Why did antagonism occur between the USA and Cuba between 1959 and 1961?

Essay by KeirHigh School, 11th grade November 2005

download word file, 4 pages 1.0

Downloaded 36 times

In Cuba, 1962, was where one of the major conflicts between the US and USSR took place--the Cuban Missile Crisis. However before 1959, the US and Cuba were really close, nearly all its industry, electricity production, railways and the entire telephone system were owned by the Americans. What happened that had changed their relation so rapidly, and why did it take place?

Firstly, the Cuban Revolution in 1959, in which a nationalist Fidel Castro became the Cuban leader, who wanted nothing more than making Cuba independent of US control. Since 1989, the US had a great deal of influence over Cuba. It was "an ideal target for US economic exploitation" Despite the Cuban leader before the revolution, Fulgencio Batista, was a brutal and corrupted military dictator, he protected and encouraged the Americans' investments in Cuba. Unlike Fidel Castro who had nationalized all the US owned property in Cuba, he was viewed as a threat to the US investments in Cuba.

Therefore, the Americans favored Batista more. Even from the press it could be easily seen, the following was a quotation from an article published in Time on January 26, 1959, "Fidel Castro himself is egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized. A spellbinding romantic, he can talk spontaneously for as much as five hours without strain." The tone was negative and a little emotional. It could be seen from those adjectives that described him, "egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized." For a rebel and a country leader, these words could not be worse. A country leader that was "impulsive, immature, disorganized" could imply that he would run the country poorly, and the citizens would have to live in bad conditions, for example, chaos, starvation. A Rebel leader that was "egotistic" could have implied that he would very likely turned out to be a dictator...