Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World

Abstract

With Barack Obama beginning his second term, Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro are seeing their eleventh U.S. president. The Cold War ended in 1989, and the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, but U.S.-Cuban relations remain entangled in a bizarre time warp. In November 1959 the Central Intelligence Agency began to plot the “elimination” of Fidel Castro. In 1960 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized plans to invade Cuba and imposed trade sanctions on the island. In January 1961 Eisenhower broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. Little has changed in U.S. policy toward Cuba since 1961, although President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the end of U.S. conspiracies to assassinate Cuban leaders. The Torricelli Act (1992) strengthened U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba, prohibiting trade in food and medicine. The Helms-Burton Act (1996) forbade the restoration of normal relations until Cuba was democratic, capitalist, and free of the Castro siblings. President Obama has eased travel restrictions to Cuba, but he has not announced plans to repeal the Helms-Burton Act and normalize relations. As Robert Pastor, a member of the National Security Council during the Jimmy Carter presidency noted, Fidel Castro caught the essence of U.S. policy when he brandished an index finger in Pastor's chest and informed him that “your policy is to wait for me to die. And I don't intend to cooperate” (p. 237).