The Cuba archives: Kennedy’s disastrous invasion

Oct 16th 2026

As the 1960s began, relations between America and Cuba worsened fast. Fidel Castro, Cuba’s revolutionary leader, showed little interest in placating the American industrials who had accrued assets on the island over decades. Dwight Eisenhower’s administration imposed a partial embargo on trade with Cuba; his successor, John F. Kennedy, who took office in January 1961, would tighten the screws further. Meanwhile, Castro strengthened ties with the Soviet Union, fuelling concerns that Cuba would become a bridgehead for communism in America’s backyard. Those fears led Kennedy to back a doomed invasion of the island by a group of Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

The third part in our archive series on the Cuban revolution considers how Kennedy made his fateful decision—and what it would mean for Cuba, America and the world. The Economist’s coverage from the period shows how Castro consolidated his power, and how his ideology of fidelismo took on a Marxist-Leninist hue. It also highlights the United States’s long-standing anxiety about the extent of its influence in Latin America. The Trump administration claims America has the right to dominate the western hemisphere, as it showed by toppling Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, in January. Donald Trump’s punishing oil embargo on Cuba could also reshape America’s role in the region.

Our coverage from the early 1960s described the effects of Castro’s growing anti-Americanism. In January 1960 our correspondent in Havana explained how the revolutionary leader had found favour with many Cubans through a series of “hasty and carelessly drafted” economic edicts that slashed energy, housing and food costs. His agrarian reforms, which split up large privately owned estates, had also created work for impoverished farm labourers. But “in the long term”, we wrote, “the financial picture is dimmer”. American investment had “slowed to a trickle”. And tourism, one of Cuba’s largest industries, had “dropped off disastrously as a result of Castro’s anti-American speeches”.

Castro was determined to look beyond America for help, and soon invited Soviet officials to Havana for economic talks. The results were swift. In February 1960 the Kremlin granted Cuba a $100m loan and agreed to buy vast amounts of sugar, partly in exchange for Soviet oil. A few months later Castro brazenly demanded that American oil facilities in Cuba refine Soviet rather than Venezuelan crude. When America’s big oil firms refused, the Cuban state seized control of their refineries. Eisenhower responded by ending a sugar-trade quota that had long given Cuba a higher price for its biggest export than rates set by the global market.

The Economist reported on the clash on July 2nd 1960. The “stock of American goodwill” that the revolutionary government had previously accrued in America was now “almost entirely lost”, we observed. The regime’s “mass public trials” and “cavalier” treatment of landowners had not helped. Castro’s crackdown on dissent was intensifying and Cubans who opposed the revolutionary regime were fleeing in growing numbers to America, especially to Florida, where the diaspora remains large and politically influential to this day. (Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state, who is leading the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the Cuban regime, is a Cuban-American from the Sunshine State.)

Still, we thought the “shrill bellicosity” of the American media and some politicians who had built Castro into a “king-sized enemy” was overdone. Any American effort to bring him to heel, we thought then, would probably backfire. Today Cuba’s regime is out of ideas after decades of violence and misrule. But little more than a year after the revolution, Castro retained support among poorer Cubans, particularly in rural areas. “Economic pressure from the United States is much more likely to have the result of closing the ranks of his supporters than of teaching Dr Castro a lesson,” we wrote. A show of force would be even more unwise. Whatever the provocation from Castro, we concluded, he had “to be lived with”.

The Economist’s calls for de-escalation fell on deaf ears. On January 3rd 1961, in the final days of Eisenhower’s presidency, America cut diplomatic ties with the island nation and closed its embassy in Havana. On taking office later that month, Kennedy confirmed he would not reverse this decision; he had previously criticised the Eisenhower administration for acting too indecisively to halt the Soviet Union’s attempts to court Castro.

In fact, Eisenhower had been working on a daring plan to restore America’s sway over its neighbour by allowing the CIA to arm a brigade of Cuban exiles and launch an invasion. In February 1961 Kennedy decided to proceed with the operation. He hoped America’s involvement would be kept secret to give the anti-Castro forces greater legitimacy, should they manage to topple the regime.

Little did Kennedy know that Castro had already caught wind of America’s plans. When the group of roughly 1,500 fighters landed on April 17th at the Bay of Pigs, a swampy area on Cuba’s southern coast, they swiftly came under attack from government forces. On April 22nd The Economist reported that the American-backed brigade appeared to be outnumbered and already headed for defeat. The revolutionary army soon captured almost 1,200 of the exiles in a humiliation for the anti-Castro cause and its American backers.

In the week of the calamity The Economist published a 20-page report on Latin America. Kennedy’s coup-attempt gave it an urgent opening chapter. We argued that the United States’s policy towards its neighbours was still based on the doctrine of James Monroe, a 19th-century president who espoused the right to stop European powers from interfering in the Americas. The doctrine’s legacy had led the United States to view Castro’s revolution merely as a Soviet-backed effort to undermine its authority, rather than “an indigenous Cuban product”. Dismissing Cuba’s agency meant that “odium” would fall on the Americans whatever the outcome of the invasion, we felt, potentially causing a continental rift.

Monroe still informs American foreign policy. In its National Security Strategy, published in November 2025, the Trump administration said it would “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine” to establish American pre-eminance in the western hemisphere. It claimed this would allow America to “protect our homeland” and “deny” geopolitical competitors the chance to threaten strategic assets in nearby countries. This “Trump Corollary” to the doctrine was the basis for the administration’s campaign against Mr Maduro, whom America accuses of supporting “narco-terrorists”. It is also the foundation of its threats towards Cuba’s regime, which is a pet concern of Mr Rubio and a totem for the administration’s broader disdain towards leftist governments across the region.

For Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs was an embarrassing blunder mere months into his presidency. On April 29th 1961 The Economist described how his image as a “cautious and sure-footed young leader” was “inevitably tarnished”. Yet we also noted the Democrat had shown some political skill in spreading responsibility among not only officials in his administration but also Republican hawks. (Privately, Kennedy blamed the CIA: the president forced out the agency’s longtime director, Allen Dulles, in November 1961.) Meanwhile, Castro’s position was markedly strengthened. In May 1961 he announced to great fanfare that Cuba was officially a socialist state, solidifying its alliance with the Soviet Union. He confirmed there would be no further elections in Cuba.

The debacle was by no means the end of America’s quarrel with its neighbour. Kennedy soon approved other unsuccessful plans to assassinate Castro; the Soviet Union would seek to protect its ally from American invasion by housing nuclear weapons on the island, sparking the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. But the particular failure in 1961 is a reminder of the risks Mr Trump runs in asserting US regional dominance. More than six decades later his administration has, by accident or design, created a chance to support Cuba’s private sector, weaken the state’s sprawling military conglomerate, Gaesa, and increase America’s economic leverage. The embargo has forced the communist government to introduce sweeping reforms that, on paper at least, push the country towards a market economy. America’s challenge is to seize the opportunity for further change without repeating painful blunders. ■

Illustration: Mike McQuade