The Bay of Pigs Invasion, also known as Playa Girón in Cuba, after the beach where the battle took place, was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), consisting of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, clandestinely and directly financed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
By early 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had begun contemplating ways to remove Castro. In accordance with this goal, Eisenhower eventually approved Richard Bissell's plan which included training the paramilitary force that would later be used in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Alongside covert operations, the U.S. also began its embargo of the island. This led Castro to reach out to the U.S.'s Cold War rival, the Soviet Union, after which the U.S. severed diplomatic relations.
Cuban exiles who had moved to the U.S. following Castro's takeover had formed the counter-revolutionary military unit Brigade 2506, which was the armed wing of the DRF. The CIA funded the brigade, which also included approximately 60 members of the Alabama Air National Guard, and trained the unit in Guatemala. Over 1,400 paramilitaries, divided into five infantry battalions and one paratrooper battalion, assembled and launched from Guatemala and Nicaragua by boat on 17 April 1961. Two days earlier, eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers had attacked Cuban airfields and then returned to the U.S. On the night of 17 April, the main invasion force landed on the beach at Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs, where it overwhelmed a local revolutionary militia. Initially, José Ramón Fernández led the Cuban Revolutionary Army counter-offensive; later, Castro took personal control. As the invasion force lost the strategic initiative, the international community found out about the invasion, and U.S. president John F. Kennedy decided to withhold further air support. The plan, devised during Eisenhower's presidency, had required the involvement of U.S. air and naval forces. Without further air support, the invasion was being conducted with fewer forces than the CIA had deemed necessary. The invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias; FAR) and surrendered on 20 April. Most of the surrendered counter-revolutionary troops were publicly interrogated, incarcerated into Cuban prisons and subsequently prosecuted and tried.
The invasion was a U.S. foreign policy failure. The Cuban government's victory solidified Castro's role as a national hero and widened the political division between the two formerly friendly countries, as well as emboldened other Latin American groups to undermine U.S. influence in the region. As stated in a memoir from Chester Bowles: "The humiliating failure of the invasion shattered the myth of a New Frontier run by a new breed of incisive, fault-free supermen. However costly, it may have been a necessary lesson." It also pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, setting the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Background
United States interventions in Cuba
On 20 May 1902, a new independent government proclaimed the foundation of the Republic of Cuba, with U.S. military governor Leonard Wood handing over control to President Tomás Estrada Palma, a Cuban-born U.S. citizen. Subsequently, large numbers of U.S. settlers and businessmen arrived in Cuba, and by 1905, 60% of rural properties were owned by non-Cuban-born North American citizens. Between 1906 and 1909, 5,000 U.S. Marines were stationed across the island, and returned in 1912, 1917, and 1921 to intervene in internal affairs, sometimes at the behest of the Cuban government.
Constitution of 1940
In 1940, Cuba adopted a new constitution which drew on many of the ideas of the Cuban Revolution of 1933. The Encyclopedia of U.S.–Latin American Relations purports that the 1940 constitution was one of the most progressive constitutions in Latin America, because it legally mandated social security, a minimum wage, health insurance, workers compensation, vacation time, the women's right to vote, and the right to free expression.
In 1940, the Cuban general and politician Fulgencio Batista was elected under the provisions of the new constitution. After his term ended in 1944, he was not legally allowed to run for a consecutive term, so he stepped down and moved to Florida. Batista returned to Cuba in 1948 to run for a presidential term starting in 1952.
CIA interventions
The CIA was founded in 1947 by the National Security Act. The agency was "a product of the Cold War", having been designed to counter the espionage activities of the Soviet Union's own national security agency, the KGB. As the perceived threat of international communism grew larger, the CIA expanded its activities to undertake covert economic, political, and military activities that would advance causes favorable to U.S. interests, often resulting in brutal dictatorships that favored U.S. interests. CIA Director Allen Dulles was responsible for overseeing covert operations across the world, and although widely considered an ineffectual administrator, he was popular among his employees, whom he had protected from the accusations of McCarthyism.
Cuban Revolution
Until Castro, the US was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American ambassador was the second most important man, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president.
— Earl E. T. Smith, former American Ambassador to Cuba, during 1960 testimony to the US Senate
In March 1952 Fulgencio Batista seized power on the island, proclaimed himself president, and deposed the discredited president Carlos Prío Socarrás of the Partido Auténtico. Batista canceled the planned presidential elections and described his new system as "disciplined democracy."
Although Batista gained some popular support, many Cubans saw it as the establishment of a one-man dictatorship. Many opponents of the Batista regime took to armed rebellion in an attempt to oust the government, sparking the Cuban Revolution. One of these groups was the National Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario), a militant organization containing largely middle-class members that had been founded by the Professor of Philosophy Rafael García Bárcena. Another was the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, which had been founded by the Federation of University Students president José Antonio Echevarría.
However, the best known of these anti-Batista groups was the "26th of July Movement" (MR-26-7), founded by Fidel Castro. With Castro as the MR-26-7's head, the organization was based upon a clandestine cell system, with each cell containing ten members, none of whom knew the whereabouts or activities of the other cells.
Between December 1956 and 1959, Castro led a guerrilla army against the forces of Batista from his base camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Batista's repression of revolutionaries had earned him widespread unpopularity, and by 1958 his armies were in retreat. On 31 December 1958, Batista resigned and fled into exile, taking with him an amassed fortune of more than $300 million.
Provisional government
After the success of the revolution a popular uproar across Cuba demanded that those figures who had been complicit in the widespread torture and killing of civilians be brought to justice. Although he remained a moderating force and tried to prevent the mass reprisal killings of Batistanos advocated by many Cubans, Castro helped to set up trials of many figures involved in the old regime across the country, resulting in hundreds of executions. Critics, in particular from the U.S. press, argued that many of these did not meet the standards of a fair trial, and condemned Cuba's new government as being more interested in vengeance than justice.
Castro retaliated strongly against such accusations, proclaiming that "revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction." In a show of support for this "revolutionary justice", he organized the first Havana trial to take place before a mass audience of 17,000 at the Sports Palace stadium. When a group of 19 pilots accused of bombing a village was found not guilty, Castro ordered a retrial, in which they were found guilty and each sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In early January 1959, Fidel Castro appointed various economists such as Felipe Pazos, Rufo López-Fresquet, Ernesto Bentacourt, Faustino Pérez, and Manuel Ray Rivero. By June 1959, these appointed economists would begin to express disillusionment with Castro's proposed economic policies. On 16 February 1959, Castro took on the role of Prime Minister. The presidency fell to Castro's chosen candidate, the lawyer Manuel Urrutia Lleó, while members of the MR-26-7 took control of most positions in the cabinet.
In early 1959, the Cuban government began agrarian reforms which redistributed the ownership of Cuba's land. Expropriated lands would be put into state ownership, and the newly formed Instituto de la Reforma Agraria (INRA) was to oversee the expropriations and be headed by Fidel Castro. In Camagüey Province there was growing opposition to the Cuban government due to the resistance of conservative farmers to the agrarian reforms and distaste for Raúl Castro and Che Guevara's promotion of communist ideals in the local government and military. The anti-communist opposition within the Cuban government assumed that Fidel Castro was unaware of growing communist influence because of Fidel Castro's frequent public disavowals of communism.
In April 1959, Fidel Castro announced that elections were to be postponed in order to allow for the provisional government to focus on domestic reforms. Castro announced this electoral delay with the slogan: "revolution first, elections later". These postponed elections would later be outright canceled in May 1960.
On 17 July 1959, Conrado Bécquer, the sugar workers' leader, demanded Cuban president Urrutia's resignation. Castro himself resigned as Prime Minister of Cuba in protest, but later that day appeared on television to deliver a lengthy denouncement of Urrutia, claiming that Urrutia had "complicated" the government, and that his "fevered anti-communism" was having a detrimental effect. Castro's sentiments received widespread support as organized crowds surrounded the presidential palace demanding Urrutia's resignation, which was duly received. On July 23, Castro resumed his position as premier and appointed loyalist Osvaldo Dorticós as the new president.
Diplomatic decline
The U.S. initially recognized Castro's government after the Cuban Revolution ousted Batista, but the relationship quickly soured as Castro repeatedly condemned the U.S. in his speeches for its misdeeds in Cuba over the previous 60 years. Many U.S. officials began to view Castro as a threat to national security as he legalized the Communist Party, nationalized property owned by U.S. citizens totaling $1.5 billion, and strengthened ties with the Soviet Union.
In recently declassified documents, the feelings of the CIA toward Fidel Castro have become more clear. The CIA had written a comprehensive study of the background between the United States and Cuba, beginning with Castro's regime. This study was top secret and around 400 pages in length. At the very beginning of Castro, the CIA needed to decipher the alleged pro-communist beliefs. They had inside men working to make a clear decision on the belief of the new Cuban official. According to the Official History of the Bay of Pigs, the top-secret CIA document, two agents were placed in the ranks of the communist party of Cuba (Partido Socialista Popular). In 1958, both agents were either captured or snuck their way into the ranks of Fidel Castro's forces. They explained the so-called 'anti-American' sentiment of the regime.
In 1959, Fidel Castro planned on visiting America. The invitation was extended by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The already tense relations between Cuba and the US became increasingly futile. According to the written document detailing the conflict, the Official History of the Bay of Pigs, written by the CIA, America was apprehensive. The CIA was aware that Castro would not plan on appealing to Heads of State, but instead, the masses, as he addressed the workers and farmers of America. The CIA was not impressed with Castro and believed that his officials and people among his ranks were Communists, and therefore the Castro regime was a Communist regime. Despite the optimistic and seemingly friendly view that Castro revealed, American officials were not convinced. They perceived Castro to be a serious threat, one that needed to be addressed.
Prelude
Huber Matos affair
On 20 October 1959, Cuban army commander and veteran of the Cuban Revolution, Huber Matos, resigned and accused Castro of "burying the revolution". Fifteen of Matos' officers resigned with him. Immediately after the resignation, Castro accused Matos of disloyalty and sent Camilo Cienfuegos to arrest Matos and his accompanying officers. Matos and the officers were taken to Havana and imprisoned in La Cabaña. Cuban communists later claimed Matos was helping plan a counter-revolution organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other Castro opponents, an operation that became the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
The scandal is noted for its occurrence alongside a greater trend of removals of Castro's former collaborators in the revolution. It marked a turning point where Castro was beginning to exert more personal control over the new government in Cuba. Matos' arresting officer and former collaborator of Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, would soon die in a mysterious plane crash shortly after the incident.
Shortly after Matos' arrest, the prime minister and Che Guevara made a speech to members of the INRA that Cuba would continue to turn in a socialist direction. Manuel Artime viewed the arrest of Matos and affirmation of socialism in Cuba as precedent for him to resign. On 7 November 1959 his resignation letter from INRA and the revolutionary army was published on the front page of Avance newspaper, one of the last newspapers not controlled by the government. Artime then entered an underground organization run by Jesuits in Cuba to hide fugitives; it is unclear what exactly made Artime immediately turn to hiding and later defect.