The US tried to overthrow the communist government in Cuba—and failed

The Cuban Revolution, from 1953 to 1959, overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and established the first socialist state in the Western Hemisphere.

Hear about the US role in the Cuban Revolution—and the blowback it caused

Against long odds, Fidel Castro launched a socialist revolution just 90 miles from the US and kept it alive for decades. This 10-part podcast traces Washington's pivot from early support to an obsessive campaign of sabotage and hundreds of alleged assassination plots.

The US intervened in Latin America to block communist influence during the Cold War

Fearing Soviet expansion, the US intervened across Latin America by backing coups, funding right-wing regimes, and supporting anti-communist militias—most notably in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro

From exploding cigars and poisoned Cohibas to an infected scuba suit and plans to drug a TV studio with LSD, this account catalogs the CIA's strangest—and consistently unsuccessful—attempts to kill Fidel Castro over decades.

The US embargo on Cuba was designed to cause hardship and eventual regime change

A secret 1960 memo by State Department official Lester Mallory argued that trade restrictions were “the only foreseeable means” to unseat Castro by provoking hunger and desperation. This page compiles declassified US documents detailing that strategy and its aftermath.

See a timeline of the tumultuous relationship between Cuba and the US since 1959

Only 90 miles separate Cuba from the US, yet Cold War hostility froze relations for decades. This timeline traces six decades of tension, from revolution and missile crisis to renewed hardline US policies reintroduced in 2025

The CIA once tried to poison Fidel Castro's milkshake during the Cold War.

See a timeline of the Cuban Revolution

A small rebel force toppled Batista through a series of unlikely breaks, including a decisive 1958 ambush in which Castro’s fighters seized an arms train bound for Santa Clara. This timeline charts the revolution’s causes, key turning points, and enduring legacy.

US–Cuba contentious relations began long before the Cold War

Long before the revolution and missile crisis, US involvement in Cuba stretched back over 150 years—rooted in slavery, sugar, and shifting imperial ambitions. This short video traces how cycles of intervention and neglect shaped the island’s modern history.

Since the revolution, approximately 1.4 million Cubans have fled to the US

Although Castro initially enjoyed broad support after toppling Batista in 1959, nearly 2 million Cubans chose exile in the years that followed. Most settled in the US, while others dispersed across Latin America and Europe, shaping migration patterns that persist to this day

Explore the fraught relations between the United States and Cuba since 1959

From the Cuban Missile Crisis and decades of economic embargo to President Obama's normalization efforts and President Trump's reversion to "maximum pressure," US-Cuba relations have fluctuated between hostility and fleeting diplomacy since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

Fidel Castro first launched the Cuban revolution on a small yacht

Fidel Castro's regime has lasted almost seven decades. That story began on Dec. 2, 1956, with the landing of a small yacht—dubbed the Granma—with 82 soldiers and Castro himself, as his onshore allies attacked military and government installations in advance of their arrival.

Pre-revolution Cuba was prosperous—and deeply unequal.

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation

Moscow's decision to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba—just 90 miles from the US—pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. To prevent future crises, both sides later set up a direct hotline and boosted arms-control diplomacy

Read the New York Times 2016 obituary of Fidel Castro, the defining figure of the Cuban Revolution.

Embargoes and economic mismanagement have pushed Cuba into its worst crisis in decades

For more than 60 years, Cuba has been pressured by two forces—the US economic embargo and its own government's repression and mismanagement. NPR's Throughline podcast explains how both contributed to today's blackouts, food shortages, and mass exodus.

A secret airlift sent 14,000 Cuban children to the US

As part of the covert Operation Pedro Pan, roughly 14,000 Cuban children were quietly flown to the US in the early 1960s—often with no warning, no luggage, and no certainty they would ever see their parents again.

The US and the USSR backed opposing sides in dozens of proxy wars during the Cold War

To avoid direct confrontation, the superpowers supported rival factions in conflicts around the world—including in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, and Afghanistan.

Watergate's anti-Castro Latino burglars believed they were fighting communism

Among the Watergate burglars, Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, and Eugenio Martínez were Cuban American anti-Castro exiles who believed they were combating communist influence in the United States.

See photos from the day Havana fell

When news broke that Batista had fled on New Year’s Eve 1958, photographer Burt Glinn rushed from Miami to Havana without an assignment. His iconic images—tanks in Old Havana and tearful reunions—captured a nation celebrating, uncertain, and on the brink of radical change.

Explore 100 years of communism across the globe, from the 1917 October Revolution to North Korea's modern nuclear defiance.

Take a multimedia journey through the thirteen days that nearly ended the world

In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. This interactive archive from the JFK Library reconstructs those tense days through documents, photos, and secretly recorded conversations from the Kennedy White House.

US–Soviet hostility began long before the Cold War

US–Soviet tensions began decades before WWII. After the 1917 revolution, the US refused to recognize the Bolshevik regime and even sent troops to fight against it.

The Soviet Union’s surprising first atomic test ended the US nuclear monopoly

In 1949, the USSR successfully tested its first atomic bomb—ending the US monopoly on nuclear weapons and sparking an arms race that would define the Cold War.

Propaganda became a key weapon in the US–Soviet Cold War

Both superpowers waged a global battle for hearts and minds through propaganda—using film, radio, art and education to promote their values. The US emphasized freedom and prosperity, while the USSR championed socialism and anti-imperialism.

The US and the USSR each boycotted Olympic Games during the Cold War

The US led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In retaliation, the USSR and its allies skipped the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

The space race was a Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union that culminated in the US landing astronauts on the moon in 1969.

A movie helped make JFK assassination conspiracies widespread

Oliver Stone's film "JFK" (1991) imagined the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the result of a conspiracy by US government agents. Before the film, this belief was not common, but it became widely adopted afterward. The film's impact contributed to the release of major CIA files in subsequent decades. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The US once had a plan to nuke the moon

In the 1950s, the US considered detonating a hydrogen bomb on the moon as part of a Cold War show of force. Known as Project A119, the classified plan aimed to create a visible explosion from Earth to signal American dominance in the Space Race.

The US once had a plan to nuke the moon

In the 1950s, the US considered detonating a hydrogen bomb on the moon as part of a Cold War show of force. Known as Project A119, the classified plan aimed to create a visible explosion from Earth to signal American dominance in the space race.

The 1969 moon landing was a defining Cold War victory for the US

When Apollo 11 astronauts stepped onto the moon in July 1969, it marked a dramatic win in the US-Soviet space race. The televised landing—broadcast across the globe—showcased American technological supremacy.

A 1960s effort came close to abolishing the Electoral College

This podcast episode examines the closest attempts in US history to eliminate the Electoral College, focusing on a major 1960s reform push—and why, despite broad support, it ultimately failed.

The Roosevelt Corollary transformed the Monroe Doctrine from a defensive warning into a rationale for US military intervention

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the US had the right to exercise international police power in Latin America. Over the following two decades, the US intervened militarily in the region about a dozen times—often enough that Marines became known locally as "State Department troops."

The second attack used to justify full-scale US involvement in Vietnam never happened as reported

In August 1964, Washington claimed that North Vietnam launched two attacks on US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The second, used to justify escalating the US war effort, was later revealed to most likely have been a radar mistake.

US intelligence failures contributed to the success of the Japanese attack

Despite breaking Japan’s diplomatic codes, US agencies failed to integrate warnings, successfully track Japan’s carriers, or even believe a Hawaii strike was possible (they also had not cracked Japan’s naval codes). Missed signals, ignored reports and poor coordination led to one of the worst intelligence failures in US history.

Oil nationalization triggered the CIA‑backed 1953 coup in Iran

NPR's Four Days in August podcast recounts the four days of covert CIA‑UK operations in Iran that toppled Prime Minister Mossadegh in August 1953. Threats of Iranian oil nationalization were a major driver of the decision to facilitate regime change.

Watch the 1954 film adaptation of George Orwell's 'Animal Farm,' which was covertly funded by the CIA.

Conspiracy theories come from distrust in government, media, and institutions

Some believe JFK's assassination was orchestrated by larger networks rather than a lone shooter. Skeptics wondered how one unknown man could kill the most powerful person in America, and believed the CIA, FBI, or Soviet government played a role in the murder.

The Monroe Doctrine helped lead to the American occupation of territory abroad

This podcast explores how the policy motivated a century of US military intervention throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific—covering the annexation of Hawaii, the Spanish-American War, and occupations of Cuba, Haiti, and Panama.

The Truman Doctrine marked the start of US containment strategy

Introduced in 1947, the Truman Doctrine pledged US support for nations resisting communism—starting with Greece and Turkey—and launched the containment policy that defined early Cold War strategy.

Mohammad Mosaddegh was ousted in a CIA-backed coup in 1953

Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mosaddegh, nationalized the country's oil industry in 1951, challenging British and American control of Iran's resources. The CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup that ousted him and reinstated the Shah, fueling decades of Iranian distrust of the West.

Communist governments across Eastern Europe fell in 1989

In 1989, a series of mostly peaceful uprisings led to the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Protests and political shifts in countries like Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia marked the end of Soviet dominance in the region.

Mexico’s political chaos weakened its defense against US invasion

Mexico’s post-independence instability—marked by coups, power struggles, and weak central control—left its northern frontier vulnerable. That political fragmentation shaped Mexico’s unpreparedness during the Mexican-American War and helped enable US conquest.

Brazil's military dictatorship led to bossa nova's decline

In 1964, Brazil's president João Goulart was overthrown by a military coup supported by the US State Department. Scholars argue that the events led to the decline of bossa nova, with many Brazilians believing its pleasant sounds and picturesque lyrics were tone-deaf to the politically fraught moment.

Sartre eventually denounced communism

The French philosopher was a long-time ardent supporter of communism and the USSR. He finally spoke out against the movement with the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, saying that the move was "made possible by 12 years of terror and imbecility."

An NSA analyst helped avert nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis

In October 1962, NSA cryptographer Juanita Moody headed analysis of U‑2 surveillance data and urgently produced intelligence on Soviet missile deployments in Cuba. Her reports drove high-level US decision-making, and were critical to avoiding nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The US handed control of the canal back to Panama in 1999

This was the result of two treaties signed during President Jimmy Carter's presidency, one shifting control to Panama and the other declaring the canal zone neutral. In recent years, US officials have suggested the US may retake control. Experts agree that the only viable way would be through military force.

In 1979, Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days

Outraged by the US decision to allow the exiled Shah to enter the United States for medical treatment, student protesters stormed the embassy in November 1979. The crisis paralyzed the Carter presidency and ended with a negotiated release on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration.

Hear the story of a doctor who decided to flee Cuba with his family in 1963

In this StoryCorps conversation, Gustavo Mestas reflects on leaving the island with his family in 1963 and the difficult transition that followed—from treating patients in Cuba to picking tomatoes and cleaning motels while rebuilding a life in the US.

Explore the material culture of socialist Cuba

Even the objects of everyday life were politicized under socialism. This catalog of Cuban artifacts, collected between 1959 and the fall of the Soviet Union, reveals how revolutionary values infiltrated the most ordinary of items—from cocktail coasters to cologne.