John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

He was born in Brooklyn in 1917 and died in Dallas in 1963.

He was the U.S. president from 1961 to 1963. He was a continuator of Eisenhower’s aggressive policy towards Cuba, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion having been launched during his presidency. During his term in office, CIA-backed subversive groups were armed, financed, trained and infiltrated into Cuba and counterrevolutionary bands which carried out acts of sabotage and murdered civilians were sponsored.

Though he admonished the CIA for its methods and failures following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy did not steer away from Washington’s policy of hostility towards Cuba and assembled a Special Group responsible for conceiving and leading anti-Castro initiatives.

The group was made up of his brother, Robert Kennedy (the attorney general), his military advisor (General Maxwell Taylor), the National Security advisor (MacGeorge Bundy), the secretary of state (Dean Rusk), Advisor Alexis Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Advisor Roswell Gilpatric, new CIA Director John McCone and Chief of Staff General Lyman L. Lemnitzer.

Kennedy sought to contain the Cuban revolution and reinvigorated social movements with the implementation of the Alliance for Progress in Latin America. What was termed a “peaceful and democratic revolution” on paper culminated in new bloodbaths. A repressive wave of military coup d’etats and direct or indirect military interventions by the United States was unleashed to contain the unfolding of numerous popular Latin American and Caribbean movements.

Meyssan, Thierry. Operation Mongoose . www.redvoltaire.org Suarez Luis. Madre América. Un siglo de vioilencia y dolor (1898-1998) (Mother America. A Century of Violence and Pain (1898 – 1998). Ed. Ciencias Sociales. La Habana, 2002.