{"id":625665,"date":"2026-01-18T23:13:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T22:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cronologia-universale.it\/august-2-1964\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:13:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T22:13:52","slug":"february-16-1959","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cronologia-universale.it\/en\/february-16-1959\/","title":{"rendered":"February 16, 1959"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Castro is sworn in. On February 16, 1959, after six years of guerrilla warfare against dictator Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro is sworn in as Cuba&#8217;s prime minister. Although initially denying any communist affiliation, Castro launched a program of agrarian reform, nationalized American assets on the island, and proclaimed a Marxist government. After repelling the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, he strengthened ties with the Soviet Union, granting it missile bases on the island in 1962. The discovery of these bases by American spy planes triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis, which ended when the Soviets agreed to eliminate offensive weapons in exchange for the US&#8217;s commitment not to invade Cuba.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Castro is sworn in. On February 16, 1959, after six years of guerrilla warfare against&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vg-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>February 16, 1959 - Cronologia Universale<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cronologia-universale.it\/en\/february-16-1959\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"February 16, 1959 - Cronologia Universale\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Castro is sworn in. 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