Cuba and Castro 3
three failures of the revolution
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Angola
An African nation which had been engaged in a lengthy twenty-seven year long civil war from 1975 to 2002. That civil war served as the battleground for a proxy war between the United States and Soviet powers. It is this conflict that Cuba used to gain relevance on the international stage as a promoter of socialism. Cuba fought alongside the USSR in a united front known as MPLA starting November 1975. This occurred under the U.S. leadership of President Gerald Ford.
COMECON
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance - The communist economic convention for trade alliance. The organization was led by the USSR and it consisted predominantly of Eastern Bloc nations as well other socialist powers around the world. The council was joined with the membership of Cuba in the year 1971.
Rectification Campaign
Formally known as the "Campaign of Rectification of Errors and Negative Tendencies" The campaign was started in 1986 by Fidel Castro. It aimed to increase people's participation in the economic and political structures and was a return to the political and economic ideals of Che Guevara. That is to say, a return to relying on heightened political consciousness rather than material incentives and bureaucratic control to run the economy. While overall living standards dropped slightly for most Cubans, the national economy was stabilized and there was more popular participation in politics. The campaign was initiated through the anticipation of a collapse in Soviet economic and political support for Cuba.
Three successes of the revolution
Health Care, Housing, and Literacy
Mini-brigade
Small groups of Cubans who were sent into the countryside to aid in the execution of a number of public service projects. These groups were comprised of citizens willing to offer voluntary labor and were instrumental in the development of rural Cuba. These groups provided service for a number of large undertakings including the attempted fulfillment of the large ten million ton sugar quota.
Leonid Brezhnev
The Soviet Premier from the year 1964 to the year 1982. His policies both eased relations between the US and the USSR and increased Cuban economic reliance on trade with the USSR. His actions easing relations with the United States were critically received by both Cuba and China as they considered American imperialism to be the greatest threat. Castro's outspoken criticism increased Soviet-Cuban tensions which translated into reduced trade between the two countries which sparked a Cuban economic crisis. The economic period from 1972 to 1982 was classified by some as the "Brezhnev Years" as Cuba increasingly reorganized its economy along Soviet lines.
Ronald Reagan
The U.S. President served from the year 1980 to 1988. He secretly supported the Somoza regime in Nicaragua through the supply of arms to the "contras," or the Somoza troops. This support once exposed led to scandal as such interference in Latin American nations had been made illegal by Congress. He reversed the relaxation of anti-communist policies of U.S. President Jimmy Carter as he was an anti-communist hardliner.
Anastasio Somoza (Nicaragua)
The U.S. leader of choice in Nicaragua. Although he was officially the President of Nicaragua, he was effectively a dictator. He had been secretly supported by the Reagan administration up until his defeat in the face of a Cuba supported Sandinista revolution. He left the country in 1979 after losing control of the state to the Sandinista revolutionaries and was ultimately assassinated in Paraguay.
Jimmy Carter
The United States President from the year 1977 to the year 1981. He was one of the first United States Presidents to relax anti-communist diplomatic policies. In many ways, he slowly began to ease relations with Cuba, as he and Castro collaborated on the establishment of maritime fishing and border acts for the region between Florida and Cuba. No major progress was made and all such eased relations were reversed under succeeding presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Sandinistas
The group of revolutionaries that rebelled against the United States supported Somoza regime in Nicaragua. This group of revolutionaries was provided with the military aid of Cuba and the Soviet Union. Their victory over the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza strengthened Ronald Reagan's anti-communist policy
OPEC
The large international organization which helps control oil economics. It imposed an oil embargo on the United States and other Western nations as a result of their support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
Mikhail Gorbachev
The last Soviet head of state in power from 1985 to 1991. He oversaw the dissolution of the USSR. During his rule he promoted positive relations between US and the USSR. His actions estranged Cuba from the USSR as he phased out price subsidies to the Cuban economy. With the fall of the USSR, Cuba fell into an economic recession and this triggered the beginning of the Special Period with the end of Soviet subsidies.
Prague Spring
The liberal reformist political movement that predominated the political scene in Czechoslovakia in the year 1968. The political revolution was forcefully suppressed by a Soviet invasion and crackdown. Fidel Castro mistakenly praised Brezhnev's actions which served to lower his international reception which he had been building for
Mariel Boat Lift - 1980
The wave of exodus following the Camarioca Exodus. While the Camarioca Exodus featured the migration of the dangerously oppositional middle-class elite which was well received by the U.S., the Mariel Boat lift was largely a migratory wave unwanted by the United States. Among the migrants, a sizable number were prisoners, both criminals and political prisoners, and the mentally handicapped. Several thousand Cubans traveled by boat to Miami.
Special Period
an extended period of economic crisis that began in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and, by extension, the Comecon.
