Cuban+Revolution,+Bay+of+Pigs+and+the+Missile+Crisis



These are summary notes. Whole article: http://www.bartleby.com/65/ba/BayPigsI.html
 * //The Bay of Pigs Invasion : (1961)//**
 * April 17, 1961
 * Cuban Exiles invaded (supported by US Government)
 * 1500 Cuban Exiles landed at Bay of Pigs (south coast of Cuba)
 * Americans hoped to overthrow communist regime (Fidel Castro)
 * Invasion = failure.
 * 1962: Castro released 1113 rebel's in exchange for 53 million in food and medicine.


 * //Result for America (compared with above picture of Castro)://**


 * The Cuban Missile Crisis**

= =


 * Occured in October 1962
 * The Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of the United States.
 * U.S. armed forces were at their highest state of readiness.
 * Soviet field commanders in Cuba were authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if invaded by the U.S.
 * Fate of millions literally hinged upon the ability of two men, President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev, to reach a compromise.


 * Awesome Website for the Cuban Missile Crisis

http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/

Scroll down page to... "Where Can I Go On In This Site" and click on a link. (Then you actually have to do some reading...)


 * __Cuban Revolution:__**



__Che Guevara__

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, two of the leaders involved on the Cuban Revolution


 * CUBAN REVOLUTION:**

On March 10, 1952, General Fulgencio Batista overthrew the president of Cuba, Carlos Prìo Socarrás, and canceled all elections. This angered the young lawyer Fidel Castro, and for the next seven years he attempted to overthrow Batista’s government. On July 26, 1953, Castro led an attack against the military barracks in Santiago, but he was defeated and arrested. Although Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Batista released him in 1955 in a show of supreme power. Castro did not back down and gathered a new group of rebels in Mexico. On December 2, 1956, he was again defeated by Batista’s army and fled to the Sierra Maestra. He began using guerrilla tactics to fight Batista’s armed forces, and with the aid of other rebellions throughout Cuba, he forced Batista to resign and flee the country on January 1, 1959. Castro became the Prime Minister of Cuba in February and had about 550 of Batista’s associates executed. He soon suspended all elections and named himself "President for Life", jailing or executing all who opposed him. He established a communist government with himself as a dictator and began relations with the Soviet Union.

At the beginning of his rule, the United States supported Castro. However, once he embraced communism, the U.S. attempted to overthrow him. Cuban exiles, armed and trained by Americans, formed an army known as La Brigada and invaded Cuba’s Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961. The army was crushed by Castro after President Kennedy refused to directly involve the U.S. armed forces, and 1200 of the invaders were captured. The United States was forced to give $53 million worth of food and supplies to Cuba for the release of the captives. Due to Kennedy’s lack of involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, felt that the U.S. would do little to resist Soviet Expansion. So, in July 1962, Khrushchev began installing missile sites in Cuba. When this was discovered, Kennedy completely blockaded Cuba and threatened to invade. The U.S.S.R. promised to withdraw from Cuba if the U.S. did not invade, and the conflict known as the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved. After the Crisis, Soviet aid represented 75% of Cuba’s economy. The United States had issued a trade embargo around the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion, so when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, so did Cuba’s economy. Strict rations were imposed on food and supplies and Castro’s regime continues to be on the verge of collapse.

The Cuban revolution was a turning point in recent history. With Castro’s regime in place, Cuba became an important player in the global power of the Soviet Union and the severity of the Cold War. Castro was involved in unsuccessful rebellions in Venezuela, Guatemala and Bolivia, which caused Cuba to isolate itself from the surrounding world. The communist regime in Cuba gave the U.S.S.R. an ally neighboring the United States during the Cold War, thus bringing the threat of nuclear war to an all time high. Castro presents no immediate danger to the U.S. today, but his status as dictator is still highly opposed by many nations because of the violations of human rights practiced under his rule.

http://library.thinkquest.org/20176/crevolution.htm

Bay of Pigs Invasion:




 * What Went Wrong**

The first major error occurred on April 15, 1961, when eight B-26 bombers left Nicaragua to bomb Cuban airfields. The operation failed to destroy the entire arsenal of planes, leaving most of Castro's air force intact. The CIA had used obsolete World War II B-26 bombers, and painted them to look like Cuban air force planes. As news broke of the attack and American complicity became apparent after photos of the repainted planes became public, President Kennedy cancelled the second air strike. On April 17, the Cuban-exile invasion force, or Brigade 2506, landed at beaches along the Bay of Pigs and immediately came under heavy fire. The planes left unharmed in the earlier air attack strafed the invaders, sank two escort ships, and destroyed half of the exile's air support. Bad weather hampered the ground force, which had to work with soggy equipment and low stores of ammunition. During the next 24 hours, Castro had 20,000 troops advancing on the beach and the Cuban Air Force continued to control the skies. As the situation grew increasingly grim, President Kennedy authorized an “air-umbrella” at dawn on April 19, which called for six unmarked American fighter planes to help defend the Brigade's B-26 aircraft flying from Nicaragua. But the B-26s arrived an hour late (most likely due to time zone confusion) and were shot down by the Cubans. The invasion was crushed later that day. Some exiles escaped to the sea, while the rest were killed or rounded up and imprisoned by Castro’s forces. Almost 1200 Brigade members had surrendered and more than 100 had been killed.


 * The Aftermath**

The Brigade prisoners remained in captivity for 20 months, as the United States negotiated a deal with Fidel Castro. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy made personal pleas to pharmaceutical companies and baby food manufacturers, and Castro eventually settled on 53 million dollars worth of baby food and drugs. On December 23, 1962, just two months after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a plane containing the first group of freed prisoners landed in the US. A week later, on Saturday, December 29, surviving Brigade members gathered for a ceremony in Miami’s Orange Bowl, where the Brigade’s flag was handed over to President Kennedy. “I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this Brigade in a free Havana,” the president promised. The failure at the Bay of Pigs had a lasting impact on the Kennedy administration. The commitment to erase this blot from the historical record contributed to the November 1961 decision to establish Operation Mongoose--a plan to sabotage and destabilize the Cuban government and economy, including the possible assassination of Castro himself. More than 40 years later, relations between Castro's Cuba and the United States remain tense and tenuous at best.

Website where this information was located: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/JFK+and+the+Bay+of+Pigs.htm