Sino-Cuban Relations during the Early Years of the Castro Regime, 1959–1966

Abstract

China's relations with Cuba in the first half of the 1960s—when the Sino-Soviet split was rapidly intensifying—were important to both Beijing and Havana as well as to the world Communist movement. The Sino-Cuban relationship during this period moved from one of intimate comradeship to deterioration and finally a bitter separation. Although Fidel Castro's ties with Mao Zedong survived the immediate start of the Sino-Soviet rift, Castro's dependence on the Soviet Union ultimately doomed his courtship of China. Castro's vehemently anti-Chinese speech in March 1966 marked the end of Sino-Cuban amity. The Sino-Cuban case sheds valuable light on the tensions that bedeviled the international Communist movement after the Sino-Soviet divide flared to the surface.