January 3, 1961 – Eisenhower Severs Diplomatic Ties with Cuba

Fidel Castro governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008. A Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, Castro also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state, while industry and business were nationalized and state socialist reforms were implemented throughout society. Castro’s alliance with the Soviet Union (our Cold War enemy) and Cuba’s location just 90 miles south of Florida made Cuba a “geopolitical flash point in a global struggle of ideology and power,” to quote the New York Times.

Fidel Castro 1959

On the afternoon of August 6, 1960, Castro announced that the Cuban government would be taking action against the “economic and political aggression toward our country” by the United States. He pointed out that the U.S. Congress recently moved to reduce the participation of Cuban sugar producers in the U.S. sugar market, “as a weapon of political action against Cuba.”

He averred that such an act was only “a repetition of the ongoing conduct of the United States of North American government, directed toward denying our people the right to exercise its sovereignty and its comprehensive development, thus reflecting the despicable interests of U.S. monopolies which have hampered the growth of our economy, and the expression of our political freedom.”

He wasn’t actually wrong.

Castro then proclaimed the nationalization of the businesses and properties of the national telephone and electricity companies; Texaco, Esso and Sinclair oil companies; and the 36 sugar mills owned by U.S. firms in Cuba.

On October 13, 1960, Cuban ministers approved two more laws that stipulated the nationalization via expropriation of all industrial and commercial companies, including all associated factories, warehouses, depots, other property and rights. 382 companies in all, including 105 sugar mills, 18 distilleries, and all banks except the Royal Bank of Canada and the Bank of Nova Scotia.

Sept. 20, 1960 – Cuban leader Fidel Castro, left, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev hug at the United Nations. (San Diego Union-Tribune

The U.S. felt compelled to respond. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s State Department imposed the first trade embargo on Cuba on Oct. 19, 1960. The original embargo covered all U.S. exports to Cuba except for medicine and some foods. Time Magazine noted wryly, “The U.S. need not worry that a strategic embargo will damage private industry in Cuba. It no longer exists.’”

Then in January 1961, on this day in history and just weeks before he left office, Eisenhower closed the American embassy in Havana and broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba.

According to the online site of The History Channel,

The immediate reason cited for the break was Castro’s demand that the U.S. embassy staff be reduced, which followed heated accusations from the Cuban government that America was using the embassy as a base for spies.”

Cuba wasn’t the only country engaging in surreptitious activities of course. Early in 1960, the Eisenhower administration began financing and training a group of Cuban exiles to overthrow the Cuban leader, ultimately leading to the Bay of Pigs debacle.

Then in May 1960, a diplomatic crisis ensued when the USSR shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, President Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the CIA had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years.

Francis G. Powers, Civilian pilot of the U2 American jet plane shot down over Russia. (AP Photo)

Nevertheless, the United States continues to impose a commercial, economic, and financial embargo against Cuba. As of 2018, the Cuban embargo is enforced mainly through six statutes: the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the Cuban Assets Control Regulations of 1963, the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the Helms–Burton Act of 1996, and the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000.

No changes were made to these policies until 2009, when President Barak Obama eased the travel ban, allowing Cuban-Americans to travel freely to Cuba. In January, 2011, he further eased the ban, by allowing students and religious missionaries to travel to Cuba if they meet certain restrictions. In 2014, the Obama administration announced its intention to re-establish relations with Cuba.

The easing of restrictions were not met with uniform support in the United States, and when Donald Trump was elected president, he took steps to reverse this and all other policies enacted by President Obama. Trump’s tough stance on Cuba paid off in the 2020 election. As “The Miami Herald” reported:

Years of courting voters with tough policies toward Cuba and Venezuela, a strong pre-pandemic economy, an unmatched Republican ground game in Miami-Dade and a targeted messaging instilling fear about socialism coming to America helped the president rally Cuban-American voters, part of the reason he carried Florida.”

You can read a November, 2019 update on “U.S. Relations with Cuba” from the U.S. State Department, here. You can see the status of the Biden Administration’s Cuba policy changes as of August, 2022, from the US Congress Congressional Research Service, here.