January 3, 1961 – Cold War: The United States cut diplomatic ties with Cuba

On January 3, 1961, the United States ended all official diplomatic relations with Cuba, closed its embassy in Havana, and banned trade to and forbid American private and business transactions with the island country. Earlier, in 1960, Castro had entered into a trade agreement with the Soviet Union that included purchasing Russian oil.  When U.S. petroleum companies in Cuba refused to refine the imported Russian oil, a succession of measures and retaliatory counter-measures followed quickly.  In July 1960, Cuba seized the American oil companies and nationalized them the next month.  In October 1960, the United States imposed an economic embargo on Cuba and banned all imports (which constituted 90% of all Cuban exports) from Cuba.  The restriction included sugar, which was Cuba’s biggest source of revenue.

(Taken from Cuban Revolution – Wars of the 20^th Century – 26 Wars in the Americas and Caribbean: Vol. 7)

Background In March 1952, General Fulgencio Batista seized power in Cuba through a coup d’état.  He then canceled the elections scheduled for June 1952, where he was running for the presidency but trailed in the polls and faced likely defeat.  Having gained power, General Batista established a dictatorship, suppressed the opposition, and suspended the constitution and many civil liberties.  Then in the November 1954 general elections that were boycotted by the political opposition, General Batista won the presidency and thus became Cuba’s official head of state.

President Batista favored a close working relationship with Cuba’s wealthy elite, particularly with American businesses, which had an established, dominating presence in Cuba.  Since the early twentieth century, the United States had maintained political, economic, and military control over Cuba; e.g. during the first few decades of the 1900s, U.S. forces often intervened directly in Cuba by quelling unrest and violence, and restoring political order.

American corporations held a monopoly on the Cuban economy, dominating the production and commercial trade of the island’s main export, sugar, as well as other agricultural products, the mining and petroleum industries, and public utilities.  The United States naturally entered into political, economic, and military alliances with and backed the Cuban government; in the context of the Cold War, successive Cuban governments after World War II were anti-communist and staunchly pro-American.

President Batista expanded the businesses of the American mafia in Cuba, where these criminal organizations built and operated racetracks, casinos, nightclubs, and hotels in Havana with relaxed tax laws provided by the Cuban government.  President Batista amassed a large personal fortune from these transactions, and Havana was transformed into and became internationally known for its red-light district, where gambling, prostitution, and illegal drugs were rampant.  President Batista’s regime was characterized by widespread corruption, as public officials and the police benefitted from bribes from the American crime syndicates as well as from outright embezzlement of government funds.

Cuba did achieve consistently high economic growth under President Batista, but much of the wealth was concentrated in the upper class, and a great divide existed between the small, wealthy elite and the masses of the urban poor and landless peasants.  (Cuban society also contained a relatively dynamic middle class that included doctors, lawyers, and many other working professionals.)

President Batista was extremely unpopular among the general population, because he had gained power through force and made unequal economic policies.  As a result, Havana (Cuba’s capital) seethed with discontent, with street demonstrations, protests, and riots occurring frequently.  In response, President Batista deployed security forces to suppress dissenting elements, particularly those that advocated Marxist ideology.  The government’s secret police regularly carried out extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances, as well as arbitrary arrests, detentions, and tortures.  Some 20,000 persons were killed or disappeared during the Batista regime.

In 1953, a young lawyer and former student leader named Fidel Castro emerged to lead what ultimately would be the most serious challenge to President Batista.  Castro previously had taken part in the aborted overthrow of the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo and in the 1948 civil disturbance (known as “Bogotazo”) in Bogota, Colombia before completing his law studies at the University of Havana.  Castro had run as an independent for Congress in the 1952 elections that were cancelled because of Batista’s coup.  Castro was infuriated and began making preparations to overthrow what he declared was the illegitimate Batista regime that had seized power from a democratically elected government.  Fidel organized an armed insurgent group, “The Movement”, whose aim was to overthrow President Batista.  At its peak, “The Movement” would comprise 1,200 members in its civilian and military wings.

Revolution On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led over 160 armed followers, which included his brother Raul, in an attack on the army garrisons in Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo, both located at the southeast section of the island.  The plan called for seizing weapons from the garrisons’ armories and then arming the local civilian population to incite a general uprising.  The attack was foiled by the military, however, with the Castro brothers and many other rebels being captured, imprisoned, and subsequently charged for treason.  Three months later, on October 16, the Castro brothers were handed down long prison terms, together with their followers who were given shorter prison sentences.  The trials gained national attention, with Fidel Castro, who acted as his own defense attorney, gaining wide public recognition.  While serving time in prison, Fidel renamed his organization the “26^th of July Movement” or M-26-7 (Spanish: Movimiento 26 de Julio), in reference to the date of the failed attacks.

Then in March 1955, President Batista, who had been elected president a month earlier, believed that his regime was secure and issued a general amnesty for jailed political enemies.  Many political prisoners were freed, including the Castro brothers.  After their release, the Castros, and in particular Fidel, were received enthusiastically by supporters.  In June, however, a wave of violence broke out in Havana, and with the Cuban authorities moving to arrest political enemies, the Castro brothers fled from Cuba and settled in Mexico, which at that time was a haven for leftist elements.

In Mexico, Fidel Castro organized anti-Batista exiles into an armed group as part of M-26-7, with funds solicited from wealthy émigrés belonging to the Cuban political opposition in the United States and Latin America.  Just outside Mexico City, Fidel Castro’s group secretly began training for rural guerilla warfare, which Fidel Castro planned to launch upon his return to Cuba.  The Castro brothers befriended Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine medical doctor and hard-line Marxist-Leninist, who joined and then became one of the leaders of the M-26-7 organization.

By the autumn of 1956, Fidel Castro was ready to restart the revolution in Cuba.  Early on the morning of November 25, 1956, he, Raul, Guevara, and 79 other rebels set off from Tuxpan on the Gulf of Mexico (Map 27) aboard the crudely refurbished yacht, Granma, for their 1,200 mile voyage to Cuba.  The trip was scheduled to take five days, in time for Fidel Castro and his men to meet up with the M-26-7 rebels in southeastern Cuba and then to jointly launch a coordinated attack against civilian and military targets in Oriente Province.

However, the voyage encountered many problems: the yacht’s engine broke down and had to be repaired, the boat’s hull sprung a leak and water had to bailed out by hand while the pumps were repaired, a man fell overboard (but was located and rescued).  Furthermore, the vessel had a capacity to hold only twelve persons, but was dangerously overloaded with over 80 men, including weapons and supplies.  On November 30, the scheduled day of the joint attack, Fidel and his men were yet out at sea.  The M-26-7 rebels in Cuba launched their attacks on several towns in Oriente Province, but government forces threw back the attackers after two days of fighting.