Cuban Interventions: The Bay Of Pigs Invasion

On April 17, 1961, 1400 CIA-backed Cuban exiles launched a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. This invasion was called The Bay of Pigs Invasion. This invasion "Was intended to provoke popularity for an uprising against Fidel Castro, who had overthrown American-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista" (Web).The goal of the unfortunately failed invasion was the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States. Before John F. Kennedy took office, he was informed of this plan by the CIA. Developed during the Eisenhower administration, the plan was to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their

Fulgencio Batista, the son of poor farmers in Cuba, was elected president in 1940. At the beginning , he greatly improved the education and economy. However, his term ended in 1944, when he moved to Florida. During that time, corruption made its way back to Cuba, so Fulgencio;s return through an overthrow of the government was widely welcomed by the people. To their astonishment, he returned as an oppressive, cruel dictator, embezzling money, favoring corruption , managing to be hated by the majority of the Cuban population.

The Bay of Pigs was a failed invasion by the United States to overthrow the communist government in Cuba run by the infamous Fidel Castro. The CIA-operated campaign attempted to use Cuban exiles as a Guerilla army in hopes of conducting a secret invasion. The objective was to remove the Cuban leader and establish a non-communist government that would benefit the United States. President John F. Kennedy, Commander in Chief during this time, wanted to prove to China, Russia, and even pessimistic Americans that he was determined to win the Cold War. Unfortunately, the campaign was extremely underprepared, which led to a disastrous outcome with Castro’s troops having the aggressors pinned on the beach under heavy fire. Soon after, the exiles surrendered in less than a single day of fighting, making the assault widely known as the CIA’s “perfect failure”. This topic was selected because the Cold War era intrigues me greatly; there is an abundance of covert operations, heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as technological competitions such as the space race. The Bay of Pigs ties into all of this, which led to the Cuban missile crisis, causing one of the closest calls in history in regards to nuclear war. The information found for this paper is from sources including the History Chanel website, the JFK Library, the CIA website, and the United States History website.

History: The Bay of the Pigs was a Cuban government attack to overthrow Fidel Castro, the Prime Minister at the time. It was a CIA backed and was executed under the administration of John F. Kennedy. With Castro being a communist, the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations tried their best to remove him. Their opportunity to overthrow Castro came in the form of the Cuban exiles, who under Castro’s rule, fled from the island ultimately losing their investments and properties. This fact made it easier to convince the Cuban exiles to participate in the invasion against Castro’s government. US ships sailed on the 13th of April and chose to land on “Bahía de los Cochinos” which became the attacks downfall. The area was barely

In 1959, Fidel Castro came into power by overthrowing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and from that moment on the United States was very skeptical about him. They felt this way because they were very much aware of Castro's relationship with the leader

Civil Rights activist believed Kennedy was not focusing enough on domestic issues happening in the United States. Many people fail to understand the United States was dealing with a great deal of turmoil domestically and internationally, during the Kennedy Administration, and as the Chief Diplomat, the Kennedy main focus would have been foreign relations and not domestic. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was one of the first international the Kennedy Administration was forced to deal with. The Bay of Pigs originated in President Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration but was carried out a few months after Kennedy was sworn into the Presidency. The Bay of Pigs was supposed to unseat Communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, however, it was a great failure.

The Bay of Pigs took place in April of 1961, and was a failed attempt to overthrow communist dictator Fidel Castro. The American troops split into five groups by boat on April 13, 1961 and had landed by the 16th. At the beginning the Cubans were overwhelmed, but then Castro took over the mission. The US only sent half of the air support that was planned and necessary for the US to claim victory. Because of the lack of air support the American soldiers were captured in three days and sent to Cuban prisons. This was one of the worst losses for the United States military but great for Castro. He felt as though he was on top of the world and much better than the US which led to Cuba to make the call to Khrushchev to import the nuclear weapons. The call that Castro made led the US and Cuba to a 13 day political and military standoff, and the US was not afraid to use massive retaliation. Cuba and the US came to an agreement that Cuba would remove their weapons if the US removed their nuclear weapons from Turkey. Cuba had allied with the Soviet Union while the Cold War was at its climax, the U.S. flew over Cuba and saw that nuclear missiles were being installed which continued the battle. After a long and treacherous 13 days both Cuba and The

The bay of pigs invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba. Brigade 2506, the group that attempted to invade cuba, was made up of Cubans who fled the country after Castro’s takeover, was trained and funded by the CIA. The CIA Castro gone because he was a communist, and at the time everyone was afraid of communists. This attack lasted three days before Brigade 2506 was defeated.

In March 1960, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to conquer Castro. The plan was to train a paramilitary force outside Cuba so they are able to perform guerrilla action, and needed 13 million dollars. Richard Bissel and Richard Helms organized the operation. Operation Mongoose had approximately 400 CIA officers who were employed full-time to carry out the mission. The project leader was Edward Lansdale and Task Force W was led by William Harvey. The Operation Mongoose headquarters was to the JM WAVE station. Castro once said, “If surviving assassination attempts were an olympic event, I would win the gold medal.” Castro’s body guards said that they counted that there was a total of 638 assassination attempts by CIA to kill Castro. In a survey they found that 90 percent of the Cuban population supported Castro and his policies. Castro started to tighten his grip over Cuba and enjoy all the powers that he had in the government. Then Castro put a ban on existing political parties, ruled all of Cuba, and said he would ruin the national unity and integrity. Castro wasn’t a really malicious person, but he was

These missiles were capable of dropping atomic bombs on U.S. cities, and, suddenly, the world was on the verge of nuclear war. Fortunately, after a scary 13-day confrontation between the countries, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, negotiated with the U.S. and removed nuclear-armed Soviet missiles from Cuba in exchange for U.S. withdrawal of its current missiles in Turkey and Italy, and to no longer attempt to overthrow Castro (“Fidel Castro”). The crisis not only impacted the 1960s era by provoking fear among people all over the world, but it also forever changed the testing of nuclear warfare in the years to come. Through its friendly yet

Fulgencio Batista was president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944. During his time in office he expanded the educational system, sponsored a huge program of public works, and brought up the growth of the economy (Britannica). In 1952 he ran for president again but this time put together a coup because he believed he wouldn’t win. The coup overthrew the current president, Carlos Prio Socarras, and made Batista dictator. As Fulgencio Batista gained more power he became more corrupt, forgetting his roots, and negatively impacting the poor of Cuba.

Cuba, a country just south of the United States of America, was the center stage of events leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Actions attempted by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower prior to the crisis gave incentive to the Soviet Union and Cuba to agree to place missile installations in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis was an incident that might have potentially led to a third world war because of the already heightened tensions between Cuba and the U.S. - but this time with ever more destruction owing to the role of weapons of mass destructions involved. The U.S. played a very crucial role in leading up to and then eventually resolving the crisis.

Castro intended on helping Cuba’s high poverty, but Castro did not turn Cuba into a democracy like he said he would (“Cuban missile Crisis”2). In 1960 the soviet premier attempted to convince Castro to become communist, soon after this castro became communist, probably influenced by the soviet premier (“Cuban missile Crisis”3). A new american president, that could probably change the war, was coming into office around this time, President Kennedy. The new president would take on the problem of this new cuban leader (International Encyclopedia of the… 1). Before him, Eisenhower trained about 1,500 Cuban Exiles in secret to try to take over Cuba, Kennedy allowed this to go on. On april 17, the exils attempted to invade Cuba(“Cuban missile Crisis”3). Since Castro had found out about the invasion, he was ready and defeated the the incoming force easily(“Cuban missile Crisis”3-4). The failed invasion seemed to help the Cuban opinion of Castro. He was now an obvious threat and so the U.S. decided to start operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose was a secret operation to get rid of Castro, it was an operation where the U.S. would try to sabotage Cuba, but Operation Mongoose never ended up happening. The U.S.S.R. did not want to lose Cuba so they decided to secretly send weapons into Cuba, including nuclear weapons (“Cuban missile Crisis”4). These arm shipments would lead to one of the

The loss at the Bay of Pigs did not avert the Kennedy administration from for ways to overturn Castro. November 1961 the Operation Mongoose was created to integrate these efforts. This was not only a CIA operation as General Edward Lansdale was assigned with making activities between the CIA, State Department and the Defense Department. The Special Group Augmented oversaw the program at the White House and the President played a very big role.

His reign over Cuba is best described as one of deceit and self-interest. His first action was to assure the public that Cuba’s constitution would be upheld, yet the guarantees would have to be suspended while there was still danger of another coup. There was little opposition to this claim because the people of Cuba had lived their whole lives under a corrupt government. To them this was the normal way of politics. In light of this, Batista was easily able to transform the weak government into a dictatorship. His intentions became clear to the public when the announcement of a “disciplined democracy” was made. This so called democracy put an end to all future elections and ushered in a short era of government profiting organized crime. For many Cubans this is where Batista crossed the line. With Batista’s notoriety of harsh punishment, the thought of this regime becoming indefinite was too much.