Democratic socialists Cheddi and Janet Jagan helped to organize the Peoples Progressive Party of British Guyana. Twice Jagan won a popular electoral majority and was established as Prime Minister of the British Colony. His two periods of administrative responsibility were badgered and hectored by every reactionary force that could be mobilized inside and outside British Guyana, from the British appointed governor to the domestic and foreign business interests and the urban trade unions. Before a third election British and American governments, business and labor interests got together. Money was funnelled into the country through trade union connections. Protests were staged. Riots were organized. The electoral system under which the Peoples Progressive Party had won its victories was altered in London and Jagan was replaced by a system of proportional representation under which the P.P.P. was defeated and a new regime inaugurated. Throughout the struggle the Peoples Progressive Party had insisted upon winning popular majorities as a basis for establishing socialism in the colony by democratic methods and legal means. Imperialist reactionaries from Britain's Prime Minister and the President of the United States to the A.F. of L.-C.I.O. retorted: "No you don't", and backed up their veto with money, riots and guns. As a consequence of this counter-revolutionary conspiracy, the Peoples Progressive Party was forced out of office and an administration favorable to British, United States and native Guyanese capital was substituted. A revolt was led by Fidel Castro and his associates against the Washington-backed Batista regime in Havana, Cuba. When Cuba was seized by United States armed forces during the Spanish-American War of 1898 much of the island was in the hands of anti-Spanish rebels who were demanding independence of Spain's imperialist rule. Between 1898 and 1959 seven million Cubans enjoyed technical independence. Actually the island, located only 90 miles from Florida, was economically a United States colony and politically a Washington dependency, with United States armed forces stationed in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. After seizing power in 1959, Castro went to the United States seeking a market for Cuba's chief export, sugar; a source of food supplies not produced in Cuba, and the manufactures necessary for the economic and social life of an essentially agricultural island. Batista had emptied the Cuban treasury before he fled the island in 1959. Castro therefore needed loans to meet the immediate needs of the Cuban economy. He also sought to continue arrangements under which the chief market of Cuban sugar was in the United States. Castro was turned down cold. All doors, political and economic, were closed to him. As a revolutionary with left leanings he got the cold shoulder in New York as well as in Washington.