Cuba Essay Research Paper In this paper

Cuba Essay, Research Paper

In this paper I hope to prove that the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion was one of mismanagement, overconfidence, and lack of security. The blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his dvisors. The result of the invasion caused a rise in tension between the two great superpowers and ironically 39 years after the event, the person that the invasion was meant get rid of, Fidel Castro, is still in power.

On April 17th 1961 the assault on the Bay of Pigs began at 2 a.m. with a team of trained Cuban exiles who went ashore to stake out the area for the main task force. At 2:30 a.m. and at 3:00 a.m. two battalions came ashore at Playa Girn and one battalion at Playa Larga beaches. The troops at Playa Girn had orders to move northwest, up the coast and meet with the troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small group of men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to secure it as well.

When looking at a modern map of Cuba it is obvious that the troops would have problems in the area that was chosen for them to land at. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampy marsh land area which would be hard on the troops. The Cuban forces were quick to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. Off the coast were the command and control ship and another vessels carrying supplies for the invading forces. The Cuban air force took out the supply ships, sinking the command vessel the Marsopa and the supply ship the Houston. In the end the 5th battalion was lost, which was on the Houston, as well as the supplies for the landing teams and eight other smaller vessels. With some of the invading forces’ ships destroyed, and no command and control ship, the operation soon broke down as the other supply ships were kept at bay by Castro’s air force.

Over the 72 hours that the invasion lasted the Cubans pounded on the US backed exiles of about 1500 men. By Wednesday the invaders were pushed back to their landing zone at Playa Girn. Surrounded by Castro’s forces some began to surrender while others fled into the hills. In all 114 men were killed while thirty-six died as prisoners in Cuban cells. Many where left in the Cuban cells for over 20 years as prisoners of war.

The 1500 men of the invading force never had a chance for success from almost the first days in the planning stage of the operation. The invasion was called Operation Pluto and it had originally been suggested by the Eisenhower administration yet carried over when John F. Kennedy became president. American policies having to deal with Latin America in the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s were based on America’s economic interests and its anti-communism.

In 1950 George Kennan spoke about the American policy with Latin America he said that American policy had several purposes in the region, “To protect the vital supplies of raw materials which Latin American countries export to the USA; to prevent the ‘military exploitation of Latin America by the enemy’ [The Soviet Union]; and to avert ‘the psychological mobilization of Latin America against us.” By the 1950s trade with Latin America accounted for about 25% of American exports, and 80% of the investments in Latin America was also by the United States.

In the spring of 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to send small groups of American trained, Cuban exiles to work on overthrowing Castro. By the fall, the plan was changed to a full invasion with air support by exiled Cubans in American supplied planes. The group was to be trained in Panama, but with the growth of the operation and the quickening pace of events in Cuba, it was decided to move things to a base in Guatemala. The plan was becoming rushed and this would start to show. The man in charge of the operation, CIA Deputy Director Bissell said, “There didn’t seem to be time to keep to the original plan and have a large group trained by this initial cadre of young Cubans. So the larger group was formed and established at La Finca, in Guatemala, and there the training was conducted entirely by Americans.”

It was now fall and a new president had been elected. President Kennedy could have stopped the invasion if he wanted to yet he didn’t. There were a few key factors in which he believed it was a good idea to go with it, one he had campaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also the height of the cold war, to back out now would mean having groups of Cuban exiles traveling around the globe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. In competition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americans look weak on the international scene. Furthermore by domestic consumption the new president would be seen as backing away from one of his campaign promises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn’t abort the operation is the main reason why the operation failed, problems with the CIA.

The failure at the CIA led to Kennedy into making poor decisions, which would affect future relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. The failure at CIA had three causes. First the wrong people were handling the operation, secondly the agency in charge of the operation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the operation, and thirdly fo