Crushing Cuba, 1959 to Present

Summary

History As It Happens

Episode Title: Crushing Cuba, 1959 to Present
Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Prof. Alexander Avigna (Arizona State University, historian of Latin America)
Date: August 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the decades-long U.S. policy of antagonism toward Cuba, tracing the roots of the conflict from the 1959 revolution through the present day. Host Martin Di Caro and historian Alexander Avigna discuss how U.S. efforts to isolate or overthrow Cuba’s government have shaped the lives of ordinary Cubans, the wider region, and U.S. foreign policy itself. The conversation spans pivotal moments—Bay of Pigs, the embargo, revolutionary internationalism—and takes special aim at the recent intensification of U.S. sanctions under the Trump administration, questioning their impact and strategic purpose.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Current Crisis: “Slow Strangulation” of Cuba

[08:07 – 11:02]

• Severity of U.S. Pressure: Recent American efforts—renewed oil embargoes, secondary sanctions, diplomatic isolation—are described as “the most intense, the most violent” U.S. campaign against Cuba since the revolution.
  • Avigna: “What we have witnessed for a year and a half is the slow strangulation of an island of 9 and a half, 10 million people where people do not have daily access to clean water, do not have access to transportation to work, they don’t have access to electricity.” [08:26]
• Impact on Daily Life: Massive blackouts, water shortages, chaos in public services and health, including Cuban women giving birth in dark hospitals.
  • Quote: “If you don’t have diesel, if you don’t have gasoline…what does that do? You have trash out in the streets that attracts mosquitoes, illness-carrying mosquitoes. And now you have…large numbers of dengue and chikungunya diseases. Right. We can all tie it back to what is a genocidal U.S. war against Cuba.” [09:19]
• Policy Rationale: U.S. aims regime change "on the cheap," trying to collapse the government via hardship rather than military action, repeating a Cold War-era formula.

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2. Historical Pattern: U.S. Economic Warfare Since 1960

[11:02 – 13:06]

• The Mallory Memo (1960): Early admission by U.S. officials that popular support for Castro was strong, so only economic hardship might destabilize Cuba.
  • Quote (Avigna): “The only way that they can change the course of this government is through economic warfare.” [11:10]
  • Direct Memo Excerpt: “…every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba…to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” [11:44]

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3. Deep Historical Roots: Cuba’s Nationalism and the Shadow of Empire

[14:29 – 21:06]

• Pre-Revolutionary Context: Cuba’s struggle against Spanish colonialism (1890s), U.S. intervention (Spanish–American War, 1898), and the imposition of a semi-colonial relationship that lasted until 1959.
  • Avigna: “The semi-colonial relationship between the United States and Cuba…is the background for a lot of what we’re going to be talking about today.” [14:29]
• Fulgencio Batista’s Dictatorship: Pro-U.S., violent, suppressive regime ultimately overthrown by nationalist rebellion.
• Origins of the Cuban Revolution: Centered on social justice (land, education, equality) and national sovereignty (free from U.S. interference).
  • Avigna: “The core of the Cuban Revolution of 1956…revolves around two themes: social justice and national sovereignty.” [21:06]

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4. U.S.–Cuba Tit-for-Tat and Radicalization of the Revolution

[24:24 – 32:43]

• Initial Reception: Early hope in U.S. that Castro might be moderate; deteriorated when revolutionaries began land reform and nationalization.
• Escalation:
  • U.S. embargoed sugar, Cuba turned to USSR for oil and trade, triggered further nationalizations.
  • Summed Up by Di Caro: “There’s a tit-for-tat…the U.S. does something and then the Cubans react quite logically.” [28:01]
• Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961): Clandestine U.S. operation using Cuban exiles fails disastrously, radicalizing both sides:
  • Kennedy: “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” [33:45]
  • Avigna: “It was a plan…modeled on what the CIA did to Guatemala…It failed. It failed miserably.” [31:41]
• Result: After invasion failure, Cuba aligns openly with USSR, declares socialism.

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5. U.S. Subversion and Cuban Defiance

[35:23 – 38:51]

• Operation Mongoose: State-directed terrorism, sabotage, repeated assassination attempts on Castro.
  • Avigna: “State terrorism, official U.S. government policy until the late 1960s.” [36:26]
• Effect: U.S. actions fuel Cuban nationalism, solidify the regime, and generate anti-U.S. sentiment.
  • “U.S. policy…is doing another, which is targeting Cuban people. And that then has the counterproductive effect of closing ranks around a government…” [36:26]

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6. Regional Ripples: Latin America and Revolutionary Internationalism

[37:22 – 46:38]

• Fears of "More Cubas": U.S. attempted to contain regional revolutionary fervor with initiatives like the Alliance for Progress and covert support for dictatorships.
• Cuban Support Abroad: Cuba’s internationalist missions, notably aiding Angolan independence against apartheid South Africa.
  • Mandela’s Praise: “Castro helped bring about the end of racial apartheid and white supremacy in Southern Africa.” [45:33]
• Independent Policy: Cuba acted for ideological reasons—anti-racism, sovereignty—not simply as a Soviet proxy.
  • “What drove this was that revolutionary internationalism organized around the idea of anti-racism…” [48:41]

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7. Post-Cold War to Obama: Persistent Isolation, Brief Thaw

[50:02 – 60:18]

• The “Special Period” and Prolonged Suffering: Collapse of Soviet support in the '90s intensified the embargo (Helms-Burton Act), deepening Cuban hardship.
• Entrenchment: U.S. policy driven by inertia, domestic politics, and South Florida exile lobbying.
  • Avigna: “Like the Cold War never ended in South Florida. I think it’s one way to think about it.” [51:14]
• Pink Tide: Late ‘90s/early ‘00s resurgence of left-wing governments in Latin America, helping Cuba regain regional integration—a lifeline ended as Venezuela collapsed.
• Obama Era (2014–2017): Diplomatic thaw, restoration of relations, eased restrictions—widely popular but quickly reversed by Trump.
  • Obama: "We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests..." [07:17, 59:04]
  • Avigna: “I think the Obama effort…did show a lot of promise. I think that was the way to proceed.” [59:55]
  • Cuban-American generational shift: Many younger Cuban Americans supported normalization. [60:40]

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8. Today: Intensified Pressure, Familiar Rhetoric, No Clear Endgame

[61:21 – End]

• Trump Administration: New “oil blockade,” executive orders, Cuba designated again as state sponsor of terrorism.
• Familiar Justifications: Claims Cuba is both starving and simultaneously a major threat to U.S. security via foreign alliances and espionage.
  • Avigna: “These are all lies. These are all clear lies…They're designed to galvanize domestic support for an upcoming regime change.” [62:39]
• Allies Withholding Help: Even Mexico, Cuba’s recent oil lifeline, has halted shipments to avoid U.S. tariffs.
• Dire Consequences: Human suffering increasing, with little evidence the embargo is moving Cuba toward desired reforms.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Alexander Avigna on U.S. Strategy:
  “We can all tie it back to what is a genocidal U.S. war against Cuba. That's the way I would characterize it. It's a slow violence, but it is causing mass death, misery, suffering, just on a slower scale.” [09:19]
• Mallory Memo, 1960:
  “Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba… to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” (Quoted by Avigna) [11:44]
• Avigna on U.S. Domestic Politics:
  “Like the Cold War never ended in South Florida. I think it's one way to think about it.” [51:14]
• Martin Di Caro on Obama’s Policy:
  “What Obama did here took some political courage and was the right thing to do…It wasn’t good for Cuba either.” [58:35]
• Alexander Avigna on Current US Claims:
  “It cannot be [simultaneously] the capital of 21st century communism…and a starving island. It cannot be that and an island…open enough that the US is increasingly sending bigger numbers of CIA and other intelligence assets. These are all lies.” [62:39]
• Nelson Mandela (via Avigna):
  “Castro helped bring about the end of racial apartheid and white supremacy in Southern Africa. It wasn’t the Americans…It was… the solidarity and internationalism demonstrated by the Cuban revolutionary government and Fidel Castro.” [45:33]

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Segment Description | | -------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | | 08:07–11:02 | Current U.S. embargo impact on Cuban daily life | | 11:02–13:06 | The 1960 Mallory Memo and tradition of economic warfare | | 14:29–21:06 | History—Batista, U.S. dominance, roots of revolution | | 24:24–32:43 | Early U.S.–Cuban relations, Bay of Pigs, radicalization | | 35:23–38:51 | Operation Mongoose, U.S. sabotage, consequences | | 41:46–46:38 | The Angola intervention, revolutionary internationalism | | 50:02–59:55 | The Special Period, embargo in law, Pink Tide, Obama | | 61:21–66:06 | Present: renewed sanctions, Trump orders, future dangers |

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Analysis & Significance

• Pattern of Continuity: From Eisenhower’s and Kennedy’s escalation to today’s renewed embargoes, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been remarkably consistent: using economic, diplomatic, and sometimes covert violence in the pursuit of regime change.
• Failure of Policy Goals: Far from achieving a pliant Cuba, U.S. actions have repeatedly entrenched the power of the island’s government.
• Human Toll: Ordinary Cubans bear the brunt, not regime elites, as social collapse, health crises, and poverty intensify under embargo.
• Missed Diplomatic Opportunity: Obama’s thaw showed promise and popular support, but domestic politics and the 2016 election reversed progress.
• Myth vs. Reality: Official U.S. claims of Cuban threat do not match the island’s actual regional or international position, and ignore opportunities for peaceful engagement.
• Historical Resonance: The American impulse to “crush Cuba” is cyclical, driven by geopolitics, domestic politics, and chronic misreading of Cuban nationalism.

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Tone & Language

• Analytical, critical of U.S. policy errors and moral blind spots, conversational and sometimes impassioned, particularly from Avigna; Di Caro provides framing and synthesis, invites the guest to provide deeper historical insight and context.

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Suggested Listening for Key Moments

• 08:26 – Avigna describes current humanitarian suffering
• 11:44 – Reading from the Mallory Memo
• 21:06 – Explanation of revolution’s “social justice and national sovereignty” motives
• 31:41 – Avigna on Bay of Pigs’ impact
• 36:26 – Avigna on Operation Mongoose and its counterproductive effects
• 45:33 – Mandela’s recognition of Cuba’s anti-apartheid role
• 59:04 – Obama administration official’s statement on ending outdated policy
• 62:39 – Avigna debunks current U.S. official claims about Cuba

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Final Takeaways

The U.S. relationship with Cuba is more than a Cold War relic; it’s a living example of how historical patterns, domestic politics, and foreign policy inertia can combine to perpetuate suffering and stymie resolution. The Cuban people have repeatedly paid the price for Washington’s obsessions, yet have preserved a distinctive sense of nationhood and resilience.

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For a deeper dive:
Visit History As It Happens, and look up references such as Visions of Freedom by Piero Gleijeses, or explore the publicly available Mallory Memo (April 1960).

Transcript

[Martin DeCaro]

History as it happens. August 7, 2026. Crushing Cuba.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

Joyous followers of Fidel Castro sweeped triumphantly through the Cuban capital hours after their rebellion had toppled the regime of Fulgencio Batista, the man who overthrew the Batista dictatorship, calls on them to approve the public trials and executions of pro Batista victor. There is a limit to what the United States in self respect can endure. That limit has now been Miami, the first week of April 1961. Invasion fever is rising among the Cuban exiles.

[John F. Kennedy]

We do not intend to be lectured on intervention by those whose character was stamped for all time on the bloody streets of Budapest.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

Cuban Americans understand perhaps better than many of their fellow citizens that freedom is not just the heritage of the people of the United States. It is the birthright of the people of this hemisphere.

[Alexander Avigna]

His communist revolution outlasted 10American presidencies and withstood half a century of American economic embargo.

[Obama Administration Official]

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.

[Donald Trump]

Whether I free it, take it, I think I could do anything I want with it.

[Martin DeCaro]

The Trump administration is trying to bring down Cuba's communist government, but in the process is crushing the island's population. An oil blockade has made daily routines dramatically difficult. The Cold War may be long over, but this conflict seems frozen in time. Today's drama part of a long pattern of belligerence stretching back to the coldest years of the Cold War. That is next as we report history as it happens.

[Alexander Avigna]

I'm Martin DeCaro and everyday people are going to suffer. They're suffering now and they'll suffer even more, which is horrific.

[Martin DeCaro]

Cuba is the 21st century capital of communism and therefore a danger to the United States, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an interview with Fox News.

[Intelligence Analyst]

To the average American, you know, you see Cuba, small country, 90 miles off our shores, you know, nine and a half million people, population, what people forget that when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they actually are an influence and espionage superpower. If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them. We had an ambassador, a US Ambassador who ended up being a Cuban spy and was recently convicted. We've had them penetrate the highest levels of Defense Intelligence Agency. Anna Belen Montez was one of the single biggest intelligence failures on the part of the United States and one of the biggest penetrations we ever had in our system. So. And then on the influence front, if you look all throughout Latin America, every communist left wing insurgency that's destabilized governments across the region and every single one of them over the last 40, 50 years has found its support, its help, in many cases its birth from a Cuban influence operation.

[Martin DeCaro]

If you were to travel back in time through the decades of the Cold War, you would hear an echo, because since the early days of Castro's revolution, American officials have talked about Cuba the same way.

[John F. Kennedy]

It is clear that the forces of communism are not to be underestimated in Cuba or anywhere else in the world. The advantages of a police state, its use of mass terror and arrests to prevent the spread of free dissent cannot be overlooked by those who expect the fall of every fanatic tyrant.

[Martin DeCaro]

That was John Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, April 1961.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

From the sea and by parachute, the rebels have struck along the coast within 90 miles of Havana. Initial accounts of the fighting sketchy.

[Martin DeCaro]

Kennedy was right about Cuba's internal repression. Human Rights watch in a 2016 report said. During his nearly five decades of rule, Fidel Castro built a repressive system that punished virtually all forms of dissent, a dark legacy that lives on even after his death. Castro died that year, the report goes on to say. During his rule, thousands of Cubans were incarcerated in abysmal prisons, thousands more were harassed and intimidated, and entire generations were denied basic political freedom. Cuba made improvements in health and education, though many of these gains were undermined by extended periods of economic hardship and by repressive policies. Cuba's economy also bent under the weight of decades of US sanctions and an embargo. They date to the early 1960s, even as the US supported other authoritarian, even murderous regimes in Latin America. Castro himself made that very point during a four and a half hour speech at the United Nations, September 1960. He also defended his decision to nationalize U.S. owned businesses in Cuba. The best lands in Cuba, said Castro, and the most important industries are property of North American companies. That was the situation that we found, and that situation should not be strange to many of the countries represented in this assembly, because at the end of the day, he said, what we've said about Cuba is nothing but an X ray of general diagnosis applicable to most of the country countries represented here. Today. Trump and Rubio are trying to crush Cuba by strangling its economy with an oil embargo. There are massive blackouts and drinking water shortages. The idea is that the government will agree to dismantle itself under this pressure or Maybe just collapse so the U.S. can take over. Here is President Trump about two months ago.

[Donald Trump]

You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States do it? I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That'd be a good. That's a big honor.

[Obama Administration Official]

Taking Cuba.

[Donald Trump]

Taking Cuba in some form. Yeah, taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth? A very weakened nation.

[Martin DeCaro]

So why is this relationship between the world's most powerful country and a small communist island 90 miles off the Florida coast, stuck in a time warp as if the Cold War never ended? With the exception of the Obama presidency,

[Obama Administration Official]

neither the American nor Cuban people are well served by a rigid policy that's rooted in events that took place before most of us were born. Consider that for more than 35 years we've had relations with China, a far larger country also governed by a Communist Party. Nearly two decades ago, we reestablished relations with Vietnam, where we fought a war that claimed more Americans than any Cold War confrontation.

[Martin DeCaro]

Obama fulfilled a campaign promise by easing restrictions on remittances and travel, allowing Cuban Americans to send unlimited money to Cuba. In response, Raul Castro, who had taken over for his ailing brother, began liberalizing Cuba's state controlled economy. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Cuba's private sector grew with the number of self employed workers nearly tripling. And in 2014, Obama and Raul Castro announced their governments would restore full diplomatic ties.

[Obama Administration Official]

The United States will not be imprisoned by the past. We're looking to the future.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, as Obama mentioned, the US has normal relations with China and Vietnam, both ruled by communist parties, both who've gone through very hostile stretches in their relationships with the United States. Yet the US Is still trying to crush Cuba. By the way, we're not going to cover the Cuban Missile crisis in this episode because I've covered it several times already and it had as much, if not more to do with the US Soviet conflict and Khrushchev's geopolitical brinksmanship as it did Castro. Alexander Avigna is an associate professor of Latin American History in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. And he's been following the Cuba situation very closely. Alex Avigna, welcome back.

[Alexander Avigna]

Hey Martin, thank you for having me back.

[Martin DeCaro]

Let's start with what's happening today, then we'll dive into the history. Can you put it into perspective for us, this pressure campaign to cripple the Cuban economy and unseat its government somehow. Is this the most pressure the US has ever put on Cuba since the revolution?

[Alexander Avigna]

I think so. I think that's what Cubans themselves are saying. Perhaps in the 1990s during what they referred to as a special period after the fall of the Soviet Union, was another extremely difficult time for Cubans, definitely during COVID But what we're witnessing right now and reading and listening to what Cubans are saying about the current situation that let's say really begins with Trump taking office for the second time at the beginning of 2025, is the most intense, the most violent, and we can define violent in a variety of different ways. Effort by the United States to finally what they would say would resolve the so called Cuba question. What we have witnessed for a year and a half is the slow strangulation of an island of 9 and a half, 10 million people where people do not have daily access to clean water, do not have access to transportation to work, they don't have access to electricity.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

There's been four or five national electrical blackouts in the last couple of weeks.

[Intelligence Analyst]

Why?

[Alexander Avigna]

Because Cuba has not been able to get petroleum and other energy resources from other countries. Because the US has threatened any of these other countries with tariffs if they help the Cuban government out. Venezuela for a long time was a major provider of oil and diesel petroleum products to Cuba. But since late 2024, it actually been Mexico. And Mexico has promptly followed Trump's threats and has not sent. They've sent humanitarian supplies, but they have not resumed the humanitarian shipment of oil, as President Claudia Sheinbaum would refer to it. So, yeah, I think this is the most intense, difficult, violent period that Cubans have faced since 1960. You read their testimonies, you listen to their testimonies. It's horrible. I mean, let me just say one example. So if you don't have diesel, if you don't have gasoline, you don't have transportation, you don't have things like trash trucks coming up, going around neighborhoods and picking up trash. Right. So what does that do while you have trash out in the streets that attracts mosquitoes, illness carrying mosquitoes. And now you have like these barrotis or large numbers of like dengue and chikungunya diseases. Right. We can all tie it back to what is a genocidal US War against Cuba. That's the way I would characterize it. It's a slow violence, but it is causing mass death, misery, suffering, just on a slower scale.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

We've had reports of Cuban women giving birth in the dark in hospitals because they don't have electricity. We'll talk about the historical context of this type of approach because this approach from the US toward Cuba has been around since at least 1960. But in terms of intensity and the level of suffering that US policy is creating on Cubans right now, I think this is the most horrific period that we've witnessed.

[Martin DeCaro]

It's not entirely clear. I'm not sure the administration even knows how this is supposed to affect a change they would approve of.

[Alexander Avigna]

The target has always been the Cuban people. There's a really famous memo that is called the Mallory Memo that gets written in April of 1960. It's readily available online. It's titled the Decline and Fall of Castro. Already April 1960, a year before the Bay of Pigs. That we can talk about. You already have the US Government under Eisenhower admitting that this Cuban revolutionary government has high levels of popular and political support. Therefore, the only way that they can change the course of this government is through economic warfare. So let me just quickly read the conclusion because this then becomes the MO for US policy towards Cuba till today. That the calibration of it depends. Right. And there's all sorts of nuances, but this is fundamentally the US approach to Cuba that Mallory, this Secretary of State official, I think, if I remember correctly, writes in April 1960. If the above are accepted and cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government. That's April 1960. That is describing what we are witnessing now, just in a much more intensified format. Because in the end, the Trump administration wants regime change, but they want it on the cheap. They want something akin to what we witness in Venezuela. Perhaps they don't want to send troops on the ground, they don't want to expand any other military resources. So they're falling back on a long standing US policy toward Cuba, which is to strangle the island economically. Now, how that's supposed to induce regime change, which with people who are starving, and they know that the culprit of that starvation is the United States, I have no idea. That's always been an open question. But the people of Cuba have always been the target of US policy toward that island.

[Martin DeCaro]

There's no Maduro like figure there who's been indicted, as far as I know, in the United States, who can be kidnapped.

[Alexander Avigna]

Raul Castro has been indicted. Raul Castro, he's 94, 95 years old.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, I would bet 99% of Americans could not name who's running the Cuban government on a day to day basis. Miguel Diaz S Canal is the first secretary of the Communist Party and President. The prime minister who does the day to day work is Manuel Marrero Cruz. They don't have the same kind of personal standing that Castro or Maduro had. Let's return to what's going on today. At the end, you just introduced a historical note. So I think it's important to go back to really the beginning, 1959, 1960, because one theme of our conversations has been through lines and patterns when it comes to the US policy toward Latin America and Cuba in particular. So it's the late 1950s. Cuba is run by an increasingly dictatorial figure by the name of Fulgencia Batista, who's becoming closer and closer to the United States. Many American companies dominate the Cuban economy, or at least one of the most important aspects of it. Sugar. Why did Batista. Well, tell us first briefly, who was Batista and why did his regime become so unpopular that he decided to flee Cuba at the end of or at the beginning of 1959?

[Alexander Avigna]

I apologize, Martin. I'm gonna have to do the historian thing and go even farther back because part of this story begins in the late 1890s when Cuban Patriots tried to fight for their independence against Spanish colonial rule. In the mid-1890s, this was the third fight of independence against Spain. As they're fighting, waging the struggle, the US gets involved, and this becomes a Spanish American War of 1898. Right. The USS Maine sails down into Havana harbor, mysteriously blows up, the US blames the Spanish, and we have a splendid little war, as a US government official referred to it. Now, part of the result of this war is Cuba does become independent, but only in the sense that it becomes a semi colony of the United States. So that semicolonial relationship between the United States and Cuba that exists from 1898 up until the Cuban Revolution is successful in 1959 is the background for a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. The cementing of a monocultural economic system in Cuba that's organized around sugar production is going to be really important. And any sort of revolutionary attempts to better Cuban society has to engage with the fact that the Cuban economy is oriented around sugar. But that's going to bring it into conflict with U.S. government interests. Batista emerges in the 1930s. He was a military, I think he was a rank of sergeant. He was in the Cuban military. And in the early 1930s there is an attempt within, a revolutionary attempt within Cuba to create some sort of social democratic government that with the help of the US government is put down by Cuban military officials. And Fulgencio Batista is one of the most prominent. And he really by the late 1930s becomes kind of like the US's man inside Cuba. He becomes president of Cuba in 1940. The Cuban constitution of 1940 is passed. A very progressive social democratic document. It's drawing a lot from the Mexican Constitution of 1917. So it's a very social democratic document that in large part gains a lot of organized labor support for Fulgencio batista throughout the 1940s. Eventually he leaves office. He actually leaves the country toward the late 1940s if I remember correctly. And he comes back to run for office again, presidential office in the 1952 elections. And he's not, he's not doing very well. I think he's like polling in third place. So what he decides to do is he uses his connections within the Cuban military and they launch a so called bloodless coup d'.

[Martin DeCaro]

Etat.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

Police patrol excited crowds in Havana who found that while they slept behind the scenes, strongman general Batista had overthrown the constitutional regime of President Carlos Prio once before. In 1933, when only an army sergeant, Batista staged a revolt. Now, as then, his co conspirators in the army, navy and police seized key points. The present coup was accomplished in only 77 minutes. But Cuba's political freedom is ended as Batista cancels the June 1st elections. Batista says he is a friend of the people as his soldiers patrol the streets to establish what he calls discipline democracy.

[Alexander Avigna]

From 1952 up until he flees the island on January 1, 1959. If you've watched the Godfather 2, you know the scene. He's a dictator. It's not increasingly dictatorial like he took power via a coup d'.

[Intelligence Analyst]

Etat.

[Alexander Avigna]

And he establishes himself as a dictator who in response to a popular movement and insurrection that begins in 1956 led by the July 26th movement, he becomes increasingly violent and ends up killing thousands of his own people. Within this broader context, Fidel Castro is a young law student. He's traveling throughout Latin America in the late 40s. He's a nationalist, he's a social democrat, let's say he's part of the Partido Ortoloxo, which was kind of like a Left Popular, one of the main Left popular political parties in Cuba. But after the 1952 coup d' etat in which Batista takes power, Castro is convinced that the only way to achieve one remove Batista from power, but achieve meaningful social reform. To actually implement the 1940 Cuban constitution, it's going to require armed struggle. And this leads to this attempt in 1953, the Moncada Barracks attack in the southeastern city of Santiago, where 160 guerrillas led by Fidel Castro try to take over the military barracks in city of Santiago, take over that city, and then that would stop, start a movement from the southeast of Cuba moving west to taking over the, the central part of the island and then Havana. It fails, but it makes Fidel Castro really famous.

[Donald Trump]

He.

[Alexander Avigna]

He's put on trial and he gives a really fa one of the most famous speeches in Latin American history, titled History Will Absolve Me. And this is a really interesting speech because in it he's laying out the reasons why they rebelled against Batista. It's all about his dictatorship, but it's all about again making real the promises of that 1940 Cuban constitution, a social democratic document. And then he does something really interesting, which is he does this long as Castro does this long excursion, philosophical excursion, into the natural right of peoples to resist tyranny via any means possible. And he goes through, I think he starts with like St. Thomas Aquinas and he moves his way up through the American Revolution to other more contemporary movements in Latin america of the 20th century. Him and his comrades are still charged and sentenced, but because of popular outcry inside Cuba and internationally, Castro and a small group of his followers end up being exiled to Mexico, which is where they plot and plan for the 1956 revolution. And that's where they meet an Argentine doctor named Ernesto Che Guevara who had just fled from Guatemala because Jacob Arbenz had just been overthrown with the help of the CIA in 1954, for the

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

first time in 10 years, the people of Guatemala are breathing the sweet air of liberty. Only days after the resignation of Red President Jacobo Arbenz. Rebel leader Castillo Armas Sweet.

[Alexander Avigna]

So when they arrive on the island in 1956, Batista had been a dictator for a good four years with no democracy, with increasingly hem fisted and violent efforts to quell any sort of resistance to his dictatorial rule.

[Martin DeCaro]

I have the Cold War A World History. It's the title of a book by Odd Arn Westad. He says Here. The Cuban Revolution was the result of years of misrule by Batista. As you just said, it reflected widespread poverty and social injustice in the countryside, though not more than was found in other Latin American countries. From the beginning, nationalist opposition to US Control played an important part in the revolution. Cuba had been occupied by the US Several times during its history, and some Cuban businesses, such as the vital sugar industry, were dominated by US companies. So one through line in American history is underestimating the nationalism in the countries that are in conflict with Washington and emphasizing the communism, the Marxist Leninism, plain nationalism. How any people in these circumstances would revolt against cruel, corrupt, ineffective rulers.

[Alexander Avigna]

Yeah, I mean, the core of the Cuban Revolution of 1956, it revolves around two themes, social justice and national sovereignty. Why social justice? Because the Cuban economy had been centered around sugar production, a highly unequal, inequitable economic activity that was controlled, heavily controlled, by US business interests. Let's say by 1959, 40 to 50% of all sugar plantations are in US hands. 50% of sugar mills are in US hands. More than 80% of all Cuban exports had something to do with sugar. This produces a really unequal society. Right. Like, if you're working in sugar, you only have season. You have seasonal employment, maybe like 25% of the year you have a job, and then the rest of the year you're jobless. That's one reason why the Cuban Revolution had social justice at its forefront. Right. It wants to achieve a more equitable, more fair, more socially just country. The second part of that is national sovereignty. Why? Why do they fight for national sovereignty? Because the US had been involved in meddling in Cuban Internal affairs since 1898. U.S. marines invaded Cuba three times between 1906 to 1917. The revolution that takes power in 1959 is based on social justice, national sovereignty. It's a nationalist, popular, democratic revolution that in subsequent years in relation to the United States, radicalizes. And in many ways, Cuba is forced to look for allies to offset increasing US meddling and bellicosity. Well, in that moment of the world, what's the other big country that might offer some sort of support, whether it's military, economic or political? What's going to be the Soviet Union? And there's a classic documentary about the CIA called Inside Company Business. I think they put it out in, like, 1980. And in it, there's a really interesting interview with Victor Marchetti, which was a former CIA analyst involved in Latin America. And he. He says it like he. He says, we push Cuba into the arms of the Soviet Bear.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

I am to this day absolutely convinced that we drove Fidel Castro into the arms of the Russian bear because he was frightened that we were going to murder him and destroy his new Cuba. And he was absolutely right.

[Alexander Avigna]

It was US policy after the revolution in 1959 that pushed Cuba to align with the Soviet Union. Yes, eventually, ideologically. Because it's really important to remember that Fidel Castro was not a communist or a Marxist Leninist until the early 19th century 60s and his brother were.

[John F. Kennedy]

Yeah.

[Alexander Avigna]

And there were other people in what was called the July 26th Movement that certainly identified as such, but Castro did not. But what ends up radicalizing the revolution after taking power in January 1, 1959 was U.S. efforts to overthrow the revolution from the very beginning. And we can talk about this like Besides maybe like January 1959. Beyond that, there was no honeymoon period between revolutionary Cuba and the United States

[Martin DeCaro]

States Tap subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get early access and enjoy all of our bonus content or go to history as it happens.com. Castro went on an American television show. He spoke in English.

[Alexander Avigna]

Well, I'm not afraid.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

No. May I ask you a question, sir, as a lawyer and as one who has spoken very eloquently about the civil rights that must be guaranteed to the Cuban people, how do you explain I

[Donald Trump]

will never be against any right that this may think in politics. I am not communist at all, but I will never be against any rhyme.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

May I ask you, sir, why is it when you have that attitude which you obviously believe very strongly, why with that attitude have there been so many executions across Cuba without open free trials?

[Donald Trump]

Well, not so many.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

How many?

[Donald Trump]

I don't know exactly about.

[Martin DeCaro]

He visited the United States in April 1959. As Westat says here, he was feted as a pop star by the press and by large audiences wherever he went. And even in the Eisenhower administration in Ike was a cold warrior. They were concerned about the radical and authoritarian aspects of the new regime and what they considered the influence of the communists within it. But they also at first hoped that it would be possible to stunt these trends over time. But really this did not last. By 1960, relations are in free fall because of a number of actions, reactions. I'll just sum this up quickly before I ask my next question. Eisenhower decides. Well, he wants to get rid of Castro. So Cuba nationalizes land holdings of the U.S. owned sugar cane companies. The United States responds by reducing the import quota of Cuban sugar. So as you said, Castro then turns to the Soviet Union for help. The Soviet Union Promises Cuba cheap oil in exchange for sugar. So they reach an economic deal and then what happens? The US oil refineries, the US owned refineries on Cuba refused to process the Soviet oil. So Castro then responds by nationalizing those. Eisenhower responds with an embargo on trade with Cuba. This is October 1960. Castro responds by nationalizing all remaining U.S. property on the island. January 1961. Eisenhower breaks off diplomatic relations. So finally, Alex, I'll get to a question here. There was something else happening covertly during this time. It starts under Eisenhower. It was implemented by Kennedy Bay of pigs invasion in 1961. What was it and why is it important?

[Alexander Avigna]

Yeah, let me just say something. That what the Cuban revolution wanted to accomplish in 1959 was in line with kind of the democratic, social democratic springtime that had emerged in Latin America at the end of World War II and was crushed by right wing military dictatorships that waged counter revolution hemispherically in the 1950s, really aided by US anti communist policy. So what the M26 movement wants in 1959 is something very Latin American. It's within the political context of this region that had existed for two decades at least, and in large part was inspired by, in part at least by the Mexican Revolution and also by FDR's New Deal policies. Also, the July 26th movement was just one component within a broader governing coalition. It would take a While for the M26 movement, movement led by Fidel Castro, to emerge politically hegemonically. One of the ways they're able to do that is they're able to show to Cuban society that they're able to channel widespread popular grievances and discontent against both Batista and the United States in a productive way throughout 1959. They posit themselves as like, we're the ones who can bring about your demands for social justice and national sovereignty. So the agrarian reform program that they passed in the middle of 1959, it's a very moderate agrarian reform program.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

It's similar in many ways to what Mexico did in the 1910s, 20s, similar to what Guatemala tried to do in the early 1950s. But then that triggered US intervention and CIA meddling. So it's a couple of things that trigger the problem. One is that the revolutionaries putting on trial a bunch of Batista's horrific henchmen in early 1959, and then this agrarian reform program in the mid-1950s that starts to touch US business interests like sugar plantation companies that then go to the Eisenhower administration and start to complain. Yeah, I think you Laid it out correctly. Right. There's a tit for tat. The US does something and then the Cubans react quite logically. Right. So why did the Cubans start to buy weapons from the Soviets in early 1960? Well, because the US had an arms embargo against Cuba. Why would the Cubans start to buy oil and refined oil and pegasoline from the Soviets? Well, because the U.S. prevented them from doing so.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

So again, U.S. policy is designed to. It was designed almost to like, push the Cubans into this country.

[Martin DeCaro]

What a connection to today. Right, because there's an oil embargo on Cuba again, and this time there's no Soviet Union to help. Yeah, but to your point, there was land reform, rent reduction, a minimum wage. This is part of Castro's program. Also massive expansion of education and healthcare. Yes, and you alluded to the purge of the former regime officials. There were hundreds of executions by firing squads after revolutionary trials. And you know, Westad says Castro's regime was authoritarian and at times brutal. But we know that the United States has had productive relationships with other countries that have been authoritarian and brutal.

[Alexander Avigna]

So the plan again in 1959 was a popular democratic nationalist revolution. That agrarian reform program was capitalist, designed against an agricultural system that was, to use the terminology of the M26 movement, feudalistic in nature. So actually breaking up large landed estates and then divvying it up to small landless peasants was a way to foment agricultural productivity and to diversify it away from sugar. That's a capitalist program. It's what Guatemala wanted to do. It was what the World bank and other global associations were recommending for Japan after the end of World War II that MacArthur actually oversaw. But when it gets applied in Latin America, the US deemed it as not possible. Right. So by September, October of 1959, the US government is already saying, you know, we need to decide whether we want to let this revolutionary process succeed. So September of 1959, we already have declassified documents with US officials are saying, you know what? We probably don't want this revolutionary process to succeed. From the Cuban perspective, they started to realize that democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy and empire, because as soon as they start to undermine the oligarchy, they're going to piss off the empire, which is what happens. So by late 1959, early 1960s, there's, as you rightly noted, there's already clandestine shenanigans being plotted by the US government to undermine this revolutionary government again. This revolutionary government that at this point has not declared itself to be in the Soviet sphere of influence. That has not even declared itself to be socialistic in nature. That is going to happen after the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961, which I'm finally getting to your question, sorry, Martin, which is with the CIA, trains thousands of Cuban exiles into a paramilitary force and they tried to invade the island and overthrow the M26 government.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. These charges are totally false and I deny them categorically. The United States has committed no aggression against Cuba and no offensive has has been launched from Florida or from any other part of the United States.

[Alexander Avigna]

Predicated on this idea that Cubans, once they saw this outside force come in, would join for some reason, spontaneously would demonstrate their support for these, this paramilitary force, and they would side with them, fight against the M26 government and overthrow the revolutionary process. It was a plan that was really modeled in many ways on what the CIA did to Guatemala with the overthrow of democratically elected President Jacob Arbenz in 1954. And it failed. It failed miserably. The Cuban Army, Revolutionary army, is able to defeat the paramilitary forces to this day. Veterans of this brigade, these Cuban exiles will blame JFK for not providing air support in many instances. This is like where Democrats lost the support of Cubans in South Florida. And it's only after this failed Bay of Pigs, or Playa Giron as it's known in Cuba, where Castro and the M26 government starts to come out and start to identify themselves as socialists. Fidel's declaration of being a Marxist Leninist won't come until 1962, as relations further deteriorate with the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, I don't say history repeats or rhymes, but it is amazing how often past episodes resonate with what's happening now. When you look at the Trump administration's plan to topple Iran and have some kind of pliant regime to cooperate with. This Bay of Pigs operation, which again was devised by Eisenhower, CIA, but Kennedy, it would be letting Kennedy off the hook to say he was just handed this as a fait incomplete. He was a hardliner, especially his brother too, about Castro. They wanted to get rid of Castro, but afterward Kennedy said, I'm paraphrasing here. He said he looked around with his aides and said, how could we be so stupid? Like, how is this ever going to succeed? A few thousand of these renegades, emigres who wanted to get back in, liberate their country from Castro, they had no chance. And of course There was no US Air cover because Kennedy did not want it to look obvious that the United States was involved in this. But of course, it did not take long for the world to realize what had happened. And Kennedy, I don't know if he apologized, but he did acknowledge what an era it was.

[John F. Kennedy]

Good deal has been printed in the paper. I wouldn't be surprised if those of you who are members of the press will be receiving a lot of background briefings in the next day or two by interested people or interested agencies. There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.

[Martin DeCaro]

You take a look at this from Castro's perspective, and this is where really the Cold War aspect comes in. When Cuba seeks a partnership. To call Cuba a client of the Soviet Union misses how independent Cuba acted during the entire period up until the end of the Soviet Union.

[Alexander Avigna]

Yeah. That proxy language that we hear nowadays for other certain countries doesn't apply for them, and it doesn't apply in this instance as well.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

And we can talk about how Cuba defied the Soviet Union on various occasions.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

Again, this was a revolution driven by social justice and national sovereignty. If there was one thing that Cubans to this day are consistently affirming, it's those two principles.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

The broader continental impact of the Bay of Pigs. Right. So the Cubans talked about it, how this was the first defeat that the US Empire had suffered in Latin America. The historical memory of the revolutionaries themselves are, I think, interesting. Right. If we go all the way back to 1898, when the US took over the city of Santiago from Spanish forces, they didn't let the Cuban patriots go in. So when the Cubans actually take over Santiago and Havana in late 1958, early 1959, one of the first things Fidel says is, like, this time we are going into Santiago. Like historical memory drives, also a lot of Cuban actions and policies toward the United States in the early 1960s.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

They.

[Alexander Avigna]

They see the US for what it is, is what I'm trying to say. They know that the US Is an empire. It's always been an empire in relation to Cuba. So they have to act accordingly. And I think that again explains in part why they are looking for an ally to kind of offset this menacing force that did try to invade it once with the Bay of Pigs.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

Cuban revolutionary troops such as these have invaded Casa Castro's leftist island fortress, reportedly rallied by a mysterious coded radio message. Alert, Alert.

[Alexander Avigna]

And then after that, the US Government realized, listen, we can't do this again. It didn't work. So we're going to do something called Operation Mongoose, which was ordered by JFK and his brother. And this was essentially a campaign of US sponsored state terrorism against Cuba throughout the 1960s, where they would send in CIA assets and they would introduce pig viruses into the pig herds of the country. They would send people in and burn down sugar cane fields, they would blow up ships. State terrorism, official U.S. government policy until the late 1960s.

[Donald Trump]

There was.

[Alexander Avigna]

And also the one thing that people know about this period is all the different assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. Some which were attempted, others were just plans really, like Looney Tune, Acme stuff like exploding cigars or explosives, exploding abalone shells. If we step back a little bit, and this is something that we can see today, like US Policy, if it's designed to achieve regime change, it achieves the opposite. If anything, it allowed the Cuban revolutionary government to close ranks, Right. To, to tell Cuban society, listen, this outside force is trying to attack you and take you over. You have to support us as the only way of kind of offsetting US Imperial support. Right. And this is another constant. US policy says it's designed to do one thing, it actually is doing another, which is targeting Cuban people. And that then has the actual counterproductive effect of closing ranks around a government, which I thought was not the original intent of U.S. policy. Right. But this is something that we see over and over and over again.

[Martin DeCaro]

There's a regional aspect to this as well. The US was concerned about the Cuban revolution spreading to other countries. And from the Cuban perspective, there's the historical pattern of U.S. policy toward many Caribbean and Latin American countries. Cuba is certainly not the only one that was invaded multiple times or occupied multiple times by the United States. Can you address the regional implications?

[Alexander Avigna]

There's a famous story of these Cuban exiles are being trained in Guatemala and they actually took off from Guatemala to invade Cuba. That led to a group of nationalistic military officers to. To organize a guerrilla army and then try to overthrow the dictatorial Guatemalan government.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

And that starts a cycle of political conflict in Guatemala that has its own domestic origins. Right. But then the continental aspect of it is also really impactful in terms of how these Guatemalans try to get rid of their own dictatorial government. The one interesting thing about the fallout from the Bay of Pigs is that JFK realizes that there has to be another way to prevent more Cubas. And this is where you get the alliance for Progress. Right. So finally, Latin America is going to get its own version of the Marshall Plan.

[John F. Kennedy]

The Cuban people have not yet spoken their final piece, but there are from this sobering episode useful lessons for us all to learn. Some may be still obscure and await further information. Some are clear today. First, it is clear that the forces of communism are not to be underestimated in Cuba or anywhere else in the world.

[Alexander Avigna]

One way to prevent more Cubas was to try to dump money into Latin America and to tell these different Latin American countries, hey, you have to be less feudalistic and more capitalistic. You have to give your citizens rights, healthcare, schools, illiteracy, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, this is where you also get the origins of like let's say jsoc, right? Joint Special Operations, the School of the Americas and the Panama Canal Zone being used as a training area for hundreds and thousands of some of the worst torturers and dictators of Latin America will see come out of this. This military training program that the US sets up. Cuba does try to support a number of different guerrilla movements throughout Latin America in the in the mid to late 1960s, but it soon realizes that this is actually just creating more blowback from the United States. It's really pissing off the United States. So once we get Che Guevara's failed effort to spread South American revolution in, in October of 1967 and he's captured and killed by Bolivian, US trained Bolivian Rangers and some sort of CIA assets, Cuba decides to kind of push back from explicitly supporting training, arming Latin American guerrilla groups to foment revolution in the Americas. And they develop other type of relationships even though technically they're expelled from the Organization of American States. And at that point only Mexico I think is the one country that has maintained diplomatic relations with the island. This also marks a period by the late 60s, also marks a period where Cuba starts to adopt a more Soviet state style method of political organization and economic production. It's the way that historians generally talk about the 60s as being like the socialismo de Pachanga, like tropical socialism. But after a failed sugar harvest effort in the late 60s, you start to see a more Soviet style political and economic organization. Nonetheless, the Cubans are still very committed to revolutionary internationalism. But instead of trying to foment it and support it in Latin America, what they do is support it in other parts of the decolonizing global south, especially in Southwest Africa.

[Martin DeCaro]

Tap subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get early access and enjoy all of our bonus content or go to historyasithappens.com. I want to get to Angola in a bit we won't have time to get into the entire history of that conflict. But something that's overlooked in this history is how often Castro sought Hamodis Vivendi with the United States and was rebuffed. But Also in the 1970s, Kissinger, who was still around under Ford and then even Jimmy Carter were very close, or at least they were considering. I don't know how close they came. They were considering normalizing relations with Cuba. You know, enough is enough. And at that point it was less than 20 years of this, but still enough was enough from their perspective. But it didn't happen. Maybe you can tell us why that didn't happen. I think everyone could agree today. Well, certainly not everybody. Not Marco Rubio. It would have been better to normalize relations with Cuba in the mid-1970s, but it didn't happen.

[Alexander Avigna]

Well, there was always domestic political considerations that only become more important as we get late into the 20th century, particularly the 80s and 90s and satisfying political constituencies in South Florida. For instance, when Kennedy runs for office, like he outflanks Nixon from the right. I mean, that's part of his like hardline anti communism that he kind of boxes, boxes himself into with regards to Cuba is as a consequence of the domestic political campaign that he waged against Richard Nixon, at least in the 70s. One of the things that prevented, and again this shows how idealistic the Cubans were. They truly believed in revolutionary internationalism is that when they were, it looked like they were on the point of reaching some sort of peace with the Nixon administration. They then decide to respond to the call seeking help from the MPLA anti colonial force in Angola. It's a really complicated story, as you mentioned, Martin. It's a really fascinating one though. But Angola is finally going to achieve its independence in the mid-1970s. There's three different anti colonial forces. The more left wing force, the mpla, they emerge victorious. They're going to be the new government of the newly independent Angolan nation. But as soon as that happens, apartheid South Africa invades the country and it looks like Angola is going to fall. At that moment, the Angolans put out, the MPLA puts out a call for help for the Cubans. They've had a long standing relationship, right? The Cubans have been in Africa since the early 1960s that we didn't have time to get into as well. They did this on their own. The Cubans did not ask the Soviets for permission to enter Angola. And to support the mpla, they sent thousands of their best troops, war materiel that was Soviet. So in that sense, it did help. And they stopped the South African advance. And you have testimonies from South African military officers who couldn't believe the courage and the bravery of Cuban military officers who, who were fighting them. Right. There's one quote I always remember. I think it's from the Gleyesis book that we've talked about where a South African officer said, these Cubans fought merrily or cheerily till death.

[Martin DeCaro]

Piero Gliesis, Visions of Freedom, Havana, Washington, Pretoria and the Struggle for Southern Africa. An excellent book, but go ahead. I'll cite the book in a minute, but go ahead with your point.

[Alexander Avigna]

Anyway. The US sees Cuban meddling in Angola and South Western Africa as, as a Soviet meddling. Right. And that kind of undercuts that possibility of reaching some sort of peace. But later on, if you read Kissinger's memoirs or if you read actually declassified documents, from the moment Kissinger and his people realize, oh, these Cubans are doing it on their own, they really believe in this revolutionary internationalism. They really believe in anti racism. Right. Because South Africa was an apartheid regime that was ostracized from throughout the world. They had prevented the independence of Namibia in violation of United nations rulings. So the US they know to a certain extent that the Cubans are doing this on their own, out of their own commitment to revolutionary internationalism and anti racism and anti racial apartheid. Eventually the Cubans do to keep up this operation. They do drag the Soviets into it in terms at least with transportation and weaponry. But it's the Cubans who are fighting the South Africans, but again, bred from the United States at least, least publicly. The Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations will be like, oh, this is just the Soviets trying to take over Southern Africa. We will not have this. And that undercuts the possibility of the US and Cuba from reaching any sort of peace in the 70s, at least,

[Martin DeCaro]

as you say, Angola got its independence around that time from Portugal, I believe. And it was the South African invasion that prompted the Cuban response to assist the leftists, I guess you would call it the MPLA in Angola. The Reaganites rewrote the history to make it sound like the Cubans intervened first. That is not true. Maybe some Americans have a hard time picturing the Cubans or the Cuban army and all the aid workers as well who were sent to Angola as being on the right side of an issue or being on the right side of history. In this case, they were whatever one thinks of intervening in the affairs of another country.

[Alexander Avigna]

And Nelson Mandela said that, right? Like The Cubans stayed in Angola until the late 80s. In someone like Nelson Mandela, who the ANC had received support and training from the Cubans in the early 60s. But when Nelson Mandela gets released from Robben Island Prison, the first person he wants to meet is Fidel Castro. Why? As Nelson Mandela says it, Castro helped bring about the end of racial apartheid and white supremacy in Southern Africa. It wasn't the Americans that supported South Africa for decades. There's also a very close South African, Israeli relationship as well. Throughout the 70s and 80s, it wasn't any of those forces that brought about the end of racial apartheid. It was domestic resistance within South Africa, black resistance. But it was also, according to Nelson Mandela, the solidarity and internationalism demonstrated by the Cuban revolutionary government and Fidel Castro. When Nelson Mandela gets out of prison, he starts touring the United States in the early 90s and starts saying this in front of American audiences, like Americans don't know what to do with it. Right. Because we've been taught to think about Cuba and Fidel Castro in a very narrow, ahistorical, inaccurate way.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. And Mandela was also a supporter of Yasser Arafat. So this will help us transition to the post Cold War period, the thaw under Obama. And we'll wrap up with what's happening now, but just about Angola and why Cuba intervened and then stayed in Angola, although it was hurting relations with the United States. I'll just cite the paragraph from the end of the book here. Given these clear costs, why did Cuba intervene and stay in angola? In the 1960s, US intelligence analysts occasionally referred to Castro's ego, his thirst for self aggrandizement, as a motivating factor for his foreign policy activism. But the explanations they posited in again and again were self defense and idealism rather than Castro's ego. It was an astute analysis. Self defense. As U.S. officials acknowledged, Castro had repeatedly offered to explore a modus vivendi with the United States and had consistently been rebuffed. The American response had been to launch paramilitary operations against Cuba to attempt to assassinate Castro and cripple the island's economy. This led the Cubans to a simple conclusion. If Washington persisted in its aggression, the best defense would be offense. Not by attacking the United States directly, of course, that would be suicidal. But in the Third World, Cuba would assist revolutionary forces wherever and whenever possible, thereby gaining friends and weakening US Influence. And, you know, this is my comment here at the end of that paragraph from Visions of Freedom. You look at the history of the Cold War. Was the balance of power the Global balance of power, did it really hinge on Angola? So Kissinger, to his credit, wanted to normalize relations with Cuba, but he soured on the idea because of Cuba in Angola. I mean, was really, was it really that important?

[Alexander Avigna]

Well, John Stockwell, who's a whistleblower CIA agent, he talks about how when the Angola affair happened, the first thing he had to do was like show US government officials on a map where Angola was. So like, like this is Angola. This is like.

[John F. Kennedy]

So.

[Alexander Avigna]

Yeah, I mean, to your point, I think, I think that's exactly right. I think Leisas is the one guy who's done amazing amount of archival research in multiple countries. And the conclusion he comes to when it, in terms of analyzing understanding Cuban policy in Angola is like revolutionary internationalism, he says. And he says it's a very unique example of state to state relationships in the broader history. I mean, at least since like the 17th or 18th century there's some realpolitik, obviously, as always. But what drove this was that revolutionary internationalism organized around the idea of anti racism, particularly because of Cuba's own history with slavery. The very operation that sent Cuban troops to angola in the mid-70s was named Operacion Carlota. Operation Carlota, which was the name of a African slave woman who led a rebellion in Cuba in the mid 19th century. Historians, we tend to not make these type of like super idealistic, romantic assertions, but essentially that's what he does in this book. When it comes to understanding Cuba in, in Angola, it doesn't always quote, unquote, work out right. Like Cuba had an. Also an intervention in Ethiopia and Somalia, which is a lot more controversial, I think, in terms of the outcomes of that and even you could say the outcome in Angola. But nonetheless, Glesis is right again. If we go back to like someone like Nelson Mandela, they're very clear about what helped bring about the end of racial apartheid in South Africa. And Cuba played a pretty big role.

[Martin DeCaro]

So Cold War ends. Late 80s, early 90s. American triumphalism is in full effect.

[Alexander Avigna]

This is a victory for democracy and freedom. It's a victory for the moral force of our values.

[Martin DeCaro]

Found an article here at the North American Congress on Latin America. They say here in the 90s, the Clinton administration was seeking to push a beleaguered Cuba because let's remember, all Soviet aid dries up. Devastating effect on the Cuban economy, which of course still under an embargo with the us Massive layoffs, reductions in transportation, blackouts. Clinton administration seeks to push a beleaguered Cuba toward an eastern European style free market transition by pressuring the Cuban economy and people through punitive policies like the 1996 Helms Burton bill. So again, there's another echo with today. There are a number of different ways that you can help a country reform itself. And it seems like the United States here and the Cold War is over now, this is 1996. We're talking about a punitive measure. Why? Is it just anti communism or is it history, the weight of history, bureaucratic inertia, domestic political considerations?

[Alexander Avigna]

It's all that. I think it's a combination of all those factors. And they saw their opportunity in the early 90s. This is their moment, their opportunity to finally get rid of this island nation that had long been a thorn in their diplomatic side internationally, an island nation that had punched way above his weight for decades and thwarting US Geopolitical designs in certain parts of the world. It's in the 90s when we get essentially riding into law the embargo, right. One of the reasons why it's so difficult to get rid of some of these horrific policies against Cuba is it gets written into law. It would take an act of Congress to take back a lot of the more violent sanctions and sanctioning components of US Embargo toward Cuba. Florida becomes extremely important politically in terms of elections in the 1990s to this very day. Right. So some we see today with Marco Rubio is you have a certain type of, we've talked about it before, a certain type of South Florida political culture. It's extremely right wing, anti communist, anti black. To a certain extent, if we think about the 2020 reaction to the BLM movement, it's a place that has been replenished with different waves of right wing Latin American exiles that left their countries because they, quote, unquote, lost some sort of political process. Like the Cold War never ended in South Florida. I think it's one way to think about it. And someone like Marco Rubio is interesting because his whole political story is a lie, right? Like his whole identity as a Cuban exile. I mean, his parents came to the United States during the Batista regime. They were escaping Batista, not Fidel Castro. I think that's really interesting to keep in mind someone like Ted Cruz as well, right. His dad was a anti Batista fighter, so that's part of it. I think what we get in the 1990s is in a less outright brash way compared to today. You have the US after the end of the Cold War, say, okay, how can we kind of reorient Our dominance or control of Latin America that doesn't have to involve anti communism. And one way they do it is to frame national security through the issues of immigration and through the war on drugs. What makes it complicated in the Cuban case is that it doesn't fit within that framing. Right. So, you know, how do you then achieve regime change on an island nation that has long been designated an enemy of the United States, but it's not involved in narco trafficking, it's not involved in sending yet millions and millions of people to United States where they could say, oh, we're being invaded by Cuba. Although there are past instances. Right. We didn't talk about, wait, I saw

[Martin DeCaro]

the movie Scarface that was all about drugs, you know, okay, well we're in the 90s now, so.

[Alexander Avigna]

Well actually the irony we didn't talk about this. It's the CIA, Cuban exile assets in the 70s and 80s who are practicing state terrorism, who are involved in narcotrafficial trafficking, including Iran Contra, who are doing things like assassinating Orlando Letelier in Dupont circle in Washington D.C. in 1976, working with Chilean secret police upon the behest of Augusto Pinochet. The 1970s in South Florida is really interesting because you have these hard right wing CIA linked Cuban exiles who will car bomb other Cuban exiles who are trying to take a more moderate approach to Cuba or who want peace.

[Narrator/Archive Voice]

Peace.

[Alexander Avigna]

If you look at the history of south florida in the 70s, it was pretty violent when it comes to like car bombings and targeting killings because again, a particular faction is trying to take hegemonic control of this narrative in that part of the country. Which is to say the only reason that we, we can't coexist with Cuga, we have to induce regime change. And essentially they win the political argument in the 90s when the embargo gets written into US law and it's during the special period. So they figured this is when we can do it. This is when we can kind of push them over the edge. But they don't. They failed and they're failing today, even though they're creating massive amounts of human suffering.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's what I was just about to say. The New York Times has been doing some great reporting on this, showing how Cubans are adapting under these really difficult, it's understatement, difficult circumstances. Three more items. Pink Tide, Obama. And then we'll return to the current moment. Cuba's fortunes do turn around by the late 1990s, something called pink Tide. Tide. What was that and why is it important? Because it seems not to have lasted, partly because Venezuela's fallen on such hard times.

[Obama Administration Official]

Yeah.

[Alexander Avigna]

The pink tide is used to describe a massive Latin American resistance to the neoliberal economic policies of the Washington Consensus that had been applied in the region since the 70s and 80s. An economic policy that led to a massive increase in pieces of inequality and impoverishment and extreme poverty in most parts of Latin America. But by the late 90s, most of Latin America has some form of democratic elections. So beginning in Venezuela with the democratic election of Hugo Chavez in 1998, you start to see a group of center left governments come to political power. Democratically elected center left governments. And in many ways these governments are kind of the people who militarily lost the Cold War. You had people like Lucas Lula in Brazil who had suffered torture under the Brazilian military dictatorship for his trade union activities. You had people like Tabare Vasquez and Pepe Mujica in Uruguay who had been Tupamaro guerrilla fighters during the 1970s, and they had suffered horrific torture. Michel Bachelet in Chile, also her air force general father was tortured to death by Pinochet and she also suffered torture. So it's almost like the revenge of the Cold War. Latin American left or lefts that then achieve democratic power or achieve political power via democratic means in the late 90s and early 2000s, and that reorients the geopolitics of Latin America. And the one really important consequence of this is that it gave Cuba new life economically. Latin America started to question the exclusion of Cuba from the Organization of American States, from the social, economic and political life of the region that the US had been pushing since late 1960, early 1961. Cuba and Venezuela then create, and what Chavez and Fidel Castro create, a very close political and economic relationship in many ways, the type of petroleum and other economic goods that Venezuela is able to provide to Cuba. And then Cuba provides, you know, everything from medical care to bodyguards to Venezuela. It gives the Cuban government a lifeline, right? It reintegrates the island into the every everyday life of Latin America from which they had been excluded for decades.

[Martin DeCaro]

Did it last?

[Alexander Avigna]

Well, a couple of things. One, the US was preoccupied elsewhere, so that gave Latin America space to breathe. Right? The US was involved in this catastrophic war in Iraq, Even though the U.S. still, we don't know to what extent, but there was an effort to overthrow with Chavez in April of 2002. We don't know the extent of U.S. participation, but it benefited from U.S. attention elsewhere. And two, it benefited from a particular economic moment where there's high global prices for primary commodities like petroleum, like other natural resources available in Latin America that a country like China could increasingly buy, there's a commodity boom that also helps some of these Latin American governments create a better life for their citizens, at least in the pink tight countries. But this economic situation globally starts to fall apart in the 2010s, and one way to track the falling apart of it is to look at what happened to Venezuela 2013, 2014, when the price of oil collapses.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

So it did not last. There's been other efforts to say we're in the midst of a second pink tie. We're definitely not now, not since Trump came into power. But while it lasted, it did help reintegrate Cuba into the region diplomatically, economically and socially.

[Martin DeCaro]

And Obama's softening did not last either. And I think the easiest explanation for that is Trump took office and 2017 and reverse the policies. I rarely praise US foreign policy or the foreign policy of American presidents, but what Obama did here took some political courage and was the right thing to do. He announced, which obvious to everybody who's watching this that isolating Cuba had failed. US Interests were not being advanced by this. It wasn't good for Cuba either.

[Obama Administration Official]

And the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years, 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. Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.

[Martin DeCaro]

I guess I answered my own question, but why didn't the Obama approach, which went beyond just words, he took actual policy steps throughout his presidency. Why didn't this last?

[Alexander Avigna]

I have so many criticisms of a president that people in my community referred to as a deporter in chief. But the two big things, I think the most important things he did was the diplomatic opening with Cuba and the JCPOA that he signed with Iran.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

And it's interesting that we're living right now through the consequences of a right wing authoritarian government like Trump's, undermine both efforts. But I think the Obama effort in 2015. Right. And a lot of it culminates in Obama's visit to the island, watching a baseball game with Raul Castro. To me, it's very tragic that that effort was undercut. That effort did show a lot of promise. I think that was the way to proceed.

[Martin DeCaro]

And I think most of the.

[Alexander Avigna]

And you're right, I think Obama did show a lot of courage. He did go against a lot of domestic political considerations, but that that moment was so promising on a variety of different levels that it's a tragedy that it was, you know, aborted by. By the Trump administration.

[Martin DeCaro]

I don't have the polling at my fingertips here, but it seems to me that most Americans would have found that a reasonable policy to pursue.

[Donald Trump]

Yes.

[Alexander Avigna]

My first job was at Florida State University, and most of my Latino students were Cuban American, and the younger generation was supporting that. Younger generations of Cuban Americans themselves were demonstrating support for Obama's diplomatic opening with Cuba. I had so many students come up to me and say, like, I want to be able to. To visit the island. I want to be able to reconnect with the. The homeland of my grandparents. If you're trying to induce a government to do what you want them to do, this was a more subtle, more effective way of achieving it.

[John F. Kennedy]

Right.

[Alexander Avigna]

I think if you're, if we're. If you want to think nefariously from the perspective of a US Imperial policymaker, because the opposite, as we've talked about, just creates the. A closing of ranks and a reaffirmation of national sovereignty, nationalistic sovereignty.

[Martin DeCaro]

So we'll end where we began. The current situation. The Trump administration is trying to crush Cuba to unseat its government. What would come after that is not clear. How that would happen is not clear, other than, I guess, just creating so much chaos in Cuba that something happens. Here's an executive order that Trump signed earlier this year declaring that Cuba was a threat to the United States. I want you to evaluate these claims. The government of Cuba has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the U.S. the regime aligns itself with and provides support for numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States, including Russia, China, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. For example, the executive order says Cuba blatantly hosts dangerous adversaries of the United States, inviting them to base sophisticated military and intelligence capabilities in Cuba that directly threaten the national security of the U.S. cuba hosts Russia's largest overseas signals intelligence facilities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and recently some of Rubio statements as well. They're painting Cuba not just as a government we don't like, and we've had this historic conflict we can't seem to snap out of, but as a danger to U.S. security.

[Alexander Avigna]

Yeah, the state sponsor of terrorism, it's been designated once again as a state sponsored. I mean, it can't be both. Right. Like, it cannot be the capital of 21st century communism as that Crazy recent report that the State Department recently put out. I don't know if you read it, Martin. 70 pages of AI slop about how Cuba is the capital of 21st century communism and it's fomenting racial grievance and inequality and divisions within the US to undermine the US from within. It cannot be that and a starving island. It cannot be that and an island that. Now, per cnn, is open enough that the US Is increasingly sending bigger numbers of CIA and other intelligence assets. These are all lies. These are all clear lies. I don't know to what extent there's supposed Chinese or Russian bases on the island. The Cuban government says that's not true. They've tried to really bring up the idea that the Iranians have been sending shahed drones to Cuba. And if Cuba has shahed drones, those drones are coming straight for the United States. The Cubans have never attacked the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

Cuba's allies are not helping it now anyway. They're not delivering oil.

[Alexander Avigna]

They're afraid. Yeah, right. They're afraid even like a country like Mexico. Mexico. If Mexico was to resume petroleum shipments to Cuba, that's going to induce a massive amount of tariffs. Right now Mexico has avoided like 85% of Trump's tariffs. To stay in his good graces depends on not providing what Cubans need the most. I think is a shameful act, but it also involves real politic from. From the Mexican government. Cuba has never attacked the United States, but the United States has attacked Cuba on numerous occasions. It is policy. So these type of claims, I think are obviously like outright fabrications and lies, but they're designed to try to galvanize domestic support for an upcoming regime change. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it could look like based on what the Trump administration has done in other parts of the world. It's not going to be. It's just going to be a disaster. I mean, even if a Democrat was in office, if they were pushing forth a similar type of regime change operation, it would be a disaster because fundamentally it's violating what Cubans themselves are entitled to, which is national sovereignty and self determination and not to be suffering a blockade after decades that is starving them and making them sick and killing them.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. The final point here is that Cuba's leadership has said, we're not gonna reform our government out of existence. Essentially, the Trump administration wants Cuba to change its government, and the government has said, we're not gonna do that, but we would open up our island to American investment. Again. I'm borrowing this from the New York Times. Headline, Cuba to Trump are open for business. Even some of Trump's own business interests, they say they have an open mind about. But they're not gonna just cancel their own government and have someone else take over. I think most countries would respond that way. So the thing I guess I'm most worried about, because I think we've all learned you can't rule out anything anymore, is an American military operation on Cuba.

[Intelligence Analyst]

Yeah.

[Alexander Avigna]

And that would be a disaster. I hope it doesn't happen. I think it would play out much differently than what we witness in Venezuela. It would be a disaster for Cuban people. The worst that the US Empire gets it in other parts of the world. The more they lose in other parts of the world, the more they take it out on Latin America. I mean, that's like another historic historical pattern. And that's what really scares me. The more that Trump is forced to accept or admit defeat in West Asia with Iran, the more I worry they're going to take it out on Latin America and Cuba because that's what they've done historically. And everyday people are going to suffer. They're suffering now, and they'll suffer even more, which is horrific.

[Obama Administration Official]

Like so many people in both of our countries, my lifetime has spanned a time of isolation between us us. The Cuban Revolution took place the same year that my father came to the United States from Kenya. The Bay of Pigs took place the year that I was born. The next year, the entire world held its breath watching our two countries as humanity came as close, as close as we ever have, to the horror of nuclear war. As the decades rolled by, our government settled into a seemingly endless confrontation, fighting battles through proxies in a world that remade itself time and again. One constant was the conflict between the United States and in Cuba. I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.

[Martin DeCaro]

On the next episode of History As It Happens. American presidents have found that starting wars is much, much, much, much, much, much, much easier than winning a war or even just ending a war on preferred terms. Why is that? We're going to try to figure it out next as we report History As It Happens. Make sure to sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to substack and search for the name of this podcast.