CASTRO GLOATS ABOUT THE BAY OF PIGS….50 YEARS LATER SWINE STILL RULE CUBA
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/americas/news/article_1632571.php/Cuba-celebrates-50th-anniversary-of-Bay-of-Pigs-triumph
Havana – The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion sought to oust Fidel Castro’s Cuban regime, but it failed within just 65 hours and became ‘the first great defeat of North American imperialism in Latin America,’ in Castro’s own words.
Fifty years later, the same Cuban communist regime is still in power and celebrating its triumph, though now led by Raul Castro, brother of the ailing and retired Fidel.
On April 17, 1961, some 1,500 Cuban exiles who were trained and led by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) disembarked on Playa Giron, in the so-called Bay of Pigs in central-southern Cuba. Their plan was to pave the way for the arrival from Miami of a ‘provisional government,’ which was to demand from within Cuba a military intervention by the United States.
By April 19, however, Castro’s troops had captured the last of the invaders. The misadventure shattered the myth of US invincibility, strengthened Cuba’s revolutionary government and drew Havana even closer to the Soviet Union for the Cold War’s remaining 30 years.
The Cuban Communist Party is holding a historic congress on the anniversary weekend. The meeting is to focus on economic reforms, to ‘update’ and make ‘irrevocable’ the socialist model on the island.
Cuban authorities last month completed the restoration of Playa Giron Museum, which displays weapons, ammunition and military uniforms used in combat at the time. It is one of the area’s main attractions.
In today’s Cuba, though, Giron is a key destination for a less revolutionary form tourism, as one of Cuba’s top beach destinations, popular among divers for its clear water and beds of coral and sponges.
The Cuban revolution ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959. Although initially recognized by the United States, the Castro government and its increasingly communist orientation soon started to worry Washington.
In May 1959, Castro’s Agrarian Reform Law led to the expropriation of large plantations, many of them operated by US firms. This led the United States to reduce its purchases of Cuban sugar, the island’s main source of income.
The Soviet Union quickly sprang in to buy Cuban sugar exports, and later supplied oil after Washington cut off supplies to Cuba.
Faced with orders from Washington that US-owned Cuban oil refineries stop processing Soviet crude, Castro moved to expropriate the fuel refineries, too.
Since political pressure had failed, US President Dwight Eisenhower started to devise alternative strategies to oust Castro. He gave the green light to the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was carried out by the CIA after his successor, John F Kennedy, had become president.
Two days before the ill-fated landing, US planes with Cuban flags on their fuselage bombed three military air bases on Cuba, to reduce the enemy’s air capacity.
A day later, at the funeral of the Cubans who died in that attack, Castro delivered a heated address in Havana, in which he for the first time declared that his revolution was a socialist movement.
‘What imperialists cannot forgive us for is the dignity, the integrity, the courage, the ideological firmness, the spirit of sacrifice and the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people,’ Castro said. ‘That is what they cannot forgive us for, that we are there before their very noses, and that we have carried out a socialist revolution right in the face of the United States.’
The next morning, Cuban exiles arrived on the Bay of Pigs from Nicaragua and launched their battle with Soviet-equipped Cuban forces.
An estimated 160 men are believed to have died on the US-sponsored side, plus some 100 local civilians and Cuban troops. In December 1962, Washington and Havana made a deal to exchange 1,113 prisoners held by Cuba for medicine and food.
Kennedy gave up further plans to invade, after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.
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