ABSTRACT
In March 1960 the Dwight Eisenhower administration committed itself to Castro’s overthrow, and the US Central Intelligence Agency began training Cuban exiles for an invasion. Soviet aid to the Cuban regime began in the mid-1960s. It included a military component, which played an important role in strengthening Cuban defense. The success of Cuban nationalism in 1959 sent shivers throughout the US foreign policy establishment and prompted a reevaluation of hemispheric conditions by political analysts, diplomats, and academics. Many Brazilian labor, peasant, and democratic reform advocates fled to nearby countries in the wake of the military takeover. Spanish military commanders attempted to pacify Cuba by establishing relocation camps for much of the rural peasantry. Even more significant than its systematization of torture, however, was the Brazilian military’s development of theories regarding internal subversion. Massive and largely spontaneous rallies against the government in 1982 convinced Argentina’s military leaders to step down.
