One of the forefathers of the United States Benjamin Franklin, in a letter dated on August 28 to William Franklin, argued in the need to colonize the valley of Mississippi “…to be used against Cuba or Mexico itself (…)” It was in 1805 when President Thomas Jefferson expressed interest in taking over the larger of the Antilles.

 
The peak of the interest for Cuba came in 1823, when John Quincy Adams then US Secretary of State in his instructions to its Minister in Spain defined the essence of the policy to be applied against Cuba which was later known as the “Ripe Fruit” theory.

 
Adams, who later became the sixth President of the United States referred to the Caribbean islands as “natural appendixes of the American continent (…) it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that Cuba’s annexation to our Federal Republic will be indispensable for the continuation and integrity of the Union itself”.
 

After failed attempts to purchase the island from Spain by Presidents James Polk (1848), Franklin Pierce (1853), and James Buchanan (1857), the United States instigated and supported different annexation attempts, but despite their failure, they did not desist.

It was natural for US administrations to oppose Cuban Independence efforts during the Ten Year War and that of 1895.

 
When in 1898, the Cuban Liberation Army was about to become victorious against Spanish troops, the newly born US imperialism intervened in the conflict and after three land and naval combats, imposed a military occupation of the island.
 

After the creation of the neocolonial Republic in 1902, the following Cuban governments were submitted to the interests of the US.

A little after January 1st, 1959, when the first Agrarian Reform Law and other measures in favor of the people were established, discrepancies of the US government with the Cuban Revolution began.

 
The first conflicts began in early June of 1960, when the main US companies announced its intentions of not sending more fuel to the island and prohibit the use of its refineries to process the oil that came from the Soviet Union.

After refusing to refine Soviet oil, the installations belonging to TEXACO and the Esso Standard Oil in Santiago de Cuba and Havana respectively, were nationalized.
 

A week later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the reduction of the Cuban sugar quota and rejected the purchase of 700 000 tons of product.

 
As a response, 36 sugar factories were nationalized on August 6th, of that same year in addition to the telephone and electricity companies.

As a response to the boycott carried out by US ships in delaying the dates of the pickups in Cuban ports, all banks, 105 sugar mills, 30 textile factories, 8 railway companies, 16 rice mills, 11 coffee processing plants and 6 condensed milk entities were nationalized on October 13th, 1960.

 
Then the White House prohibited shipping a large variety of merchandise to Cuba and the cancelation of new shipments destined to the island.

 
These were the preliminary measures to what would be the blockade against
Cuba, reinforced with actions of pressure in the economic, commercial and
financial order.

The US broke diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba on January 3rd,
1961.

Conditions were created for new threats and armed aggressions of all type,
including the mercenary invasion of the mercenary group Brigada 2506
through the Bay of Pigs on April 17th, 1961.