American-Cuban Relations

Walker Bragg

5/14/15

US History

I Pledge

American and Cuban Relations

For almost all of my generation we have known that we could never travel to Cuba. Relations with Cuba have almost always been rocky to say the least. Even years before the Cold War began America and Cuba struggled with each other over imperialism. These problems were amplified significantly because of the Cold War. All of these problems finally led to the complete embargo on travel and trade.

            The growing threat of communism scared American and in turn scared the president of America. At this point Dwight D. Eisenhower was the president and was looking at Cuba as a possible threat that could fall under the control of communism. During this time a man named Fidel Castro was forming a rebellion to over throw the leader of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista. Once Fidel Castro took over the Cuban capital of Havana Americas fears America’s fears were finally realized, Cuba was under control of a communist government.

Dwight D. Eisenhower decided that Castro was a threat to America and began to make plans to overthrow the new government that Castro had created. Castro angered Americans even more when he nationalized American owned companies without paying them. This caused America to place an embargo on Cuba.  When Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961 John F. Kennedy became president and also inherited the plans to try and take down Castro. This plan was called the Bay of Pigs and it was the main incident that started the hostilities between Cuba and America. This was a CIA backed invasion of Cuba by Cuban rebels. This operation went horribly wrong when the Cuban rebels were quickly defeated by Castro’s forces. The failure of the Bay of Pigs led to Fidel Castro allying himself more closely with the Soviet Union. This led to Cuba becoming a proxy for the Soviet Union and started getting weapons and supplies given to them. This alliance led to the pinnacle of the cold war the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred when an American U-2 spy plane photographed Russian missiles being made in Cuba on October 14, 1962. This sparked a global conflict that was the most volatile part of the cold war. This was the closest the Cold War ever got to becoming a nuclear war. America made negotiations with Russia to stop sending missiles to Cuba if America would stop sending missiles to turkey. Throughout this period conflict between America and Cuba worsened making America put a stricter embargo on Cuba.

Over the years following the Cuban missile crisis America has still had minor conflicts with Cuba. Several Cubans were arrested as being spies in America and were sent to jail. In Cuba several Americans were arrested and accused of being spies. The CIA has been known for trying to assassinate Castro many times over the years of his rule. None of these attempts ever came close to working.

American Cuban relations have only recently started to take a turn for the better with President Barack Obama meeting with President Raul Castro. America and Cuba have begun in recent prisoner swaps in an attempt to mend relations with each other. Obama has succeeded in passing reforms in traveling to Cuba as well as loosening some parts of the embargo put upon Cuba.

This topic has been fascinating to learn about. It holds some of the most influential parts of the Cold War and changed the affairs of the world for many generations. Researching this topic was fairly easy since it is an important and relatively current event in American history, and I was able to find several news articles on the topic. I found some videos on the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs that really helped my research and helped me better understand how these events marked history.

Fidel Castro

Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis

rebels captured by the Cuban government after the Bay of Pigs

Images taken by the U2 plane 

 

Barack Obama shaking hands with Raul Castro

Works Cited

"The Bay of Pigs Invasion Begins." History.com. A+E Networks, 2009. Web. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.history.com%2Fthis-day-in-history%2Fthe-bay-of-pigs-invasion-begins>. I used this source to fine information about the Bay of Pigs. This side had text and a video on the topic that was very helpful.

Bohn, Kevin, and Laura Koran. "A New Era in U.S.-Cuba Relations - CNNPolitics.com." CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 14 May 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/18/politics/a-new-era-in-u-s--cuba-relations/>. This CNN article had a lot of current information on modern day relations between America and Cuba. This website talked about how travel between America and Cuba was becoming more possible.

"Cuban Missile Crisis." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 10 May 2015. <http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis>. This website had a lot of information about the Cuban missile crisis. This website had text and a video on the topic.

Renwick, Danielle. "U.S.-Cuba Relations." Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, n.d. Web. 14 May 2015. <http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113>. This website was really helpful and gave a broad overview of the history of Cuba and America, as well as information about the current state of Cuban American relations.

"Timeline: US-Cuba Relations - BBC News." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2015. <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-12159943>. This site showed the long history of Cuba and any events that might have affected U.S. Cuba relations.

Cinderella Man

Walker Bragg

5/1/15

I pledge

Historical accuracy of Cinderella Man

The movie Cinderella Man is a great movie telling the fantastic rags to riches story of the fighter James J. Braddock as he struggles to take care of this family in the great depression. Some people might say that this movie is only a boxing movie but I believe that this move shows a lot of insight on what life was like living in the great depression.

It appears that the director, Ron Howard, went to great lengths to keep the historical accuracy of this film as close to real life as possible. At points this movie seemed to even go out of its way to add historical information into the film. The whole character of Mike, Braddock’s friend, was added to the movie to provide a different look at the people in the great depression. Many of the historical points in this movie were provided by Mike such as the Hooverville, working on the docks, showing how low even business men fell during the great depression, and many other emotional problems that people had in the great depression.

Much of James Braddock’s own life shown in the movie was just to give incite on what his and others life was like living in the Great Depression. Even when the movie showed us James’ life in the 1920s and how good it was. The majority of the movie was showing peoples’ lives and how they were living and how James Braddock’s boxing had affected their lives. Such things like when Braddock’s son stole the meat from the butcher and how they could not afford milk or when the man came to turn off the power and he said he had to because he really needed his job. All of these things were showing what peoples’ lives were like in the great depression.

Through most of the film, Ron Howard, stayed historically accurate, but one character was portrayed completely wrong. The character Max Bear was played out to be the evil villain in the movie who just wanted to kill people in the ring. While it is true that two of Max bears fight led to fetal head injuries, Max Bear was a bad guy as the movie portrayed him. Max Bear was known to have become very distraught and sad after those fights and strongly regretted the accident. Max even donated the money from one of his fights to the family of one of the dead fighters. Another aspect of Max bear’s character that was changed was Star of David that Max wore on his shorts. Ron Howard kept the star in the movie, but significantly reduced the size and changed the color to make it not as prominent. This was probably done as a stylistic decision or to not make the “villain” have any redeemable qualities, since Max wore the star to protest the mistreatment of Jews in Europe before World War 2.The Cinderella Man was not just a great movie but also had great historical insight into the lives of people living in the Great Depression.

http://www.boxingscene.com/-biggest-thing-cinderella-man-got-wrong--1317

http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/rails-timeline/