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Cuba
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Fidel Castro takes over power in Cuba. He receives support from other political parties and the majority of the population. The new government soon initiates a sweeping reorganisation of the country patterned after the countries of the Soviet bloc. Liberals and moderates doubt that Castro will return Cuba to democracy.
Batista Zaldívar, the president of Cuba, flees Cuba after facing overwhelming pressure from guerrilla factions who are dissatisfied with Batista's government.
Castro's policy of seizing businesses and confiscating the property of the wealthy raises concerns in the United States about Communist influence. The United States decides to support a group of Cuban exiles in their attempt to topple the Castro regime.
Castro establishes full diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union becomes Cuba's major trading partner and source of funds and military supplies.
Cuba openly aligns itself with the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet Union and indicates its solidarity with the Sino-Soviet Bloc.
The United States and Cuba sever diplomatic and consular relations.
1,000 CIA-trained Cuban refugees land at the Bay of Pigs on the Southern coast of Cuba in an attempt to "liberate" Cuba from the Castro regime. The attempt fails. The Bay of Pigs incident becomes a victory for Castro as it shows him defeating forces trained by the United States, the strongest military power in the world.
Looking back on the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
The Organization of American States formally excludes Cuba from its council. By September 1964, all Latin American nations except Mexico had broken diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba.
In an attempt to safeguard itself from further US plans to attack it, Cuba seeks economic and military assistance from the Soviet Union. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev decides to send missiles armed with nuclear weapons that are capable of hitting targets within the United States, to Cuba.
 U.S. spy planes take photographs that reveal Soviet missiles under construction in Cuba. President Kennedy responds by imposing a naval quarantine around Cuba.
Khrushchev is warned that any Soviet ships bringing missiles to Cuba would risk starting a nuclear war. President Kennedy demands that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba. This period is known as the Cuban Missiles Crisis. It lasts for 13 days with both the United States and the Soviets refusing to back down.
Read more on Cuban Missile Crisis.
Read about the series of letters between Kennedy and Khrushchev that covers the period of the Crisis.
Khrushchev recalls the ships and agrees to dismantle the missile sites. In return the United States agrees not to invade Cuba, and to remove U.S. missiles from sites in Turkey.
Castro visits the Soviet Union. Despite this a period of ideological instability between the two nations follows.
Cuba becomes a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), the trade association of Communist nations. The Soviet Union agreed to provide financial assistance to Cuba, but it insists that Castro create a Soviet-style bureaucracy that limits his personal influence on policy.
Castro begins to assume a significant leadership role among the Third World countries. He becomes the head of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of nations that sought to remain neutral during the Cold War.
The Cuban government allows 125,000 Cubans to leave Cuba for the United States.
Read more on information of Cuban refugees.
The collapse of the Soviet Union has a terrible impact on Cuba as economic aid and trade between the two nations ends. Cuba's economic output plunges.
Recent human rights-related news from Amnesty International.
Poster pictures from Cuba.
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