Frances Robles

They're announcing that banks will only be open by certain days.

They're going to get to a point where they don't have the gasoline to deliver food to the store.

So what are people supposed to do?

That's the big thing that people are wondering.

How long does this go on for and how bad does it get before somebody cries uncle?

I guess it comes down to the simple fact that the United States government does not want a communist regime in their backyard.

I mean, a one-party state, a centralized economy, lack of basic freedoms, jailed dissidents —

This is the antithesis of what the United States represents and what it wants in the Western Hemisphere.

Right.

And so we have to turn the clock back to 1960.

Fidel Castro wins in 1959, but it's in 1960 that he announces his intention, his sort of socialist zeal.

And he starts confiscating lots of industries.

oil refinery, the sugar industry, the telephone company, banks, never mind private property, you know, people's houses.

So that gives the United States the reason, you know, oh, oh, you're going to confiscate our oil company?

Well, watch this.

So this is where the United States government really starts its very aggressive stance against Cuba and its quest, its decades-long quest to topple this regime.

Right.

In 1961, we invaded Cuba, landing over 1,000 men at the Bay of Pigs in what was absolutely disaster for the United States.

A short time after that, the Kennedy administration made a full embargo on Cuba, and that meant cutting off any kind of ability Cuba would have to buy anything on the international market.

Yes, near total isolation.