|
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
|
|
The year 1959 starts with the news that the president of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, has fled the island and abandoned the government. Fidel Castro, commanding guerrillas in the easternmost province of Oriente, gives his very first order on the phone to his brother Raúl: “Begin the executions!” He soon marches to Havana and assumes power.
In this decade there will be massive executions, thousands of people taken prisoners, alliance of Cuba under the Soviet block, operation Pedro Pan of unaccompanied children sent abroad, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the first and second waves of Cuban refugees abandoning the country.
Government “administrators” are imposed on businesses big and small, retail and wholesale (the so-called “intervención”) which would eventually result in confiscation of all private property; the judicial system is revamped, educational curricula at all levels is changed, the Cuban Communist party assumes sole political role.
|
|
|