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Cuba and the Bay of Pigs Invasion Previous Next
Digital History ID 3410

 

In 1959, rebel leader Fidel Castro toppled Cuban dictator Fugencio Batista. In Washington, Castro told U.S. officials that "The [Cuban] movement is not a Communist movement.... We have no intention of expropriating U.S. property, and any property we take we'll pay for."

The next year, the Soviet Union agreed to provide Cuba with $100 million in credit and to purchase five million tons of Cuban sugar. After President Eisenhower declared that the United States would not allow a regime "dominated by international Communism" to exist in the Western hemisphere, Havana nationalized all banks and large commercial industrial enterprises in Cuba. The United responded by imposing a trade embargo.

In April 1961, a U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba led by anti-Castro Cuban émigrés turned into a rout. The members of the invasion force, who had been trained by the CIA in Florida, Louisiana, and Guatemala, were defeated in just three days. On Christmas 1962, the United States traded $53 million worth of medical supplies and food stuff for 1,113 captured invaders and 922 of their relatives.

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