Word: cubans
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...coast of Florida, the two nations have had no diplomatic relations since 1961 and use Switzerland as a mediator whenever they need to talk. But maybe - finally - things might change. On April 13 President Barack Obama announced that he would lift some longstanding restrictions, allowing Cuban Americans to visit and send remittances to their families and easing - but not removing - the 47-year-old economic embargo on the island nation. (Read "Will Obama Open Up All U.S. Travel to Cuba...
Then came the Cuban Revolution and everything changed. It took multiple years and a few attempts but on Jan. 1, 1959 Fidel Castro and his band of guerillas successfully overthrew the government of President General Fulgencio Batista. The United States - which supported Castro by imposing a 1958 arms embargo against Batista's government - immediately recognized the new regime, although it expressed some misgivings over the revolutionaries' execution of over 500 pro-Batista supporters and Castro's increasingly obvious communist tendencies. Castro visited the U.S. just three months after coming to power, touring Washington monuments and meeting with Vice President Richard...
...supplies. Decrying "Yankee imperialism," Castro expanded trade with the Soviet Union instead. The U.S. responded by cutting all diplomatic ties, and the two countries have been talking through Switzerland ever since. President Kennedy issued the permanent embargo on Feb. 7, 1962 - right after ordering a shipment of 1,200 Cuban cigars for himself - and within a few years the country, whose economy relied on the use of American-made products, became a shell of its former self. Food consumption decreased. Telephones and televisions were harder to come by. With no way to import American cars, Cubans watched their pre-embargo...
...early 1960s were marked by a number of subversive, top-secret U.S. attempts to topple the Cuban government. The Bay of Pigs - the CIA's botched attempt to overthrow Castro by training Cuban exiles for a ground attack - was followed by Operation Mongoose: a years-long series of increasingly far-fetched attempts on Castro's life. Between 1961 and 1963 there were at least five plots to kill, maim or humiliate the Cuban leader using everything from exploding seashells to shoes dusted with chemicals to make his beard fall out. The Get Smart-like plans never worked, and Castro...
Experts like Erikson acknowledge that Obama has domestic political constraints, including the staunch opposition of Cuban-American pols like New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez and Florida Senator Mel Martinez to the bill that would end the travel ban. But even they know momentum is building inside the Beltway, as prominent Senators like Indiana's Richard Lugar now argue that the Cuban embargo has been a failure. Obama didn't need the once indispensable Cuban-American vote to win Florida's critical electoral votes in last year's presidential race, and the Cuban-American Foundation - a once hard-line exile group...