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Cuban Revolution
During the Revolutionary period Cuba was one of the few developing countries to provide foreign aid to other countries. -
Communist Takeover
Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's Prime Minister. -
Bay of Pigs
Bay of Pigs was a failed invasion attempt led by the CIA and Cuban exiles. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13 day confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. -
Ten Million Plan
Fidel Castro attempted to motivate the Cuban people to harvest 10 million tons of sugar, in Spanish known as La Zafra, in order to increase their exports and grow their economy. In July 1970, after the harvest was over, Castro took responsibility for the failure and later that same year he blamed the Sugar Industry Minister saying “Those technocrats, geniuses, super-scientists assured me that they knew what to do in order to produce the ten million tons -
Cuban Debt
In 1986 Cuba defaulted on its $10.9 billion debt to the Paris Club. -
Change in Leadership
In February 2013, Raúl Castro, current Cuban President, announced his resignation for 2018, that will end his current 5-year term, and hopes to implement permanent term limits for future Cuban Presidents, including age limits. -
Economic Freedom
In 2014 Cuba’s economic freedom score was 28.7, making its economy one of the world’s least free. Its overall score was 0.2 point higher than last year, with deteriorations in trade freedom, fiscal freedom, monetary freedom and freedom from corruption counterbalanced by an improvement in business freedom. Cuba ranked least free of 29 countries in the South and Central America/Caribbean region and its overall score was significantly lower than the regional average -
Death of a Dictator
after the death of Fidel Castro on November 25,2016 his brother, Raul Castro took power as president of Cuba.