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Castro and his movement hoped that they could incite a rebellion against the Batista government. They have calculated that Cubans appeared to be sick and tired of violence and corruption. However, Batista and U.S. investors thought that the strengths of the Cuban economy predisposed people to supporting the administration. The Cuban economy was in fact doing well especially when sugar prices rose in 1957. The predominant features of the Cuban economy were its reliance on U.S. trade and investment and dependency on sugar, as it was ranked as the world's largest producer of sugar. The U.S. took half of the sugar exports of Cuba. There was indeed an interlocking of the Cuban and U.S. economies. There was also during this time a growth of U.S. direct investments under the Batista regime. The Cubans, on the other hand, grumbled about the North American element felt in their economy.

This chapter tracks the flow of hard currency reaching Cuba from the United States in order to provide evidence of the importance for the Cuban economy of activities carried out by U.S. citizens and firms. More specifically, it analyzes the presence of U.S. visitors on the island, the flow of remittances from Cuban exiles, payments to the Cuban government by American carriers for telecommunications services, and U.S. investments in foreign companies that operate in the Cuban market. It also examines U.S. food sales to Havana and other recent developments.

This chapter analyzes the evolution and results of foreign direct investment in Cuba to show the positive impact of foreign capital and know-how on the development of the Cuban economy. Public disclosure of data on the presence of foreign capital in Cuba is basically limited to statistics on the evolution of international economic associations by year, by sector, and by country. This method of reporting the level of foreign investment in the country offers no idea of the value or strategic importance of the deals involved. Toward this end this chapter makes extensive use of not easily accessible official reports along with additional information collected from a variety of sources in order to provide a quite detailed analysis of foreign business activities in Cuba and their main economic effects.

This chapter describes several different ways in which the Helms-Burton law affects prospective and existing foreign investors in Cuba. It also evaluates the impact of the legislation on Cuba's economic performance and the flow of foreign investment as well as its effectiveness in forcing overseas firms to pull out of the island. The analysis gives special attention to the sizable number of existing foreign investors on the island that have been targeted by the U.S. law. After all, the U.S. government mostly targeted foreign companies with major business activities in Cuba in an attempt to produce a serious negative impact on the Cuban economy.

Many scholars of international relations have assessed the effectiveness of sanctions by focusing on the economic adjustments introduced by the target country to cope with external pressure, neglecting the importance of growing transnational flows of capital and finance in the context of globalization. This chapter examines the success rate of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions and explores the prevailing discourses on transnational linkages at both global and local levels in order to structure the proposed case study and identify theoretical assumptions relevant to its working hypotheses. Transnational practices by non-state actors such as multinational corporations and migrants are given special attention since foreign investment and remittances have played a major role in keeping afloat the Cuban economy in the post-cold war era.

This chapter begins with Batista’s March 11, 1952, coup, followed by a discussion of the violent and repressive character of the new regime. It also traces the development of the struggle to oust Batista including the emergence of several political and armed organizations, most saliently Castro’s 26th of July Movement. It examines the Moncada attack, the Granma landing, and subsequent guerrilla war that defeated Batista’s forces.