14 – The Cuban Revolution of 1959

This is just a simplified guide. The questions are not central to the discussion in this class, but rather basic starting points.

Prof. Jorge Majfud

1. What was Cuba’s historical and current political and social context before the Cuban Revolution?

2. What was the Cuban Revolution of 1959 about?

3. Arrange in chronological order the major events that preceded and followed the Cuban Missile Crisis.

4. What happened after the 1959 Revolution?

5. What was the U.S. policy known as “wet-foot/dry-foot”?

Self attack, false flag on Cuba (CIA declassified):

THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF. WASHINGTON 25, D.C.. UNCLASSIFIED. MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE. Subject: 13 March  1962.

Related: Che Guevara radicalization

«[…]  just after that tour around Latin America, where he first began to develop a pan-American consciousness, [Ernesto «Che» Guevara] wound up in Guatemala, a country that at the time was undergoing a profound democratic revolution. Che practiced social medicine in the country’s rural highlands, ministering to the country’s most marginal. He was in Guatemala during the CIA’s 1954 coup that ended that country’s democracy, and he saw firsthand the U.S. role in restoring a regime that would go on to kill hundreds of thousands of its citizens. He always cited his experience in Guatemala as a turning point. Prior to the coup, the Latin American left, including Communist groups, still believed it was possible to work with a country’s national bourgeois to achieve social democratic reform. Afterwards, it was increasingly difficult to do so. Che himself would go on to taunt the United States, saying “Cuba will not be another Guatemala” to justify the restrictions of civil liberties in Cuba, since it was through the subversion of the press, the Church, and independent political parties that the CIA did its work in Guatemala, and subsequently elsewhere.

Herper’s Magazine

http://harpers.org/blog/2007/09/six-questions-for-greg-grandin-on-ches-legacy/ 

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75 DIE IN HAVANA AS MUNITIONS SHIP EXPLODES AT DOCK; Government Said to Suspect Sabotages — Castro Paper Hints at U.S. Role MORE THAN 200 INJURED Vessel’s Stern Sinks — Many Buildings Are Damaged — Troops Ring District 75 Killed in Havana Explosion Of French Ammunition Vessel

HAVANA, March 4 — Explosions on a French freighter loaded with ammunition and explosives for the Cuban Army rocked Havana today. Seventy-five to 100 were killed and more than 200 injured by the series of blasts.

 La Coubre 1960 Cuba NYT.pdf  

La Coubre 1960 Cuba NYT.pdf – Alternative Formats

CIA report on Cuba (1963)

CIA on Cuna 1963.pdf

“It should be noted that, in 1975, when on a visit to Cuba, the American scientist Charles Henry Calisher investigated and found evidence of the existence of antibodies to dengue in the Cuban population and the lack, among Cuban people of at least 45 years of age, of antibodies to the dengue type 2 virus. “At his trial in 1984 in the United States, Eduardo Arocena, ringleader of the terrorist organization Omega 7, publicly confessed to having introduced germs into Cuba and admitted that haemorrhagic dengue fever had been introduced into the island via groups of family relatives of Cuban origin, based in the United States. “In order to determine whether or not this confession by the head of the notorious Omega 7 terrorist organization is true, regarding the groups used to introduce the haemorrhagic dengue epidemic into Cuba, we have provided below an exhaustive explanation and description of who these groups are, who organized them and in whose service they were operating.

BACTERIOLOGICAL AND TOXIN WEAPONS (UN Arocena).pdf

United States embargo against Cuba