Actually the
island, located only 90 miles from Florida, was economically a United
States colony and politically a Washington dependency, with United
States armed forces stationed in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. After
seizing power in 1959, Castro went to the United States seeking a market
for Cuba's chief export, sugar; a source of food supplies not produced
in Cuba, and the manufactures necessary for the economic and social life
of an essentially agricultural island.
Batista had emptied the Cuban treasury before he fled the island in
1959. Castro therefore needed loans to meet the immediate needs of the
Cuban economy. He also sought to continue arrangements under which the
chief market of Cuban sugar was in the United States. Castro was turned
down cold. All doors, political and economic, were closed to him. As a
revolutionary with left leanings he got the cold shoulder in New York as
well as in Washington.
Faced by economic bankruptcy and political hostility in the West, Castro
turned to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. They bought
his sugar on long term contracts; provided him with manufactures;
extended loans. Under these economic and political conditions Castro's
Cuba had no choice. Of necessity it became a part of the socialist bloc,
took over the property of Americans and other foreign investors, planned
its economy and announced socialist goals, thus making the island of
Cuba the only outpost of socialist construction in the Americas.
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