July 9: Premier Nikita Khrushchev says Soviet Union will protect Cuba militarily if the United States attacks the island. President Eisenhower warns that his government will not permit ''the establishment in the Western Hemisphere of a regime dominated by international communism.'' (11)

September: Cuba gets its first military aid from the Soviet Union.

Sept. 18: Castro arrives in New York to address the United Nations. He moves to the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where his visitors include Khrushchev, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and American Black Muslim leader Malcolm X.

Sept. 26: In his U.N. address, Castro expresses fear of U.S. aggression against Cuba.

Sept. 28: Committees for the Defense of the Revolution are created to extend the regime's security and other controls to the neighborhood level. (12)

Oct. 14: Urban Reform Law nationalizes all commercially owned real estate. Twenty U.S.-owned companies are among 380 large industrial, commercial and transportation companies seized.

Oct. 19: United States imposes partial trade embargo on Cuba, banning all U.S. exports to the island except for food and medicine.

Dec. 19: Cuba and Soviet Union issue joint communique announcing Havana's alignment with Moscow. U.S. drops the Cuban sugar quota to zero.

1961

Jan. 3 -- United States breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.

April 17-19: Cuban exiles land at the Bay of Pigs and are defeated. Castro declares the revolution to be socialist. Later, he says there will be no elections. (13)

June 7: Government seizes all private and religious schools and intensifies Marxist indoctrination.

July 26: Castro announces that all groups and political parties in Cuba must join his faction, the United Party of the Socialist Revolution. Eventually, all political activity outside the ruling party is banned.

Sept. 17: Government deports 136 Spanish priests abroad the ship Covadonga.

Dec. 2: Castro declares he is a Marxist-Leninist and has been from the beginning of the revolution.

1962

During the year, Castro's security and military forces begin a program of training leftist guerrillas from throughout Latin America that will last until the 1980s and eventually include: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico,m Uruguay and Venezuela.

Jan. 31: Organization of American States declares Marxism-Leninism incompatible with the inter-American system and suspends Cuban government from the organization.

Feb. 7: Total U.S. trade embargo against Cuba goes into effect.

March 12: Food and soap rationing begin.

July 27-31 -- Twenty Soviet ships unload 3,000-4,000 Soviet bloc technicians and large quantities of weapons at four Cuban ports.

October: Soviet missiles are discovered in Cuba. Khrushchev agrees to withdraw them after a tense face-off with the United States. In return, the United States agrees not to invade Cuba and prevent others from doing so. (14)

Dec. 24: 1,113 prisoners from the Bay of Pigs invasion arrive in Miami, exchanged for $53 million worth of medicine and food. President Kennedy later addresses Bay of Pigs veterans at Miami's Orange Bowl, vowing to return their Brigade 2506 flag in a ''free Havana.'' (15)

1963-69

October 1963: The number of Cuban exiles registered at the Cuban Refugee Center in Miami reaches 168,897.