In 1959, a group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, and Che Guevara
stormed the Cuban capital - Havana - and succeeded in overthrowing the dictatorship of Fulgencio
Batista.
The Castro government then had to fight insurgent forces for six-years in the Escambray Mountains
until they gained full control of the country-- a campaign that actually lasted longer and
involved more soldiers than the revolution that preceded it.
At first, the revolution was viewed as a positive development in the United States, which supported
bringing democracy to Latin America.
But as Castro purged Cuba of loyalists to Batista, executing thousands, the US’s support
for Castro faded.
When Castro embraced the Communist party and broke up and redistributed large farmlands
to the peasants who worked them, relations between the US and Cuba neared a breaking
point.
That breaking point came in 1960 when Castro signed a commercial agreement with Soviet
Vice-Premier Anastas Mikoyan.
One month later, President Eisenhower gave the CIA the go ahead to begin planning an
operation to train and arm a group of Cuban refugees to overthrow the Castro regime.
That fall, the US banned all exports except food and medicine to Cuba, and a year and
a half later, banned almost all imports from the island.
On April 14, 1961, the newly elected President John F. Kennedy green-lit the CIA’s operation,
and 1,400 Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs a day after American B-26’s bombed
Cuban airfields.
After initially overwhelming a local militia, the American-supported invaders surrendered
at the hands of a counter-offensive led by Fidel Castro himself.
Most of the prisoners were publicly interrogated and eventually sent back to the United States.
It was a major victory for Castro, cementing his power in Cuba and emboldening him to further
confront Kennedy and the United States in the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year.
In the heat of the 1962 US midterm election campaign season, pressure was mounting on
Kennedy to do something about the nuclear missile facilities that were being supplied
and built by the Russians in Cuba--especially after a US spy plane produced clear photographic
evidence of the facilities’ rapid progress.
Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba and announced it would not permit offensive weapons
to be delivered by the Russians.
What followed was an incredibly tense 13-day drama that played out daily on television.
It was one of the first ever serial news events in the new age of the visual communication
medium, and was the closest the world would come to full-scale nuclear war.
Kennedy and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev eventually reached a mutual stand down agreement:
the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba; the US would end its naval
blockade and agree never to invade Cuba without direct provocation; and the Americans would
secretly dismantle the nuclear warheads they had deployed within striking distance of the
USSR in Turkey and Italy a year earlier--a program the American people didn’t know
about.
By 1963, Cuba was looking like a full-fledged Soviet-modeled Communist state.
The standard of living in the 1970s was poor and discontent was growing among the Cuban
people.
Fidel Castro would admit the failures of economic policies in a 1970 speech, and in 1975, the
16 countries that formed the Organization of American States lifted their sanctions
against Cuba, but the United States still maintained its own.
The Soviet Union collapse in 1991 testing Castro's rule in the years that followed.
Cuba faced a severe economic downturn following the withdrawal of Soviet subsidies worth $4
billion to $6 billion annually, resulting in effects such as food and fuel shortages
in Cuba.
State security personnel were even called upon to break up a protest in Havana.
Always prideful though, the Castro government did not accept American donations of food,
medicines, and cash until 1993.
To replace the Russian aid, Cuba found a new friend in Communist China.
Castro also turned to Hugo Chávez, the former President of Venezuela, and Evo Morales, the
current President of Bolivia, as allies to provide Cuba with oil and gas.
In 2008, 81 year old Fidel Castro announced his resignation as President of Cuba and announced
his younger, 76 year old brother, Raúl Castro, was the new President.
After his 2009 inauguration, President Obama signaled that relations with Cuba could be
normalized if Cuba took steps toward democracy (show brief clip).
Obama also lifted a ban on Cuban-Americans who wanted to travel and send money to their
island homeland.
But relations became strained again that year after Cuba arrested USAID contractor Alan
Gross and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
In 2013, Cuba ended the 52-year-old requirement that any citizens who wished to travel abroad
had to buy an expensive government permit and produce a letter of invitation.
Later that year, President Raúl Castro, announced he was stepping down in 2018.
Today, the Cuban-US relationship has come full circle, as Presidents Obama and Castro
negotiated the release of Mr. Gross and another, unnamed American spy for a group of Cuban
spies held in America for more than 15 years.
This swap, along with Cuba’s agreement to other conditions of openness and reform, led
President Obama’s historic announcement that the United States would begin normalizing
relations with Cuba, ending one of the oldest economic standoffs in modern history.
Despite years of sanctions, the United States was still providing Cuba with 6.6% of its
imports.
We can expect this number to skyrocket as Americans flood Cuba with capital investment
and tourism dollars in the years to come.
This is a defining moment in Obama’s time as President.
It symbolizes his tried and true approach to solving international conflicts with patient,
wise diplomacy; and it’s a sign that the communist system that divided the world in
the 20th century, is no longer relevant in the 21st.