The Cuban Revolution: The Bay Of Pigs Invasion

Introduction The Cuban revolution took place in 26th July 1953 and ended in 1st January 1959. It was caused by overthrowing the president at that time, Fulgencio Batista. It started when Fidel Castro led a group of rebels against the president of Cuba Fulgencio Batista. At first it started with a small group of supporters, then the group of rebels started to expand and raise awareness when Fidel went on a Propaganda tour, which then turned into a civil revolution. The group of rebels were unsatisfied with their dictator, and demanded freedom which slowly caused Cuba to be a communist country.

The book That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, focuses on the relationship between both Cuba and the United States. A lot of the contention between Cuba and the United States stems from the American view that every country is in need of our assistance. The author details how American officials asserted themselves into Cuba and with their presence in most cases did more harm than good in reference to the Cuban population. The book highlights that the U.S. government supported many policies in Cuba that were undemocratic leading to their citizens suffering politically, economically, and socially. After Castro took power the relationship between the two governments suffered immediately.

How did the U.S. contain communism? After the ending of World War II l, the United States and the Soviet Union rejoiced. The worst war in human history was over. However, the peace did not last.

“To hunt them down, the government responded with scorched-earth campaigns, pacifications programs and paramilitary death squads, often with assistance from the US Special Forces advisers” (137-138). This caused in 1976 more than twenty thousand deaths, also the spread of this to the countryside. The outcome is what the government wanted them to become powerful to produce this sham election. The US went to help the government for politics, but now the relations between the two are very different. Reading some articles I saw that the “US urges citizens not to travel to Cuba, cuts embassy safe and halts visa processing” (Chicagotribune).

The Bay of Pigs was an invasion that the CIA had financed which involved training a group of Cuban refugees to land in Cuba. The primary goal of the invasion was to get rid of the communist government led by Fidel Castro. The Outcome of the invasion was unexpected, and the invasion failed miserably. The plan failed due to last minute cancellations of airstrikes, and the lack of knowledge that Castro had ordered 20,000 troops in advance to go to the attack site; this resulted in having the Cuban Air Force dominating the sky, which did not allow the U.S army to fight back. As the invasion went on, the chance of the U.S winning decreased within every hour.

The CIA was motivated by Cold War tensions and feared that communism would spread to other parts of Latin America. The plan involved training Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and provoke a popular uprising against Castro, but it failed due to a lack of support from the local population and poor military planning. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was a major embarrassment for the United States and led to increased tensions between the US and Cuba, as well as between the US and the Soviet Union. It also solidified Castro's grip on power and led to a more aggressive posture towards the US, including closer ties with the Soviet Union and the eventual installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba, which nearly led to a nuclear war. The Bay of Pigs crisis highlighted the dangers of covert operations and the limitations of US foreign policy in the context of the Cold

In January of 1959, Fidel Castro came to power. The United States’ attempted to overthrow Castro with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a CIA operation to overthrow Fidel Castro by landing 1200 disgruntled Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs. The attempt fails miserably and is a huge embarrassment for Kennedy, who then vows to bring down Castro. After the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, Castro looked to the Soviet Union for protection. According to document D in 1962 “The soviets began shipping 40,000 troops, 60 missiles and 158 nuclear warheads to communist Cuba.”

The United States has had an ongoing embargo with Cuba. An embargo is when there is a ban against a trade from a particular country. The United States has imposed it upon Cuba. This happened on October 19th, 1960, signed by John F. Kennedy. The US placed an embargo on Cuba except for food and medicine.

The imperialistic mentality of the American government after the Civil War, led to some degree to the Spanish-American war that would render a great acquisition of land for the United States. However, imperialism would not be the sole factor that led to the war against Spain, but also the sympathy felt by the American government towards Cuba’s efforts in fighting for their independence; additionally, the United States would seek to protect its commercial interests (sugar) in the island. Therefore, after invoking the Spanish to secede from their brutal practices towards Cuban rebels and attain a peaceful end to the situation, the United States arbitrarily sent a navy ship, “The USS Maine” to monitor the area.

The Cuban Missile Address is delivered October 22nd, 1962 in the Presidential office through a major radio and television address (Podell, Anzovin, and States United 705). Historically, it is worth mentioning that United States had attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro, who was at the time Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, in at least two occasions known as the Bay of Pigs Operation and Operation Mongoose, because of his communist regime and close relationship with the Soviet Union (Pious). Then, after the Bay of Pigs incident, Fidel Castro urged Nikita Khrushchev, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to send support and weapons to Cuba, because of the fear of another attack to his person/regime, Nikita did by sending missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction, hence, this major crisis that lasted 14 days ending October 28, 1962 (Deinema and Leydesdorff). In addition, the target audience for this speech is the American people as President starts his speech with the phrase, “Good evening, my fellow citizens” (Kennedy); however, the secondary audience would be the Cuban people, whom he describes as captive people, the Soviet Union leaders, whom he directly addresses and even quotes, and Fidel Castro of course (Kennedy). As noted above, the cultural, socio-political context is important to understand the seriousness of this crisis and

On October 22nd, the authors of Cuba: It Matters: Negotiations in a Changing World, Jay Brickman and Maria Conchita Mendez, presented key points in their work and moderated a discussion on U.S.-Cuban relations and Cuban international policy, mainly in the sectors of trade. The book deals mostly with what needs to be done in order to advance U.S.-Cuban relations from their current standing and the benefits that could arise from a change in policy. Thought the entirety of the discussion was remarkable, two key points caught my attention, specifically due to their ties with what has been studied in this course over the last two months. The book’s authors are Brickman, a U.S.-born vice president of an American maritime trading company, and Mendez,

Essay One: Imperialism Flies circle great black lumps as the moist air ravages the corpses. Dried blood soaked into the ground after faceless soldiers brutally destroyed its owners’ lives. These were the stories in the newspapers, the movies, and the films. Horrified by these crimes against humanity, the American public was spurred into action against the Spanish oppressors. the United States invaded Cuba in 1898 to pursue humanitarian efforts.

Late president Nikita Khrushchev (from USSR), agreed to assist Castro and took immediate action. He installed missiles in Cuba, which the US thought was a threat to the security of their nation. In summary, I think that this was a defensive move by the Cubans. I most definitely agree with

Nothing changed things got worse and worse and worse. Cuba remained the same as it did earlier with Batista; a poor country in debt whose livelihood depends on sugar production. At first the United

The Bay of Pigs ‘damaged US relations with foreign nations enormously” and “encouraged Khrushchev’s adventurism” resulting in increased Cold War tensions that demanded the President’s full