From the Cuban Revolution to the Obama Era: from strains to normalization

Abstract

Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the relations between the United States with Cuba have entered an era of antagonism and political tensions. After more than half a century of close intimacy, both countries come to be enemies inside the context of the Cold War. As a result, the United States engaged in an austere strategy of foreign policy towards Cuba, ceasing diplomatic relations and imposing a commercial embargo that would come to perpetuates itself for more than fifty years. Even with the end of the bipolar conflict the antagonist relations between the countries remained unchanged, and Cuba remained in isolation thanks to the American embargo. It was only in 2014 that the Obama administration betted on a different strategy, breaking with decades old political paradigm and promoting a rapprochement with Cuba. Still, the process of normalization was never fully complete, and evidenced how the strategy of the United States foreign policy towards Cuba depends of different domestic actors and their diverse interests. To understand this phenomenon, it’s needed to comprehend how the old strategy was formed, why was it perpetuated and which were the conditions that led to be possible to break it. This article brings a historical study of the main events that happened between Cuba and the United States since the Revolution, seeking to better explain the formation and changes of the American foreign policy strategy.