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 Fidel Castro establishes a revolutionary socialist state in Cuba after he and a group of guerrilla fighters successfully revolt against President Fulgencio Batista. Batista, who had been supported by the U.S. government for his anticommunist stance, flees the country after seven years of dictatorial rule. Castro gradually strengthens relations with the Soviet Union.
Castro nationalizes all foreign assets in Cuba, hikes taxes on U.S. imports, and establishes trade deals with the Soviet Union. President Dwight D. Eisenhower retaliates by slashing the import quota for Cuban sugar, freezing Cuban assets in the United States, imposing a near-full trade embargo, and cutting off diplomatic ties with the Castro government.
Executing a plan developed and approved by the Eisenhower administration, President John F. Kennedy deploys a brigade of 1,400 CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro. The Cuban military defeats the force within three days, after several mishaps disadvantage the invaders and reveal U.S. involvement. Despite the failed invasion, U.S. administrations over the next several decades conduct covert operations against Cuba.
The Kennedy administration imposes an embargo on Cuba that prohibits all trade. Cuba, whose economy greatly depended on trade with the United States, loses approximately $130 billion over the next nearly sixty years, according to Cuban government and United Nations estimates.
Castro indicates in a September 1965 speech that Cubans can leave for the United States of their own free will, saying that “nobody who wants to go need go by stealth.” Days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will open U.S. borders to all Cubans and signs into law an immigration bill that gives preference to Cuban migrants with family ties to U.S. citizens or residents. The U.S. State Department estimates that some 270,000 Cubans have arrived in the United States since Castro took power. In November 1966, Johnson enacts a law that allows Cubans who reach the United States to pursue permanent residency after one year.
President Jimmy Carter reaches an agreement with Castro to resume a limited diplomatic exchange, allowing officials from the two countries to communicate regularly. The United States opens an interests section with a small staff in its former embassy in Havana under the auspices of the Swiss embassy. Switzerland had taken over U.S. interests in Cuba in 1961. Meanwhile, Cuba opens an interests section in Washington, DC, under the auspices of the embassy of Czechoslovakia.
Cuba faces intense pressure from thousands of Cubans hoping to flee the country as its economy suffers from a spike in oil prices and the continued U.S. embargo. Following a forty-eight-hour debacle in which ten thousand Cubans crowded at the gates of the Peruvian embassy to gain asylum, Castro states that anyone wishing to leave Cuba for Florida may do so from Mariel Harbor over the next six months. President Carter welcomes Cubans to the United States “with open arms,” and as many as 125,000 Cubans take part in the boatlift.
Havana and Washington implement two accords aimed at addressing the thousands of Cubans attempting to enter the United States annually. The first follows an abrupt policy change by President Bill Clinton in August 1994 that calls for all Cubans rescued at sea to be brought to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. It outlines terms for future legal immigration from Cuba to the United States, setting the number of Cubans allowed to enter the U.S. annually at a minimum of twenty thousand (not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens). The second accord establishes the “wet foot, dry foot” policy [PDF], in which Cubans intercepted by U.S. authorities at sea are sent home while those who make landfall in the United States are allowed to remain and pursue permanent residency after one year. The agreement also allows for more than thirty thousand Cubans detained at Guantanamo Bay to enter the United States on parole status.
Clinton signs the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, better known as the Helms-Burton Act, which tightens and codifies the U.S. embargo. It comes several weeks after the Cuban military shot down two U.S. civilian planes over waters off of Florida. Among other provisions, the statute penalizes foreign companies that do business with Cuba, provoking some U.S. allies to denounce it as a violation of international law. The law stipulates that sanctions may only be lifted after Fidel Castro and his brother Raul are no longer in office, Cuba has moved toward free elections and a free press, and it has released political prisoners.
The Clinton administration charges five Cuban counterintelligence officers in the United States with conspiracy to commit espionage, among other illegal activities. The officers, who were sent by the Castro government to infiltrate Cuban-American exile groups in Miami, are arrested in 1998 and found guilty in 2001. Two are released at the end of their terms, in 2011 and 2014, and the remaining three are released on December 17, 2014, as part of a prisoner swap for a U.S. intelligence officer held in Cuba.
The case of five-year-old Elian Gonzalez, the sole survivor of an attempt by his mother and ten others to reach the United States by boat, ignites a media storm. The Clinton administration is faced with deciding whether to allow the child’s Miami relatives to keep him, the course of action supported by Florida’s Cuban-American community, or send him back to his father in Cuba, the position of the Cuban government. After a seven-month battle in U.S. courts, a federal appellate court gives Elian’s father the power to act on his behalf in immigration proceedings. After the U.S. Supreme Court declines to review the case, Elian is returned to his family in Cuba.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signs an agreement with Castro allowing Venezuela to send oil to Cuba at a heavy discount in return for Cuban support in education, health care, science, and technology. Chavez aligned himself early on with Castro’s anti-U.S. stance and, soon after taking office in February 1999, announced a government overhaul of state oil giant PDVSA, the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States at the time. In the following years, Venezuela boosts its oil exports to Cuba in return for more technical personnel from Cuba, including physicians, teachers, and other social-service workers. |
Which of these actions gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba if its independence was threatened?
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