The Tropas were the infantry of the Cuban Army under President Fidel Castro of Cuba. Trained soldiers armed with Soviet Union-made equipment, they fought against the Op40 Cuban exiles equipped by the CIA in the 1960s and were also sent overseas to fight in the Angolan Civil War and Ogaden War in the 1970s-1980s.
History[]
Cuban troops on parade
"Tropas" literally means "troops" in Spanish, and it refers to the infantry forces of the Cuban Army after the 1959 Cuban Revolution under Fidel Castro. The Tropas were deployed to combat guerrillas in the countryside and in the capital of Havana in the 1960s, with the United States' CIA lending support to the rebels against the communist government of Castro. Their first real combat experience was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, where they massacred Op40 Cuban exiles trained to overthrow the government. The rebels were suppressed in the "Escambray Rebellion" of 1959-1965, with 250,000 Cuban government troops being sent in to crush the rebels. The Tropas later played a role in the Congo Crisis when 100 advisors under Che Guevara were dispatched to assist the Simba Rebellion against the Congo-Leopoldville government backed by the USA and Belgium, and they later had a policy of assisting struggling Marxists in Africa in the 1970s. From 1976 to 2002, Cuban troops assisted the MPLA in the Angolan Civil War against UNITA (which caused the USA to step up their support of UNITA), in 1977 their troops supported the Derg against Somalia in the Ogaden War, and in 1961-1974 they supported Eritrea in the Eritrean War of Independence before switching their support to Ethiopia from 1974 to 1989 after the Derg's revolution.
Following the end of the Cold War in 1991, Cuba's military played almost no role in international affairs. They no longer intervened in conflicts on other continents, and on 20 July 2015 Cuba and the United States normalized relations in the "Cuban Thaw".
Armaments[]
The Tropas were equipped with cheap weaponry such as AK-47s, FN-FALs, Skorpions, KS-23s, RPDs, and AK-74us. Their soldiers were known for their green uniforms and caps that Fidel Castro commonly wore in pictures, and they were composed of people from all ethnic backgrounds, from people of Spanish descent to Afro-Caribenos. Tropas consisted of anything from militia to professional soldiers, although most of the Cuban Army during peacetime consisted of militiamen.
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