History of Cuba This military campaign to topple Cuba's revolutionary government is now known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion (or "La Batalla de Girón" in Cuba). The aim of the invasion was to empower existing opposition militant groups to "overthrow the Communist regime" and establish "a new government with which the United States can live in peace." The invasion was carried out by a CIA-sponsored paramilitary group of over 1,400 Cuban exiles called Brigade 2506. Arriving in Cuba by boat from Guatemala on the 15th of April, the brigade landed on the beach Playa Girón and initially overwhelmed Cuba's counter-offensive. But by
Fidel Castro model of rule, with a one-party state, government control of trade unions, suppression of civil liberties, and the absence of freedom of speech and press. In January 1961, Castro ordered Havana's U.S. Embassy to reduce its 300-member staff, suspecting that many of them were spies. The U.S. responded by ending diplomatic relations, and it increased CIA funding for exiled dissidents; these militants began attacking ships that traded with Cuba, and bombed factories, shops, and sugar mills. Both Eisenhower and his successor John F. Kennedy supported a CIA plan to aid a dissident militia, the Democratic Revolutionary Front, to invade Cuba