Cuba and the US: Five decades of feuding

When Cuba's most affluent citizens fled Fidel Castro and his leftist revolutionaries after they took power on New Year's Day 1959, they sought refuge by the thousands in southern Florida with the expectation that they'd be back home before the following Christmas.

"Next year in Havana!" was the Noche Buena toast among the exiles in 1959, 1960, 1961 and every holiday season since.

Few from the early immigration wave ever contemplated spending decades in US exile, waiting in vain for the Castro regime and the communist ideology it embraced to be toppled by the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the economic embargo that cut off Cuba-US trade for more than 50 years and the diplomatic isolation orchestrated by 11 successive US presidents.

Castro is now 88, seldom seen in public and seemingly out of power, having handed the reins of the island nation of 11 million to his 83-year-old brother, Raul, six years ago. But Wednesday's news of a bilateral commitment to ending half a century of acrimony between Washington and Havana will likely be seen by the fading revolutionary icon as vindication of his refusal to submit to the dictates of his powerful US neighbour.

The US-Cuba falling-out in 1959 was as sudden as the announcement Wednesday by President Barack Obama that it makes no sense to "keep doing the same thing we've done for over five decades and expect a different result".

Castro and his relatively small band of guerillas were a thorn in the side of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista for half a dozen years before they managed to seize the southern military stronghold of Santiago de Cuba in the last days of 1958 and lead a triumphant procession to the capital after Batista fled on New Year's Eve.