Page 8 - Social Science.docx

Principles of social science
devolved into a dictatorial police-state.2 Disenfranchised Cubans backed revolutionary Fidel Castro and, through guerilla warfare, Batista’s repressive regime was defeated in 1959.3 Following Batista’s removal from office, Cuba began to increasingly associate itself with Marxism and the U.S.S.R, nationalizing American investor-owned properties as well as sugar production and oil refineries, appointing self-identified communists as government officials and eventually as president, seizing and nationalizing private U.S. businesses, engaging in heavy trade with the Soviet Union, fraternizing with communist leaders during United Nations conferences, and adopting a one-party state model.4 Fearing the spread of communism as well as the threat to business that Castro’s Cuba posed, President Dwight D. Eisenhower allotted the CIA a budget of $13 million with the goal of toppling Castro’s administration. Considering the United States’ earlier success in orchestrating the coup d’etat of 1954 in Guatemala, Eisenhower and his administration remained confident in their belief that they could bring a halt to Cuba’s activities under Fidel Castro, passing on an anti-Cuba agenda to the next administration. The United States’ efforts to combat increasingly-Marxist Cuba culminated in the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, a military operation authorized by newly-inaugurated President John F. Kennedy and carried out through the CIA and a group of 1,500 anti-Castro Cuban exiles.5
2 “Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Cincinnati, Ohio, Democratic Dinner,” Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Cincinnati, Ohio, Democratic Dinner | The American Presidency Project. The American Presidency Project, October 6, 1960.
3 Jerry A. Sierra, “Batista,” Fulgencio Batista, From Army sergeant to Dictator.
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William E. Gibson, “Cuban Exiles Seek Compensation for Seized Property,” Sun-Sentinel.com; Richard
Luscombe, "Cuban Exiles Hope Diplomatic Thaw can Help Them Regain Confiscated Property." Theguardian.com;
"Run from Cuba, Americans cling to
claims for seized property," Tampa Bay Times; Peter G. Bourne, Fidel: A
Biography
of Fidel Castro (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1986), pp. 181-183; John Gaddis, We Now Know:
Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 206-209.
Bourne, Fidel, pp. 202,
211-215; Augusto Garcia, "Bay of Pigs Invasion: 1961,” ed. Alan West-Durán, 23-27.
Scribner World Scholar Series, vol. 1 (Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2012), pp. 23-27.
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