President Obama is the first sitting American president to visit Cuba in two generations, heralding the end of decades of enmity between the United States and Cuba.
1952-1959A Young Revolutionary
In January 1959, Fidel Castro, a fiery revolutionary, emerged from the jungle and entered Havana to triumphantly declare the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, a dictator and American ally.
Soon, the young guerrilla would remove any doubt as to his ideology, declaring the revolution socialist and the country communist, and in the process altering the relationship between Cuba and the United States for the next 55 years.
Mr. Castro quickly became a thorn in Washington’s side, and American leaders repeatedly sought ways to weaken his hold and oust him from power, including an economic embargo, assassination attempts and a failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs.
TimesMachine: ‘Batista and Regime Flee Cuba; Castro Moving to Take Power’ (NYT, Jan. 2, 1959)
TimesMachine: ‘Havana Welcomes Castro At End of Triumphal Trip’ (NYT, Jan. 9, 1959)
1961The Bay of Pigs
On April 17, 1961, about 1,500 Cuban exiles trained by the C.I.A. stormed the beaches of the Bay of Pigs in a failed attempt to overthrow Mr. Castro.
The invasion, ordered by President John F. Kennedy, was a disaster for several reasons. The dissidents telegraphed their plans for what was supposed to be a covert operation, American efforts to destroy Cuba’s air force ahead of the invasion were unsuccessful and the Cuban people did not support the rebels in their fight.
After three days, more than 100 of the exiles were killed and 1,200 were captured. The failed invasion embarrassed the United States and pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, setting the stage for the Cuban missile crisis.
TimesMachine: ‘Anti-Castro Units Land in Cuba’ (NYT, April 18, 1961)
TimesMachine: ‘Kennedy Says U.S. Won’t Allow Communism to Take Over Cuba’ (NYT, April 21, 1961)
1962The Missile Crisis
Tensions between the United States and Cuba reached their apex for 13 days in October 1962.
An American U2 spy plane photographed Soviet ballistic nuclear missiles stationed on the island on Oct. 14. About a week later President Kennedy addressed the country from the White House, explaining that he had ordered a military blockade of Cuba to prevent more Soviet equipment from reaching the island. In the days that followed, the Soviets would call the blockade an act of war and shoot down an American spy plane, bringing the countries to the brink of war.
The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated an end to the conflict, resulting in the withdrawal of missiles. But Cuban citizens bore the brunt of the fallout from the standoff when the United States restricted travel to and from the island.
TimesMachine: ‘U.S. Imposes Arms Blockade on Cuba on Finding Offensive-Missile Sites; Kennedy Ready for Soviet Showdown’ (NYT, Oct. 23, 1962)
TimesMachine: ‘U.S. and Soviet Reach Accord on Cuba’ (NYT, Oct. 29, 1962)
From 1975 to 1991, Cuba sent 300,000 combat troops and 50,000 civilians to Angola to protect the government there from foreign intervention, according to Fidel Castro.
The war, which devolved into a bloody, violent civil conflict, cost 2,000 Cubans their lives, and it was part of what Washington officials often denounced as Castro’s ambitious attempt to export the Revolution abroad. At the height of the Cold War, Cuba was involved in conflicts in both Africa and the Americas, sometimes working alongside the Soviet Union, and often angering the United States.
1980The Mariel Boatlift
Two decades into the Revolution, Cuba was “sailing in a sea of difficulties,” as Fidel Castro put it during a 1979 speech.
Sugar prices had plummeted, driving down Cuba’s gross domestic product by 5 percent. Life in the country had become increasingly difficult, so much so that in the early months of 1980, nearly 10,000 Cubans applied to the Peruvian Embassy seeking asylum. In April, Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave the country could do so.
Over the next seven months, more than 120,000 Cubans boarded overcrowded boats and embarked from Mariel Harbor bound for the United States, where they were granted refugee status.
The mass exodus ended a period of revived relations under President Jimmy Carter, who had been seeking greater engagement with Cuba. The relationship soured even more when it was discovered that the Cuban government had filled boats bound for America with convicts and the mentally ill.
TimesMachine: ‘The Long Journey of Hope From Mariel to Key West’ (NYT, May 20, 1980)
Cuba entered a period of extreme deprivation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. That led to another wave of migration in the 1990s, which reached its peak in the summer of 1994 when so-called balseros, or rafters, fled Cuba on small makeshift vessels.
The crisis effectively ended in 1995, when President Bill Clinton and Mr. Castro agreed to what would be called the “wet foot, dry foot policy,”which offers asylum to those refugees who made it onto American soil and not those intercepted while at sea.
U.S. Will Return Refugees to Cuba in Policy Switch (NYT, May 3, 1995)
A few years later, U.S.-Cuba tensions flared again, this time over a single migrant: Elián González, a 5-year-old boy fleeing Cuba with his mother and 12 others on a rickety boat in 1999.
During the journey, Elián’s mother drowned. He was rescued and placed in the custody of his mother’s relatives in Miami. But his father, still in Cuba, petitioned to have him returned. A federal court ruled that only the boy’s father could seek asylum for the child and ordered him returned to Cuba. In April 2000, armed federal agents were sent to remove the boy from his relatives’ home in Florida and return him to Cuba.
Some scholars argue that it was Elián who widened the divide between hard-line Cuban-Americans who opposed Fidel Castro at all costs, and insisted that the boy stay in Miami, and those who emphasized reconnecting Cuban families. And that split, the argument goes, laid the groundwork for President Obama’s looser rules on travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans – leading to restored relations.
Cuban Boy Seized by U.S. Agents and Reunited With His Father (NYT, April 23, 2000)
2006Tit for Tat
Though the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, and closed its embassy, it maintained an Interests Section in Havana since 1977.
It was there, on the edge of Cuba’s famous seaside Malecón, in 2006 that the administration of President George W. Bush erected an electric sign that displayed anti-government messages. The Cuban government saw the action as a provocation, responding in kind. The Cubans erected an array of flagpoles flying black flags to block the sign, and they held a 24-hour protest in front of the building – which is now officially labeled the American Embassy.
U.S. and Cuba Reopen Long-Closed Embassies (NYT, July 20, 2015)
U.S. Turns Off News Billboard Atop Its Mission in Havana (NYT, July 27, 2009)
In 2009, a year after President Obama made it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit Cuba and send money to relatives, Cuba arrested Alan P. Gross, an American contractor who had been delivering banned communications equipment to the island under a semi-covert democracy program.
His arrest and sentence of 15 years in prison led to a stalemate in relations that lasted for years, until secret negotiations involving Cuba, the United States and the Roman Catholic church, finally led to Mr. Gross’s release on Dec. 17, 2014.
That deal also involved a return to Cuba of the rest of the Cuban Five – a group of men convicted in the United States of spying for Cuba. And the releases were announced in conjunction with Mr. Obama’s declaration that Cuba and the United States would restore diplomatic relations.
“We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” Mr. Obama said in a nationally televised statement from the White House. The deal, he added, will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas” and move beyond a “rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.”
Alan Gross and U.S.-Cuba Relations (NYT, Dec. 17, 2014)
U.S. to Restore Relations With Cuba, Erasing Last Trace of Cold War Hostility (NYT, Dec. 17, 2014)