzas Nacionales de Defensa (FND) military waged an insurgency in each of Yara's war-torn provinces.
Background[]
In 1957, the Yaran military officer Gabriel Castillo took power as President of Yara, ushering in a ten-year period of both economic prosperity and political repression. The country's economy thrived due to the exportation of tobacco, sugarcane, and rum, as well as due to Western tourism. However, the living conditions of the country's peasants remained low, and those who spoke out against Castillo's authoritarian regime were violently silenced. During the 1960s, the ideals of the Cuban Revolution spread to Yara as the communist university professor Santos Espinosa, exiled to the Soviet Union for his teachings, returned to Yara with Eastern Bloc training and materiel support and ignited the Revolution of 67. In the ensuing uprising, the "Legends of 67" overthrew and executed Castillo and condemned his young son Anton Castillo to forced labor to atone for the sins of his father. Espinosa, a protege of Che Guevara, implemented Marxist-Leninist rule in Yara, but he sold off his country's shores to foreign corporations, causing dangerous pollution to the Yaran environment. Espinosa's corruption and mismanagement of the country triggered sharp economic downturn and Yara's diplomatic isolation, even within the Eastern Bloc, whose fellow communist regimes withdrew their embassies. Espinosa died in 2018, by which point his misrule and a United States blockade on Yara had ravaged the country.
Following Espinosa's death, democratic elections were held. Anton Castillo swore to restore Yara's prosperity and build a new paradise, and the staunchly anti-communist public elected him and his True Yaran Party to power. Over the next few years, Castillo proved to be a despotic ruler who believed in social Darwinism, divided the population into patriotic "True Yarans" and the socially and politically undesirable "Fake Yarans," manipulated the Yaran population through propaganda, set about developing the Viviro drug to cure cancer (and his own leukemia) at the cost of spraying toxic pesticides over tobacco fields (thus maiming the forced laborers working there), and made plans to entrench his family as the ruling dynasty of Yara through his son and successor Diego Castillo. Castillo upheld his rule through a strong military, the Fuerzas Nacionales de Defensa (FND), which drafted military-age men and women into its ranks and indoctrinated them with elitist "True Yaran" ideology.
Because every able-bodied man and woman on the island was compelled to undertake military service, armed guerrilla movements quickly formed to oppose the Castillo regime, manned by disillusioned FND veterans. Movimiento Libertad had a nationwide reach, but its main base would be on the Zamok Archipelago. The Castroist Legends of 67 operated in El Este, the hip-hop-influenced Maximas Matanzas movement arose in Valle de Oro, the Familia Montero fought for its land rights in Madrugada, and the anarchist La Moral student group rebelled in the capital of Esperanza. Though the rebel movements were invariably committed to leftist causes, the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) aided Libertad in smuggling the Viviro cancer treatment stateside, as Castillo had refused to export the drug.
Revolution[]
The anti-Castillo resistance took many forms. Hip-hop musicians and graffiti artists expressed their anti-regime sentiments through their creative initiatives, thousands of Yarans fled to Florida on makeshift boats, and armed rebels utilized the guerrilla paths left over from the 1967 revolution to hide out in the countryside, ambush FND patrols and convoys, and launch forays into population centers. The ranks of the rebel groups were bolstered by draft dodgers who, threatened with death if they refused service, fled from Esperanza and other major settlements and joined the rebels. In 2021, FND veteran Dani Rojas fled Esperanza rather than return to the military, but her plan to flee to Miami on a refugee boat was sidetracked when President Castillo intercepted the boat, prevented an elderly woman from smuggling his son Diego out of the country, and ordered his navy to shoot at the passengers in the hull. Rojas survived and washed up on the island where Libertad was based, and her fatally wounded friend Lita Torres gave her information on how to contact the rebels before passing away.
From there, Rojas would meet up with Clara Garcia and reluctantly take up arms against the regime, learning the ways and technology of guerrilla warfare from Juan Cortez and helping Libertad take over Isla Santuario. Libertad also destroyed the two Yaran warships that kept the island on lockdown, enabling the rebel group's expansion to the rest of the country. Castillo responded by toughening the rest of Yara's defenses and readying his special forces units to hunt down Rojas if they encountered her again.
The next few weeks saw Rojas establish contact with the other rebel groups on behalf of Libertad and expand the guerrilla struggle to the rest of Yara. They overthrew General Jose Castillo (overseer of the enslaved "Fake Yarans"), Admiral Ana Benitez (who protected the Viviro experimental drug), the Canadian businessman Sean McKay (financer of Viviro, who was forced to finance Libertad in exchange for his survival), Minister of Culture Maria Marquessa, and Viviro scientist Edgar Reyes. After the rebels seized control of the provinces, they pushed into the capital. Anton Castillo shot his 13-year-old son Diego before slitting his own throat as the revolutionaries stormed the presidential palace, putting an end to the Castillo dynasty.
The conflict left thousands of Yarans dead, including Castillo and several rebel leaders. Clara Garcia's death at Castillo's hands resulted in Dani Rojas taking control of Libertad. As Garcia prophetically predicted, Libertad and the other guerrillas were unable to hold the country together, and remnants of the FND refused to surrender, instead continuing to abuse civilians and wage insurgencies across unstable provinces. Libertad and its allies were forced to respond to periodic upticks in FND activity as the insurgency continued.