Bay Of Pigs

9 Pages 2243 Words

al course. He announced his transformation to Marxism-Leninism and avowed his friendship with the Soviet Union (Goode, Stephen 75). These events upset the United States and there were concerns about Castro becoming too powerful. One reason was the friendship with the Soviet Union because Cuba was receiving armed forces to expand and improve its army. Cuba received 30,000 tons of arms a year, which included Soviet JS-2 51-ton tanks, SU-100 assault guns, T-34 35-ton tanks, 76-mm field guns, 85-mm field guns, and 122-mm field guns (Goode, Stephen 75&76).
Fidel Castro took great pride in the armed forces. He expanded the ground forces from 250,000 to 400,000 troops. These figures put one out of every thirty Cubans in the armed forces, compared to one out of every sixty Americans (Goode, Stephen 76). Castro and communist Cuba was generating a military establishment ten times larger than that of Batista’s. Castro put together the best army any Latin American country had ever had (Goode, Stephen 76). Analysts in Washington were frightened by this news. They were getting scared that Cuba might try to attack the United States with Soviet missiles and missile launchers. Also, they were afraid that Castro might attack other Latin American countries. Both scenarios were not welcome in the United States, and the downfall of Castro and the Cuban government became the top priority of the CIA (Goode, Stephen 76).
There were many Cubans that did not like Castro. They flocked to the United States in order to escape communism. These people were known as Cuban exiles (Goode, Stephen 76). On March 17, 1960, the CIA and President Eisenhower got together and discussed the situation going on in Cuba. They decided to arm and train these Cuban exiles for guerrilla warfare against Cuba (Goode, Stephen 76&77). In November 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president. Upon his election, he was informed of the Cuban crisis and after being presented with the fac...