All About Castro & The History Of U.S. Relations With Cuba
Jan 3, 1961: United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba
In the climax of deteriorating relations between the United States and Fidel Castro's government in Cuba, President Dwight D. Eisenhower closes the American embassy in Havana and severs diplomatic relations.
The action signaled that the United States was prepared to take extreme measures to oppose Castro's regime, which U.S. officials worried was a beachhead of communism in the western hemisphere. The immediate reason cited for the break was Castro's demand that the U.S. embassy staff be reduced, which followed heated accusations from the Cuban government that America was using the embassy as a base for spies.
Speaking of Fidel Castro...
Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-) established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother Raúl in 2008. During that time, Castro’s regime was successful in reducing illiteracy, stamping out racism and improving public health care, but was widely criticized for stifling economic and political freedoms. Castro’s Cuba also had a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States–most notably resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The two nations have no formal diplomatic relations, and the United States has enforced a trade embargo with Cuba since 1960, when U.S.-owned businesses in Cuba were nationalized without compensation.
Fidel Castro: Early Years
Castro was born on August 13, 1926, in Birán, a small town in eastern Cuba. His father was a wealthy Spanish sugarcane farmer who first came to the island during the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898); his mother was a domestic servant for his father’s family who bore him out of wedlock.
After attending a couple of Jesuit schools–including the Colegio de Belén, where he excelled at baseball–Castro enrolled as a law student at the University of Havana. While there, he became interested in politics, joining the anti-corruption Orthodox Party and participating in an aborted coup attempt against the brutal Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo.
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