Revolutionary Cuba
Explore revolutionary Cuba — from Castro's 1959 revolution through the missile crisis, Cold War alliance with the USSR, and its enduring one-party socialist system.
Cuba's revolution of 1959, led by Fidel Castro and a small band of guerrillas who overthrew the US-backed Batista dictatorship, produced the Western Hemisphere's first and longest-lasting communist state. What began as a nationalist uprising against corruption and inequality was transformed by Cold War dynamics into a full Soviet alliance that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Castro's Cuba nationalized industry, redistributed land, and built education and healthcare systems that achieved remarkable outcomes for a developing nation — near-universal literacy and life expectancy comparable to wealthy countries. But the revolution also brought political repression, the imprisonment of dissidents, state control of media, and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Cubans to the United States. The US embargo, imposed in 1962, became the longest trade embargo in modern history.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 — when the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles on the island — was the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war. Cuba's outsized influence continued through its support for revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa, its deployment of doctors and teachers worldwide, and its symbolic importance as a small nation defying the superpower next door. The post-Castro era, with Fidel's death in 2016, has raised questions about Cuba's future direction.