In the twenty-first century, modern media tends to solely highlight Cuba as the former Communist State and Soviet ally that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. However, Cuba was not always the Soviet Union’s golden child, nor was it always an enemy to the United States of America. In the early years of Cuban independence, Cuba was actually America’s golden child who was economically exploited by the United States government. In between these two periods however, there was a third in which an organization, rather than a country, ran Cuba from behind the scenes. The Mafia began to slowly take over Cuba starting in 1933, peaking in 1955 with the full legalization of gambling, and steadily controlling the Country until the reign of
The voice of one can influence the actions of many, cuban national hero, Jose Marti is a prime example of this statement. In the late 18th century Spain had power and control of Cuba. Cuba and Spain had a long complicated history, leaving the Cuban people determined to take back their land and economy from the unfair rulers that were the Spaniards. The first rebellion, the ten-year war, ended in an unsatisfactory stalemate leaving the Cuban people with limited resources and hope. The writer and activist Jose Marti had supported Cuba’s independence for most of his life, he wrote about the dream of independence in poems, essays and letters. While in the United States he began to rally up those who had fought in the
Simply put, In a Communist system, individual people do not own land, factories, or machinery. Instead, the government or the whole community owns these things. The ultimate goal of communism is to create a classless society and creating a dictatorship (A government in which one ruler has complete control over a country.) For nearly 35 years, the Cold War took place between the Soviet Union and the United States. The war was referred to as cold because there was never any physical fighting between the two countries. The Cold War essentially began due to political and military clashes between the two countries. After WW2, the United States sought for stronger united Germany and independent nations in Eastern Europe. The United States president
The cuban revolution allowed for gender equality and the role of women in cuban society to shift tremendously. The entire system of government changed, Cuban Women were given opportunities to leave their household and get an education, obtain government jobs that were only given to men, and they were granted opportunities that improved the status and the rights of women. Even though, the social and economic circumstances profoundly changed, social relations did not. Women in Cuba still had to fight exploitation, poverty, and violence. Many women were not given opportunities simply because of the color of their skin, notably lower class women who had to grapple with the intersecting, stratifying layers of classism, sexism, and racism in society.
During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis took place. It was when two superpowers were close to causing a nuclear war. Its main origin was when the United States invaded Cuba, on April 10, 1961; which is also known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. After the invasion, previous Prime Minister; Fidel Castro of Cuba, was ‘paranoid’ because he felt like America was planning another attack. So in order to protect his nation, he sought military and economic help from the Soviet Union. 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.
The Cuban Revolution was successful in toppling the corrupt Batista dictatorship and getting the Cosa Nostra (a major crime syndicate in Sicily) out of Cuba. The Cuban Revolution was and is not successful however, in making Cuba a free land and a good place to live for everyone. It benefited just the communist party leaders. At first the Cuban people thought they were fighting from freedom, and that they were trying to free themselves from Batista and the United States. However, what most of the cuban people didn 't know it was that it was all a lie. 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.
The presidency of John F Kennedy was one of controversy both in the past and in the present. There has long been a debate on whether or not he was a good or bad president. He did many things to help the U.S., On the other hand, there are many questionable things that he did that may have hurt the United States. The negatives seem to outweigh the positive things that he did, which proves that he was not such a great President.
America had a rapid urbanization which was results of the rapid industrialism. We had vast amount of industries and had the need for more resources. To gain more profit, we needed to look outside our country for business. We needed resources from other land to continue our growth. One country we invested for resources was Cuba. Cuba was our main resource for sugar as it had a large sugar production. The textbook states, “American businesses had more than $50 million invested in Cuban sugar, and the American trade with Cuba, a brisk $100 million a year before the rebellion, had dropped to near zero” (Roark 576). With this much money invested in a country, it’s hard to not get involved when a rebellion is breaking out. The causes of this war may be many, however, one thing remains certain Fredrick Jackson Turner and urbanization was a major
People like Castro are jerks and are very forceful, bad leaders. Castro canceled elections, forced non-communists to resign from the government in disgrace, worked secret arms deals with the Soviets, carried out mass executions live on the TV’s, shut down the free press, attacked the church and confiscated its property, tortured critics, criminalized private commercial transactions and blanketed all of Cuba with the enduring terror of his dictatorship. A bad leader is a big push factor that made Mario Loyola and his family leave Cuba and go to the
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
Batista's acts and his dictatorial regime was long-term political causes that invoked the Cuban revolution. On March 10th, 1952, Batista faced the possibility of not being elected as the president so he seized power through a military coup. He expelled the president, cancelled the 1952 election and took control of the government. Historian Arthur Schlesinger described Batista's government as "Batista's policies and his corrupted government was an open invitation to revolution." Batista showed his dictatorial attitudes through taking control of the university, the press and the Congress. He decided to suspend the constitution and made deals with organized crime during the 1950's. He also allowed America to interfere Cuba's economy and manipulated the 1954 and 1958 presidential elections to make himself the sole
Wright continues the telling of this historical event, under the topic of Fidelismo and the radicalization of Latin American politics. The combination of Castro’s actions and Che Guevara’s calls for revolution in the western hemisphere had a direct and profound effect on Latin American politics. This powerful force came to be known as Fidelismo and broken down to its core “it was simply the attitude that revolution should be pursued immediately” (Wright p. 39). On of the most noticeable symptoms of Fidelismo was an intense growth of demands for change. Wright notes that during this time, the intensity of political activities in many other Latin American countries increased, especially after Castro’s victory. This dynamic came about as new
January of 1959, Cuba welcomed the first of the Cuban Revolution, and had become a communist country under the rule of Fidel Castro as mentioned in “Document D”. The US, against communism, became much involved in Cuba during 1962, when
He deposed of a man who was consistently backed by the national army. Ultimately, Castro won a war against an entity embellished with weapons and superior technology with only 82 men. In order to do this successfully, he utilised guerrilla warfare tactics as they best suited his resource. Fighting a war against an enemy far greater with orthodox and predictable methods would be an irrefutable disaster. Instead, small scaled yet mobile attacks on troops when they least expected proved to be an effective method of confrontation. Phase 1 of the guerrilla warfare principles emphasise on the importance of popular support, which Castro strongly related to. Additionally, the warfare encouraged troops to fight on land that is not only readily available, but an area rebels have cohesive knowledge on. Guerrilla warfare has proved to be successful method of initiating liberty on numerous occasions. It worked for Tito in Yugoslavia, the Viet Cong in Vietnam and certainly for Fidel Castro in Cuba. The country was free after four centuries of neocolonialism, and ‘Cuba Libre’ was finally
Race relations within the revolutionary Caribbean complicated the Twentieth Century, leaving questions of freedom and nationalism open to interpretation. In A Nation for All, Alejandro De La Fuente examines various meanings of race within post-Spanish Cuba, Batista’s Cuba, and socialist Cuba, and how racial tensions aligned with revolutionary ideas. Rather than simply adopting a chronological organization of events, Alejandro De La Fuente gains the reader’s attention by utilizing a thematic scheme. The idea of an inequality, masked by revolutionary, egalitarian rhetoric, remains central to each thematic division. De La Fuente’s work serves to undermine the elitist pretense of equality in Twentieth Century Cuba and expose the long-term effects