BY VIV MILEY
Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Washington launched many unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the popular revolution that had triumphed just 140 kilometres(90 miles) from US shores. The most notorious attempt was at the Bay of Pigs. Playa Giron, as it is known in Cuba, was the landing point in 1961 for some 1400 counter-revolutionary Cuban mercenaries backed by the US government and the CIA.
In March 1960, US President Dwight Eisenhower and the National Security Council approved a plan to train Cuban exiles in Guatemala for an invasion. Eisenhower announced in July 1960 that the US would "not tolerate the establishment of a regime dominated by international communism in the Western hemisphere".
The CIA recruited the Cuban exiles and paid them $400 a month — a wage far in excess of that of average Cubans — with an additional $175 or more for their families. These counter-revolutionary exiles became known as gusanos (worms). With arms and technical knowledge from the CIA, the gusanos were trained in Guatemala and later moved to Nicaragua, which was the launch pad of the invasion.
The plan was simple. The Cuban mercenaries would land at Playa Giron and establish a beachhead. A "Provisional Government", composed of pro-US figures, would be flown to Playa Giron to issue a call to "democratic" countries (meaning the US) for assistance. Washington would respond by sending US troops to "liberate" Cuba from "communism".
On October 19, 1960, the US imposed an embargo on US trade with Cuba. The revolutionary government responded by nationalising remaining US-owned industry and property in Cuba.
There was no change in Washington's hostility to Cuba with John F. Kennedy's election as US president in November 1960. Kennedy's election campaign criticised Eisenhower for not doing enough to defeat Cuba. In his inaugural State of the Union address on January 31, 1961, Kennedy's words echoed those of Eisenhower, "Communist domination in this hemisphere can never be negotiated".
On January 2, 1961, Cuba charged the US at the UN Security Council with preparing to invade Cuba. Cuba demanded that the number of personnel at the US embassy in Havana, some of whom were accused of spying, be reduced to 11. The US refused. A day later the US broke off all diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.
On April 3, 1961, the US government demanded that Cuba cut all ties with the "international communist movement", namely Russia and China. Cuba began to trade with these countries following Washington's ban on US trade with Cuba. On April 12, Kennedy made a statement in which he said that any conflict in Cuba would not be a conflict between the two countries, but rather between Cubans.
Offensive
The US offensive began on April 15 with a bombing raid on Cuba. The raid, coordinated by the CIA, was designed to destroy as much of the Cubans' air force as possible and pave the way for the invasion. The emigre Cuban pilots were going to claim they were "insurgents" and take responsibility for the attack.
Cuba was prepared for the attack. Its functioning aircraft were camouflaged and protected by anti-aircraft guns, while obsolete and dilapidated planes were left in the open to draw the enemy's fire.
Two US B-26 bombers, disguised as Cuban Air Force planes, raided Cuban airfields at 6am. Seven Cubans were killed but little damage was done to Cuba's air force.
As Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a speech on the 35th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, "That was a whopping blunder on the part of [Washington], because by attacking us and inventing that whole thing about insurgent aeroplanes, ... they immediately gave us the idea that the invasion was possible within 24 or 48 hours. Although we had part of the country mobilised, we immediately mobilised the whole country and all the arms."
Playa Giron was chosen by the US because it was close to two main highways and an airfield required by the US troops and arms that would follow the gusanos' arrival. While the Cubans knew an attack was coming, they had no idea of where it would strike.
At a mass funeral service for those killed in the bombing raids, and during a speech by Castro in which he defined the revolution as a socialist one, word came that a fleet of US ships carrying marines was gathering off the coast of Havana. This prompted Castro to call a state of alert and to mobilise the militia. A mass rally was held in Havana to prepare the Cuban people.
On April 17, the mercenary forces began the invasion at the Bay of Pigs and local Cuban militias were mobilised to the area. The Cuban planes that had not been destroyed in the bombing raid were used to fend off the US B-26 bombers and to attack the invaders. Several gusano ships, carrying supplies, ammunition and troops, were sunk and the remaining ships backed off.
The local militia, mostly poor peasants, bravely held the mercenaries at bay while waiting for reinforcements from the national militia. Before and following the invasion, around 20,000 suspected counter-revolutionaries were detained, starving the invaders' of internal support.
Disaster
On April 18, with the invasion going disastrously wrong, the CIA and Kennedy gave the go-ahead for three B-26 bombers, flown by US pilots, to fly from Nicaragua — escorted by six US jets from a US aircraft carrier — to launch a napalm attack on the Cuban troops. However, the jets did not arrive in time and the cumbersome B-26 bombers became easy targets for Cuba's two aging jet fighters. The body of one of the US pilots was recovered by the Cubans, who then issued a communique stating the pilot's name, license number, social security number and home address. The US was condemned for the attempted invasion.
In less than 72 hours the Cubans had triumphed. By April 19, the battle was over. Of the mercenaries that landed, 114 were killed, 1189 were taken prisoner and 150 were rescued. The Cubans sustained many more deaths and casualties than the invading forces.
The prisoners were taken to Havana, and had the opportunity to talk and argue with Castro in a nationally televised event. "Now be honest", Castro said to one of the prisoners, "you must surely realise that you are the first prisoner in history who has the privilege of arguing in front of the whole population of Cuba and the entire world with the head of a government you came to overthrow."
Castro asked who among them had cut sugarcane, only one man raised his hand in response. As Che Guevara said of the incident, "every one of these gentlemen who came had property — 10 houses, 27,000 caballerias of land, two banks, five mines, 70 factories, 10 sugar mills. They had economic power in their hands. They were the owners of the means of production".
Despite the spectacular failure of the invasion, the US did not give up its war against Cuba. Six days after, the US imposed a total blockade on all goods destined for Cuba. Just over a year later, the so-called Cuban missile crisis erupted after Cuba had arranged for Soviet nuclear missiles to be deployed on the island to prevent further US invasion attempts.
'People's revolution'
As Castro said on the 35th anniversary of Playa Giron: "They were not going to allow our revolution to be an example for the peoples of Latin America living under similar conditions, and they disdainfully believed they could crush us. They did not realise that this was a different kind of revolution, that this was a popular revolution, a revolution of the people, by the people and for the people."
While Cubans celebrate the anniversary, they do not gloat at the US defeat. As Che said, "for our army and our militia, having defeated the gusanos is no particular glory. The glory for our army and our militia was not in the action itself, but in having been ready to fight in the way they were ready to fight — and in the entire people of Cuba rising up to defend the revolution."
In a speech made three weeks after the attack, Guevara described it as "a struggle of good against evil, but it was also something else — it was the class struggle, the sharp contours of which were beginning to surface in Cuba. It was the struggle of the exploiters, who had lost power, against the exploited, who had taken power and were eliminating the other class."