What was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962?
The Cuban Missile Crisis
La Crisis de los Misiles (la Crisis de Octubre)
14–28 October 1962. After the Bay of Pigs, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro secretly agreed to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter another invasion.
Where: The Spanish Caribbean, Cuba, United States
What happened
After the Bay of Pigs, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro secretly agreed to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter another invasion. On 14 October 1962 an American U-2 spy plane photographed the launch sites under construction. President Kennedy rejected an air strike or invasion and on 22 October announced a naval 'quarantine' of the island, a word chosen to avoid the legal meaning of blockade, and demanded the missiles' removal. For six days the world waited. Khrushchev offered on 26 October to withdraw them for a US promise not to invade Cuba, added a demand about American missiles in Turkey on the 27th, and on 28 October announced that the missiles would be dismantled; Kennedy privately agreed to remove the Turkish missiles later. Cuba, not consulted, calls it the October Crisis.
Say it
En octubre de 1962 el mundo estuvo muy cerca de una guerra nuclear por Cuba.
In October 1962 the world came very close to a nuclear war over Cuba.
Why it matters
For thirteen days the Spanish-speaking world's largest island was the centre of the Cold War, and the crisis fixed Cuba's place as a Soviet ally and a permanent US grievance for the next thirty years.
Read about it
Connected
- The Cuban Revolution (1 January 1959)
- The Cuban Revolution (1 January 1959)
- The coup of 11 September 1973 in Chile (11 September 1973–11 March 1990)
- Before: The Cuban Revolution
- After: The Venezuelan exodus
Sources
- The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962 — Office of the Historian, US Department of State