The Cuban government, which has so far outlasted 13 U.S. presidents, faces its gravest challenge yet. Images from The New York Times and others record nearly seven decades of political turmoil, economic crises and small moments of ordinary life.
Cuba is arguably facing its most precarious moment since the Communist revolution.
The Trump administration has imposed a blockade on foreign oil, plunging Cuba into a humanitarian emergency and threatening the government’s survival.
The two countries are now in discussions to try to resolve their standoff.
In the nearly seven decades since rebels led by Fidel Castro descended from their mountain camp to seize power, Cuba’s fortunes have been repeatedly rewritten, both from within and by forces far beyond its shores.
The triumph of the 1959 revolution gave way to Cold War tensions and the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the island — wedged between U.S. and Soviet superpower ambitions — stood at the center of a showdown that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
In the years that followed, Mr. Castro built a Soviet-aligned Communist state. Literacy and health care expanded, even as political repression deepened and economic opportunities shrank under decades of a U.S. trade embargo, sanctions and systemic mismanagement by the Cuban government.
Much of the country was left frozen in a midcentury patina, visible in the crumbling buildings of Old Havana and the aging American cars still clattering through its streets.
Mr. Castro’s death in 2016 closed one chapter but did little to change the island’s economic trajectory. Some researchers estimate that roughly 2.75 million Cubans have left the island since 2020, the majority heading to the United States.
These photographs were made across a long span of decades — a visual record of a small nation that has played an outsize role in world affairs, surviving crisis after crisis and now navigating yet another.
Late 1950s
Fidel Castro and his fellow revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the early days of their guerrilla campaign in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra mountains, a rebel stronghold.
1957
Mr. Castro, center, with his top rebel commanders, including his brother Raúl, kneeling with a rifle, at a secret base near the coast.
1958
President Fulgencio Batista, who seized power in a military coup in 1952, ruled as an authoritarian leader of Cuba aligned with U.S. interests. Mr. Castro and his rebels drove him from power on Jan. 1, 1959.
1959
Confusion in the streets of Havana on Jan 1., the day Mr. Batista fled and Mr. Castro’s sympathizers took to the streets with weapons. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, hundreds of Batista-era officials and soldiers were executed by firing squads.
1959
A protest in support of the revolution in Havana, in front of the old presidential palace.
1960
Mr. Castro with Premier Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union at the United Nations in New York. After the revolution, Cuba entered a close economic and military alliance with the Soviet Union, culminating in Moscow’s secret deployment of nuclear missiles to the island in 1962, triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1960
Anti-American protests erupted across Cuba as tensions with Washington escalated. After Cuba began importing Soviet oil and U.S.-owned refineries refused to process it, Mr. Castro seized the facilities. In retaliation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower slashed Cuban sugar imports, a move that deepened the confrontation and helped set the stage for a broader U.S. trade embargo.
1960
Maj. Juan Almeida Bosque, commander of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, addresses a rally denouncing American aggression. Though formal ties endured until January 1961, U.S. policy hardened rapidly throughout 1960, shifting from wary engagement to active efforts to isolate and undermine the Castro government.
1961
Captured members of Assault Brigade 2506 in April 1961. President John F. Kennedy sent the brigade of C.I.A.-sponsored Cuban exiles to overthrow Mr. Castro, in what became known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. The invasion failed, as Cuban forces defeated the rebels in three days. It was a major embarrassment for the Kennedy administration and strengthened Mr. Castro’s standing and his alliance with the Soviet Union.
1961
Mr. Castro, in his signature fatigues, during a visit by New York Times journalists a few months after the Bay of Pigs operation. His government called the incursion “the first military defeat of imperialism in the Americas.”
1962
A U.S. reconnaissance photograph of a Soviet medium‑range ballistic missile site near San Cristóbal, Cuba, taken in October during the missile crisis.
1962
President John F. Kennedy conferring with his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy at the White House during the buildup of military tensions with Cuba.
1962
Soviet missiles being paraded in Havana during the height of the missile crisis.
1962
Mr. Kennedy signing Proclamation 3504, an order quarantining offensive arms shipments to Cuba. The quarantine allowed the United States to stop ships without technically declaring war, pushing Mr. Khrushchev toward a negotiated withdrawal and allowing the crisis to end.
1964
Mr. Castro speaking with journalists from The Times from the passenger seat of his Oldsmobile.
1964
Downtown Havana. By 1964, virtually all major industries, banks and large farms had been nationalized. Planning was centralized, prices and wages were administratively set and Cuba was firmly oriented toward the Soviet bloc for trade as the U.S. embargo was in full effect.
1964
Mr. Castro consolidated his rule at home while promoting revolutionary causes abroad.
1972
Mr. Castro with the Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, center, in Moscow. Mr. Castro was in power from 1959 until 2008 and overlapped with seven Soviet and Russian leaders during his tenure.
1977
By the late 1970s, Cuba was a tightly controlled, Soviet‑aligned socialist state, economically dependent on Moscow but testing a cautious, short‑lived rapprochement with the United States under the Carter administration.
1980
The Mariel Boatlift was set off when thousands of Cubans stormed the Peruvian Embassy seeking asylum, prompting Mr. Castro to temporarily open the port of Mariel. In just six months, more than 125,000 Cubans fled the island by sea, a dramatic eruption of pent-up discontent. The huge, chaotic exodus created a severe political crisis for President Jimmy Carter, who struggled to manage the sudden influx of Cubans.
1980
Most boatlift refugees settled in the Miami area, which already had a large Cuban exile community, and they added energy to an already influential anti‑Castro bloc.
1994
In the 1990s, Cuban raft crossings to the United States surged as the island plunged into the “Special Period.” This era of extreme austerity was prompted by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which meant the end of the enormous subsidies and favorable trade that had sustained the Cuban economy. Facing economic free fall and severe shortages of food, fuel and electricity, thousands of Cubans set out across the Florida Straits on makeshift rafts and inner tubes, particularly during the peak of the 1994 crisis.
2000
Elián González, the survivor of a perilous Florida Straits crossing in which his mother died, cowering in a Miami closet as a federal agent moved to seize him. The armed, early-morning raid — ordered to return the little boy to his father, who lived in Cuba — became a major flashpoint in U.S.-Cuba relations.
2000
A playground in Havana. Economically, the worst of the 1990s collapse was over, but growth was uneven and fragile as Havana leaned on subsidized Venezuelan oil, foreign tourism, remittances and an emerging biotech sector.
2008
Cubans relaxed on the eve of the transfer of power from Mr. Castro to his brother, Raúl.
2008
A rationing store in Havana. After 49 years of Mr. Castro’s rule, many Cubans wondered if his brother would bring real economic liberalization.
2011
The Malecón, Havana’s waterfront promenade.
2011
Four brothers in their room where they have to share two beds with their mother.
2012
Neighbors playing dominoes on a street in Havana. Cuba was in a state of high-speed transition. By 2012, for the first time in decades, people were legally allowed to buy and sell their homes.
2012
Farmers planting potatoes near Güira de Melena, Cuba. In 2012, the government issued decrees to make farming more attractive and increase food production.
2012
A window reflects an image of Fidel Castro in a working-class Havana neighborhood.
2014
Repairing bicycle frames in Old Havana.
2014
Emerio Hijuelos at his home in the town of La Flor, outside of the city of Holguín, where his family grew and raised most of their own food.
2015
Cuban locals and international tourists walking through the Callejón de Hamel alley Havana, which features Afro-Caribbean-inspired art.
2015
Workers raising the Cuban flag in a plaza in front of the U.S. Embassy on July 30, the day it reopened in Havana, during a brief thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations under the Obama administration.
2015
A service at the Caridad del Cobre Catholic church in Havana.
2015
Havana’s colorful buildings.
2015
A barbershop in old Havana.
2016
Men watching a cockfight in the countryside near Viñales, Cuba.
2016
A taxi driver in a park in Havana.
2016
Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president in 88 years to visit Cuba, raising hopes for expanded diplomacy, trade, and people‑to‑people contact. Although the visit led to increased travel and some economic openings, many initiatives were later rolled back under the first Trump administration.
2016
Students gathering at the University of Havana, where Fidel Castro studied, during national commemorations three days after he died on Nov. 25.
2016
A procession carrying the ashes of Mr. Castro passing through the Malecón area in central Havana.
2016
Children crying as the caravan carrying Mr. Castro’s ashes passed by in Santa Clara, Cuba.
2016
People waiting for the caravan carrying Mr. Castro’s ashes along the road to Santiago de Cuba.
2019
A rooftop bar at the Casa Granda hotel in Santiago de Cuba. Under the first Trump administration, Cuba saw a series of intensified pressure tactics by the United States, such as restricting oil shipments from Venezuela and banning cruises from sailing to the island.
2021
A man was arrested during a demonstration against the government of President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The 2021 island-wide protests, the largest since the 1990s, were prompted by a shortage of food and medicine. Hundreds of protesters remain behind bars.
2022
A man at the airport in Havana preparing to leave Cuba and emigrate to the United States. Since 2020, roughly 2.75 million have left the island, according to some estimates.
2024
Collapsed buildings have become common backdrops as Cuba’s housing infrastructure is affected by the country’s economic crisis. In 2024, the Biden administration sought to ease sanctions on Cuba, but President Trump reversed those actions when he took office.
2026
A blackout in Havana in February. Power outages have worsened because of the Trump administration’s oil blockade, which has halted shipments from Venezuela, Mexico and other suppliers. Mr. Trump has brought Cuba’s already-frail economy to the brink of total collapse in recent weeks, with the apparent goal of forcing major concessions from the government.
