In late June 1960, journalist Andrew St. George snapped this picture of Cuban militiamen preventing the managers of US-owned oil refineries from entering the gates of the plant. Far from chaotic, the scene exemplified the orderly plan by which Prime Minister Fidel Castro achieved a major standoff with the United States and then precipitously imposed a radicalization of economic policy in defense of Cuban national sovereignty. Fidel Castro’s orderly plan began when the Soviet Union offered to sell Cuba crude oil at a much cheaper price than US producers. After foreign-owned oil refineries on the island refused to process Soviet crude, Fidel Castro moved quickly to decree a government takeover of these properties. The move was strategic, perfectly designed to enrage US officials and thereby trigger the United States to unilaterally cancel the purchase of Cuba’s upcoming sugar harvest and suspend trade in a tidal wave of retribution. Both moves would have devastated Cuba economically. Yet, US hostility served a purpose central to further empowering Fidel Castro and supporters of an authoritarian state: it allowed the Soviet Union to save Cuba from the brink of destruction. Immediately after the US cancelled its sugar deal, the Soviets promised to purchase not only Cuba’s quota of sugar sales to the US, but the entire sugar harvest. In the wake of this back-and-forth with the Cold War’s Superpowers, Fidel Castro continued to claim victory after victory for Cuba’s sovereignty despite decades of historic domination by the United States. Between August and November 1960, he capped off these dramas with an unexpected rash of decrees, nationalizing all foreign-owned companies and then all large-scale and medium-sized businesses. Cuba was socialist in all ways —but name only—by December 1960. It was not until after the CIA launched the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 that Fidel Castro announced the government was “socialist” and formally allied with the Soviet Union. Havana province, June 1960. Andrew St. George Collection, Smathers Library, University of Florida.
