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Cuba: An American History
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Themes
The Consequences of US Policy on Cuba
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.
Cuba: An American History focuses on the history of Cuba and explains how that history has been shaped by US policy over the centuries. Ferrer argues that the US has historically acted like an imperial power toward the island nation and illustrates how it has exercised its power economically and politically. She identifies three overlapping stages in this relationship, each of which reinforced Cuba’s subordination and fueled its people’s resentment toward the US.
The first stage was the US’s support for Cuba’s sugar plantations and for its economy that was largely reliant on enslavement; this set the stage for American intervention on the island. Ferrer explains that when the US became an independent nation in 1776, Cuba remained a Spanish colony. However, the US quickly began to express an interest in controlling Cuba. She cites John Quincy Adams’s description of the island as “the apple of the eye of a young United States” (77), referencing his belief that Cuba would inevitably come under US control. The economies of both countries relied on the trade in enslaved people, and this tied them together. For instance, even after Britain and Spain outlawed enslavement, Cuba and the US collaborated to maintain Cuba as a hub for the trading of enslaved people. Ferrer also notes how Confederates from the US traveled to sugar plantations in Cuba after their defeat in the American Civil War; they wanted to maintain their enslavement practices on the island even after the abolition of enslavement in the US.
The second phase began in 1898 with the Spanish-American War. Under the guise of liberating Cuba from Spanish rule, the US occupied the island for three years. Even after ceding Cuba its independence in 1902, the Platt Amendment ensured that the US could intervene in Cuban affairs whenever they threatened American interests. As during the first stage of US-Cuban relations, this relationship was predicated on access to Cuban sugar exports. Ferrer writes, “[O]n the eve of World War I, [the average American was] eating 81 pounds [of sugar a year] each. Now Cuba would supply most of it” (186). Policy decisions in Cuba were thus dictated by Americans’ hankering for sugar. The US’s control over Cuba was most clearly illustrated in the years following the Revolt of the Sergeants in 1933. Ferrer notes that when Cuban President Ramón Grau pursued economic policies that threatened US investments on the island, Fulgencio Batista, who was backed by the US, intervened on its behalf and deposed Grau.
The third phase emerged with the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and was a conscious rejection of this pattern of subordination. Fidel Castro imposed a rupture from the US, leading to a total break in US-Cuba diplomatic relations and an economic embargo. Typically, this is ascribed to Castro’s preference for communism during the Cold War. However, Ferrer argues that it is more closely connected to Castro defying the US’s imperial interests on the island by nationalizing US-owned sugar plantations and other industries. She concludes that “for Cubans to assert their sovereignty as they did—in opposition to their northern neighbor’s long presumption of direct and indirect rule—was not just to press their right to self-rule. It was also fundamentally to challenge Americans’ notion of themselves as a nation” (451). Thus, Cuba forced the US to reconsider its dominance of the region by reclaiming Cuban political and economic agency.
The Historical Impacts of Enslavement and Racial Politics
Ferrer shows how Cuba, like the US, is profoundly shaped by its centuries of enslavement. From the time when Christopher Columbus claimed Cuba for Spain in 1492, Spanish settlers imported enslaved people from Africa to work on the sugar plantations on the island. Cuba abolished the trade in enslaved people in 1867, and enslavement ended in 1886. Ferrer emphasizes that nearly four centuries of enslavement had lasting impacts on the racial politics of the island, namely in the ongoing marginalization of Black Cuban people. She points out that these racialized politics are mirrored in the US, which has a similar—though not identical—history. The impacts of human trafficking, including racism and inequities, interact in distinct ways throughout the nations’ histories.
Ferrer describes how one key moment of this intersection took place during the Spanish-American War in 1898 when the US sent soldiers to Cuba to “assist” in the Cuban war of independence from Spain. At this time, the Black American community was reeling from the harsh backlash to emancipation and Reconstruction that had resulted in the rapid spread of Jim Crow laws across the US. They worried that “the intervention of the United States in Cuba […] could serve instead to spread Jim Crow segregation and racial violence to Cuba” (161). Ferrer describes how some of these concerns were indeed borne out. For instance, in Cuban military units, Black Cuban officers were forced to accept demotions in accordance with US racial dictates that only white men could be officers. This example shows how American imperialism extended into Cuba even through racial ideology.
Ferrer also explores how race was debated within Cuba. The Cuban Constitutional Convention of 1940 represented an important moment in Cuba’s racial politics since delegates openly discussed race and discrimination. Ferrer describes this as “one of the thorniest problems in Cuban history” (252). Conservative delegates insisted that “discrimination d[id] not exist in Cuba” (255-56). Their claims were overruled by the majority, and an anti-racial discrimination measure was written into the new Cuban Constitution. However, after the revolution, Fidel Castro declared that “two years of government action on the issue [of race] had successfully eliminated racial prejudice and discrimination” (393). Although many Black Cubans disagreed with this claim, they found themselves silenced by this official position. Ferrer highlights how governmental control made it difficult to advocate for racial equality.
Ferrer notes that US and Cuban racial tensions once again came to the fore during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. At that time, Castro allowed (or obligated) hundreds of thousands of Cubans to leave the island for the US. The so-called marielitos were disproportionately poorer, less educated, and more likely to be Black Cuban than earlier Cuban exiles. Their arrival in Miami created tensions within Florida’s Cuban community and in broader American society; as Ferrer writes, the marielitos “were forcibl[e] reminde[rs] that Cuba is not a white island but largely a black one” (476). Media portrayals of them as criminals reinforced racialized fears. As a result, some of the marielitos were placed in indefinite detention on US military bases and elsewhere. Ferrer’s analysis reveals how enduring racial discrimination of Cubans in both the US and Cuba are rooted in the legacies of enslavement.
The Role of Mass Movements in Shaping Historical Events
In Cuba: An American History, Ferrer commits to exploring Cuba’s history as a “people’s history.” Accordingly, she focuses on how mass movements, including popular paramilitary mobilizations and protest movements, shaped the history of Cuba. Although she describes the role of political leaders like Fidel Castro, she emphasizes that their rise was supported by waves of mass public support.
The first set of mass movements that Ferrer emphasizes took place during Cuba’s fight against Spanish imperialism and enslavement during the 19th century. The most notable of these was the origin of the Liberation Army: In 1868, the enslaver Carlos Manuel de Céspedes emancipated his enslaved people and “invited them to help ‘conquer the liberty and independence’ of Cuba” (129). Both enslaved people and free Black Cubans soon joined the cause. Ferrer describes the Liberation Army as “a popular multiracial fighting force” (126). Although they were not initially victorious, the Liberation Army eventually achieved the abolition of enslavement and then independence from Spain.
In the 1920s, a new wave of mass movements began to shape the history of Cuba. Ferrer notes that “a vibrant group of intellectual activists […] championed a new kind of ‘mass politics’ in which workers and students protested, lobbied, and organized en masse” (228). This wave of protests, exemplified by the student protest leader and communist Julio Antonio Mella, eventually led to the mass strikes and protests that brought down President Machado in 1933. As Ferrer notes, “[T]he fact that the public played so pivotal a role in forcing out the old regime is why Cubans—and historians—refer to the events of 1933 not as a coup, but as a revolution” (235). This distinction emphasizes popular agency over political maneuvering.
Ferrer emphasizes how Castro’s rise to power depended on these mass movements. She notes, for instance, that University of Havana students—mobilized in the Revolutionary Directorate to overthrow the Batista regime—became pivotal in Castro’s ascendancy. These “students had been the most effective lobbyists for the pardon that released Castro from prison” (290). As a result, Batista fled the country, and Castro came to power. Ferrer describes in detail how he was greeted by cheering crowds in Havana; she emphasizes that he had the support of a large swath of the Cuban people. This embodies Ferrer’s “people’s history” approach, showing that revolutionary change arises from persistent grassroots organization. Rather than describing Castro as a solitary hero who changed history, she describes him as one person of many—like labor unions and student collectives—who contributed to the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
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