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Bay of Pigs Invasion

Cold War

Cuban Missile Crisis

Immigration

The 1960s in America

Fidel Castro

by Julio César Pino

Leader of the Cuban Revolution and prime minister of Cuba after 1959. His alliance with the Soviet Union, forged after the U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Early Life

The son of a prosperous Spanish-born landowner and his Cuban wife, Fidel Castro Ruz first became active in politics as a student at the University of Havana in the 1940’s, where he imbibed equally from the nationalist rhetoric of nineteenth century Cuban patriot José Martí and the doctrines of socialist thinker Karl Marx. The coup d’état of army general Fulgencio Batista in 1952, which resulted in economic ruin for much of the peasant and working classes, convinced Castro that only Marxist revolution could improve social conditions in Cuba and simultaneously make Martí’s vision of independence from the economic might of the United States come true. In July, 1953, Castro and a small band of followers mounted a surprise attack on an army camp in the city of Santiago de Cuba, hoping to spark a national uprising against Batista. The plot failed and Castro was jailed but later pardoned. After fleeing to Mexico, he returned secretly to Cuba in 1956 to launch an insurrection that lasted three years and culminated in the ouster of Batista on January 1, 1959.

The 1960’s

Assuming the premiership of the Cuban government in 1959, Castro decreed a radical land-reform program, nationalization of foreign property, and the elimination of all political parties except the Cuban Communists. Opposed to the left-wing tilt of the revolution, the United States broke off diplomatic relations and banned trade with Cuba after 1960. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched an ill-fated plan designed to reverse the revolution, whereby anti-Castro exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The Cuban leader used the occasion to proclaim his revolution officially socialist and sought assistance from the Soviet Union to forestall future U.S. assaults by placing nuclear missiles on the island. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba in October, 1962, to be kept in place until the weapons were withdrawn. Castro lost much political prestige when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev (1958-1964) agreed to Kennedy’s terms, but he found a useful diplomatic bargaining chip in promoting anti-U.S. guerrilla movements throughout Latin America. The death in combat of longtime Castro aide Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 at the hands of U.S.-trained troops marked the failure of this enterprise. The administration of President Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974) tried to isolate Cuba further by fostering friendlier relations with Castro’s Soviet patrons. Rather than being the vanguard of the Latin American revolution, Cuba remained an exception a socialist republic ninety miles from the shores of the United States. Accepting this, Castro devoted the rest of the 1960’s to the institutionalization of his regime, the reorganization of the Cuban Communist Party with himself as first secretary, and the full integration of the Cuban economy with that of the Soviets through barter agreements.

Fidel Castro.

ph_0111200738-Castro.jpg

(United Nations)

Later Life

Castro regained some diplomatic influence in the 1970’s when pro-Cuban revolutionary factions came to power in Nicaragua and the Caribbean nation of Grenada. The inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States in 1981, however, signaled the beginning of a series of setbacks for Castro. A U.S. invasion toppled the government of Grenada in 1983, and his Nicaraguan allies were defeated at the polls in 1990. The extinction of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in a severe economic crisis for Cuba. Deemed a mortal threat to the security of the United States in the 1960’s, by the end of the century, Castro was merely an irritating problem.

Impact

Few international leaders had such an important influence on U.S. foreign policy during the 1960’s as Castro did. The fear that his revolution might spread to the rest of the hemisphere figured significantly in the establishment of programs such as the Alliance for Progress and the decision to instruct Latin American armies in counterinsurgency warfare. Castro’s revolution also resulted in a flood of immigrants arriving in Miami after 1959, altering the demographic and political makeup of Florida and contributing to a further rift in relations between Cuba and the United States.

Additional Information

Robert E. Quirk’s biography Fidel Castro, published in 1993, is particularly perceptive on his subject’s lifelong antipathy for the United States.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Pino, Julio César. "Fidel Castro." The 1960s in America, edited by Carl Singleton, Salem Press, 1999. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1960_4030008711.
APA 7th
Pino, J. C. (1999). Fidel Castro. In C. Singleton (Ed.), The 1960s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Pino, Julio César. "Fidel Castro." Edited by Carl Singleton. The 1960s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 1999. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.