Timeline: 1959-1960 | 1961 | 1962 | Flash Timeline

Introduction

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Timeline

About Cuba

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Glossary

Yalta

Citizen Kurchatov

Berlin Crisis

Timeline: 1959-1960

January 1, 1959: Fidel Castro assumes power in Cuba, the culmination of the six-year revolution that ousted General Fulgencio Batista.

February 4-13, 1960: Soviet First Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan visits Cuba and attends the opening of a Soviet trade exhibit in Havana. He negotiates economic and trade agreements that make Cuba more economically independent of the United States.

Winter 1960: President Eisenhower and advisors see Fidel Castro as a potential problem for the United States and the Western Hemisphere.

March 17, 1960: Eisenhower authorizes a CIA plan called "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime." Shortly thereafter the CIA begins recruiting and training a group of 1,400 Cuban exiles from Miami in Guatemala.

May 7, 1960: The Soviet Union and Cuba establish diplomatic relations.

July 8, 1960: The United States suspends the Cuban sugar quota, effectively cutting off 80 percent of Cuban exports to the United States. The following day, the Soviet Union agrees to buy that sugar.

August 16, 1960: A CIA official receives a box of Castro's favorite cigars and is told to poison them. It is not clear whether they were ever passed on to Castro, but this represents the first of at least eight assassination plots by the United States.

August 28, 1960: The United States imposes an embargo on trade with Cuba.

September 1960: A large Soviet Bloc arms shipment arrives in Cuba along with advisors and technicians.

October 6, 1960: In response to the sugar situation, Castro nationalizes U.S. private investments in Cuba worth about $1 billion.

December 19, 1960: Cuba openly aligns itself with the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet Union, pledging Sino-Soviet Bloc solidarity.