Word: castros
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cuba's ties go back well before Castro. In 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American war, a defeated Spain signed the rights to its territories - including Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam - over to the U.S., which subsequently granted Cuba its independence with the stipulation that the U.S. could intervene in the country's affairs if necessary (later relinquished) and that it be granted a perpetual lease on its naval base at Guantánamo Bay (not). For the next half-century the two countries more or less cooperated, with the U.S. helping to squash rebellions and heavily investing...
Then came the Cuban Revolution and everything changed. It took multiple years and a few attempts but on Jan. 1, 1959 Fidel Castro and his band of guerillas successfully overthrew the government of President General Fulgencio Batista. The United States - which supported Castro by imposing a 1958 arms embargo against Batista's government - immediately recognized the new regime, although it expressed some misgivings over the revolutionaries' execution of over 500 pro-Batista supporters and Castro's increasingly obvious communist tendencies. Castro visited the U.S. just three months after coming to power, touring Washington monuments and meeting with Vice President Richard...
...Castro's government had seized private land, nationalized hundreds of private companies - including several local subsidiaries of U.S. corporations - and taxed American products so heavily that U.S. exports were halved in just two years. The Eisenhower Administration responded by imposing trade restrictions on everything except food and medical supplies. Decrying "Yankee imperialism," Castro expanded trade with the Soviet Union instead. The U.S. responded by cutting all diplomatic ties, and the two countries have been talking through Switzerland ever since. President Kennedy issued the permanent embargo on Feb. 7, 1962 - right after ordering a shipment of 1,200 Cuban cigars...
...early 1960s were marked by a number of subversive, top-secret U.S. attempts to topple the Cuban government. The Bay of Pigs - the CIA's botched attempt to overthrow Castro by training Cuban exiles for a ground attack - was followed by Operation Mongoose: a years-long series of increasingly far-fetched attempts on Castro's life. Between 1961 and 1963 there were at least five plots to kill, maim or humiliate the Cuban leader using everything from exploding seashells to shoes dusted with chemicals to make his beard fall out. The Get Smart-like plans never worked, and Castro...
...April 1980, a downtown in the economy caused thousands of dissatisfied Cubans to seek political asylum in foreign countries. Anyone who wanted to leave, Castro announced, could do so through its northwestern port, Mariel Harbor. Over the next six months 125,000 Cubans clambered onto boats and made their way to the U.S. in a mass flotilla. Castro also released criminals and mental-hospital patients, of whom as many as 22,000 landed on the shores of Florida; Cuba refused to take them back...