THINGS TO REMEMBER

 Cuban Missile Crisis

 Bay of Pigs Invasion
 Moncada Barracks
 July 6 Movement
 Granma
 Sierra Maestra Mountain
 Platt Amendment
 Dictator
 Coup d’ etat
 Guantanamo Bay

Achieving Excellence through PHD: Prayer, Hard work and Discipline

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union
engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over
the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from
U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John F.
Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles,
explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it
clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this
perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared
the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided
when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1971) offer to
remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade
Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was a failed attack launched by the CIA
during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro from
power. Since 1959, officials at the U.S. State Department and the CIA had
attempted to remove Castro. Finally, on April 17, 1961, the CIA launched what
its leaders believed would be the definitive strike: a full-scale invasion of Cuba
by 1,400 American-trained Cubans who had fled their homes when Castro took
over. However, the invasion was doomed from the start. The invaders were
badly outnumbered by Castro’s troops, and they surrendered after less than 24
hours of fighting.

Various groups formed to oppose Batista’s dictatorship, and on July 26, 1953, Castro
led some 160 rebels in an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de
Cuba–Cuba’s second largest military base. Castro hoped to seize weapons and
announce his revolution from the base radio station, but the barracks were heavily
defended, and more than half his men were captured or killed.
On January 1, 1959, facing a popular revolution spearheaded by Fidel
Castro’s 26th of July Movement, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista flees the
island nation. Amid celebration and chaos in the Cuban capitol of Havana, the
U.S. debated how best to deal with the radical Castro and the ominous
rumblings of anti-Americanism in Cuba

In November 1956, 82 men representing the 26th of July Movement sailed from
Mexico aboard the Granma, a small yacht

On December 2, 1956, Castro and 81 armed men landed on the Cuban coast.
All of them were killed or captured except for Castro, Raul, Che, and nine
others, who retreated into the Sierra Maestra mountain range to wage a
guerrilla war against the Batista government.

Approved on May 22, 1903, the Platt Amendment was a treaty between the U.S. and
Cuba that attempted to protect Cuba's independence from foreign intervention. It
permitted extensive U.S. involvement in Cuban international and domestic affairs for the
enforcement of Cuban independence.

Dictatorship, form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute
power without effective constitutional limitations

Coup d'état, also called coup, the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government
by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed
forces, the police, and other military elements

Guantanamo Bay- A US owned prison located in Cuba

Achieving Excellence through PHD: Prayer, Hard work and Discipline