The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), consisting of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, clandestinely and directly financed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
The Cuban Revolution was the military and political overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship, which had reigned as the government of Cuba between 1952 and 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, which saw Batista topple the nascent Cuban democracy and consolidate power. Among those opposing the coup was Fidel Castro, then a novice attorney who attempted to contest the coup through Cuba's judiciary. Once these efforts proved fruitless, Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl led an armed attack on the Cuban military's Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953.
Manuel Urrutia Lleó was a liberal Cuban lawyer and politician. He campaigned against the Gerardo Machado government and the dictatorial second presidency of Fulgencio Batista during the 1950s, before serving as president in the revolutionary government of 1959. Urrutia resigned his position after only seven months, owing to a series of disputes with revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, and emigrated to the United States shortly afterward.
Manuel Francisco Artime Buesa, M.D. was a Cuban-American who at one time was a member of the rebel army of Fidel Castro but later was the political leader of Brigade 2506 land forces in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961.
Carlos Franqui was a Cuban writer, poet, journalist, art critic, and political activist. After the Fulgencio Batista coup in 1952, he became involved with the 26th of July Movement which was headed by Fidel Castro. Upon the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, he was placed in charge of the rebellion's newspaper Revolución, which became an official government publication. When he came to have political differences with the regime, he left Cuba with his family. In 1968 he broke with the Cuban government when he signed a letter condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He became a vocal critic of the Castro government, writing frequently until his death on April 16, 2010.
Huber Matos Benítez was a Cuban military leader, political dissident, activist, and writer. He opposed the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista from its inception in 1952 and fought alongside Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and other members of the 26th of July Movement to overthrow it. Following the success of the Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, he criticized the regime's shift in favor of Marxist principles and ties to the Popular Socialist Party (PSP). Convicted of treason and sedition by the revolutionary government, he spent 20 years in prison (1959–1979) before being released in 1979. He then divided his time between Miami, Florida, and Costa Rica while continuing to protest the policies of the Cuban government.
José Ignacio Rivero y Hernández was a Cuban exile and journalist. He is the grandson of Don Nicolas Rivero, who in 1895 became the director of Diario de la Marina, then the most popular newspaper in Cuba, and the son of Pepin Rivero, who took over the newspaper upon the death of Don Nicolas in 1919. After the newspaper's public battle with Fidel Castro, Rivero was exiled from Cuba.
Diario de la Marina was a newspaper published in Cuba, founded by Don Araujo de Lira in 1839. Diario de la Marina was Cuba’s longest-running newspaper. Its roots went back to 1813 with El Lucero de la Habana and the Noticioso Mercantil whose 1832 merger established El Noticioso y Lucero de la Habana, which was renamed Diario de la Marina in 1844. In 1895, Don Nicolás Rivero took over as the 13th director of the publication and transformed it into the widest-circulated newspaper in Cuba. Though a conservative publication, its pages gave voice to a wide range of opinions, including those of avowed communists. It gave a platform to essayist Jorge Mañach and many other distinguished Cuban intellectuals.
The Triumph of the Revolution is the historical term for the flight of Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959, and the capture of Havana by the 26th of July Movement on January 8.
General elections were held in Cuba on 3 November 1958. The three major presidential candidates were Carlos Márquez Sterling of the Partido del Pueblo Libre, Ramón Grau of the Partido Auténtico and Andrés Rivero Agüero of the Coalición Progresista Nacional. There was also a minor party candidate on the ballot, Alberto Salas Amaro for Partido Union Cubana, who received 1% of the vote. Voter turnout was estimated at 50% of eligible voters. Although Andrés Rivero Agüero won the presidential election with 70% of the vote, he and all other elected officials were unable to take office due to the Cuban Revolution. Anselmo Alliegro y Milá briefly became the next president on 1 January 1959, before being replaced by the Chief Justice Carlos Manuel Piedra the following day, who in turn was replaced by Manuel Urrutia Lleó a day later.
Fidelismo, otherwise known as Castroism, consists of the personal beliefs of Fidel Castro, which were often anti-imperialist, Cuban nationalist, supportive of Hispanidad, and later Marxism–Leninist. Castro described two historical figures as being particular influences on his political viewpoints: the Cuban anti-imperialist revolutionary José Martí, and the German sociologist and theorist Karl Marx. The thought of Che Guevara and Jules Régis Debray have also been important influences on Fidel Castro.
Prensa Libre was a newspaper published by Sergio Carbó in Havana, Cuba, from 1941 to 1960.
The consolidation of the Cuban Revolution is a period in Cuban history typically defined as starting in the aftermath of the revolution in 1959 and ending in 1962, after the total political consolidation of Fidel Castro as the maximum leader of Cuba. The period encompasses early domestic reforms, human rights violations, and the ousting of various political groups. This period of political consolidation climaxed with the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which then cooled much of the international contestation that arose alongside Castro's bolstering of power.
The Huber Matos affair was a political scandal in Cuba when on October 20, 1959, army commander Huber Matos resigned and accused Fidel Castro of "burying the revolution". Fifteen of Matos' officers resigned with him. Immediately after the resignation, Castro critiqued Matos and accused him of disloyalty, then sent Camilo Cienfuegos to arrest Matos and his accompanying officers. Matos and the officers were taken to Havana and imprisoned in La Cabaña. Cuban communists later claimed Matos was helping plan a counter-revolution organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency and other Castro opponents, an operation that became the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
The P.M. affair was a political scandal that occurred in Cuba in 1961. After a brief period of artistic optimism beginning in 1959, where exiled artists returned to Cuba, the banning of the film P.M. triggered a slow wave of emigration of Cuban filmmakers, who grew more frustrated with growing censorship in Cuba. The banning of the film P.M. was not a lone act of censorship which caused pessimism among filmmakers, instead, the censorship of P.M. was viewed to exemplify a growing atmosphere of artistic overwatch.
The slogan "revolution first, elections later" was coined by Fidel Castro in a speech given on April 9, 1959. The speech famously announced the postponement of the elections promised by Fidel Castro, which were scheduled to occur after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. The announcement was the beginning of an electoral delay that culminated in the solidification of Fidel Castro's rule over Cuba. On May Day, 1960, Fidel Castro would outright condemn elections as corrupt, and cancel all future elections.
Don José Ignacio "Pepín" Rivero y Alonso was a Cuban journalist and the 14th director of Diario de la Marina, which was the oldest and most popular newspaper in Cuba. He is considered to be "one of the most subtle writers of his time and one of the best writers of Spanish-American journalism in the 20th century". The journalist Gerardo Gallegos wrote upon his death that Rivero was "the most hated and, at the same time, the most beloved Cuban of his time." He took over management of Diario de la Marina from his father, the 1st Count of Rivero, Nicolás Rivero y Muñiz. He also inherited from his father the unofficial title of Decano de la Presna. His directorship of Diario de la Marina ran from 1919 until his death in 1944. His older brother, Nicolás Rivero y Alonso, became the 2nd Count of Rivero, and was the first Cuban Ambassador to the Holy See in 1935. Rivero was the first Cuban to earn the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 1941.
The betrayal thesis is an interpretation of the Cuban Revolution that supposes that the revolution was the culmination of a democratic resistance to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. After the success of the revolution in 1959, the rebel leader Fidel Castro began to consolidate political power, and associate with communist officials. This political turn is considered a "betrayal" of the original ethos of the revolution, according to proponents of the betrayal thesis.
Felipe Rivero was an anti-Castro Cuban exile who fought against the regime of Fidel Castro as a member of Brigade 2506 in the landings at Playa Girón during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Rivero soon became an ideological leader of the anti-Castro movement. Rivero was the director, and one of seven creators of the Cuban Nationalist Association, which was the first Cuban exile organization to use terror tactics. The MNC was responsible for several terrorist bombings throughout the Americas, including an attempted assassination of Che Guevara during an attack on the Headquarters of the United Nations, and the bombing of the Cuban embassy in Ottawa. Later in life, Rivero became a radio host at WRHC (AM), where he was known to the community of Little Havana as a Holocaust denier and Fascist.
