People Of Cuba example essay topic

By: Peter Ka kouros The Cuban revolution brought a lot of pain and unrest to the people of Cuba. It was a time in Cuba where many people in Cuba didn't have enough money for anything including money for food and for shelter. Before the troubles in Cuba life wasn't all that bad. People would work in the sugar fields and would receive a hefty amount of cash during the sugar harvest season. Things started to change though, work came to an end and the people would have to take low paying jobs.

Soon enough, people didn't have enough money for food and their diet would consist of bananas and sweet potatoes. Before the revolution a series of corrupt men ruled Cuba. In 1952 Fulgencio Batista took control of Cuba and did very little to improve the conditions. In the late 50's a man by the name of Fidel Castro led a revolt against Batista with Guerilla warfare and Batista left Havana, Cuba's capital. At first Castro seemed like the perfect man for the job in Cuba. Soon enough people found out that Castro was communist and he intended to make Cuba a socialist state.

The people in the government that did not want this were forced into exile by Fidel Castro. There were many causes that led up to the revolution in Cuba while under Batista's rule. The people of Cuba were unhappy with what was going on in their country. The government had everything milked that went on in the country, from parking meters all the way to drivers licenses (doc 1). Above all that the government was unfair to its own people. Batista even had control of what the people said in the media, he put a tight grip on that and made sure noone said anything out of line (doc 3).

The elite upper class took control of the sugar plantations and of most of the land in Cuba. Many Cubans were unemployed. This left the Cubans that had jobs to work for the rich and to get paid very little. Many people were even unemployed and didn't have enough money to feed their children and to survive. Education, housing, and medical care wasn't very good for the majority of the Cuban population.

There was also discrimination to Blacks and to poor people. The military patrolled the streets and picked up anyone suspected of insurrection, and would serve beatings as a punishment (doc 3). There was also a secret police used to watch every action of the people of Cuba. Besides just problems with the people there was also corruption and bribery with high government officials.

The whole government was going down the drain and there seemed to be only one answer, to get a new leader to control the very poorly run country of Cuba. Soon enough the people peoples prayers were answered and a new leader took control of Cuba through Guerilla warfare. This new leader was Fidel Castro. Castro announced that he was communist and wanted to make Cuba a socialist state. Castro did many things to change the government. The first thing he did was that he nationalized business.

This means that he put all business and industry under government control. Castro did good things as well as bad things for the government. One of the good things was that he made a lot of changes in education housing and medical care. He made an expansion of public education and lowered the countries illiteracy rate. He built public housing and gave free medical care and education for his people. He prohibited discrimination based on race, sex, or class.

The peasants finally had enough money to put food on the table and thought that land reform was the right thing to do for the country (doc 5). Castro set up large government run farms and wanted to industrialize Cuba. A bad thing that Castro did to the people was that he took away many of their basic freedoms. Cuban authorities began to treat things such as writing letters to the government, reporting on political or economic developments, speaking to international reporters, or advocating the release of political prisoners as criminal offences (doc 4). Castro did this because it made the people not able to talk about problems in the government. After Castro announced that Cuba was the U.S. became very unhappy.

It was unhappy because besides just being communist Cuba also started to become allies with other communist nations such as the Soviet Union during the cold war. Soon enough the U.S. started an embargo against Cuba. The embargo meant that there would be no trade between the U.S. and Cuba. Eisenhower the president of the U.S. at the time proposed this because he wanted to ruin the economy of Cuba (doc 2).

He thought this because so much of Cuba's imports depended on things that the U.S. produced (doc 2). In April 1961 many American trained Cubans launched an attack against their own land. They thought that this attack would start a revolt against Castro but the invasion failed. This was known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion because the American trained fighters landed on the Bay of Pigs in the Southern coast. The Cuban revolution caused a lot of mixed feelings throughout the world.

Before Castro became the leader of Cuba, the country was a mess. Poverty was very high and peoples education was very low. The government gave the people no freedom and practically controlled every aspect of everyday life. Then a ruler named Fidel Castro came along and seemed like a very good leader because of all the things he did at the beginning of his rule. Soon enough the people found out that Castro was communist and the people didn't know what to think. He wanted the rest of Latin America to revolt against their countries government and for them to become communist.

The U.S. didn't like this at all however and decided to stop all trade with Cuba. After many attempts to overturn Castro such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion the U.S. just wanted to ruin Cuba's economy by starting an embargo. Other countries joined into this embargo and helped to ruin Castro economy. To this day there is still an embargo between the U.S. other countries and Cuba.