Today we set off from Viñales for a five hour bus journey. On the highways along the way, there were many people walking along the roadside trying to hitchhike, and riding bikes!
Apart from a lunch stop to eat a sandwich, we didn’t really stop today. But we did watch a documentary about the Bay of Pigs Invasion and Carlos spoke to us a lot. We then saw the nearby town of Australia. Apparently sugar mills here used to be named after countries. This particular one is where Fidel Castro planned his counterattack in response to the Bay of Pigs Invasion (information below).
Then we arrived to where we were staying - the Bay of Pigs. It’s so named because centuries ago there were a lot of wild pigs here. It’s part of the Zapata Swamp National Park, which nowadays doesn’t have any pigs, but does have crocodiles! It’s the largest wetland in Cuba.
At some point, you’ve probably heard of the Bay of Pigs. I first heard of it as a kid in Billy Joel’s song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, and since I was a kid I’ve made it my mission to visit/learn about as many places as possible from that song. Before I explain what happened at the Bay of Pigs, I’m going to explain what I know about the history of Cuba leading up to that point in time.
When Christopher Columbus arrived here, there were 100,000 native people already living in Cuba. After this time, Cuba was ruled by the Spanish for four centuries. After three wars for independence and 30 years, Cuba finally became a republic. Since 1850, the US had had the idea of buying Cuba from the Spanish. In 1898 when Cuba were trying to finally fend off the Spanish, they saw their opportunity. They offered their army to help, and defeated the Spanish together. An interesting fact is that when the Cubans and Americans were celebrating together post war victory, the Cubans were drinking rum and the Americans were drinking coke. They mixed them together and this is how the cocktail ‘Cuba Libre’ (rum and coke) was created. Libre means liberty or freedom, so it makes sense.
After this time, the US told Cuba they would only leave if they wrote into their new constitution that the US had the right to intervene in Cuba when they chose to do so, and also that they had the right to build naval bases in Cuba. So after fighting for independence for so long, they were now under pressure from someone else. This was entered into their constitution, and remained there until 1934.
Guantanamo Bay was created in 1903 as a naval base, taking up 170 square kilometres. A 99 year lease was signed, but in 2001 9/11 happened and George W Bush decided instead to turn it into a prison to house the worst terrorists in the world that the US could track down. Seeing as it’s not legally a US territory, the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply and so prisoners there were able to be tortured etc. Sounds like a pretty scary place. Obama tried to shut it down but was unsuccessful.
Back to the early 1900s - there were a few rebellions and dictatorships established in the first half of the 20th century in Cuba, with Fulgencio Batista (an American backed president) coming into power for the second time in 1952. His government was extremely corrupt, but the US turned a blind eye for the most part because he was pro American, anticommunist and didn’t mind that wealthy Americans owned lots of Cuba’s sugar plantations and the majority of its ranches, mines and utilities at the time. In fact, 94% of Cuban land was in American hands at this time. In Havana and Varadero, many rich Americans visited and things seemed great in Cuba. But the reality was that around the rest of the country, people lived in extreme poverty and were illiterate.
Fidel Castro was running against Batista in 1952. When it was becoming more and more obvious that Castro was going to win, Batista shut down the other political parties. Towards the end, the USA did not support Batista as he became more and more corrupt. As a result of being shut down, Fidel Castro orchestrated a revolution beginning in 1953. He was arrested but then released due to Batista wanting to gain back some popularity, so then sailed to Mexico to gain support. Here he met Ché Guevara (more on him in a few days’ time) and they and their followers headed back in 1956 to start the revolution properly. One of Castro’s famous slogans was “Cuba si, Yanquis no” as he believed it was time Cubans took more control of their country. In 1959 the revolution was successful and he became prime minister.
The Cuban economy had been very dependent on the US prior to this, and the US were not happy. The telecommunications company, utilities companies etc had all been American and Castro nationalised them so they weren’t anymore. Castro and his new government seized $1 billion of US buildings and lots of land, promised improved healthcare, land for all and that everyone in Cuba would learn to read.
During his first speech as prime minister, a white dove landed on Castro’s shoulder and remained there for the duration of his speech. To many people in Cuba this was a sign from the gods, and they took this to mean that his leadership was definitely the right thing for their country. He was very charismatic and popular, and had the support of about 90% of the population. Of those that didn’t support him, most had fled to Miami. Between 1953 and 1993 it’s estimated that 1.2 million Cubans fled.
In 1960, Castro instituted communism and aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union. Apparently after this time, the CIA bombed a ship in the harbour in Havana and sabotaged a few other places in Cuba to try and incite fear amongst the people and make them feel they weren’t safe under the new system. They also placed the embargo on Cuba that is still in place today. This banned the importation of sugar from Cuba, but the USSR stepped in and said they would buy it instead, as sugar exports to the US comprised 80% of the country’s total at this time.
In 1961, John F Kennedy became president of the US and inherited the covert operations that Dwight Eisenhower had been planning regarding Cuba since 1960. This was a little awkward, as in his election campaign JFK had criticised the Eisenhower administration for not doing enough about Cuba. However, the planning of the operations had been kept top secret.
In my opinion, the plan hatched by the Eisenhower administration to invade the Bay of Pigs seemed doomed from the start. The plan was to invade the bay and gather support from the Cuban people, eventually overthrowing Castro and his government. Considering that most of the people against Castro had already fled the country, I’m not sure how it was ever thought this would work.
Nevertheless, the CIA trained about 1400 Cuban exiles in Guatemala. Kennedy felt politically compelled to act even though all this was happening just one month into his presidency. He didn’t want to appear “soft” on Castro or “abandon Cuba to the communists”, however, he also didn’t want to act too harshly and start World War III. The Americans felt threatened by Castro’s leadership and alliance with the Soviet Union, and other factors such as Castro telling the US they could only have 11 people working in their embassy didn’t help.
The original plan was to invade Trinidad, a town further east, but JFK said this was “far too noisy”. He wanted to invasion to appear as if Cuban exiles had invaded, not assisted by the US. Prior to the new plan being executed (a night time invasion at the Bay of Pigs), a reporter at the New York Times caught wind of what was going on and wrote an article about it, and despite Kennedy denying the allegations, Cuba began to prepare for an invasion.
On the 15th of April 1961, the exiles flew in from Nicaragua and conducted an air strike to try and take out Castro’s small Air Force. The Americans painted these planes to look like stolen Cuban planes (again to make it look like the US weren’t involved). But Castro had found out, and had moved his planes out of harm’s way.
It was too late to stop the invasion that was planned for two days later, so it still went ahead. It was a disaster before it even began, with a radio station that the CIA had not spotted broadcasting minute by minute details of what was going on to the entirety of Cuba. Coral reefs damaged and sank many of the ships involved, and paratroopers landed in the wrong spot. Nearly 150 of the exiles died, and around 1200 were taken prisoner. Within three days the exiles had surrendered. Those taken prisoner were sentenced to 30 years in Cuban jail, but Castro traded them with the US for baby food and medicine two years later.
To this day, the embargo and other restrictions placed on Cuba still have a massive effect. Any ship that has touched a US port in the last six months is not allowed to go to Cuba, and Cuba cannot buy any life saving medicines or medical machines produced in the USA. There have been eight American presidents since all this happened, and Obama really tried hard to take a different approach. He decided it would be easier to befriend Cuba and loosen some of the restrictions. When he was in office, 125 direct flights a day were scheduled from the USA to Cuba, and he also created 12 categories of travel that would allow US citizens to come here, one of which included visiting via cruise ship (essentially tourism). Since Trump got in, life has become much more difficult here. He got rid of the tourism category of travel and has cancelled most of those flights.
It is estimated that if the US embargo was lifted, Cuba would have 10 million US tourists coming here per year. Considering currently they have 4.5 million tourists on average per year, that would mean a lot more jobs, economic growth etc. It would cause a whole host of other changes to the island as well though.
We spent the afternoon swimming in the bay, walking around the back streets of the small town and chilling on the beach. Then we had a lovely group dinner on the beach with the sunset (I had yummy lobster and my best piña colada so far!), but we all agreed that it was a weird site for a resort and beachside dinner. It would be like setting up a small resort town in Normandy or Gallipoli! After dinner, we had fun as a group playing Cuban dominoes. Rob won the whole tournament. Our rooms are right next to the bar….literally. I’m not quite sure how sleep will go!
Love to all,
Claire
Xoxox
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