The Bay of Pigs

During our 8-day tour we stopped at Giron beach, also known as the Bay of Pigs. While I'm by no means an expert (despite writing more or less the same Cuban Missile Crisis paper throughout middle school), here a quick account of what happened and my experiences at the museum.

 

But first, the tinniest of backgrounds. The current political structure was established when Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra overthrew Fulgencio Batista on New Years Eve, 1959. Fidel was elected president (there are elections but just the one party) and retained the position until 2008, when illness forced him to take a less active role and his brother Raul assumed the presidency. The specific details of Che's depature from Cuba are not discussed here, but he tried to lead similar communist revolutions in Africa and South America before being assassinated in Bolivia in 1967 (the CIA almost certainly helped with that one).

 

 

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was one of the US's earlier attempts at getting rid of Castro. Essentially, the CIA trained a few thousand Cuban refugees, armed them, and sent them to land on Giron beach with the promise of aerial support. The thinking was that an invasion from even a token force would incite an internal upheaval: the oppressed population would rise up and the army would turn against Fidel, overthrowing the communist regime. Turns out most of the country actually liked Castro and this uprising did not occur, there was no air support, and unsurprisingly the force was anihilated quite quickly when an entire country's army showed up to defend itself.

 

The museum commemorating the invasion was fascinating, especially the black-and-white propoganda video that was made shortly after. A dramatic 1960's theatrical score blares over a series of battle clips and long lines of prisoners marching, with the occasional victorious slogan sprinkled throughout. My favorite: the evil imperialist invaders with the world's most advanced technology were defeated by the humble peasantry equipped only with a just cause. I love the USA and am forever grateful to be an American, but we aren't the Jesus of the world: sometimes we fuck up, and this was one of our dumber foreign policy maneuvers. It was refreshing to see how another depicts its version of history, albeit with a flair of exageration.