Personal Narrative: The Cuban Missile Crisis

“Hold it!” I screeched. I rose the rifle, pressing the stock against my shoulder. His ripped uniform was deep, blood red. The patch on his shoulder flashed the marking of the Soviet Union, sworn enemies to the Fourth Reich. I gritted my teeth and narrowed my eyes. “State your name!” I demanded. His head was bowed with his hands held up in surrender. My finger stiffened against the trigger. One shot in his skull would end his pathetic life and make my country safer without another Soviet soldier.

mother, I had been forced to stay home while my parents went out to a

In February of 1964, my grandfather, along with his wife and children, fled Cuba with two suitcases and not a dime to his name. Once a successful business owner, my grandfather lost everything when Fidel Castro took power. He first fled to Mexico to stay with family, believing the turmoil in Cuba would resolve within a year. When it didn’t, my grandfather took his family to Flint, Michigan, one of the most dangerous towns in America at the time. Speaking no English and penniless, my grandparents remarkably found work, eventually earning enough money to move to Hialeah, FL eight years later. It haunts me that, 51 years later unresolved political strife still plagues Cubans. Additionally, relations between the United States and Cuba have barely improved, with America only recently reopening the Cuban embassy.

In 1962 United States intelligence discovers that the Soviet Union were building nuclear missile sites in Cuba. The american presidency believed that the soviets were protecting castro from an american invasion of Cuba. The challenge that the U.S. faced was how to force the soviets to withdraw the missiles from Cuba without starting a nuclear war. During this crisis several points will need to be discussed such as the U.S. and Soviets rationale for this crisis, the link to the “Bay of Pigs”, and the effect that the Cuban Missile Crisis had on President John F. Kennedy’s legacy as a president.

"The Korean War was a conflict between the U.S and Korea that..." My eyes felt heavy. The class had started 10 minutes ago and I was already falling asleep. It seemed like my teachers could drone on forever and it didn’t help that I was especially tired that day. I tried to force myself to stay awake but it was a losing battle. The intervals of nodding off were getting bigger and bigger until.

Gonzalez was in Ecuador and was asked to speak at a conference for the World Festival and Youth of Students he said he wasn’t too sure what his topic would be.” My topic could range anywhere from lifting of the unjust blockade on Cuba the freedom of the ‘Cuban Five’. The main reason we’re here is because we want a revolutionary progressive movement that leads to socialism,” he said. He is now a cadet in a military school and studying engineering. He is now and outspoken Castro supporter blaming the U.S. for Cuba’s economic crisis. Like Elian’s mother many people have died trying to come into the U.S. for a better life.

Have you ever been all the way to the top of the World Trade Center?Well I have and it was amazing!I was pretty scared because I'm afraid of heights,but when I got up to the top I forgot all about being scared.When I was going up in the elevator it showed a amazing virtual view of the buildings around the World Trade Center.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The words of the 35th president John F. Kennedy. During the 1960’s the Soviets were looking to have world power. So they decided to expand their power towards the America’s. while in Vietnam they always had trouble keeping independence and now communism is splitting the North and South and causing a civil war. Both the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War illustrate the United States attempt to combat communism. The Cuban Missile Crisis in the prevention of a nuclear war. Whereas the Vietnam War ultimately curtailed the spread of communism.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a harsh time during the Cold War. About 50 years ago the USA and the USSR were at each others throat for a very pointless reason. This basically started because USSR planted nuclear bombs in Cuba which was pretty close to Florida. John F. Kennedy was the president at this time and he was not to fond of that idea. October 1962, JFK was warned that the USSR had the nuclear weapons set up in Cuba ready to attack and as a result of this situation, Kennedy then also placed nuclear bombs in Cuba. The USSR found out about Kennedy’s plans and this was the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both the United States and the USSR were at each others throat, and if they were to continue the stalemate any longer, they would have started a nuclear war. According to the treaty between the US and the USSR, it basically states that although many people believe that the US did not have the right to do what they did, they actually had every right to do it. There are two main reasons why the US had the right to do this and it is because the treaty between the US and the USSR states that the US was able to and had the right to intervene and because the US did not sign the peace treaty that USSR offered them so they were able to attack.

Following the establishment of Fidel Castro’s Marxist-Leninist government on January 1, 1959, a mass influx of Cubans fled the country and made their way to the United States. Miami, Florida was the evident choice for many of those fleeing Cubans because it had a small, yet already-established population of Cubans that had resided there as political exiles of previous regimes, had fled during the wars for Cuban independence, or had escaped economic troubles (Levine & Asis, 3). Trying to settle in a new country with different customs, language, and laws is the similar challenge presented to new immigrants, and these Cubans were not the exception. The exceptional element of the Cuban immigrant experience is that within almost one generation, they were able to acquire economic stability and expand their political power in Miami (Grenier & Perez, 55). How were they able to achieve this sort of “success”? The answer lies beyond “Cuban exceptionalism” and the hard work of the immigrant group.

At the height of the Cuban War, the United States and the Soviet Union risked nuclear confrontation in an event known as the Cuban missile crisis. The Event was the closest the two countries came to a nuclear war. Even though the confrontation lasted a span of 13 days the crisis is considered one of the most fascinating events in American history due to the fact the war could have led to the destruction of the world.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a conflict caused by the U.S.S.R. setting up nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. In October of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev, under the pretext the U.S.S.R. was protecting Cuba with soviet arms, began to transport military supplies to Cuba in order to set up missile bases. On Tuesday 16 October 1962, John F. Kennedy learned of the U.S.S.R.’s actions when he was brought an unmistakable photograph from a U-2 plane flying over Cuba. The photograph depicted Soviet soldiers hurriedly and secretly assembling nuclear-armed missiles. After Kennedy assembled a small counsel to aid in his decisions called the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, ExComm for short, he proceed to examine his options.

“It was like a small town with a big jail,” observed a longtime Alcatraz staff member. The children of the prison staff’s families attended school in San Francisco and traveled by boat to the mainland.

We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked. ~ Secretary of State Dean Rusk (LaFeber, p. 422).

It all began on a warm summer Havana night in 1953. Little did my family know that in the near future they would be exiled from their home, leaving their friends and family behind in search of freedom. My grandfather was a successful entrepreneur who had the unfortunate distinction of being among the first in Cuba to have his entire fortune nationalized, seized by the newly formed communist regime. My grandfather would often dwell for hours about his past struggles of famine and poverty after being stripped from his land, prior to his departure from Cuba. He would tell me how difficult it was to find everyday necessities that were commonplace before. He would rationalize his decisions, soon coming to the determination that the only way to keep his family safe from an anti-capitalistic Castro was to escape his native