Tom Hayden
Tom Hayden Photo credit: Jay Godwin / Wikimedia.

It has been 62 years since the Cuban Revolution began. Fifty-four years since the Bay of Pigs invasion. Fifty-three years since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Twenty-six years since the end of the Cold War, and 15 years since the Elian Gonzalez incident. And it is just now that we are beginning a new relationship with our neighbor 90 miles away.

President Obama shakes hands with Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela’s memorial.

President Obama shakes hands with Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela’s memorial.

A significant part of our population has come of age with absolutely no knowledge of the history of the US / Cuba relationship, what the revolution was about, or what all the hostility has been about. And yet the history of that relationship with Cuba has been a kind of Rosetta Stone for understating the bias, the mistakes, and domestic politics behind so much of American foreign policy, from the mid-20th century until today.

Few have had the access to Cuba to provide the kind of clear and present perspective that Tom Hayden has.

Tom Hayden, a leader in the student, antiwar, and civil rights protests throughout the 1960s talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman about what this new opening might mean.

Author

  • Jeff Schechtman

    Jeff Schechtman’s career spans movies, radio stations and podcasts. After spending twenty-five years in the motion picture industry as a producer and executive, he immersed himself in journalism, radio, and more recently the world of podcasts. To date he has conducted over ten-thousand interviews with authors, journalists, and thought leaders. Since March of 2015, he has conducted over 315 podcasts for WhoWhatWhy.org

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