1960–1962
Confiscations, embargo, and missile crisis
Property is nationalized, the U.S. imposes an embargo, the Bay of Pigs invasion fails, and the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The years 1960–1962 transformed Cuba's revolution into a Cold War flashpoint and severed its ties with the United States.
Nationalization and embargo
The new government nationalized American and Cuban-owned businesses, farms, and homes — confiscations that displaced hundreds of thousands of families and remain a deep wound in exile memory. In response, the U.S. imposed a trade embargo that, in expanded form, still stands.
Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis
In April 1961, a CIA-backed invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs failed disastrously, strengthening Castro and pushing Cuba closer to Moscow. It was President John F. Kennedy who authorized the operation and who faced the full weight of its failure. In October 1962, Kennedy confronted the gravest test of his presidency when the Cuban Missile Crisis — the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island — brought the world to the edge of nuclear war. His televised address and back-channel negotiations produced a tense superpower bargain that ended the standoff. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, less than a year after the crisis, leaving unresolved questions about Cuba's role in Cold War tensions that persist to this day.
Why it matters
These three years locked in the patterns that defined the next half-century: confiscated property, a hardened embargo, mass exile, and Cuba's role as a pawn and player in the Cold War.