Before the revolution, Cuba was run by the Mafia and a military dictator who routinely kidnapped rural peasants, including children, and strung them up in town squares based on the mere suspicion that they might be aiding the rebels.
Dictator Batista's government troops attacked peasant villages, burned down farmers' homes and destroyed their crops. The army executed a campaigned of bombing the countryside and evacuating whole villages. Anyone who dared to stay behind was labeled a traitor and subject to torture and execution.
All this was happening in the background while rich Americans used Cuba as their playground. The Mob ran the casinos and brothels, drawing movie stars, pop singers and rich businessmen who spent and gambled away their money, which went directly into the pockets of the American Mafia and dictator Fulgencio Batista, who personally raked in millions of dollars a year as his cut of mob activities.
In return, Batista made mobster Meyer Lansky minister of gambling for Cuba and gave him free reign of the island.
Cuba touted itself as the richest economy in the Caribbean in the 1950s, but none of that money went to the peasants, many of whom were literally starving in the countryside.
Meanwhile, notable Americans such as JFK and Sinatra were traveling to the island to take advantage of private orgies set up for them by the mob. The women and girls were provided courtesy of the Mafia, who controlled the human trafficking rings that complimented their gambling empire.
All the while, Batista was allowing Cuba to be used as a hub for international drug smuggling to move heroin into the United States.
Through narcotics trafficking alone, Cuba was more of a threat to the US under Batista than it ever was under Fidel or Raul Castro.
When the Cuban people had finally had enough, they deposed their dictator and chased him and his thugs away. The response of the US to Cuba's revolution was to enact an embargo, attempting to strangle its economy for the past 60 years.
But despite Cuba having an economy equivalent to that of New Hampshire and a population 3.2% that of the United States, little Marco Rubio is rattling the saber and trying to convince at least a few Americans that Cuba is a threat to the richest nation in the world.
Trump is now illegally blockading the island, preventing oil, food and medicine from reaching its people. The DOJ just indicted Cuba's former president Raul Castro - now 94 - on ridiculous charges and Trump - who's ego is bruised from the debacle in Iran - thinks he has finally found and "enemy" in Cuba small enough to do what he isn't able to do in Iran.