August 30: The United States charges that the Soviet Union has installed a combat brigade in Cuba. Cuba and the Soviet Union assert that the brigade is a training group that had been stationed in Cuba since 1962.
September 3–9: The sixth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement meets in Havana.
October 1: Carter announces the establishment of a US military headquarters in Key West, Florida, and expanded military maneuvers in the Caribbean, in response to the alleged presence of a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba.
1980
March 12: Cubans begin work on a new international airport in Grenada, which becomes an object of concern for the United States.
March: Private farmers’ markets open, where individual producers or cooperatives are able sell any excess over their contracted production level.
April 21: Cuba announces that anyone wishing to leave the country can be picked up at the port of Mariel. By September 26, when the port is closed, 125,000 had left the country.
1981
January 20: The government creates the Territorial Troop Militia, composed of people who are in neither the regular or reserve forces. By 1985, it will have 1.5 million members.
February 18: US secretary of state Alexander Haig asserts that the United States has “to deal with the immediate source of the problem [in El Salvador], and that is Cuba.”
October 31: Cuba mobilizes its reserves and goes on full alert as the US Navy begins four weeks of exercises in the Caribbean.
1982
April 19: The US Treasury Department announces the reimposition of restrictions on travel to Cuba.
1983
October 25: The United States invades Grenada, captures 642 Cubans, kills 24, wounds 57, and establishes a provisional government. Of the 784 Cubans on the island, 636 had been construction workers.
1984
June 29: Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson leaves Cuba after a series of meetings that result in the release of twenty-six prisoners, further openings for the church in Cuba, and Cuba’s assent to open talks on immigration issues with the United States.
December 14: The United States and Cuba reached an immigration agreement under which Cuba would repatriate 2,746 Mariel “excludables” and the United States would permit the immigration of up to 20,000 Cubans annually.
1985
January: The government creates an Office of Religious Affairs to improve church-state relations.
March 11: The Soviet Union’s Communist Party elects Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary.
May 20: The United States initiates propaganda broadcasts to Cuba over Radio Martí. In response, Cuba suspends the five-month-old immigration agreement.
1986
February 4: The Cuban Communist Party’s Third Congress approves Fidel’s proposal to begin the “process of the rectification of errors and negative tendencies.”
February 25: Gorbachev proposes limited free-market operations under his plan for “perestroika” (restructuring).
May: The Cuban government closes the private farmers’ markets.
1988
March 23: Angolan and Cuban troops secure a major victory against South African forces in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale.
May 3: The United States, South Africa, Angola, and Cuba begin negotiations to end the Angola civil war.
November 15: The four-party talks conclude in Geneva, Switzerland, with South Africa’s acquiescence to the independence of Namibia and an agreement that Cuba and South Africa would withdraw their troops from Angola.
1989
July 13: Division General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez and Colonel Antonio (Tony) de la Guardia y Font are executed following convictions on drug-trafficking and corruption charges. Interior Minister General José Abrantes is arrested for corruption and receives a thirty-year prison term.
1990
January 28: Castro declares the onset of a “special period in a time of peace.”
July 25: Gorbachev announces that beginning on January 1, 1991, trade among members of the CMEA will be on the basis of hard currency exchanges instead of barter arrangements.
1991
March 31: The six remaining countries of the Warsaw Pact formally dissolve their alliance.
June 28: The CMEA formally disbands. More than 85 percent of Cuban trade had been within the CMEA.
September 11: Without informing Cuba, Gorbachev announces he is withdrawing all Soviet troops from Cuba and cutting off military aid.
October 10–14: The Cuban Communist Party’s Fourth Congress permits religious believers to join the Communist Party.
December 25: The Soviet Union dissolves, leaving the Russian Republic as the successor state.
1992
July 10–12: The National Assembly of People’s Power approves constitutional amendments that protect foreign investment in Cuba, permit foreign ownership of Cuban property, and impose new environmental safety regulations.
October 23: President George H. W. Bush signs the Cuban Democracy Act into law.
1993
July 26: The Cuban government legalizes the free circulation and use of US dollars, which creates a dual, peso/dollar economy.
September 9: Decree-Law 141 goes into effect allowing self-employment (cuentapropistas) in 117 new occupations. By 2005, the government will issue approximately 150,000 licenses.
December 31: Cuba’s gross domestic product for the year is 30 percent lower than in 1989. Cuba imported only 1.8 million barrels of oil in 1993, in contrast to 13 million barrels in 1991. The average caloric intake of the working population (ages fourteen to sixty-four) falls to 57 percent of the World Health Organization’s recommended level.
1994
June–August: An average of more than fifty Cubans per day attempt to cross the Florida Straits in makeshift rafts and small boats.
July 13: A Cuban coast guard vessel sinks a hijacked tugboat with illegal emigrants aboard, drowning thirty-seven people.
August 5: Between five and ten thousand people stage the largest anti-government demonstration since 1959 on Havana’s waterfront roadway, the Malecon, demanding the right to emigrate.
September 9: President Bill Clinton announces that the United States will grant twenty thousand visas annually to Cubans and send any Cubans picked up in international waters to Guantánamo Naval Base.
1995
May 2: US and Cuban officials announce the “wet foot–dry foot” immigration policy: Cuban exiles rescued at sea will be repatriated to Cuba; those at Guantánamo Naval Base will be admitted into the United States; any Cuban setting foot on US territory will be considered a political refugee and be eligible for citizenship under the Cuban Adjustment Act.
September 5: The Cuban government approves new laws allowing foreigners to own 100 percent of a business and some kinds of real estate.
1996
February 22: Several leaders of an umbrella opposition organization, Concilio Cubano, receive prison sentences or are detained for allegedly using US government funds to organize a February 24 conference of 130 Cuban groups seeking to change Cuba’s form of government.
February 24: A Cuban air force plane shoots down two Brothers to the Rescue planes in international airspace, killing the four pilots.
March 12: Clinton signs into law the “Cuban Liberty and Solidarity Act,” known as the Helms-Burton Act, codifying prior executive orders on the embargo. It potentially gives former Cuban property owners the right to sue foreign corporations in US courts as repayment for their “trafficking” with stolen property, and mandates that officers of these corporations be barred from entering the United States.
December 2: The Council of the European Union adopts a “Common Position” on trade with Cuba intended “to encourage a process of transition to pluralist democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
1997
April 12: A bomb explodes in Havana’s Hotel Meliá Cohiba. It is the first in a string of hotel bombings in which several people are wounded and an Italian tourist is killed. Luis Posada Carriles later admits to planning the hotel attacks.
October 11: The Fifth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party installs new, younger members in key leadership posts and reduces the size of the Central Committee from 225 to 150 members.
1998
January 21: Pope John Paul II arrives in Havana, marking the first papal visit to Cuba. During his five-day visit, he conducts several open-air masses, which involve hundreds of thousands of Cubans, speaks out against the US embargo, and calls for improved human rights.
September 12: Five Cuban intelligence agents are arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States. Known as the Cuban Five, they had been involved in efforts to monitor terrorist activities of anti-Cuban groups in South Florida.
October: Cuba inaugurates the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) intended for students mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean who receive full scholarships.
1999
January 5: Clinton issues an executive order allowing any US citizen to send remittances to Cubans, and authorizing the Treasury Department to issue group licenses for the purpose of educational, cultural, humanitarian, religious, journalistic, and athletic exchanges.
March 28: The Baltimore Orioles win a baseball game against Cuba’s all-star team at Havana’s Estadio Latinoamericano. The Cuban team wins a second game on May 3 at Baltimore’s Camden Yards.
November 25: Five-year-old Elián González is found at sea after his raft—which also had carried his mother—capsizes. The Justice Department permits the boy to return to Cuba with his father on June 28, 2000.
2000
October 27: Clinton signs the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, relaxing some restrictions on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba.
November 17: Panamanian authorities arrest Luis Posada Carriles and three other men with a carload of C-4 explosives and dynamite near the University of Panama where Fidel Castro was scheduled to speak.
2001
June 8: The Cuban Five are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage at the end of a trial in Miami. The leader, Gerardo Hernández, receives a sentence of two life terms.
November 4: Hurricane Michelle, the worst storm to hit Cuba in fifty years, causes the evacuation of more than 700,000 people from their homes. It leads President George W. Bush to relax some restrictions on the sale of food to Cuba.
2002
January: Prisoners of war from the US-led action in Afghanistan are housed in US facilities at the Guantánamo Naval Base. Cuba does not protest this use of the base.
May 10: Oswaldo Payá, head of the Varela Project, delivers to the Cuban National Assembly a petition signed by 11,000 Cubans calling on the legislature to hold a national referendum on amending the constitution.
May 12: Former president Jimmy Carter arrives in Havana for a five-day visit, which includes meetings with Fidel Castro and a speech at the University of Havana in which he praises Cuban advances in health and education and criticizes Cuba’s lack of political freedom and the US embargo.
June 13: Castro announces that the Cuban government is downsizing the sugar industry, closing 71 of the country’s 154 sugar mills.
2003
March 18: Cuban police arrest seventy-five people on charges of treason and accepting financial support from the United States for their activities.
June 5: In response to the March 18 arrests, the European Union announces that it will reduce high-level government contacts with Cuba, discourage member states from participating in Cuban events, and encourage member states to tighten trade sanctions.
2004
May 6: President George W. Bush’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba releases a report intended to provide strategies “that will help the Cuban people hasten the dictatorship’s end.”
June 30: The Bush administration imposes new restrictions on US study abroad programs in Cuba and educational travel and family visits to Cuba.
November 8: US dollars are taken out of circulation in Cuba and replaced by the Cuban Convertible Currency (CUC).
November 22: On a visit to Cuba, China’s President Hu Jintao signs a contract for 4,000 tons of nickel sinter annually from 2005 to 2009.
December 14: Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Fidel issue a joint declaration calling for the “Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.” The leaders also announce that Venezuela will provide oil to Cuba at drastically reduced prices, and Cuba will send doctors to Venezuela.
2005
August 30–31: The trial of Luis Posada Carriles, on charges of entering the United States illegally, opens in Texas. The judge declares a mistrial, and he is retried and acquitted in 2011.
2006
January: The US Interests Section installs a large ticker tape displaying exhortations for the Cuban people to struggle for their “freedom,” news headlines, and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. In response, the Cuban government erects 150 poles carrying large flags, effectively blocking a view of the ticker tape.
July 10: President Bush’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba second report recommends an $80 million fund “to increase support for Cuban civil society.”
July 31: As a result of major intestinal surgery, Fidel Castro “temporarily” turns over his responsibilities to six officials. Vice President Raúl Castro becomes acting president of the Council of State.
September 11–16: Cuba hosts the summit of the 118-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for the second time, and becomes the chair of the NAM for the next three years.
October 31: Cuba reports an economic growth rate in 2005 of 11.8 percent, based on measures that include estimates of the market value of free social services in Cuba and medical services exported to Venezuela and Bolivia. Cuba has deployed more than 30,000 medical personnel to South America.
2007
May 17: Mariela Castro presides over Cuba’s first celebration of International Day Against Homophobia.
July 26: Raúl Castro indicates Cuba’s willingness to improve relations with the United States.
2008
February 24: Cuba’s National Assembly elects Raúl as president and José Ramón Machado Ventura as first vice president of the Council of State.
March: Raúl lifts restrictions on the purchase of mobile phones and computers and the ability of Cubans to stay in tourist hotels and rent cars.
July: The government announces it will lease fallow land to private farmers and reduce restrictions on the free market sales of produce.
August: A new labor law allows greater salary disparities by lifting the salary ceiling on highly skilled jobs.
August–September: Hurricanes Gustav and Ike leave 200,000 Cubans homeless and destroy 25,900 metric tons of agricultural crops, including 50 percent of the sugar crop, 90 percent of the tobacco crop, and 80 percent of the plantain and banana crop.
October: The European Union restores economic aid it curtailed in 2003, including emergency hurricane recovery aid of more than $2.6 million in 2008 and $38.9 million in 2009.
December: A poll by the Institute for Public Opinion Research at Florida International University finds that 55 percent of Cuban-Americans living in Miami want an end to the US embargo.
2009
March: Cabinet Secretary Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez-Roque, former close aides to Fidel Castro, resign after admitting “errors.” Their departure, along with eight other officials, is the first major change in senior government officials since Raúl Castro’s election as president.
April: In advance of the Summit of Americas, US president Barack Obama asserts that he wants a “fresh start�
� with Cuba, lifting all restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba for Cuban-Americans.
June: Despite opposition by the United States, the Organization of American States votes to start a process to restore Cuba’s membership, which the organization suspended in 1962. Cuba responds that it has no intention to resume active membership.
August: Raúl Castro announces the creation of an Office of Comptroller General to improve fiscal discipline and fight corruption.
September: Colombian singer and Miami resident Juanes headlines a concert in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution, drawing hundreds of thousands of fans. Approval of the concert by both the US and Cuban governments signals greater receptivity to cultural exchanges.
December: Cuban authorities arrest Alan P. Gross, a USAID subcontractor, charging him with committing “acts against the integrity or territorial independence of the state” by installing sophisticated satellite communications transmitters, which may have included the capability to prevent detection of its signals for a radius of 250 miles.
2010
April: In a speech to the Congress of Young Communists, Raúl Castro asserts that the state payroll may be inflated by as many as one million workers. He declares, “The Revolution will not leave anyone helpless . . . but this does not mean that the State will be responsible for providing a job to everyone.”
May: After the intervention of Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, Raúl Castro agrees to allow the dissident group “Ladies in White,” initially composed of the wives and mothers of political prisoners, to hold regular demonstrations.
July: President Castro agrees to free 166 political prisoners, including all of those still in jail as a result of the 2003 arrest of government critics.
September: The Cuban government announces plans to cut over one million state sector jobs and relaxes restrictions on self-employment and small businesses.
November: Raúl Castro’s plans for economic reform on the island are unveiled with the distribution of the “Guidelines for the Economic and Social Policies of the Party and the Revolution,” which outline 291 proposals for reform. After widespread public discussions, a revised version is approved at the 2011 Communist Party Congress.
Cuba Libre: A 500-Year Quest for Independence Page 49