Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil

Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), or Student Revolutionary Directorate, was a Cuban student group which in opposition to Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista from 1954 to 1957 played a role in the Cuban Revolution, which came to power in 1959. In 1960 the Directorio was relaunched in opposition to Fidel Castro and moved its base to the United States, where it soon developed links with the Central Intelligence Agency. In August 1962 it carried out an attack on a beachfront Havana hotel. As of 1963 it was the largest anti-Castro student group in Miami; it also had a chapter in New Orleans, where it had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald in mid-1963. Immediately after the 22 November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, it launched a campaign asserting that Lee Harvey Oswald had been acting on behalf of the Cuban government. The group lost its CIA support in December 1966.

The DRE was founded in 1954 as a Catholic student group opposed to the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, defining its principles as political liberty, economic independence, and social justice. It made significant military contributions to the Cuban Revolution, including a 1957 attack on Batista's Presidential Palace organised by DRE leader José Antonio Echeverría, who died the same day in a related incident, and the opening of a second front in the Escambray Mountains, which was taken over by Che Guevara. The death of Echeverría and other leaders led to the virtual collapse of the group, and its remaining membership largely joined the Escambray front under the leadership of the 26th of July Movement.

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