Cuba's Castro "resigns"

I'm not too sure things will change in Cuba. Castro's brother is still running the country and has been since last year when Castro had intestinal surgery. It will be interresting to see if the US approaches Cuba to reinstate diplomacy. I hope so. We need missionaries there.

the biggest mistake the US made in the 50's was turning their backs on cuba. if they would have let castro buy food from the US to feed the cuban people then he wouldn't have had to go to the USSR. castro hated the USSR. nobody ever talks about the this side of the story.

nice try split

castro came to power in 1959 while Eisenhower was president. eisenhower started the sanctions against castro. need i remind you what political party ike belonged to?

To get a bigger picture of the story, you need to read the section in Wikipedia on the "Embargo" section.
Quote:  A U.S. arms embargo had been in force since March 1958 when armed conflict broke out in Cuba between rebels and the Batista government. In July 1960, in response to the expropriations by the Cuban government, the United States reduced the Cuban import quota of sugar by 700,000 tons; the Soviet Union responded by agreeing to purchase the sugar instead, and Cuba took further actions to take over American businesses. A partial economic embargo was imposed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on October 19, 1960, and diplomatic relations were broken on January 3, 1961—two years after Castro's rise to power. The Soviet Union promptly stepped in, offering Cuba "preferential" trade prices, mainly for the sugar that Cuba exported and the crude oil the USSR sold them.

In response to Cuba's alignment with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, President John F. Kennedy extended Eisenhower's measures by Executive Order, first widening the scope of the trade restrictions on February 7 (announced on February 3 and again on March 23, 1962). (According to former aide Pierre Salinger, Kennedy asked him to purchase thousands of Cuban cigars for Kennedy's future use immediately before the extended embargo was to come into effect.)[3] Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy imposed travel restrictions on February 8, 1963, and the Cuban Assets Control Regulations were issued on July 8, 1963, under the Trading with the Enemy Act in response to Cubans hosting Soviet nuclear weapons, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Under these restrictions, Cuban assets in the U.S. were frozen and the existing restrictions were consolidated.


Thus we see that Ike imposed a partial embargo in 1960 (making Melkor partially correct). However, JFK expanded the embargo and solidified it. I love the fact that JFK had thousands of cuban cigars purchased and stockpiled before the extended embargo was to come into effect. Splitt scores a three pointer hitting nothing but net.