... He confronted the United States, which had been involved in Cuba's internal affairs for decades, and announced that Cuba would follow a socialist path. Castro severed Cuba's close ties with the United States and aligned Cuba with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), then the leading power among the world's communist nations. This strain on relations between the United States and Cuba continued into the 1990s. The revolution also left a legacy of opposition among exiles who left Cuba rather than live under the Castro government. More than 1 million Cubans left the island for exile in the three years following the revolution. At first, many of these exiles were professional middle-class Cubans who saw their livelihoods threatened by Castro's economic policies and objected to the political system that Castro imposed. Restrictions on political freedoms and economic hardships caused thousands of other Cubans to flee the island in the years ...

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