Cuba: An American History

The leader of the Soviet Union in 1962, Nikita Khrushchev, wanted to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to retaliate against the US having missile sites installed in Turkey and Italy that were capable of striking the Soviet Union. Cuba approved of the scheme as a way to prevent another US invasion attempt. Raúl Castro traveled to the USSR in July 1962 to confirm the plans. The first ships carrying munitions from the Soviet Union to Cuba, known as Operation Anadyr, arrived in September of that year. This sparked what is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On September 4, President Kennedy made a public statement announcing knowledge of the Cuban armaments. The US military began to prepare defensive and retaliatory measures. On October 16, a US surveillance flight identified a nuclear missile installation in the small Cuban town of Santa Cruz de los Pinos. The threat of nuclear attack made the situation even more grave. Kennedy warned Khrushchev in a public speech that if the USSR launched a nuclear attack on the US, the US would retaliate in kind. Khrushchev proposed that the USSR would withdraw the missiles from Cuba if the US withdrew its missiles from Turkey. In a secret meeting between Bobby Kennedy and the Russian ambassador, it was agreed that the US would not invade Cuba if the missiles were withdrawn and that the US would withdraw missiles from Turkey in exchange.

Castro learned about the deal from Khrushchev’s public statement on October 28. He was furious that the US and USSR were negotiating the fate of Cuba without including him. In retaliation, he refused to let United Nations weapons inspectors into Cuba to validate the claims of disarmament. Finally, the US settled for surveillance flights to verify claims.

Castro did not believe Kennedy’s reassurances that the US would not attempt to invade Cuba again. Indeed, the CIA continued its attempts to assassinate Castro and otherwise covertly agitate against him. As a result, Cuba drew even closer to the USSR.

In this chapter, Ferrer describes the measures taken by the Cuban revolutionary government to shape a new, more egalitarian society. For instance, everyone would be referred to as compañero or compañera (roughly, “comrade”) rather than by formal titles in order to emphasize their equality. Revolutionary Argentinean doctor Che Guevara, who fought alongside Castro in the revolution, argued in an essay titled “Socialism and Man in Cuba” (1965) that a new society had been created in Cuba of “new men and new women” (286).

The government expanded public education and instituted a statewide literacy program. Many rural children were sent to boarding schools, and private schools were closed. The literacy project was also a “political project” meant to associate education with the revolution. Urban youth volunteers were sent to the countryside to teach literacy, to the consternation of some of their parents.

The revolutionary government also sought to get more women to enter the workforce by expanding free daycare options and providing paid maternity leave. However, traditional gender roles proved difficult to break. In 1975, the Family Code was passed, stating that men and women were to have equal duties (including in housework), and the language was even incorporated into marriage vows. The government targeted gay people as “unwanted remnants of old bourgeois decadence” and sent them to forced labor camps from 1965 to 1967 (391). The camps were closed due to international pressure.

Despite its willingness to reshape social norms, the revolutionary government was more circumspect when it came to racial relations. For instance, Castro quickly walked back a claim that the revolutionary government intended to integrate social clubs after white Cubans complained. Instead, to address racial inequality indirectly, the government focused its efforts on helping impoverished people, thus assisting the Black Cuban population since many of them struggled to make ends meet. In 1961, Castro announced that the government had “successfully eliminated racial prejudice” (393), making it difficult for Black Cubans to raise racial complaints without being charged with being anti-revolutionary.

In 1969, to address worker absenteeism and make a point about the possibilities of true communism, Castro announced the Ten Million Ton Harvest plan. The goal was to mobilize the entire country to harvest 10 million tons of sugar, the largest in the nation’s history. Schools and workplaces were shut, and everyone, including urban intellectuals and artists, were sent into the cane fields, even though they were not efficient at the work. In the end, the effort was a failure. The most sugar in Cuban history, 8.5 million tons, was harvested, but it came at a time when the price of sugar was low and at the cost of all the other work that had been put on hold. The failure highlighted the threat of underdevelopment in Cuba and was a “turning point in the history of the Cuban Revolution” (398). People’s idealism faltered.

In 1972, Cuba joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), the Soviet economic alliance, to bolster its economy.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island for the US during the revolution and its aftermath. Many landed in Miami and settled in a neighborhood that came to be known as Little Havana. The waves of immigrants had different characteristics. The first wave of Cubans to leave for the US were typically wealthy and well educated. Black Americans were frustrated that Cubans were treated as white, regardless of their skin color, even as Black Americans were still segregated. Many of these early arrivals were funded and supported indirectly by the CIA, which ran many front companies in Miami as part of the Cold War effort.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, flights between the US and Cuba were suspended. Cubans wanting to leave were forced to do so by boat. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson announced that Cubans would be granted refuge in the US. Hundreds of thousands of these “Freedom Flight migrants” left on boatlifts and, later, after many drownings, by airlifts (406). Cuba refused to give exit visas to military-aged men, so this wave of immigrants was mostly older and female. Cuban migrants were given preferential treatment under US law because the US wanted to weaken the Cuban communist regime by encouraging departures.

In 1974, anti-Castro Cubans based in Miami formed Omega-7, a paramilitary group that conducted bombings and assassinations in the US against pro-Castro Cubans. In 1978, Castro agreed to a meeting with Cubans who had settled in the US and allowed family reunification visits beginning in 1979. Hardline anti-Castro Cubans like Omega-7 objected to those who visited Cuba and even bombed the Continental Bank in Miami because its president, Bernardo Benes, was a “big proponent of dialogue” with Cuba (409). The visits made Cubans aware of the economic disparities between themselves and their wealthy US-based relatives.

On April 1, 1980, a group of Cubans broke into the Peruvian embassy and demanded asylum and transit to the US. By April 3, the number of Cubans sheltering there ballooned to 10,800. A radio personality turned car salesman named Napoleón Vilaboa proposed a boatlift; he suggested that Miami Cubans use their personal boats to pick up relatives who wished to leave from the port of Mariel. This began the Mariel Boatlift on April 21, 1980. Over the next two months, approximately 114,000 Cubans left on these boatlifts for the US. US immigration services struggled to process the influx and shipped some of the migrants to different parts of the country. The Cuban government “forced” people to leave, especially those who had criminal records or mental disabilities. This created a moral panic in the US newspapers like The New York Times, which reported that “retarded people and criminals” were being sent from Cuba (416). Some of the Cuban migrants who were being held in indefinite detention in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, staged a prison riot and broke out. Governor Bill Clinton blamed the event for his election loss that fall. Established Cuban exiles in Miami sought to distance themselves from the Cubans who arrived on the Mariel boatlifts, or marielitos, who were poorer, less educated, and more likely to be Black.

The Cuban government under Castro was committed to supporting anticolonial movements throughout the world, particularly in Africa. For instance, in 1961, Cuba sent weapons to Algeria to support the fight against the French. In 1966, Cuba hosted a Tricontinental Conference of anticolonial movements where Castro announced the creation of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to support the anticolonial effort. Although the US saw Cuba as a Soviet proxy, Cuba often intervened against Soviet wishes. Part of this intervention included civilian missions where Cuba sent aid workers, including doctors, around the world.

In 1961, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) launched a guerilla movement to overthrow the Portuguese colonial regime in Angola. Cuba allied with them and provided military and civilian support. In 1975, Portugal agreed to withdraw from Angola. However, the country was under threat from invasion by apartheid South Africa. On November 5, Cuba committed troops to fight the South Africans. Overall 36,000 Cuban troops were sent to fight with the MPLA against US-backed South Africa. Their contributions were key to the MPLA winning the war, particularly after the Cuban forces triumphed at the battle in Cuito Cuanavale against the South Africans. Cuban forces and civilian support remained in Angola until 1991. Ferrer says that the win “projected Cuba’s power and legitimacy on multiple fronts—military, political, moral” (430).

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union. In 1991, after a coup, Gorbachev was forced out, and the Soviet Union dissolved. This threated the Cuban economy, which was highly dependent on Soviet support since it joined COMECON in 1972. This change was not unexpected; in 1990, the US refused to loan the USSR money unless it ended trade subsidies with Cuba, and the USSR complied. In 1991, the US pressured the Soviet Union to remove all military support from Cuba. Castro only learned of the agreement from the public announcement.

In January 1990, Castro instituted a “special period in times of peace” (438), meaning harsh austerity measures and rationing. There were food shortages, gasoline shortages, and other hardships. The US government felt certain that the US embargo with Cuba coupled with the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that Castro’s regime in Cuba would soon fall. Instead, Castro turned to tourism and international investment to support the economy. International investment had been highly limited for decades; restrictions were loosened to attract investors from Spain, Canada, and elsewhere. In 1993, Cuba legalized the use of the US dollar to capture more of what had previously been black-market trade. It allowed people to open small businesses like bed and breakfasts.

The tourism trade created income inequality as those in the service sector—including sex workers—earned US dollars rather than Cuban pesos and therefore were wealthier. This had a racial component as well, as white Cubans had nicer homes that were better suited to the growing bed-and-breakfast economy than Black Cubans.

On August 11, 1994, Castro announced that he would not prevent “rafters” (people on rafts) from leaving the island. President Bill Clinton only allowed those who reached American beaches to stay; those who were caught at sea would be returned or held at Gitmo. In 1995, the US agreed to issue 20,000 visas for Cubans a year, and approximately 189,000 applied. Castro silenced dissenters on the island; protestors and dissidents were often imprisoned, and writers were censored.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it was thought that the US would soften its stance toward Cuba. Instead, in 1996, the US passed the Helms-Burton Act that strengthened US sanctions against Cuba. Castro passed a concomitant Law 88 in response that prohibited collaborating with the US. Ferrer argues that the reason why relations hardened is because conflict between the US and Cuba was not about communism or the Cold War but about Cuban sovereignty and American empire.

On July 31, 2006, Castro was ill and announced that his brother, Raúl, would be serving as president. The US hoped that it would gain international support for finally intervening in Cuba now that Castro was weakened, but the international community did not “join the U.S. campaign for regime change” (453). Under Raúl’s presidency, Cuba pursued some “modest” economic reforms, like liberalizing self-employment opportunities and permitting cell phones. Raúl signaled that he was open to working with the US, but his openness was ignored.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected president. Obama stated that he wanted to close Gitmo and open relations with Cuba. In 2014, the US reopened its embassy in Havana, and Americans were permitted to travel directly to the island. In March 2016, President Obama visited the island, the first sitting president to do so since Coolidge in 1928. Still, Castro was skeptical of Obama’s ability to achieve his goals of normalizing relations.

On November 25, 2016, Castro died. Two weeks earlier, Donald Trump won the US presidency. The Trump regime reversed any advancements in normalizing relations that were made during the Obama administration.

In 2019, Cuba adopted a new Constitution that permitted more foreign investment and private property. Yet the Cuban military, headed by Raúl, and its business conglomerate GAESA, expanded its ownership to control a majority of businesses. Censorship of artists and activists increased. Despite Trump tightening sanctions, the Cuban economy survived with support from Russia, Venezuela, and China. However, many ordinary Cubans suffered deprivations.

The Black Cuban sculptor Teodoro Ramos Blanco created sculptures of leading Cuban independence figures throughout the 20th century. For instance, he made sculptures of Antonio Maceo and José Martí. However, he also “loved to carve anonymous people” (468). Ferrer uses this as an analogy for history as a whole, which is made up of both individual leaders and ordinary people. She argues that it is important to consider history through the lives of ordinary people. She hopes that an understanding of Cuban history will inform future efforts to create “a new relationship between Cuba and the United States” (470).