The Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution

The United States had its satellite states in Central America (Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Guatemala), the Caribbean (Cuba, the Dominion Republic and Haiti) and east Asia Philippines, South Korea, South Vietnam and Thailand). These states were governed by ruling groups made up of military personnel, landed gentry and occasionally of local capitalists.

After Castro took power, the US-owned oil refineries on the island refused to process Russian oil. Castro nationalized them. The US retaliated by ending the arrangement by which it bought the bulk of Cuba’s sugar. Castro nationalized the US-owned sugar companies. and ended the US monopolies in electricity and telephones. All these gravely threatened American economic interests.

Cuban Missile Crisis

In April 1961, while landing an army of Cuban exiles on the island of Bay of Pigs, the US bombed Cuban airfields with the objective of overthrowing Castro’s regime. US warships surrounded Cuba. The Kennedy government had received intelligence that the USSR was secretly installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Finally, the Soviet President Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles and thus the Missile Crisis was defused.

Eventually the two sides reached an agreement. The Soviet Union removed the missiles from Cuba on an understanding that the US would never invade Cuba again.