Cuban-US Relationship Essay

In light of all the atrocities enacted upon mankind, none were as demeaning and repugnant as slavery. On the island of Cuba, slavery flourished for over 300 years with more than one million slaves being trafficked from Africa and China. Many of these slaves were brought over to work on large plantations that harvested tobacco, coffee and sugar cane. Life on the plantations was not only exhausting, but a slave’s life was often cut short due to the rigorous demands of crop and factory production. Slavery was finally abolished on the island in 1886, but had already left its indelible mark on Cuban society. This essay will cover the different facets regarding slavery in Cuban society and its effects on modern day Cuba.

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.” However, U.S spy planes soon identified evidence of the nuclear missile sites being rapidly installed in Cuba. As a result, the U.S quarantined (set a zone around) Cuba where ships carrying weapons could not go. If Cuba had missiles, they could threaten other countries and make them submit to Cuba which would result in them becoming communist. Numerous Soviet transports stopped dead in the water just outside the quarantine line. In April 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union came to an agreement. Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba and the U.s removed their missiles from Turkey. This tactic of containment through blockades/quarantines was highly effective because as a result of the quarantine, there were no more missiles in Cuba so they could not take over other countries and spread

The Spanish American war was a war between the United States of America and Spain. It lasted 4 months in the year 1898. The purpose of the war was for Spain to loss control of Cuba, the Philippians, Guam, and Puerto Rico. It all started when Spain started to put pressure on Cuba to increase trade to the Americas so they could get the majority of trade with America. This caused Cuba to fight for independence. The United States did not like this because it started to interfere with the trading. In any event, the destruction of the Maine, by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that is intolerable.1 When the sinking of the USS Maine happened it caused the US to realize how bad the problem was in

Castro is an undeniably controversial figure in the United States. For decades the American media had portrayed him as a malevolent communist dictator. By doing the readings and watching the documentary I now know the main reason why America has vilified him, Fidel has managed to defy the United States and put an end to its imperialist expansion in Cuba. My thesis is that despite the United States being a superpower, Cuba undoubtedly managed to end US imperialist expansion and interference in Cuban affairs. Cuba has managed to govern itself as an egalitarian 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 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

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

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

First, there was the political component in which Americans sympathized with the Cubans’ yearning for independence. Second, businessmen had important interests on the island, cultivated over several decades. Sugar, railroads, shipping, and other enterprises gave the United States an undeniable economic interest in Cuba, while at the same time putting Americans in a potential crossfire.Third, there was the moral issue of Weyler;s treatment of the Cubans, which appealed to American humanitarianism (Schweikart and Zinn 483).

Cuba would lose American influence thus leading to end of slavery. The U.S could not let that happen due to the fact it was the slaves who made Cuba the largest sugar producer. Without slaves and the high production and access to sugar, Cuba is almost useless economically. The U.S saw this island as a source of sugar and a place for trading. They placed large amounts of investments into Cuba and the U.S was not going to lose it all; nearly over $50 million was invested.3 The U.S spent money and time in Cuba to make more money, not to lose it. The only way to protect their investments was to rid of Spain and to do that the U.S needed to join the war against

Cuba became a communist country under the dictatorship of Fidel Castro, the united states did attempt to stop it but they failed. (Doc D) The United States late on discovered that there was a range of nuclear missiles sites in Cuba, the United States responded to this by announcing a quarantine. (Doc D) A quarantine is a place of isolation in which people or even animals are placed after coming from somewhere else, this was usually practiced to stop pesticides and other infections. The United States did this against ships carrying offensive weapons to Cuba. The Soviet began to remove their missiles and the conflict was avoided (Doc D) even though, the united states failed they restored themselves with this move. Cuba was not the only country that was communist, North Korea who was guided by the Soviet Union was also communist in contrast of South Korea who was being guided by the United States. The North Koreans surprised attacked the South, several American Forces were sent to defend the South. (Doc C) Douglas MacArthur, who was the general successfully counterattacked the North and pushed them back to the border of North Korea and communist China. (Doc C) China the decides to join the war pushing UN and US back into the South, the war lasted for several years and ended in 1953 with fifty-thousand Americans dead. (Doc

Firstly, Cuba and the Soviets already had a very bad relationship with the United States. Research shows that, “Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the United States and Cuba.” (“Cuban Missile Crisis”) The quote makes the statement in the second sentence true. The United States did not agree on how the government in Cuba was run and tried to overthrow it before but did not win. Cuba and the Soviet Union wanted to team up on the United States to get revenge. Another reason was Cuba’s dictator Fidel Castro was not very stable as the dictator and wanted more than he actually needed. Since he was a dictator he could make anything happen. All of this research let me to conclude that the best reason for the Cuban Missile Crisis was the relationship between all of the countries and how they didn’t like each other that

It is true that Spain was treating Cubans exceptionally harshly. However, after the United States took control of Cuba, it did little to ameliorate the treatment of the Cubans, although before and during the war the U.S. government had promised the American public and Spain that it would. The true drive for taking Cuba away from Spanish control was to guarantee implementing the Monroe Doctrine ensuring America’s hegemonic expansion. America’s true motivations can be seen in the Platt Amendment truly giving any freedom the United States had promised Cuba into the hands of the American government. The fact was that America was not ridding Cuba of an oppressor. Instead, America was just replacing the Spanish oppressor with

Assumption: While Cuba and Canada share a similar balance of military power and are located alongside the United States, Cuba is regarded as a foe and Canada a close ally by America, evidently not simply on the basis of material distribution of capabilities but as a consequence of ideational structure of friendship and enmity which attach greatly different meaning to Cuban and Canadian military power for the United