Cuba: An American History

At the time of the 1880 rebel settlement, Cuban revolutionary leader José Martí was living in New York City. As a journalist, organizer, writer, and translator, Martí advocated for “Latin American unity” in his landmark essay “Our America,” published in Mexico in 1891 (142). He warned that the US’s imperial expansion posed a threat to Latin America. Martí advocated for a Cuban liberation based on “racial unity,” imagining “a new kind of republic that would not be white or Black, but simply Cuban” (143). In January 1895, Martí and his supporters set sail for Cuba to launch his revolutionary effort. At a stop in Hispaniola, he wrote and published a “proclamation” of Cuban independence. He landed in Cuba along with General Máximo Gómez, a veteran of the Ten Years’ War, on April 11, 1895. He was killed in battle on May 19.

The Liberation Army continued its march across the island. People on the western part of the island were shocked to see that the rebels did not have nose rings, as reported by the Spanish authorities. Formerly enslaved people joined the rebel army in support.

In January 1896, the Spanish government appointed Valeriano Weyler as governor of Cuba. Weyler instituted a campaign of “total war” on the island to suppress the rebels. He created “reconcentration camps,” where an estimated 170,000 people died. People in the US were shocked by the images of starving people in the camps. Leading general Antonio Maceo was killed by Spanish forces on December 7, 1896, dealing a blow to the movement’s morale and leadership.

In October 1897, the Spanish government installed a new governor of Cuba. They negotiated with the rebels and agreed to give Cuba more “political and economic autonomy” (150). However, the concessions did not entirely quell the rebels.

Then, on February 15, 1898, the American battleship the USS Maine—which had been stationed in the Havana harbor to protect American possessions on the island—exploded. Ferrer says that both Spaniards and Cubans believed that the US sunk the battleship intentionally as a pretext to enter the conflict, though the US blamed Spain for the explosion. On April 20, 1898, the US declared war on Spain over the issue, setting in motion the Spanish-American War. The Teller Amendment was part of the declaration, stating that the US was not seeking to take over Cuba but only to help “pacify” it.

The Spanish-American War was seen as an opportunity for Americans recently torn apart by the Civil War to reunite against a common enemy: Spain. Theodore Roosevelt led a contingent of soldiers called the Rough Riders with his friend Leonard Wood, who would later become governor of Cuba. Black Americans were officially barred from serving, but they joined nevertheless in the hope that their service would help guarantee them rights as citizens following the rollback of civil rights after Reconstruction. These soldiers were known as Buffalo Soldiers. Racial tensions roiled the troops.

On June 22, 1898, American forces landed in Cuba. Their arrival exacerbated racial tensions on the island. Many of the Liberation Army forces were Black Cuban or people of color, but the American forces were only led by white officers. Following the arrival of American troops, elite white Cubans returned to the island to participate in the rebellion against Spain. Experienced Black military leadership was demoted or denied promotion to ensure that the forces were led by white officers, in keeping with American racial politics. In July, the US defeated Spain. In December 1898, Spain and the US signed a treaty in Paris. Spain ceded the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba to the US. On January 1, 1899, the US formally declared its occupation of Cuba.

After taking control of Cuba, the US put a number of reforms in place. American General Leonard Wood was installed as governor of Cuba. The Americans disbanded the Liberation Army and created an elite, mostly white Rural Guard in its stead. Although the Teller Agreement said that the US was not going to occupy Cuba, the official US position was that they would only leave when they felt Cubans were “up to the task of governing themselves” (170).

Wood created a large number of public schools in Cuba, and the curriculum was explicitly pro-American. Further, he arranged to have 1,273 Cuban teachers sent to Harvard University in the US in the summer of 1900 to learn important lessons like the idea that “the attainment of a self-governing republic was a very slow process” (172). Additionally, the US dismantled historic Cuban collective land holdings and codified land ownership. Wood lifted the wartime moratorium on debt collection. Thousands of Cuban small farm holdings were in debt due to the war and were forced to sell their land to large American conglomerate investors like the United Fruit Company.

In June 1900, Cuban elections were held. They were peaceful, but American authorities were disappointed that many of the elected representatives were against American occupation. Then, a constitutional convention began in November. The US wanted to ensure a clause in the Constitution that privileged relations between the US and Cuba, but the Cuban people protested. By January 1901, Cuba’s Constitution, which was largely based on the US convention, was complete. However, US Senator Orville Platt was displeased with the result. He wrote the Platt Amendment and got it passed. It stated that the US should occupy Cuba until Cuba agreed to the US’s terms of the Cuban Constitution. Cuba initially resisted the Platt Amendment but finally agreed to it in exchange for the US ending their military occupation. The Platt Amendment meant that the US could occupy Cuba whenever it felt that Cuba adopted policies that harmed the US.

On May 20, 1902, Tomás Estrada Palma was inaugurated as president of Cuba. In 1903, Palma approved a “treaty of commercial reciprocity” (186), which ensured low tariffs between Cuba and the US. This allowed Cuba to export sugar to the US while importing cheap US consumer goods and machinery to allow its economy to grow. However, much of the rural land in Cuba was owned by foreigners—mainly Americans and Spaniards—meaning that they benefited the most from the agreement. By the early 20th century, sugar refinement was highly mechanized, leading to large sugar conglomerates in Cuba worked by “cheap, seasonal labor” from Haiti and Jamaica (188). The largest mill was Chaparra, which was owned by a US Republican congressman named Robert Hawley from Texas. It was managed by a Cuban descendant of Spanish nobility, Mario García Menocal. Cheap imported finished goods from the US wiped out local Cuban small businesses and further pushed people into the sugar commodity industry. American sugar barons and their local overseers became closely entwined with the island’s government.

In 1903, a treaty granted the US a lease on Guantánamo Bay, which, to this day, is the home of Gitmo, the US naval base and detention facility.

In the early 20th century, Havana was a place where social classes mixed freely. Ferrer focuses on the example of Rénée Méndez Capote, the white daughter of a wealthy Conservative politician. The biracial man who built the house she lived in, Evaristo Estenoz, went on to become a civil rights leader in Cuba. Estenoz advocated for union rights and the rights of Black Cubans.

In 1905, President Estrada Palma was running for a second term on the Moderate Party ticket against Liberal Party leader José Miguel Gómez. The elections were troubled by accusations of voter fraud. The Cubans asked the US to intervene on the basis of the Platt Amendment, but Palma was eventually reelected. In 1906, Estenoz and other Black leaders like Quintín Bandera joined the Liberal Party to contest Palma’s government. In August 1906, a Liberal Party revolt began, and Bandera was killed in the battle. Cubans once again petitioned the US to intervene. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the US occupation of Cuba under Governor Charles Magoon. The occupation lasted until 1909.

In 1908, Evaristo Estenoz created the Partido Independiente de Color, or the Independent Party of Color (PIC). Although the Party had few wins at the polls, it continued to grow in strength into 1910. In response, Cuba passed a law written by Martín Morúa Delgado that outlawed “political parties that limited membership by race” (208). The PIC organized peaceful protests to contest the legislation. The government, army, and newspapers whipped up paranoia that the planned protests were actually cover for a plan to “kill all the whites” (208). In 1912, the PIC once again held protests for the repeal of the Morúa Law. Cuban President José Miguel Gómez, a Liberal, ordered the violent suppression of these protests. White people organized themselves into militias and shot Black Cubans on sight. US President William Howard Taft sent troops to protect US property on the island. To prove to the US that he could manage the rebellion on his own, President Gómez ordered an even more violent response. As a result, Estenoz was killed, and his body was mutilated. An estimated 3,000 to 6,000 people were killed, and only 16 of those were government forces. Eight of those 16 government troops were “Afro-Cuban soldiers murdered by their companions in arms” (213). Following these horrific events, Mario García Menocal, a sugar estate overseer, won the election and became president.

Ferrer notes that this “ugly” episode reflects how far Cuba was from Martí’s dream of a multiracial, “inclusive republic” (214). However, the dream persisted. In 1915, a contingent of Liberation Army veterans led by two Black generals traveled to the chapel of the Virgin of Charity in El Cobre, which is a symbol of multiracial harmony, as part of their petition to the Vatican “to recognize their beloved virgin as the patron saint of the Republic of Cuba” (215).

Following the end of WWI in 1918, the Cuban sugar economy was booming. However, shortly thereafter, the bubble burst. The spiraling cost of sugar allowed US investment to move in even more aggressively to take over the remaining Cuban-owned sugar estates. By 1922, two thirds of Cuban sugar production was owned by American companies. Meanwhile, the US continued to exercise their political control over the island: In 1921, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Enoch Crowder to select a new cabinet for Cuban President Alfredo Zayas in exchange for US-backed loans.

From WWI until the Great Depression in 1929, Cuba transformed into a hub of American tourism. Americans were drawn to the warm weather, the availability of alcohol during American Prohibition, and legalized gambling. Cheap transport also made it an attractive destination. Americans felt “free” in Cuba. It became a popular destination for baseball players during the off-season, especially for members of the US “Negro Leagues,” who were allowed to play in integrated stadiums in Cuba. Ferrer describes it as the “golden age of Cuban baseball” (223).

US President Calvin Coolidge paid a state visit to Cuba in 1928 and reaffirmed the principles of the Platt Amendment. However, although Coolidge praised Cuba’s democracy, the country was governed by a would-be dictator, Gerardo Machado, who sought to reform electoral laws to ensure that he could stay in office until 1935. However, there was a growing movement for reform in Cuba, which was referred to as a “nationalist awakening.” University of Havana student Julio Antonio Mella led protests at the University in 1923. In 1925, he founded the Cuban Communist Party. He and others argued for workers’ rights and against American imperialism supported by Cuban politicians. Mella was assassinated, and Ferrer says that President Machado’s “agents” were likely responsible. 

In 1929, the US stock market crashed, and Cuba slid into a depression. President Machado instituted austerity measures and resorted to harsh oppressive tactics to quell dissent, such as torture squads and secret police. Cubans protested and fought back. In August 1933, in the midst of a series of labor strikes in Havana, people marched to the Presidential Palace. Although they were held off by soldiers who killed 20 and wounded 123, Machado was forced to flee Cuba by airplane.