Communism in Cuba

A communist party was formed in Cuba in 1925 but didn't become the main power of Cuba till 1959 when it was taken by force. On January 1st 1959 Fidel Castro takes over the government. Eisenhower approved of a partial economic embargo on Cuba, with the exception of food and medicine in 1960 in hopes to get Castro out of office. Just a year later the U.S Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 which created a total embargo on Cuba so the United States wouldn't trade with them at all. Castro wanted to get independence from the United States, and the Cuban government found out about a invasion that the United States was planning before it happened, so Cuban exile troops were left on the beaches and shot and killed. The USSR used Cuba to their fullest advantage after the United States had no power over it. The Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba so if needed they could accurately attack populated areas of the United States with these missiles. This is what started the Cuban missile crisis. In the end a Kennedy- Kruschev pact was signed and it guaranteed Castro to have power for thirty years, and then in 1966 the Cuban Adjustment Act was signed, which causes one and a half Cubans to flee from Cuba and into the United States. After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the economy went down more than 40% because Cuba no longer got money from the Soviet Union. During this time, Castro started a new motto of 'Socialism or Death.' Some of the people in Cuba took the risk of going in the high seas to the United States in order to get out, and others thought that socialism is death. In July of 1993 the Cuban coast guards found a group of mainly women and child trying to flee the country and the coast guards used high pressure hoses to force them into the sea to their deaths, when the women begged to not harm their children. In November of 2001 Hurricane Michelle hit Cuba and caused a lot of damage to the island, and it had destroyed sugar mills and tobacco fields, which was the main source of Cuba's income at that point. This caused even more stress on Cuba's economy, and the United State's gave Cuba aid after this hurricane for the first time in years. In 2006 Fidel Castro gave the Presidency to his brother Raul while he recovered from a surgery, but in 2008 Fidel Castro retired giving Raul the title of President of Cuba. To this day Raul is still the President of Cuba, but he recently announced that he believed that a President should only serve two terms, and therefore he will step down from being President in 2018.