Cuban History: The Cuban Revolution

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

However, in Jan 1959 Fidel Castro and his followers revolt against Fulgencio Batista, and established a revolutionary communist state.

When one looks at all the revolutions the earth there are many differences. Evry revolution is different but every revolution have one thing in common, one group of people is being oppressed by another. For this essay we are supposed to compare two different revolutions to the American Revolution. The two others I chose are the Cuban revolution and the Haitian revolution. To begin, I will look at a little back ground of each revolution and then the main cause. Once I get done with that, I will then compare the causes to each other.

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.

What are some examples of push and pull factors? Why did these factors make people want to go to the US? War, disease, a bad government, bad calamities and famine are just some examples of push factors. Better opportunities, better living conditions, healthcare, and education are also a few examples of pull factors. In this essay I will explain how there are many ways to explain the most influential push and pull factors that contribute to immigration to the United States.

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

The Bay of Pigs Invasion took place on april 17th, 1961 and it was a failed military invasion/coup of Cuba and its government by a CIA-sponsored paramilitary group known as Brigade 2506. This paramilitary group was trained and funded by the United States Central Intelligence agency (CIA). The invasion was partially caused by the Cuban Revolution of 1952 to 1959 in which dictator Fulgencio Batista, an ally of the United States, was forced into exile. On july 26th, 1959 Fidel Castro was put into power. He then cut the country 's formerly strong links with the US after expropriating the assets of US corporations and mobsters, and developing links with the Soviet Union. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower was concerned with the way that

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

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

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

The Kennedy-Johnson years (1961-1969) provided the stimulant for social and economic re-form, but most of their policy initiatives were confounded by domestic strife and foreign