President Obama Announces Plan To Normalize Relations With Cuba
President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro, on this day, announced an agreement to normalize relations between the two countries.
The agreement began the end of decades-long hostility, marked by the infamous and disastrous U.S. invasion of Cuba (at the Bay of Pigs) in 1961, covert CIA plots to overthrow or assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a U.S. trade embargo, and for many years restrictions on U.S. citizens visiting Cuba.
On July 20, 2015, the Cuban Embassy in Washington, DC reopened after 55 years, marking the official normalization of relations between the two countries. The U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba was scheduled to reopen a month later.
For one event involving U.S. attempts to forcibly remove Fidel Castro as President of Cuba, see January 19, 1962.
For actions by the U.S. government to prevent Americans from traveling to Cuba, see August 1, 1963 (in which President Kennedy labeled the travelers “Communists”), August 26, 1963, and August 19, 1964.
President Donald Trump, however, cancelled President Obama’s changes and restored previous restrictions on U.S. – Cuba relations.
Read: Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (2000)
View a timeline on U.S. – Cuba relations, 1959-2021 here
Read: Richard Gott, Cuba: A New History (2004)
Read about the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba: Howard Jones, The Bay of Pigs (2008)