BAY OF PIGS

Bay of Pigs: A Reaction to Cuba's Communist Revolution

Bay of Pigs: A Reaction to Cuba's Communist Revolution

Background

Bay of Pigs invasion, also known as the Battle of Girón, was a military operation in which troops of Cuban exiled, trained, financed and directed by the CIA of the United States (Higgins, 2008). CIA attempted to invade Cuba in April 1961 with the purpose of taking a beachhead to form a provisional government and seek support from the OAS and the international community recognition (Gleijeses, 1995). The action ended in failure in less than 72 hours, and it was totally crushed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba. More than a hundred invaders were killed, and another 1,200 captured Cuban, along with significant military equipment. During the Cold War, the United States reaction to Castro's Communist Revolution backfired. The impact of the CIA's involvement with the Bay of Pigs Invasion strengthened communism in Cuba rather than defeating it.

Cold war

In a context of Cold War, the U.S. administration believed that the Castro's Communist Revolution was a danger, not only for having so close an ally of the Soviet Union, but because early on it became clear that the new leaders had no intention of supporting other revolutions in Latin America (Fernandez, 2001). The United States supported Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar since he had come to power as Cuban dictator in 1952. Batista, however, was corrupt and repressive, and very soon a revolutionary movement crystallized under Fidel Castro and other leaders. In 1959, Castro led a successful rebellion against Batista and became the new premier of Cuba. He was at first cordial to the United States, but, beginning in 1960, he aligned Cuba increasingly with the Soviet Union and seized American oil refineries, sugar mills, and electric utilities on the island.

CIA Involvement

As early as 1959, when Castro became premier, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began planning an invasion near Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. naval and marine base in southern Cuba, at a place called the Bay of Pigs. Although planning began during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the invasion stepped off on April 15, 1961, with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots (they were, in fact, exiles supported by the CIA). This was during the early months of the new administration of John F. Kennedy. The United States suspended the sugar quota and stopped buying this resource to Cuba, which was then practically the only millionaire real line (Gleijeses, 1995). The government of the island found a trustworthy buyer in the Soviet Union. The U.S. government halted all oil sales to the island from the United States and allied countries in order to stop destabilizing the industry and the overall economy of the island. The Soviet Union responded quickly by sending crude oil to Cuba, to which American capital refineries refused to process Soviet oil and interventionist response to these actions, Cuba nationalized all the possessions of progressive ...