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1950's Fulgencio Batista
In the 1950’s Cuba was lead by a right-wing dictator called Fulgencio Batista. He dealt with opponents with extreme harshness and while a few prospered under his regime, many Cubans were very poor. He was not tolerant of communists and received the support of the Americans. Batista’s sole support within Cuba came from the army which was equipped by the Americans. -
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Cuba in the Cold War
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Cuban Revolution
The revolution began in 1952, when former army Sergeant Fulgencio Batista seized power during a hotly contested election. Batista had been president from 1940-1944 and ran for president in 1952. When it became apparent that he would lose, he seized power before the elections, which were cancelled. -
Fulgentio Batista
When Fidel Castro led the revolution to overthrow the dictator of Cuba, General Fulgentio Batista, in 1959, the American government hoped that the neighbouring island would become a democratic ally. However, it soon became apparent that Castro had other plans. He wasted no time in turning Cuba into a Marxist state. -
1960
By 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term was ending, but the Cold War continued. The election of 1960 meant that U.S. citizens would have to choose a new leader to help the country navigate through the growing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and its communist allies. -
Eisenhower
Eisenhower ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow him, and the CIA orchestrated sabotage raids on Cuba to destabilise the regime. Attempts were made to assassinate Castro, reputedly using the mafia (the first of at least eight assassination attempts was planned as early as August 1960) -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
On April 17, 1961, 1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. -
Threatening
in 1962 a large-scale military exercise was undertaken by US forces in the Caribbean, in which 40,000 military personnel practised invading an unnamed island to overthrow a dictator threateningly codenamed Ortsac. Kennedy wanted to alarm Castro, and he succeeded. But he also alarmed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
In October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. President Kennedy did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had found out about the missiles. He met in private without anyone knowing with his advisors for several days to talk about the problem.
