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The significance of May 20 for Cuban-Americans
The significance of May 20 for Cuban-Americans
Dear Editor:
This writing is dedicated to the memory of Weehawken-born Mario de la
Peña, victim of the Castro’s regime in the Brothers to the Rescue 1996
air massacre (see http://www.hermanos.org/).
After Fidel and Raul Castro reached power in Cuba in 1959 under the
facade of a pro-liberal “revolution,” Hudson County’s northern
municipalities became home to a sizable community of Cuban refugees,
second only to Miami. They routinely celebrate May 20, Cuba’s
traditional Independence Day, with Bergenline parades and “pilgrimages”
to New York’s Central Valley hamlet, where Cuba’s first president, Tomás
Estrada Palma, had resided in the 1890s. He was elected president
following the Spanish-Cuban-American War and sworn in on May 20, 1902.
However, the Castros (and their un-elected hand-picked heirs)
continuously demonize his memory ever since they steered the
island-nation to anachronistic totalitarian communism.
Fortunately, Montclair State University emerita professor Margarita
García, formerly of Union City and West New York, straightens out Cuba’s
first president’s legacy in her recent book, “Before Cuba Libre: The
Making of Cuba’s First President” (2017).
Estrada Palma often passed through Jersey City’s railroad station, in
today’s Liberty State Park, on his way to/from Washington in his
lobbying efforts as leader of the then-Cubans exiles seeking
independence from Spain. He sought primarily to establish a
civilian-dominated democratic government, distinct from what had already
become a sad Ibero-American militaristic prototype, ironically
copycatted by the Castros decades later, if salt-and-peppered with
Marxist-Leninist rhetoric.
The Castros tyranny and its foreign apologists accuse Estrada Palma of
turning Cuba into a “Yankee vassal state.” Paradoxically, it was the
Castros who made Cuba subservient to the remote, failed Soviet Bloc,
thus transfiguring a progressive Caribbean country (notwithstanding its
imperfections) into a retrograde dystopia from which now a third
generation of Cubans continuously and desperately flee en masse.
What Cuba needs urgently is a veritable transformation of its closed
society into a genuinely elected, civilian-dominated government, as
envisioned by Presidente Estrada Palma. Let’s thus commemorate the 116th
anniversary of that momentous May 20.
Why May 20 is so important to Cuban Americans | Opinion
Tomas Estrada
By Roland Alum Jr.
On May 20, 1902, the independent Republic of Cuba was inaugurated with the swearing in of its first elected president, Tomas Estrada (aka Estrada Palma -- with his maternal patronymic added as per Hispanic cultural tradition).
Cuban patriots had been waging the War of Independence vs. colonial Spain since 1895, a conflict that blended into the brief Spanish-Cuban-American War in 1898, in turn giving way to the first U.S. Intervention (1898-1902), which called for elections in 1901. Estrada won the presidency after 25 years in exile, mostly in the U.S.
After rising in arms against the Spanish Empire in 1868, Estrada (1835-1908) was taken prisoner; upon his release, he moved to Honduras, where he was hired to reorganize the postal, educational and health-care services. When the Honduran military ousted the democratic government for which he worked, Estrada settled with his family in Central Valley, New York, 50 miles north of Manhattan (an hour's drive from Hudson County), directing a pioneering private school there.
In 1895, Estrada became the head of the Cuban Revolutionary Party that had been founded in New York for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Leading an extraordinary lobby pro Cuba's independence, he often passed through today's Jersey City's Liberty State Park on his train trips to/from Washington.
Hudson County is nowadays home to the second most important Cuban-American community, and May 20 is routinely remembered with celebrations, including a Bergenline Avenue parade and "pilgrimages" to Central Valley. The Castro family's Communist-styled tyranny and its pro-democratic exiled opponents share in the commemoration of most Cuban patriotic holidays, except for this one, given that the "socialist" dictatorship demonizes Estrada as "a U.S. puppet."
Professor Margarita Garcia, a Hudson County ex-resident, straightens the record of Estrada's legacy in her recent "Before 'Cuba Libre': The Making of Cuba's First President, Tomas Estrada Palma" (Outskirts Press, 2016).
One gathers from her book that among Estrada's presidential accomplishments (1902-1906) was the limiting the number of U.S. naval bases from the seven requested of the nascent republic, to one: Guantanamo. Above all, Estrada sought to establish a civilian-dominated, honest governmental system, drastically distinct to what had already become by then a nefarious Latin-American militaristic model, of which he had been a victim in Honduras.
Unfortunately, throughout Cuba's republican trajectory, the military often interfered in politics, culminating in the Castros' six-decade reign, as the island-country is tormented by an egotistic elite of "revolutionary generals" parroting passe, hate-mongering Marxist-Leninist slogans while the average Cuban suffers boundless deprivations.
Since 1959, the Castro family -- an un-elected, de facto Caribbean nepotistic dynasty -- has persistently accused Estrada of turning Cuba into a "Yankee vassal state." Paradoxically, it was the Castro brothers who made Cuba subservient to the far-away, failed Soviet Bloc, thus transfiguring a progressive trending nation into a backwards one from which its people desperately aspire to flee. Ironically, that ruling entrenched gerontocratic oligarchy now seeks the "stinking Yankee dollars" to subsidize the government's business monopolies managed by a vast network of corrupt Castro kinspeople and accomplices.
What Cuba needs above all is a regime change that would bestow power to the people and establish a democratically elected, civilian dominated open society that will respect individual freedoms and human/civil rights, as was envisioned by the republic's founding fathers, such as Presidente Tomas Estrada.
Professor Roland Alum, a Society for Applied Anthropology Fellow, is a West New York resident (ralum@pitt.edu) and an occasional Jersey Journal contributor. He dedicates this article to the memory of his father, Dr. Rolando Alum Sr. (1912-2017), who relished visiting Central Valley tour-guided by author Margarita Garcia.
Cuban Independence Day
May 20th in Cuba should be a very important day, but a bit of history is in order to understand why it is not.
The Spanish American War was not America’s finest hour. The reason for the U.S. entry into that war is still a source of considerable disagreement. The Cubans had been fighting for their independence from Spain for nearly three years before the U.S. entered the war in 1898.
A July 20 1898 article of the New York World had it well figured out, “Whatever may be decided as to the political future of Cuba it’s industrial and commercial future will be directed by American enterprise with American capital.” That is exactly what happened.
With the invasion by the U.S., the Spanish American War forced Spain to give Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and Cuba to the United States. On May 20, 1902 Cuba received their independence from the U.S.. This should have been a glorious day in the history of Cuba.
It is never that simple. When the war was over the U.S. needed some way to continue control. The Teller Amendment, in which congress gave President McKinley the authorization to go to war in the first place also required that troops leave upon Cuban independence.
This led to the Platt Amendment. The Platt Amendment put in place eight conditions on the Cuban Government before the US would withdraw.
“Cuba should make no treaty that would impair her sovereignty, she should contract no foreign debt whose interest could not be paid through ordinary revenues after defraying the current expenses of government.” It allowed for U.S. military intervention to “preserve” Cuban independence or the “maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, liberty, and property.” This made Cuba a puppet of the U.S.
American would have a large say in who sat in the seat of power in Cuba. It was American corporations that ran the industries. The good times leading up to the Wall Street Crash had Americans bringing gambling and prostitution as well.
The next two decades brought a constant struggle between the ruling, and the very wealthy, class and the peasant working class.
These struggles led to the 26th of July movement and to the new regime. That revolution has kept all but the original revolutionaries of Cuba from being free to this day.
So, May 20th is not really celebrated in Cuba, because the Cuban on the street has not really ever known freedom.
The next wave is coming; it is an interesting time in history to be watching.
If you like what you just read, please hit the green ‘Recommend’ button below so that others might stumble upon this essay. For more on Cuba, scroll down and follow Cubano Cuba.
Cuba’s Lost History
When i was a child and the communist authorities would send a volunteer worker to inquire why I had not yet joined the Pioneros or generally was not going along with the rhetoric of the Cuban Revolution, my grandmother would react in a way I found puzzling. She would show the visitor, usually a woman, to the sitting room my family used for people with whom we were not intimate, and then serve coffee in the good china (not the chipped and weathered cups used with family and friends). Then she invariably would launch into a version of the same routine.
Abuela would employ an exceedingly cordial but distant manner, with none of the comfortable banter that Cubans with bonds of friendship use with one another — though she was careful to drop here and there a well-calibrated cubanismo, to display her roots in the native soil.
A cold smile fixed on her lips, she would get around to informing our visitor that “this family has been in these parts for many generations — centuries.” Yes, she would go on, “we’ve noticed there is a Revolution going on outside. The important thing to us is that we’re a familia cubanisima. And what was it that you said about my grandson again? Oh, no, he won’t take part in that civic event Sunday morning. He will be at church, you see. He’s an altar boy there. Our family built that church, by the way, the one you saw on the way here. Yes, our name is on the first brick was laid there.”
Why on earth Abuela wanted to share these things with these visitors, I always wondered. Today, four decades on, I know why she proclaimed we were a corner stone.
We had memories of a time past, and history put things in context. From earliest childhood I was taught that my father’s family’s roots in Cuba ran deep. “Childhood” is perhaps too quaint a word for what was a daily anomaly: Outside raged the Revolution, with such foreign visitors as Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael descending on Havana to join Fidel in marches, sloganeering, and taunting counterrevolutionaries; inside our walls, laden with portraits of ancestors, angels, and saints, we had ourselves, books, and hallways that echoed of La traviata and Cavalleria rusticana, emanating from my father’s record player and prized 78-rpm record collection.
Our knowledge of the past amounted to more than just the point of pride that people take in their family histories in stable countries. History gave us a sense of permanence that assured us of our daily survival, just as oaks can withstand gale force winds because of deep tap roots.
The people of Cuba today need that permanence, that stability and sense of belonging. This may jar those who have visited Cuba and seen a deprived but proud people. Yet, as the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has written, “Most young people’s eyes are looking to the outside, because they see that they cannot make change in their country. They desire to take a plane to Miami or Europe and in ten hours change their lives completely.” Convincing them that they have a future on the island will require wholesale change: massive amounts of capital, a huge infusion of technical know-how, and restoration of the rule of law (respect for private property, for starters).But even these major fixes won’t be sufficient to secure the island’s revival. As the Cuban writer Jose Azel recently observed, “Post-Castro Cuba will need to rebuild much more than its economy; it will need to rebuild its national identity.”
That is because wiping out that identity — one that had grown organically through the centuries and had produced an enterprising and creative national character — was Job One for the Revolution; it was a necessity, even an obsession, to communists intent on imposing an alien blueprint on the people of Cuba. “Cubanism” had to be wrung out of the people’s consciousness so that the much-touted “revolutionary consciousness” could be installed in its place. Timeless habits had to be changed, ways of thinking rewired, history rewritten.
One of the myriad ways the Revolution’s henchmen and apparatchiks went about doing that was to completely reorder the way history was imparted, teaching it — when at all — through a political prism that denigrated the past and explained why it had to lead to Castro’s Marxist experiment. To ensure that Cubans could not henceforth have access to history books that did not comport to the Marxist view, Cuba’s communists resorted to the same instruments their counterparts have used everywhere from Moscow to Beijing: strict censorship. Books that laid out a different view were confiscated and taken out of circulation. The island was hermetically shut. Since 1959, Cubans have not had access to a non-Marxist version of current or historical events about the outside world or about themselves. Today most Cubans are barred from accessing the internet.
Much attention is paid to the economic failure and political repression that end up being the sine qua non of Marxism, but relatively little notice is taken of the attendant necessity to wipe out a culture and the deleterious effect this destruction continues to have on a nation even after the communists have had their guns taken away. China is slowly regaining a 5,000-year-old culture that was ruthlessly suppressed during the Cultural Revolution; Russia is working through difficulties in that arena. Regaining memory will be important for freedom itself. The reason is simple. As British historian Simon Schama puts it, “History and memory are not the antithesis of free will but the condition of it.” Memory allows humans to contrast different events and outcomes, a freedom which any dictator intent on enforcing a blueprint must eradicate. “And because history is the enemy of tyranny,” Schama notes, “oblivion is its greatest accomplice.”
To be sure, the roots for what went wrong in Cuba can also be traced to flaws in the Cuban character and identity. Given Cuba’s penurious state, the task of sifting through the historical record to have some sense for what these flaws are is urgent. Cuba, after all, wasn’t reduced to impoverished incarceration by Martians arriving on flying saucers. Something Cuban, very Cuban, allowed this situation to emerge. What character flaw was there and how might some future government go about ameliorating its effects?
In the case of Cuba, one flaw was obviously the institution of slavery and its pernicious generational impact. Another was very probably a strong class consciousness, one that was much more like Europe’s than what one finds in the U.S. Both provided some tinder for the revolutionary match to light. But we should also look at the strengths of the Cuban character that are products of the cauldron of history. They help explain Cuba’s success prior to Fidel Castro’s revolution. A review of the historical record helps us understand Cubans’ innate attachment to private property, entrepreneurial spirit, cosmopolitanism, and pursuit of individual freedom and self-government, all characteristics anathema to the Marxist ideal. Such a review would help explain why those who have tried to impose the foreign ideology of Marxism, with its initiative-killing collectivism, arbitrary and resentful division of the world between north and south, and political repression would out of necessity seek to quash a previous understanding of history. Imposing communism in Cuba required wiping the historical record and wringing Cuban-ness from each individual, especially since every element of Marxism’s New Man was diametrically opposed to the Cuban temperament. This is why Grandma acted as she did. She was registering her impatience with revolutionaries coming to her babbling about “revolutionary consciousness.” Her message was simple: Please don’t tell us about out national character; we have been refining it for centuries.
I saw the toll that the imposition of this unfamiliar ideology took on my family, how it eventually drove my grandmother insane, killed my father and tore my family asunder. The oak was shaken.
But the end of this bizarre experiment is now within sight — after a very long half-century, the displacement of hundreds of thousands, and the ruination of the once-stately Havana and the countryside. The revolutionary leaders have become gerontocrats. It is time now to peer into the historical record and understand the roots of Cuba’s character, so that Cubans themselves can start rediscovering why it is that they think a certain way and can start responding to ancient instincts once the shackles are removed. In this, America can be a model, because it especially has been well-served by a deep understanding of its history, of the Constitution, its earliest settlers and its founding generation, but also of how it has dealt with its problems, and how all have informed the American character. This has been a guarantee of its freedom and prosperity.
Recalling a national character
An anniversary upon us should spark interest in an often overlooked period of Cuban history. This year, 2011, marks half a millennium of Cuba’s existence.
In early 1511 (historians are not sure about the exact date, but they think it was in January), nearly a century before the settlement of Jamestown, a group of Spanish knights clad in heavy armor arrived on boats to conquer the island and recreate their medieval ways in the Caribbean. They couldn’t have been more unlike the Pilgrims, but like them, they sowed the seeds of success. Some have placed the spark that ignited Cuba’s identity at other times. Historian Hugh Thomas, for instance, places it at 1762, when the British invaded Havana. Others say 1898, when Spain lost to the U.S. in the Spanish American War; or 1902, when the U.S. left and the Republic began (Castro obviously believes Year Zero is 1959, when he took over). I believe, however, that the markers the conquistadors put down led directly to the formation of the Cuban character, though they are not often given credit.
Placing the genesis of the Cuban nation at this Spanish landing is not meant to deny the existence of Indian nations, some of which had inhabited the island for centuries (others had come to Cuba only a few decades before the Spanish, hopping around the West Indies, island to island, all the way from the basin of the Orinoco River). But unlike with Peru, Mexico or, say, Ireland, in Cuba the population in place before the imperial power’s arrival left relatively little trace.
The Indians bequeathed the cultivation of some tasty tubers, the enjoyment of the hammock and, much more famously, the use of tobacco. But the country with the culture, ethnicities, language, religions, customs, and common history that it has today (in short, with all the attributes that make a nation) had its moment of birth at the point of the conquistadors’ landing. As soon as these Spaniards arrived, they started putting down the pillars on which the Cuban economy, culture, and national character were built. The leaders of the conquistadors came mostly from the landless gentry of Castile and especially Andalusia in southwestern Spain — on whose dialect Cuban Spanish is based. They cut through the serpentine island in a matter of months, subduing the natives. In four years they established the seven villages from which Cuba sprang. The seven foundational villages — Baracoa, Bayamo, Santiago, Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus, Puerto Principe, and Havana — are all cities today.
A quick historical review, guided by the ghosts of abuela’s ancestors, suggests why Cuba was once a success, why Cubans still tend to thrive outside communism, and — most important of all — why the country has its present problems.
Within decades of their arrival, the conquistadors thrust Cuba into a global trading system which produced conditions for wealth creation for centuries to come and gave Cubans a cosmopolitan outlook that allowed them to think of themselves as the equals of Europeans and North Americans. The conquistadors also laid the foundations of representative government. Yes, the conquistadors could be implacable, even sadistic. One of abuela’s ancestors — one Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa, a native of Extremadura, as were Cortes, Pizarro, and many other leading conquistadors — is said by many historians to have been among the cruelest. He had a hand in founding four of the first seven towns. He also reportedly mutilated and castrated many natives — and had children with scores more (it is to one of these “cross-cultural” encounters that my children and I owe our existence).
These first settlers were infamous for self-dealing in land, introducing the roots of the corruption and the strong sense of class consciousness that marked the island for centuries. They did this through the Havana Council (El Cabildo), which they took over early on. Conquistadors of noble birth got the best land, followed by those of baser origin, followed by simple settlers who hadn’t fought the Indians and shed blood, then followed by mixed-bloods and, finally, Indians and blacks. There’s no doubt that this created a wedge the communists were able to expand and exploit centuries later.
The identification of family honor with private property by these first Cubans did, however, prove a boon to Cuba for centuries to come, assuring its economic success. In ignoring edicts from Madrid to establish commons, they avoided the near fatal mistake of Jamestown and Massachusetts, where land was at first held jointly. In the English colonies commons led to penury, as they do everywhere. Luckily for Virginia and Massachusetts, settlers switched to private holdings in time to avoid starvation. By disobeying Madrid and apportioning land among themselves, the Cuban conquistadors eluded “the tragedy of the commons.”
The primacy of private property rights was finally encoded into legislation in the first decade of the 19th century, in a law that condemned “all government intervention in the management and development of private capital.” The revolution’s early historian, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, in his 1964 work The Sugar Mill, decried the fact that with this legislation, the Cuban “sugarocracy won its greatest legal victory.” Respect for private property lasted in Cuba from Vasco to Fidel, surviving numerous corrupt regimes. Abuela’s husband, my grandfather, Luis Miguel Gonzalez, fought against the dictators Machado and Batista in the 1930s and ’40s. Sometimes he had to flee to the countryside for weeks, to escape arrest. My father Miguel Angel was likewise thrown in prison by Batista in the 1950s. But never were their houses confiscated.
And this organic Cuban attachment to one’s own patch of land explains why the strongest rejection of the revolution’s “Agrarian Reform” — the expropriation of people’s property — came from the guajiros (which is translated as “peasants” by leftists and as “ranchers” by everyone else), not from the upper classes.
On this foundation of private property, success was built. Soon the descendants of the conquistadors were planting sugarcane, using technology brought to the island by merchant Genoese families. In a matter of decades, Havana was linked to different ports throughout the world, via Seville and the Canary Islands, honing the enterprising spirit that is one of Cuba’s most enduring traits. As the new Cuban expert at the University of Pittsburgh, the bright historian Alejandro de la Fuente, has documented in Havana and the Atlantic in the 16th Century, by the early 1600s, Havana had become a prime center in the Atlantic and the Caribbean web of distribution and commerce.
As de la Fuente puts it, the key was making Havana the nodal point of the Spanish colonial fleet system (la Carrera de Indias), which gave the port city “the ability to redistribute European products among colonial markets in the circum-Caribbean area.” He continues:
Through this constant flow of vessels and commodities local merchants and residents got access to a large variety of goods. These goods came from production centers all over the world, from Amsterdam to Ceylon, and they were part of life in Havana and other Atlantic port cities. Local merchants, residents, and transients consumed and traded these commodities, shifting them from one sea route to another depending on the available information about local, regional, and distant markets and demands. (Italics added.)In making full use of this world system, Cuba was soon producing the coffee, sugar, and tobacco that fueled the democratic explosion of the 1680s in London’s coffee houses, the incubators of Britain’s Glorious Revolution (whose understanding of freedoms informed the American Revolution).
This trading spirit was in full swing at the dawn of the 1700s, and made its adherents feisty enough to battle an empire. In the 1720s, the newly installed Bourbon dynasty in Madrid, in the person of Philip V, brought statist French ways. In France itself, of course, within 60 years this statism would lead to the French Revolution and the beheadings of the French Bourbons. In Cuba, the Spanish Bourbon king forced Cuban farmers to sell their tobacco to a state monopoly. The tobacco farmers rebelled, albeit unsuccessfully. Defeated, many of abuela’s ancestors fled to western Cuba — through sheer luck happening upon Vuelta Abajo, the best land in the world for growing the weed. Soon they were selling tobacco and other wares to privateers from Holland, France, and England.
Cubans, indeed, traded with all comers, often breaking the law if they had to. Many of the legal cases in the Archivo de Indias in Seville have to do with the authorities’ taking reprisals against smugglers. Pirates were so welcome from the start of the colony that the Cuban historian Levy Marrero quotes a 1603 letter from Bishop Juan de las Cabezas to Philip III in which he laments that the island was so lost to the pirate trade that there was even a man “who has not wanted to baptize a son until a pirate could be his Godfather.” Commercial liberty had to come amid constant attempts by the crown to regulate trade, just as the conquistadors ignored Madrid’s edicts on setting aside commons land. The settlers found different means to get their way on trade. As de la Fuente wrote, one of the ways “to circumvent legal limits and prohibitions was to falsify cargo registries.”
This commercial spirit gave the island a great deal of prosperity, especially after the British takeover in 1762, which lasted only a few months but which transformed Cuba by making trade with the entire world possible. After that, Seville and the Canary Islands could no longer be the only gateways to Europe, as they had been up to that point. As the British historian Hugh Thomas writes, Cuba in the 19th century became “the richest colony in the world.”
By the mid-20th century, as the Cuban-American business historian Oscar A. Echevarria has written in Cuba’s Builders of Wealth Prior to 1959, “Cuba’s entrepreneurial and managerial class was disproportionally large.” He concludes that it was not just good soil and proximity to the U.S. that accounted for Cuba’s economic and social success, but its entrepreneurial know-how. This resolve to trade freely with one another, defying authority when the law was an ass, was alive even under the revolution. In 1960s Havana, it propelled my poor father (and countless others) to risk prison by trading in the black market, so he could secure food for our family. Throughout my childhood, this highly illegal barter system was the only sector of the Cuban economy that I saw function.
Politically, too, the conquistadors made the first strides in electoral politics, with lasting consequences, and, as it happens, another of abuela’s ancestors played a part. They were not all rogues like Vasco, but included also such pious Christian men as Manuel de Roxas, an early governor who in the 1520s made a point of complaining to the court in Madrid about the cruelty being meted out to Indians, and about the incipient licentiousness in the colony. Unsurprisingly, given de Roxas’s moral rectitude, he also secured for the fledgling Cuban colony a level of political self-determination and, yes, democracy, that Madrid ended up denying the towns and cities in the Iberian Peninsula itself. These embryonic political developments show that a desire for representative government — one quite at odds with what Cubans have now — has existed in Cuba from the very beginning and was culturally ingrained before Castro’s half-century experiment in Marxist oppression.
De Roxas’s achievements have been chronicled by a few historians, but the most comprehensive look I have seen was by the great chronicler of Cuba’s early years, the intrepid American Irene Aloha Wright, in her 1916 classic, An Early History of Havana. The key event, according to Wright, came in a communication to the Emperor Charles I in 1528, in which de Roxas requested for the fledgling Cuban settlement the same privileges for which European towns and guilds were fighting at the time. The gist of the request was that the 17-year-old colony be able to elect its own judges and legislators. After some consideration, Charles did accede to a mixed system: Some judges and legislators would be appointed by the crown — but some would be elected by the settlers in Cuba. The suffrage was limited to landowning heads of households, to be sure, but, lest we forget, this was the case in the United States and Britain as late as the 1800s. Local elections continued throughout most of the colonial period, albeit with limited suffrage.
It was only with the arrival of Governor Miguel Tacon in 1834 that Madrid began to take back the degree of autonomy that landowning Cuban families had enjoyed for three centuries. Tacon canceled local elections in 1836, expelled the archbishop of Santiago and even engaged in something as silly as attempting to delay the installation of railways in Cuba so tracks they could be laid in Spain first. Needless to say, such a power grab alienated Cubans, leading to their insurrection, and eventually to the Spanish-American War and the defeat of Spain in 1898.
The Cubans colonials who likewise had economic and some political freedoms saw themselves as very much a part of Spain and the rest of Europe, and they felt their lives were interwoven with events on the other side of the ocean. A copy in my possession of the 1817 will and testament of Matias Jose Duarte, the brother of abuela’s great-great grandfather, shows that among the legacies he left to churches, relatives, and slaves, he also worried about Napoleon’s victim’s in Spain and left 1,000 pesos “to Europe so it can distributed at the rate [of] 10 pesos for each poor person who lost a husband or a father in the wars that they have had with France.” It is important to note that Matias Jose Duarte was a fifth-generation Cuban. It is also noteworthy that this will was written seven years after Mexico had declared its independence from Spain, and while Simon Bolivar, Jose de San Martin, and their peers were fighting to liberate the South American continent from Spain. Until Tacon, the majority of white Cubans had wanted no part of this independence.
To be sure, the privileges of Cuba’s cities and towns in the colonial period were not as far-reaching as the rights that American colonists in Virginia, Massachusetts, and the Carolinas enjoyed in the 1700s. It is important, however, to lay out a predicate for representative government in Cuba.
And free elections were part of Cuba all the way to the 1902–1959 republic. Abuela’s father was elected in free elections of 1902 to the first Havana Cabildo in the republic, and my grandfather ran for the Constitutional Assembly in 1940 (he lost). Much is made of dictators Machado and Batista in the 1930s and 1950s, and rightly so, but there were more democratically elected presidents than dictators during those six decades.
In the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, economic freedom was reserved for the free, white or black. Excluded were the island’s slaves, until slavery was abolished in the 1880s, and anyone who goes looking for the roots of Cuba’s present-day ills must stop and consider slavery’s pernicious and lasting influence. And how could it be otherwise? Here in the United States, the New England Yankee John Adams worried about the colonies in the American South and wondered how people who deny liberty to others could ever obtain it for themselves. Slavery existed in Cuba from 1511. Because it associated personal degradation with one race, it led directly to racism. It runs as deeply in the Cuba of today as it ever has, in ways that the revolution’s starry-eyed supporters often fail to grasp. One of its most lasting and corrosive political impacts may have been a toleration of subjugation, which was accepted by all races, the subjugated and the subjugators. Cuba having had slavery till the 1880s, the folk memory of an institution that lasted for centuries can reach across the generations.
But it is important to remember that racism did not prevent free blacks from having private property. There are records in the Archivo de Indias in Seville of blacks and mixed race individuals receiving grants of land from the Havana Cabildo as early as the 1560s. A history of slavery and racism also does not condemn a society (if it did, the whole world would be doomed). During the 20th century, Cuba was so prosperous that it attracted hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe. Four of these 20th century European immigrants were my mother’s grandparents. They came penniless to Cuba. Yet one generation later, my mother was graduating law school.
The 20th century republic succeeded because it was a direct descendant of the colonial center of commerce incubated in the 1500s. Cubans’ sense of enterprise was sharpened over the centuries; it became part of the national character. Cubans were ferociously competitive, and international competition sharpened on the island global managerial best practices. United Nations statistics for 1959, the year Castro took over, bear this out. In infant mortality, Cuba’s 32 deaths per 1,000 live births was well ahead of Japan, West Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, France, Italy, and Spain (40, 36, 39, 33, 34, 50, and 53 respectively) among other nations. In terms of calories per day, Cuba was ahead all of Latin America except beef producers Argentina and Uruguay. In cars per 1,000 inhabitants, Cuba’s 24 was ahead of everyone in Latin America expect oil-producing Venezuela (27). And so on. In most vital statistics, Cuba was on a par with Mediterranean countries and Southern U.S. states.
One reason for Cuba’s economic and (to a lesser degree) political success in the 1902–59 republican period was the beneficial impact of the 1899–1902 U.S. occupation, and the strong role the U.S. continued to play in the island during the first half of the twentieth century. That is, of course, not something that you will find in the history books read in Cuba today. But Cuba in 1898 was prostrate after three decades of war with Spain, and the U.S. occupation not only made it possible to have a transition to an elected government, but also considerably fixed other ills such as public sanitation. One of the first things Governor Leonard Wood did was set up a sanitation commission, which was led by abuela’s father, the surgeon and sociologist Ramon Maria Alfonso.
Reclaiming a history
Discussion of the Cuban national character often emphasizes other aspects than I have — individualism being a positive one, informality one less so — and places the historical formative period of national character during the independence wars fought against Spain in 1868–78 and 1895–98. Castro’s Revolution emphasizes these wars of independence in its teachings of history, and reinterprets them as proto-Marxist events.
The wars of independence have been purposely left out of my treatment, which has concentrated on the roots of such Cuban characteristics as attachment to private property, an entrepreneurial spirit, an international cosmopolitanism, and the pursuit of freedom (the latter of which was the title of Hugh Thomas’s classic work on Cuban history). I posit that the seeds for these traits were laid in those early years of the conquest. My use of personal events, from my life and my family’s past, are meant simply to demonstrate the always implicit contract between the dead, the present generation, and those to still be born.
Today, the overwhelming majority of Cubans have been denied any of this history. A global trading system and wealth creation not being part of the socialist grand plan, virtually all pre-revolutionary history has been denigrated in Castro’s Cuba. Castroite ideologists especially spurn what they call the “pseudo-republic” of the 20th century — the state that was the land of promise to my four Spanish maternal great grandparents. Yet, it should be clear to all that the revolution’s victory in 1959 reversed the flow of humanity; after that event people stopped coming in and began to exit en masse. To think that Europeans today would immigrate to Cuba is risible, whereas I, like hundreds of thousands of other sons and daughters of Cuba, have had to go elsewhere to make a good life and find happiness.
Castro knew he had to smash Cuba’s old identity, smear its old pride, and degrade its traditions in order to create the “new man” called for in the bizarre 19th century collectivist cult — Marxism — that he forced the poor Cubans to embrace. The British writer Theodore Dalrymple even theorizes that Castro needed to wipe out the physical evidence of the previous culture, and that that is why the Revolution purposely destroyed Havana and its once stately architecture and left it to crumble. Dalrymple is not optimistic about what it will take to rebuild Havana, that symbol of Cuban identity:
The terrible damage that Castro has done will long outlive him and his regime. Untold billions of capital will be needed to restore Havana; legal problems about ownership and rights of residence will be costly, bitter, and interminable; and the need to balance commercial, social, and aesthetic considerations in the reconstruction of Cuba will require the highest regulatory wisdom. In the meantime, Havana stands as a dreadful warning to the world — if one were any longer needed — against the dangers of monomaniacs who believe themselves to be in possession of a theory that explains everything, including the future.In that way — and other ways — Castro has been just another banal dictator. Every tyrant from Hitler to Pol Pot has tried to restart the clock in order to put in place their plans. And like all of them, Pol Pot and Hitler included, Castro has found useful idiots outside to parrot his denigration of his country’s previous history.
The historian Manuel Moreno Fraginals’s own trajectory brings to light the revolution’s distaste for history. He started out as a darling to some, and Che Guevara even praised The Sugar Mill for its “rigorous Marxist analytic method.” But the revolution’s men quickly decided that Fraginals was writing too much history. As the American Historical Association puts it in its entry on Fraginals, The Sugar Mill “was not sympathetically received by Cuban official historians, who claimed at the time that Marxist historians should apply themselves to reinterpret the past, not to reconstruct it using new evidence and methodology.” Poor Fraginals fell into disfavor quickly; the Revolutionary government in fact never allowed him to teach at the University of Havana. He ended up dying in exile in Miami in 2001.
To convince young Cubans today that there are better goals than becoming a foreigner, as a wry Havana joke puts it, Cubans will need to look at the whole vista of the past 500 years, and put the past half century in that context.
That process can start today, up to a point, by adding more cultural and historical content to American transmissions to Cuba. Radio Martí, despite its many problems, has a following on the island and could certainly be improved. The concept is good even if the implementation may sometimes fall short. But the real heavy lifting will need to come after the Castros have passed from the scene and a real transition to freedom is under way. The transitional administration should give high priority to celebrate Cuba’s heritage, all of it, with honesty.
History and culture, from Vasco to Castro, needs to be taught again. Cuba’s zarzuela, “Cecilia Valdes,” needs to play at Havana’s main theater again. This cultural recapturing is a process that was undertaken in Eastern Europe after it regained its freedom. Not for nothing was the first president of a free Czech Republic a novelist. America will unquestionably play a role in post-Castro Cuba. The only question is whether America will be well prepared to accept this responsibility or will be dragged unwillingly into it. It will be the latter only if the U.S. government accepts that it is a force for good in the world — that it already has been that in Cuba — and has a deep understanding of the challenge at hand.
I have a cousin who lives in Europe. He and I have led parallel lives. I left Cuba almost 40 years ago, when I was twelve. He left seven years ago in his mid-30s, and knows little of Cuba’s history, except the skewed version the revolution taught him. Of Vasco, the centuries in between, and the presidents of the republic, he knows next to nothing and, honestly, doesn’t much care. He also thinks it pretty bizarre that I like guajiro music from the countryside. He would not go anywhere near it, and prefers Lady Gaga. I get him. After being force-fed Cuba as “revolutionary consciousness” for decades, he wants to turn the page.
But if Cuba is to have a shot at being as successful as it was before, the Cubans who will make a go of the country need to know what came before them. They need to understand what abuela intuited.
My grandmother, that great transmitter of culture, knew what she was doing . Her father, husband, brother, and many of her ancestors were all involved in the making of Cuba to one degree or another. My grandmother’s whole life had been about history, the present and, through me, the future. Her attachment to Cuba and its survival was personal.
And that’s where national identity and character must be felt — at the personal level. Without the romanticism of culture, life becomes purely transactional and not worth living. And only by transmitting to present-day Cubans the importance of the contract between the generations that are dead and those not yet born can Cuba hope to survive.
Michael Gonzalez is vice president of communications at The Heritage Foundation.
Details of Brutal First Slave Voyages Discovered
In August 1518, King Charles I authorized Spain to ship enslaved people directly from Africa to the Americas. The edict marked a new phase in the transatlantic slave trade in which the numbers of enslaved people brought directly to the Americas—without going through a European port first—rose dramatically.
Researchers have uncovered new details about those first direct voyages.
King of Spain Charles as he grants a license to sell Africans as slaves in Spain's American colonies, 1518.
Interim Archives/Getty Images
Historians David Wheat and Marc Eagle have identified about 18 direct voyages from Africa to the Americas in the first several years after Charles I authorized these trips—the earliest such voyages we know about.
The transatlantic slave trade didn’t start in 1518, but it did increase after King Charles authorized direct Africa-to-Caribbean trips that year. In the 1510s and ‘20s, ships sailing from Spain to the Caribbean settlements of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola might contain as few as one or two enslaved people, or as many as 30 or 40.
“By the mid 1520s, we’re seeing 200—sometimes as many as almost 300—captives being brought on the same slave ship [from Africa],” says Wheat, a history professor at Michigan State University. It’s difficult to trace what parts of Africa the captives on board came from, since many were captured on the mainland and shipped to island ports off the coast before Spanish boats took them to the Americas.
“This is also some of our earliest examples of enslaved people throwing themselves overboard, people dying of malnutrition,” Wheat adds. “Some of the same really horrible and violent and brutal aspects of the slave trade that was seen much later on, we’re seeing them already in these voyages from São Tomé in the 1520s.”
São Tomé was a colonial island port off the west coast of Africa that Portugal established in the mid-1400s. Before 1518, Portugal forced enslaved Africans to work on islands in the eastern Atlantic. In addition, Spanish ships brought captive Africans to the Iberian Peninsula, from which they sent some to the Caribbean.
The crowded deck of a slave ship.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Spain may have increased the number of enslaved Africans it brought to the Caribbean after 1518 because the Native people it had previously enslaved there were dying from European disease and colonial violence. Though it’s not clear how many captive Africans arrived through the 1520s, Wheat estimates the number is in the thousands.
We don’t have many firsthand accounts of Africans in the Americas during this period, but one exception is Rodrigo Lopez, a former enslaved man in Africa’s Cape Verde islands freed in a slaveholder’s will. After he became a free man, he was captured and sent to the Americas, where he was re-enslaved in the late 1520s. Lopez, who could read and write Latin, protested his re-enslavement and won back his freedom in the early ’30s.
“It’s an unusual case because we have not only a person who was of very high status among enslaved people in the Cape Verde islands,” Wheat says, but also because “he sues for his freedom and he writes about it, and that document still survives.” Lopez explained that one of his master’s former employees kidnapped him in the night and sold him into slavery. This was illegal, Lopez argued, because he was free man now.
Most of the enslaved men, women and children in the Caribbean didn’t have the option of suing for their freedom. Still, there were some free people of color in Spanish-American colonies, because race wasn’t yet as closely tied to slave status as it would be during American chattel slavery.
A cocoa plantation in the West Indies.
Leemage/Getty Images
“It was considered normal for enslaved people to be black, even though there were enslaved people of other origins,” Wheat says. “But at the same time, it was also normal for there to be small numbers of free people of color in Iberian societies around the Atlantic.”
Wheat and Eagle will publish an essay on their research in a forthcoming book, From the Galleons to the Highlands: Slave Trade Routes in the Spanish Americas in 2019. For the project, they spent a lot of time studying Spanish shipping records and lawsuits from the Caribbean that mentioned slave voyages.
“Most of [the lawsuits] involve either one of two things…corruption or disgruntled investors,” Wheat says. Corruption often involved “officials who had permitted unlicensed slave trading voyages to take place.” Crown officials pursued these types of corruption lawsuits, whereas investors usually sued after losing money on a slave voyage.
Dealing with the “casual brutality” in these records is often difficult, says Eagle, a history professor at Western Kentucky University. Even in a report about a slave revolt, “the whole report is about a captain who’s trying to justify the fact that he’s lost some goods to his investors, and it really is just like he’s talking about merchandise,” he observes.
“When a slaves dies they’ll send somebody to [record] what the brand was on the slave and what they died of and keep a record, and that’s all again for commercial purposes—they can claim that as loss later on,” Eagle continues. “So it is really kind of horrifying to read things like this and realize they’re talking about human beings.”
44d. The Spanish-American War and Its Consequences
Americans aboard the Olympia prepare to fire on Spanish ships during the Battle of Manila Bay, May 1, 1898.
The United States was simply unprepared for war. What Americans had in enthusiastic spirit, they lacked in military strength. The navy, although improved, was simply a shadow of what it would become by World War I. The United States Army was understaffed, underequipped, and undertrained. The most recent action seen by the army was fighting the Native Americans on the frontier. Cuba required summer uniforms; the US troops arrived with heavy woolen coats and pants. The food budget paid for substandard provisions for the soldiers. What made these daunting problems more managable was one simple reality. Spain was even less ready for war than the United States.
Battle of Manila Bay
Prior to the building of the Panama Canal, each nation required a two-ocean navy. The major portion of Spain's Pacific fleet was located in the Spanish Philippines at Manila Bay. Under orders from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, Admiral George Dewey descended upon the Philippines prior to the declaration of war. Dewey was in the perfect position to strike, and when given his orders to attack on May 1, 1898, the American navy was ready. Those who look back with fondness on American military triumphs must count the Battle of Manila Bay as one of the greatest success stories. The larger, wooden Spanish fleet was no match for the newer American steel navy. After Dewey's guns stopped firing, the entire Spanish squadron was a hulking disaster. The only American casualty came from sunstroke. The Philippines remained in Spanish control until the army had been recruited, trained, and transported to the Pacific.
Invading Cuba
The situation in Cuba was far less pretty for the Americans. At the outbreak of war the United States was outnumbered 7 to 1 in army personnel. The invading force led by General William Shafter landed rather uneventfully near Santiago. The real glory of the Cuban campaign was grabbed by the Rough Riders. Comprising cowboys, adventurous college students, and ex-convicts, the Rough Riders were a volunteer regiment commanded by Leonard Wood, but organized by Theodore Roosevelt. Supported by two African American regiments, the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill and helped Shafter bottle the Spanish forces in Santiago harbor. The war was lost when the Spanish Atlantic fleet was destroyed by the pursuing American forces.
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris was most generous to the winners. The United States received the Philippines and the islands of Guam and Puerto Rico. Cuba became independent, and Spain was awarded $20 million dollars for its losses. The treaty prompted a heated debate in the United States. Anti-imperialists called the US hypocritical for condemning European empires while pursuing one of its own. The war was supposed to be about freeing Cuba, not seizing the Philippines. Criticism increased when Filipino rebels led by Emilio Aguinaldo waged a 3-year insurrection against their new American colonizers. While the Spanish-American War lasted ten weeks and resulted in 400 battle deaths, the Philippine Insurrection lasted nearly three years and claimed 4000 American lives. Nevertheless, President McKinley's expansionist policies were supported by the American public, who seemed more than willing to accept the blessings and curses of their new expanding empire.
Cuba: Fidel Castro’s Record of Repression
Misguided US Embargo Provided Pretext for Abuse
(Washington, DC) – During his nearly five decades of rule in Cuba, Fidel Castro built a repressive system that punished virtually all forms of dissent, a dark legacy that lives on even after his death.
During Castro’s rule, thousands of Cubans were incarcerated in abysmal prisons, thousands more were harassed and intimidated, and entire generations were denied basic political freedoms. Cuba made improvements in health and education, though many of these gains were undermined by extended periods of economic hardship and by repressive policies.
“As other countries in the region turned away from authoritarian rule, only Fidel Castro’s Cuba continued to repress virtually all civil and political rights,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Castro’s draconian rule and the harsh punishments he meted out to dissidents kept his repressive system rooted firmly in place for decades.”
The repression was codified in law and enforced by security forces, groups of civilian sympathizers tied to the state, and a judiciary that lacked independence. Such abusive practices generated a pervasive climate of fear in Cuba, which hindered the exercise of fundamental rights, and pressured Cubans to show their allegiance to the state while discouraging criticism.
Many of the abusive tactics developed during his time in power – including surveillance, beatings, arbitrary detention, and public acts of repudiation – are still used by the Cuban government.
Castro came to power in 1959 after leading a revolution that toppled the corrupt and abusive government of Fulgencio Batista. He ruled by decree until 1976, when a new constitution – whose drafting he oversaw – reformed the structure of the government. From that time until he transferred power to his brother Raúl in July 2006, Fidel Castro held all three of the most powerful positions in Cuba’s government: president of the Council of State, president of the Council of Ministers, and first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party. Fidel Castro did not officially relinquish his title as president of the councils of state and ministers until February 2008, and stepped down as first secretary on April 19, 2011.
Cuba made important advances under Castro in the progressive realization of some economic, social, and cultural rights such as education and healthcare. For example, UNESCO has concluded that there is near-universal literacy on the island, and the country either met the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the UN established in 2000, or came close by the 2015 deadline.
The progress on economic, social, and cultural rights was never matched in terms of respect for civil and political rights. The denial of fundamental freedoms throughout Castro’s decades in power was unrelenting, and marked by periods of heightened repression, such as the 2003 crackdown on 75 human rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, and other critics of the government. Accused of being “mercenaries” of the United States government, the individuals were summarily tried in closed hearings. Many served years in inhumane prisons, where they were subjected to extended solitary confinement and beatings, and denied basic medical care for serious ailments. More than 50 of the remaining prisoners were released after Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother, most on the condition that they accept exile to Spain.
Under Fidel Castro, the Cuban government refused to recognize the
legitimacy of Cuban human rights organizations, alternative political
parties, independent labor unions, or a free press. He also denied
international monitors such as the International Committee of the Red
Cross and international nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights
Watch access to the island to investigate human rights conditions.
Efforts by the US government during Castro’s rule to press for change
in Cuba repeatedly failed. In the 1960s, those efforts took the form of
covert military action to unseat Castro, including the failed Bay of
Pigs invasion, and multiple botched assassination attempts. President
Dwight Eisenhower established the embargo in 1960, which was later
expanded by President John F Kennedy and eventually locked in place by
the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. Also known as
“Helms-Burton,” the law prohibits the US president from lifting trade
restrictions until Cuba has legalized political activity and made a
commitment to free and fair elections. It also prohibits lifting the
embargo as long as Fidel or Raúl Castro remains in office.
The embargo imposed indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban population as
a whole, and has done nothing to improve the situation of human rights
in Cuba. Rather than isolating Cuba, the policy isolated the US. Castro
proved especially adept at using the embargo to garner sympathy abroad,
while at the same time exploiting it as a pretext to repress legitimate
efforts to reform Cuba from within, dismissing them as US-driven and
-funded initiatives.
In December 2014, President Barack Obama began a long-overdue shift in
US policy, announcing that the US would normalize diplomatic relations
with Cuba and ease restrictions on travel and commerce, calling on
Congress to consider lifting the embargo. In exchange, the government of
Raúl Castro granted conditional release to the 53 political prisoners
that it had been holding for between two months and two years.
Nevertheless, the Orwellian laws that allowed their imprisonment – and
the imprisonment of thousands before them – remain on the books, and
the Cuban government continues to repress individuals and groups who
criticize the government or call for basic human rights. Arbitrary
arrests and short-term detention routinely prevent human rights
defenders, independent journalists, and others from gathering or moving
freely. Detention is often used pre-emptively to prevent people from
participating in peaceful marches or political meetings.
The two governments restored diplomatic relations in July 2015. In
March, President Obama visited Cuba, where he met with President Raúl
Castro, as well as with representatives of Cuban civil society. Obama
gave a nationally televised address and joint press conference with
Castro in which he urged the Cuban government to lift restrictions on
political freedoms and reiterated his call for the US Congress to end
the economic embargo of the island.
“For decades, Fidel Castro was the chief beneficiary of a misguided US
policy that allowed him to play the victim and discouraged other
governments from condemning his repressive policies,” Vivanco said.
“While the embargo remains in place, the Obama administration’s policy
of engagement has changed the equation, depriving the Cuban government
of its main pretext for repressing dissent on the island.”
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A 'SPLENDID LITTLE WAR' BUILT AMERICA'S EMPIRE
It's difficult to imagine a "splendid" war. But that's how John Hay, U.S. ambassador to Britain and a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt, characterized a conflict with Spain 100 years ago. U.S. forces won a swift and decisive victory after suffering relatively few deaths and claimed a host of new territories overseas. As a result, the country began establishing itself as a formidable world power. When the fighting ended, an enthusiastic Hay said to Roosevelt, who had led a special cavalry unit, the "Rough Riders," in the war: "It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave." The conflict was the Spanish-American War, fought from April to August 1898. In it, the United States destroyed Spanish forces and took possession of major parts of Spain's 400-year-old empire, including Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. America extended its territorial dominance overseas and joined imperialist European nations fast acquiring colonies in Africa and Asia. In the same burst of expansionist sentiment, the United States also annexed Hawaii, an independent country, shortly before the war ended. "We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California," President William McKinley said then. "It is Manifest Destiny." McKinley was referring to a concept that dates from America's earliest days but a term coined in 1845 -- that American settlers and their descendants had a divine right to spread across North America and, some contended, beyond the continent, dominating ever larger parts of the world. Late in the 19th century, empire-building sentiment came from many of the most prominent American leaders such as Roosevelt, a future president whose "Rough Riders" helped win a key battle in Cuba, and Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts senator and father of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Richard M. Nixon's running mate in 1960. If America was to become one of the world's major military powers, these men said, it, too, should have an empire. A war with Spain, which had started empire-building in the New World when Christopher Columbus landed there in 1492, offered the means. "This was a time when the United States was ready for war," says David Frum, a historian and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a political think tank. "It was bursting with strength and looking for an opportunity to display how powerful it was. One thing the war did for the United States was demonstrate that it was potentially a first-rate military power and other people should treat it as such." The war undoubtedly came at a critical juncture for the United States but ranks low on the historical barometer of most Americans, particularly when compared with the Civil War or World War II. Still, the 1898 conflict left a distinct legacy. It elevated people such as Roosevelt to the status of national hero and helped to set the stage for conflict with Japan in World War II. It was the outgrowth of an event that remains one of the most enduring and compelling mysteries in American history -- the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine, either by a Spanish act of war or an accident. Also, it generated slogans that would live for generations: "Remember the Maine!" and Adm. George Dewey's famous instruction to Capt. Charles Gridley at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." Finally, the war remains a powerful example of the power of the press run amok: In large part, the war was fomented by American newspapers using what now would be considered unethical journalistic practices. In the highly competitive climate of late 19th century journalism, influential American newspapers often sensationalized facts, deliberately trying to incite public opinion against Spain. The practice was called jingoism and "yellow journalism," the latter term coined from cartoons in the New York World and the New York Journal of "the yellow kid," a little urchin dressed in yellow. The World and the Journal, owned by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, respectively, competed feverishly for readers, knowing that nothing boosts circulation like a war. Deliberately misleading reporting made it next to impossible for the United States and Spain to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Shortly after the Maine was destroyed, and without evidence whether the explosion was caused by a mine or an accident aboard ship, the papers intensified their exaggerations. The Journal carried a banner headline that charged: "Destruction of the Warship Maine Was the Work of an Enemy." The World, which asked, "Maine Explosion Caused by Bomb or Torpedo?" also published a diagram of what it called a secret "infernal machine" that struck the ship like a deadly torpedo. Hearst was driven by sensationalism and war more than Pulitzer, according to Richard Schwarzlose, a journalism professor at Northwestern University. The year before the war, when Cuban peasants were agitating for independence from Spain and newspapers were sending journalists to cover the conflict, Journal cartoonist Frederic Remington wired Hearst from a seemingly peaceful Cuba: "There will be no war. I wish to return." Hearst allegedly cabled back: "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." The Cuban struggle for independence from Spain had begun in 1895 when, after four centuries of colonial rule, Spain suspended constitutional guarantees to the Cuban people. As a result, Cuban rebels began mobilizing under various leaders to drive out the Spanish. About 8,000 Cuban fighters organized to face 52,000 Spanish troops garrisoned on the island. Using guerrilla tactics, Cubans found success when they burned Spanish-owned plantations. Spain reacted brutally, massacring Cuban civilians and imprisoning others in disease-ridden camps, practices that caused more than 100,000 Cuban deaths. Clara Barton, who tended the wounded in the American Civil War and later would found the American Red Cross, set up hospitals in Cuba to aid soldiers and noncombatants from both sides. As the rebellion dragged on, many Americans turned against Spain, finding its treatment of Cubans intolerable and demanding that Presidents Grover Cleveland and McKinley, his successor in 1897, take steps to end the violence. Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy, made it known that he was increasingly frustrated by McKinley's "flabby" approach to Spanish tactics in Cuba. He complained that McKinley had "no more backbone than a chocolate eclair." Meanwhile, as the press tried to inflame tension between the United States and Spain, both nations tried to negotiate a peaceful solution. But a new round of violence erupted in Cuba in early 1898. To protect American citizens and business interests, McKinley sent the Maine, a sleek, powerful and costly warship, into Havana Harbor on the northern coast, where it docked Jan. 25. The U.S. government declared that the Maine was on a friendly mission. To avoid trouble, the ship's commanding officer, Capt. Charles Sigsbee, prevented his men from going ashore. At the same time, Roosevelt was itching for war, writing, "I wish there was a chance that the Maine was going to be used against some foreign power, by preference Germany but . . . I'd take even Spain if nothing better offered." The Maine was never used against anyone. About 9:40 on the misty evening of Feb. 15, with most of the 350-member crew asleep below deck, two explosions rocked the battleship. The forward third of the vessel was virtually obliterated, with about 250 sailors and two officers killed instantly. Scores of burned and injured men were fished from the harbor, and eight others died later. Sigsbee and most officers survived because their quarters were astern. That evening, Sigsbee sent a secret dispatch to Roosevelt in Washington, noting that the "Maine was probably destroyed by a mine. It may have been done by accident. I surmise that {a mine at the anchorage spot} was planted previous to her arrival, perhaps long ago. I can only surmise this." The captain added that a public verdict on the cause of the accident "should be suspended until further report." Six weeks later, a naval court of inquiry reported that a mine had detonated under the Maine, but it did not lay blame. Pressure intensified on McKinley, and several days later, he asked Congress to approve U.S. intervention. On April 21, 1898, the United States began establishing a blockade of Cuba. Two days later, Spain reluctantly declared war and, on April 25, America declared war on Spain, making the declaration retroactive to the 21st. Under the resounding cry, "Remember the Maine! The hell with Spain," America went to war. The first engagement occurred far away, 7,000 miles off the California coastline in Manila Bay in the Philippines. The lopsided battle quickly signaled U.S. military prowess over Spain. Adm. George Dewey was in Hong Kong with a fleet of six modern, steel-hulled cruisers when McKinley ordered him to the Philippines to capture or destroy a Spanish fleet based at the colony, partly to cope with Filipino insurrectionists seeking independence from Spain. McKinley was concerned that the Spanish ships might be used against the U.S. West Coast. "If the dons were victorious, they would likely cross the Pacific and ravage our Oregon and California coasts," McKinley later told the Christian Advocate newspaper. Dewey, who had served under Adm. David Farragut in the American Civil War, boldly sailed his fleet against the Spanish, who had anchored their 10 antiquated ships off the Philippine coast to protect Manila, knowing that a running battle against the American warships would be futile. On May 1 at 5:40 a.m., Dewey issued his famous call to Gridley, and U.S. guns blazed. American vessels made five runs past Spain's ships, and by noon, all were sunk, burning or abandoned. No Americans died, while the Spanish suffered 167 dead and 214 wounded. The stunning victory made Dewey a national hero, called "the conqueror of the Philippines." His image soon adorned merchandise bought eagerly by Americans who had barely heard of the Philippines but adored the man who acquired them for the United States. Spain's Pacific empire was history, and its Caribbean power was soon to crumble. In late May, America's North Atlantic Squadron under Rear Adm. William Sampson began to blockade a Spanish fleet anchored in the harbor at Santiago de Cuba, a Spanish stronghold on the island's southeastern coast. Sampson's fleet was joined by Commodore Winfield Schley's squadron, which had been created to defend America's Atlantic coastline from possible Spanish raids. For a month, U.S. ships shelled Spanish fortifications but could not enter the cul-de-sac harbor because of mines at its mouth. At about the same time, 15,000 U.S. troops were landed on Cuba and began marching toward Santiago. Then, on July 3, Sampson sailed away from the harbor, intending to confer with U.S. Army commanders on land. With the blockade momentarily weakened, Vice Adm. Pascual Cervera's Spanish fleet tried to flee the harbor, sailing single file east along the Cuban coast. Cervera's bold move launched one of the most decisive battles in U.S. naval history. With Schley in tactical command, Sampson's fleet chased the Spanish ships along the coast and attacked, burning them. Spain lost 1,800 men in the Battle of Santiago, compared with one dead and one wounded for the United States. Uncomfortable with such a lopsided victory, Jack Philip, captain of the USS Texas, told his jubilant crew: "Don't cheer, boys. The poor devils are dying." So many Spanish sailors were trapped on burning ships or leaping into the water that Capt. Robley Evans of the USS Iowa turned from attacker to rescuer. "I lowered all my boats," he told the Associated Press, "and sent them at once to the assistance of the unfortunate men, who were being drowned by dozens or roasted on the decks. I soon discovered that the insurgent Cubans from the shore were shooting men who were struggling in the water after having surrendered to us. I immediately put a stop to this, but I could not put a stop to the mutilation of many bodies by the sharks inside the reefs." While that battle was important in the defeat of Spain, the Battle of Manila Bay had greater long-term consequences for America, says Mark Hayes, a naval historian at the Washington Navy Yard. "The acquisition of the Philippines gave us an interest in the Far East," Hayes says, "and protecting our acquisitions and interests in the Philippines came in conflict with the Japanese, which led to our involvement in World War II. If we had not tried to take out the Spanish fleet in Manila and seize control of the Philippines, then the course of history would have been quite different." While the U.S. Navy was overwhelming the Spanish, the U.S. Army also had a job to do. American soldiers who had been marching toward Santiago attacked fortified hills near the city. Directing one division were Col. Leonard Wood, who had won the Medal of Honor for fighting Apache leader Geronimo, and Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had told McKinley that, if war came, he wanted to leave his post as assistant Navy secretary and go to the battlefront. He eventually sounded a call for 1,000 volunteers to join a newly created regiment known as the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. The motley group, nicknamed the "Rough Riders," consisted of privileged athletes from Ivy League schools, Western cowboys, sons of prominent citizens and assorted frontiersmen -- all made eager to fight by war sentiment stirred by U.S. newspapers. On July 1, in one of the war's most famous moments, the Rough Riders charged up Kettle Hill, outside Santiago, defeating Spanish troops occupying high ground. Roosevelt led the attack on horseback while his men, on foot, fought their way up the slope. A bullet nicked Roosevelt in an elbow. The Rough Riders, contrary to popular recollection, did not take nearby San Juan Hill. An African American regiment did. Fighting with the Rough Riders was the 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, a black unit that Spanish foes knew as los yanquis humados, or "the smoked Yankees." These men fought for the United States at a time when "Jim Crow" segregation dictated separation of the races. "Not only did six members of the 10th earn the Medal of Honor in Cuba, the best evidence points to Color Sgt. George Barry, a 30-year-veteran of the unit, as being the first to plant the American flag on San Juan Hill," Richard Bak writes in his 1997 book, The Rough Riders. "It was an honor that many white commanders and reporters were loath to admit." The rest of Shafter's contingent seized positions in other areas surrounding the city. By nightfall, U.S. troops were entrenched in ridges near Santiago after suffering 225 dead and 1,400 wounded. Like Dewey, the Rough Riders -- but not the African American unit -- soon became cultural icons, their images appearing on cigars and song sheets, among other items. The war soon would end. Spain's garrison defending Santiago surrendered on July 17, and one week later, U.S. forces invaded and easily captured Puerto Rico, an island that ever since has debated its ties to the United States, with some Puerto Ricans arguing for independence, like Cuba, others pushing for U.S. statehood and a third faction preferring to continue commonwealth status. Spain agreed to an armistice Aug. 12. But Dewey, apparently not realizing that a truce had been signed, ordered several contingents of U.S. soldiers the next day to enter and occupy Manila, which surrendered quickly. The Treaty of Paris concluded the war in December 1898. Spain freed Cuba and ceded Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States, which, in turn, paid Spain $20 million for public property in the Philippines. Although just 385 Americans died in battle, according to the Washington-based Center for Military History, 2,061 succumbed to tropical diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, dysentery and typhoid fever, and 1,662 were wounded. More than 20,000 returning troops were held in a tent camp on Long Island awaiting discharge, and many died there of tropical diseases. U.S. troops occupying the newly won Philippine colony, however, would fight for three more years. In 1902, they finally defeated Filipino insurgents seeking independence. U.S. forces suffered about 6,000 casualties, Filipinos an estimated 250,000. The Spanish-American war, in the end, was not such a "splendid little war." Still, the conquests created new U.S. responsibilities in foreign affairs. The nation became more assertive, flexing its political and military muscle to influence international policies. For example, the United States brokered a peace agreement in the 1904 war between Russia and Japan; just 10 years earlier, it had virtually ignored a war between China and Japan. Roosevelt, who had become president three years earlier after an anarchist assassinated McKinley, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to orchestrate the 1904 settlement. "The United States more or less twisted Japan's arm to make an agreement with Russia," David Frum says. "The country suddenly said, This is our ocean, the Pacific.' " In retrospect, Mark Hayes says, U.S. entrance into the war was "embarrassing" for two reasons: The United States enjoyed a huge military advantage, and the Spanish have never been found responsible for destroying the Maine. Investigations in 1898 and 1911 were inconclusive as to what caused the explosion. In a comprehensive examination of the incident, Adm. Hyman G. Rickover wrote in 1976 that the blast probably was started by a fire in the ship's coal bunker, a finding also unproven. Why did the Spanish declare war on the United States if the odds against winning were so steep? "They wanted to save their honor," says Willard Frank, a historian at Old Dominion University who concentrates on the Spanish navy. "The last thing the Spanish wanted is a war with the United States . . . they had enough problems, and they didn't see America as the real enemy." But the United States played that role for 110 days, and the balance of global power would be altered for generations. Michael Richman is a freelance writer who specializes in American history and sports. His e-mail address is mrichman@erols.com. CAPTION: A decidedly hawkish Uncle Sam revels in the Spanish-American War in this 1898 cover of Leslie's Weekly, a popular magazine. CAPTION: "New Faces at Thanksgiving Dinner," an 1898 cartoon, reflecting America's paternalism and even its racism toward the newly gained colonies. CAPTION: The 9th and 10th U.S. Colored Cavalry fights with the Rough Riders in a battle near Santiago. CAPTION: Theodore Roosevelt, center, poses with two Rough Riders while the new unit trained in San Antonio, Tex.
General Franco: Spanish Dictator Playing Between America & Cuba
Despite being a “rabid anti-Franquista” for many years, the Cuban leader Fidel Castro would develop some grudging respect for Spain’s Fascist dictator, General Francisco Franco.
Following Castro’s 1959 ousting of the American-backed tyrant, Fulgencio Batista, Washington ordered all Latin American and European nations to ostracize revolutionary Cuba. With the Caribbean island facing near-total isolation, and with worse deprivations to come, Castro noted that Franco “was the only one who didn’t bend to Washington’s demand”. It would prove an unlikely lifeline for the new Cuba.
Castro said, “Franco didn’t break off relations. That was a praiseworthy attitude that deserves our respect and even, at that point, our gratitude. He refused to give in to American pressure. He acted with real Galician stubbornness. He never broke off relations with Cuba. His attitude in that respect was rock-strong”.
In late 1963, the new American president, Lyndon B. Johnson, threatened Franco with legislation which would cut aid to nations assisting Castro’s government
Franco was himself born in the Atlantic coastal town of El Ferrol, Galicia, in north-west Spain. During the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain’s forces were routed by America in the decisive Battle of Santiago de Cuba – a naval conflict on Cuba’s southern coast, sealing America’s victory in the war.
As the battle neared its end, an entire Spanish squadron was destroyed by the Americans, which Castro highlights was “from El Ferrol” (Franco’s birthplace). Over 340 Spanish sailors were wiped out, and almost two thousand captured, while the US suffered just a single casualty. It was one of the greatest humiliations in Spanish history and ensured Cuba’s transfer from one imperial power (Spain) to another (America) – coined “the liberation of Cuba” by Western scholars.
Castro expounded that the defeat “was a terrible blow to the military’s pride, and to all of Spain’s pride. And it happened when Franco was a boy in El Ferrol. Franco must have grown up and read and heard all about that bitter experience, in an atmosphere of despondency and thirst for revenge. He may even have been present when the remains of the defeated fleet were returned, the soldiers and officers who’d been humiliated and thwarted. It must have left a profound mark on him”.
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It may explain the potential disregard in which Franco held America. This despite him enjoying support from certain US businesses during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) – like the Texas Oil Company, and automobile manufacturers Ford, Studebaker, and General Motors, who in total provided 12,000 trucks to Franco’s men, with fuel supplies.
Though officially protected by the US from 1953 on (Pact of Madrid), Franco’s Spain never gained membership of the American-run military alliance NATO – despite neighboring Portugal being among the first countries to join NATO in 1949, under the right-wing Antonio Salazar dictatorship. Spain only acceded to NATO in 1982, almost seven years after the Fascist autocrat’s death.
Nor did Franco ever set foot in the US, or grace the sacred halls of the White House, unlike other dictators (the Shah, Suharto, Pinochet, etc.). In Madrid, Franco met presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon – while in 1972 he saw Ronald Reagan in the Spanish capital when the latter was Governor of California, but never returned the favor on any occasion.
Elsewhere, Franco would have been aware that most white Cubans themselves are of Spanish extraction. Castro’s father, for example, was born in Galicia, the same Spanish territory as Franco.
One thing I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully… wherever I am there will be no Communism
As a result, Castro’s sound defeat of US-backed forces during the Bay of Pigs invasion (April 1961) – and later resistance to American terror – is likely to have been viewed by Franco, which Castro remarked, as “a way to secure Spain’s revenge”, while having “restored the Spaniards’ patriotic sentiments and honor”, after the disasters of the Spanish-American War. “That historical, almost emotional element, must have influenced Franco’s attitude”.
Despite repeated criticism of Franco’s policies, Castro was somewhat reliant upon him, admitting that “nobody was going to make me break them off [relations]”. Franco was easily the largest importer of not only Cuban tobacco, but also of rum and sugar. Had Franco severed ties as the Americans demanded, the Cuban Revolution’s future would have been thrown into further doubt.
Moreover, in return, Franco sold trucks, machinery, and other commodities such as fruit to Cuba – while Spain’s national airline continued its routine operations from Madrid to Havana, the only then such flights between western Europe and Cuba. In late 1963, the new American president, Lyndon B. Johnson, threatened Franco with legislation which would cut aid to nations assisting Castro’s government. Again, the intimidation was rebutted.
Franco, known as El Caudillo [the Leader], had long been noted for his obstinance. Decades before, despite heated demands from Adolf Hitler for Spain to enter the Second World War – including a famous meeting between the dictators in October 1940 at Hendaye, south-western France – Franco declined his German counterpart’s overtures. This was at a time when Hitler, known for his persuasive methods, was at the pinnacle of his power, with much of mainland and northern Europe under his control.
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Franco’s refusal to commit seriously to the war enraged Hitler, who had provided crucial military aid to Franco during the Spanish Civil War, along with Benito Mussolini. Unable to pin Franco down, Hitler said he would “rather have three of four teeth pulled” than meet him once more; and Indeed, they would never see each other again.
The Nazi dictator, addressing Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Armaments Minister Albert Speer, further denounced Franco in January 1943 as, “a fat little sergeant who couldn’t grasp at my far-reaching plans”.
Hitler remarked that, “during the civil war the idealism was not on Franco’s side, it was to be found among the Reds. Certainly they pillaged and desecrated, but so did Franco’s men, without having any good reason for it – the Reds were working off centuries of hatred for the Catholic Church, which always oppressed the Spanish people. When I think of that I understand a good many things”. (Hitler’s comments were recounted by Speer in December 1950 at Spandau prison, West Berlin).
Franco’s main commitment to the German military effort comprised of dispatching “the Blue Division” to the Eastern Front, in June 1941 (as the war continued its numbers rose to 45,000 troops).
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However, by the mid-1940s, Hitler’s “far-reaching plans” lay in ruins, and Franco’s refusal to weigh fully in behind the Germans surely saved his neck. As Castro discerned of Franco, “He was unquestionably shrewd, cunning – I don’t know whether that came from his being Galician; the Galicians are accused of being shrewd”.
Franco’s near four-decade rule, until his death in November 1975, was also one of bloodshed and repression, particularly in the early years. Franco had said in 1938, “One thing I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully… wherever I am there will be no Communism”. He ruthlessly followed through on such a declaration with policies responsible for killing up to 400,000 people, as Spanish Republicans and other left-leaning activists were massacred by Francoite forces.
As Castro noted of the Spanish despot, “the number of people he killed, the repression he imposed… his name is associated with a tragic period in Spain’s history”.
Shane Quinn has contributed on a regular basis to Global Research for almost two years, and have had articles published with the American news outlets People’s World and MintPress News, Morning Star in Britain and Venezuela’s Orinoco Tribune. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Global Village Space’s editorial policy.
Spanish-American War for Cuba's Independence
By the end of the 1800s, Spain had lost all of its New World colonies except Cuba and Puerto Rico. Many Cubans did not wish to be under Spanish rule, so they fled to Florida and other parts of the United States. At the same time, however, they still remained loyal to Cuba. Jose Marti, a Cuban writer living in New York, came to Tampa to gain supporters to help Cuba fight for its independence from Spain. Jose Marti was the leader of the revolution, but he was killed when he went back to Cuba to fight in it. Tomas Estrada Palma became the new leader and later the President of Cuba.
The United States watched with interest as Cuba struggled for independence. The United States had millions of dollars invested in businesses in Cuba and there were many U.S. citizens in residence there. The U.S. also traded goods with Cuba.
In 1898, the United States assisted in war to protect its citizens and businesses in Cuba. This war was known as the Spanish-American War. The United States declared war on Spain after the U.S. warship, the Maine, exploded and sank on February 15, 1898 while visiting Havana, Cuba. No one really knows what caused the warship to explode, but the United States blamed Spain. Thousands of United States troops fought in Cuba. The cities of Tampa, Jacksonville, Fernandina, Lakeland, Pensacola, Key West, and Miami were used as military bases for the American troops.
Although most of the fighting took place in Cuba, the first major battle was not fought there. It was fought half way around the world in the harbor of Manila. Manila is located in the Philippine Islands, which were then ruled by Spain. The U.S. fleet, led by Commodore George Dewey, defeated the Spanish fleet there.
Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders went to Cuba to help in the fighting. The Rough Riders were a group of cowboys and college athletes. Theodore Roosevelt later became governor of New York and then president of the United States.
The Spanish-American War lasted only a few months and was over when Spain signed a peace treaty giving the United States control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and Guam. Cuba, however, became an independent country rather than a U.S. territory.
Filibustering and the struggle for independence
The demands of sugar—labourers, capital, machines, technical skills, and markets—strained ethnic relations, aggravated political and economic differences between metropolis and colony, and laid the foundation for the break with Spain in 1898. Spanish colonial administration was corrupt, inefficient, and inflexible. People in the United States, especially in the southern slave states, showed a lively and growing interest in the island and supported a series of filibustering expeditions led by Narciso López (1849–51) and others. (The red, white, and blue battle flag that López flew was designated the Cuban national flag in 1902.) After the 1860s the United States tried many times to purchase the island.
Spain precipitated the first war of Cuban independence—the Ten Years’ War (1868–78)—by increasing taxes and refusing to grant Cubans political autonomy. On October 10, 1868, the eastern planter Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, now known as the “father of his country,” issued the Grito de Yara (“Cry of Yara”) decree, in which he declared Cuban independence. He also freed his slaves to fight in his revolution. Céspedes had the support of some landowners and of numerous farmers and labourers who wanted to increase their share of political power and abolish slavery. However, many Cubans, including the wealthy sugar producers of the western region and the vast majority of slaves, did not join the revolt. Many questioned Céspedes’s plans for manumission, notably the rate at which slaves were to be freed, or disagreed with his call for U.S. annexation of Cuba. Spain promised to reform the island’s political and economic system in the Pact of Zanjón (1878), which ended the war. However, the nationalist leader Antonio Maceo and several others refused to accept the Spanish conditions. In August 1879 Calixto García started a second uprising, called La Guerra Chiquita (“The Little War”), which Spanish forces put down the following year.
The political and economic crisis grew more
severe. The Spanish government failed to carry out most of the promised
reforms, although it allowed Cubans to send representatives to the
Cortes (parliament) and abolished slavery in 1886. Annual trade between
Cuba and the United States had reached about $100 million, but in 1894
Spain canceled a Cuban-U.S. trade pact. In addition, the central
government imposed more taxes and trade restrictions. Cubans
increasingly resisted colonial authority, and the poet, ideological
spokesman, and propagandist José Martí
coordinated and mobilized political organizations in exile. War broke
out again on February 24, 1895, and Martí and the revolutionary leader Máximo Gómez landed with an invasion force in April.
Gómez and Maceo led a force that quickly conquered the eastern region and began to spread westward. The Republic of Cuba was declared in September 1895. The following year Spain placed General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau at the head of more than 200,000 troops, who brutally “reconcentrated” rural residents into camps in the towns and cities, where tens of thousands died of starvation and disease. Both sides killed civilians and burned estates and towns, with the rebels concentrating on destroying Cuba’s sugarcane crop.
The Spanish government recalled Weyler in 1897 and offered autonomy to Cuba, and the following year it ended the “reconcentration” program. However, the vast majority of Cubans had come to sympathize with the rebels, who held most of the countryside. Meanwhile, commercial activity ground to a standstill, and news of Spanish atrocities spread to the United States, where yellow journalism (notably in newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst) stirred up anti-Spanish sentiment. Following a mysterious explosion aboard the USS Maine that sank it in Havana’s harbour in February 1898, the United States and Spain fought the brief, one-sided Spanish-American War, during which U.S. forces captured Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines by mid-August.
Occupation by the United States
Although Cuban independence was granted by the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898), U.S. forces continued to occupy the country, and General John R. Brooke, who was designated the military governor on January 1, 1899, tried to exclude Cubans from government. He disbanded the Cuban army and conducted a census before being replaced by General Leonard Wood, who had previously governed the city of Santiago. Wood increased the role of Cubans in government and supervised elections that gave Cuba its first elected president, Tomás Estrada Palma.
U.S. forces modernized Havana, deepened its harbour, and built a number of schools, roads, and bridges. But they were primarily interested in importing U.S. economic, cultural, and educational systems to the island. In addition, the U.S.-supervised electoral system was effectively racist and eliminated Afro-Cubans from politics. The Platt Amendment (1901) gave the United States the right to oversee Cuba’s international commitments, economy, and internal affairs and to establish a naval station at Guantánamo Bay on the island’s southeastern coast. Most of its provisions were repealed in 1934, but the naval base remained.
The Republic of Cuba
A republican administration that began on May 20, 1902, under Estrada Palma was subject to heavy U.S. influence. Estrada Palma tried to retain power in the 1905 and 1906 elections, which were contested by the Liberals, leading to rebellion and a second U.S. occupation in September 1906. U.S. secretary of war William Howard Taft failed to resolve the dispute, and Estrada Palma resigned. The U.S. government then made Charles Magoon provisional governor. An advisory commission revised electoral procedures, and in January 1909 Magoon handed over the government to the Liberal president, José Miguel Gómez. Meanwhile, Cuba’s economy grew steadily, and sugar prices rose continually until the 1920s.
Spain's king starts historic trip to Communist-run Cuba
By Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta
HAVANA (Reuters) - Spain's King Felipe will kick off the first ever state visit by a Spanish monarch to Cuba on Tuesday by laying flowers at the monument in Havana to Jose Marti, a symbol of the former colony's struggle for independence.
Felipe and his wife, Queen Letizia, arrived late on Monday for a three day stay in Cuba, underscoring the rapprochement between the two countries in spite of U.S. attempts to isolate the Cuban Communist government.
Felipe will hold talks in the Palace of the Revolution on Tuesday morning, according to an itinerary released by the Cuban government, while his wife tours Old Havana, founded by a Spanish conquistador in 1519.
The royal visit was timed so the couple could take part in the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Cuban capital. Havana was once one of the most important cities in the Spanish empire, providing a port for its treasure fleet.
Some Spanish politicians and Cuban dissidents have criticized the trip, saying it legitimates the one party system at a time of increased repression. Yet many locals are grateful for what they see as a sign of support for the Cuban people.
"Spain remains our parent nation and we identify a lot with it, so their visit is very important to us," said Havana resident Maria Pazos, whose paternal great-grandparents came from Catalonia. "It's also a reaffirmation that we are not alone, that we have support."
In Havana, various Spanish provinces have associations which lay on social events and dance classes, reflecting the enduring strength of cultural ties, partly due to family bonds. The father of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro himself was a Spanish immigrant.
Economic relations, meanwhile, have picked up since Cuba started opening up its state-run economy in the 1990s. Spain is now Cuba's third-largest trading partner and one of its top investors.
"It's an act of historic justice," said Xulio Fontecha, the head of the association of Spanish companies, the only foreign business group in Cuba. "The king and queen should have come before."
Felipe's father King Juan Carlos had traveled to Cuba twice to attend an Ibero-American summit in 2016 and Castro's funeral, but he never made an official state visit to the island.
Cuba's dissidents have lambasted visiting European dignitaries for not meeting with Cuban opposition leaders recently, saying this makes the government feel there are no repercussions to cracking down on political opponents.
"It legitimates a regime, a dictatorship that has been in power for 60 years," said Zaqueo Báez, an activist with the country's largest dissident group, the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), whose leader has been detained for more than a month.
Juan Fernández Trigo, Spanish ambassador in Cuba, told Spain's EFE news agency the visit's content was primarily cultural.
Cuba in 1898
José M. Hernandez
In 1898 Cuba was a geopolitical aberration. Lying only 90 miles from the Florida keys, astride the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, it was separated from Spain by the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet Cuba remained one of Spain's two colonies in the New World. (The other was Puerto Rico.) It was governed from Madrid much as it had been governed since it was first occupied and settled by the Spaniards in 1511.
Not that Cubans were as compliant in 1898 as they had been during most of the colonial period, especially when the other Spanish Americans severed their ties with the mother country in the 1820s. At that time Cuba was evolving from a slowly growing colony into the world's leading sugar producer, a development that required the importation of steadily increasing numbers of African slaves. As a result, by 1840 there were in the island approximately 430,000 slaves, approximately 60 percent of the population was black or mulatto. Fearing a repetition of the upheaval that wiped out Haiti's white planter class in 1791, Cuban creoles (native born Cubans of European descent) refrained from imitating their mainland counterparts and risk all in a bloody and ruinous confrontation with the metropolis' military might.
After the rest of the Spanish American empire disintegrated, nevertheless, Cuba's colonial government gradually turned more despotic. The members of the planter class and the intellectuals who had initially opposed independence then began to show their dissatisfaction. Some, favoring reform over revolution, opted for demanding self-government within the framework of the empire. Others sought annexation to the United States as a means of gaining political and economic freedom while preserving slavery. Neither movement made any headway. Annexationism became impractical after the U.S. Civil War. And the prospect of concessions from Spain faded out after the failure in April 1867 of the Junta de Información convened by the Madrid government to discuss the reforms demanded by the Cubans. Feeling the impact of increased taxation and an international economic crisis, a group of planters, cattlemen and other patriots raised the banner of independence on 10 October 1868.
Thus began the Ten Years' War. The Cubans were unable to overthrow Spanish power in the island, but nevertheless the old colony based on slavery and aristocracy passed away after the strife had ended with a "no-victors" peace in 1878. The long- established dictatorial government machine was dismantled, and, at least in theory, Cubans were assured representation in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament) and some elective institutions at home. An emancipation law was enacted in 1880, and six years later slavery finally came to an end. Cuban society then began to evolve gradually toward a more egalitarian pattern of racial relations, which were markedly less tense than in the United States. At the same time, owing to a great influx of Spanish immigrants (about 709,000 arrived between 1868 and 1894), Cuba's population underwent a process of intensive Hispanization, particularly noticeable in the principal cities.
Cuba's economy became even more closely linked with that of the United States than it had been earlier in the century. On the one hand, the tobacco industry was partially transplanted to the North American south. On the other, due to a sharp drop of sugar prices that took place from early 1884, the old Cuban "sugar nobility," unable to mechanize and cut costs, began to disintegrate and lose its dominant role in the island's economy and society. This facilitated U.S. penetration of the Cuban economy. Sugar estates and mining interests passed from Spanish and Cuban to U.S. hands, and it was U.S. capital, machinery and technicians that helped to save the sugar mills that remained competitive with European beet sugar. Furthermore, as the dependence of Cuban sugar on the U.S. market increased, the Cuban sugar producers were more and more at the mercy of the U.S. refiners to whom they sold their raw sugar. In 1894 nearly 90 percent of Cuba's exports went to the United States, which in turn provided Cuba with 38 percent of its imports. That same year Spain took only 6 percent of Cuba's exports, providing it with just 35 percent of its imports. Clearly, Spain had ceased to be Cuba's economic metropolis.
By this time the nationalistic spirit ignited and solidified by the Ten Years' War had brought forth an organized pro- independence movement such as had never been seen in Cuba before. It was a multiracial and multiclass movement, with a strong grass-roots character. Its leaders were no longer members of the creole elite, but men of modest social origin. Its inspirational guide and promoter was José Martí, a middle class poet and journalist. Sometime in 1894 Martí determined that conditions in the island were ripe for another bid for independence. The economic situation was critical as a consequence of the cancellation of a trade agreement with the United States. It had become clear, besides, that Spain's much heralded plans for ruling Cuba as just another Spanish province were mere "traps for the gullible." Fighting broke out again on 24 February 1895 with several uprisings in the east of the island. Blacks and mulattoes became the backbone of what subsequently came to be the Cuban liberating army.
The new war was still raging in 1898, notwithstanding the 220,285 men sent by Spain to choke it off, the largest army ever to cross the Atlantic until the Second World War. At first the rebels had been able to wage a successful campaign and push on from the east to the west, where the sugar heart of the island was located. But then Spain had bestirred itself and appointed as commander-in- chief ruthless General Valeriano Weyler, who regained the initiative with the support of substantial reinforcements. Seeking to starve out the rebels operating in the countryside, he herded the rural population into garrisoned towns, where bad and inadequate food and lack of sanitation brought death to thousands of peasants -- some 50,000 in Havana province alone. These extreme measures nevertheless failed to crush the insurrection, because the rebels retreated to rural areas in the eastern provinces and from there carried on guerrilla operations. The war thus settled down to one of attrition and destruction. Since the Spaniards were unable to defeat the rebels and the rebels lacked the resources to drive them from the island, no one knew for certain how long it would continue.
This is not what Martí (who was killed in one of the first skirmishes) had had in mind. Having lived for many years in New York as an exile, he knew that the United States had always coveted Cuba and was aware of the circuitous ways of North American expansionism. He feared that if Cuba's struggle for independence continued indefinitely without the imminent prospect of success it would create conditions leading to U.S. intervention and ultimately to the annexation of the island. At one point he even came to believe, rightly or wrongly, that there existed an "iniquitous plan to put pressure on the island and drive it to war so as to fabricate a pretext to intervene in its affairs and with the credit earned as guarantor and mediator keep it as its own." For this reason he thought that Cubans had to achieve a quick victory and then present Washington with their political emancipation as an accomplished fact. Otherwise, they could very well shed their blood merely to exchange one master for another.
Martí's fears would have been even greater had he had an inkling of how vulnerable to foreign penetration Cuba would be after three and a half years of devastating military operations. The island lay in ruins. The conflict, combined with the Spanish- U.S. tariff controversy of the 1890s, had destroyed two-thirds of its productive capacity. Close to 20 percent of its prewar estimated population of 1,800,000 had perished, and for those who survived the future was bleak indeed. Cubans had no capital and were heavily in debt. They lacked the resources needed for the reconstruction of the country. The poverty-stricken masses, which included a sizable (roughly 500,000) and even poorer black or mulatto minority, was inarticulate, largely illiterate (about 60 percent of the total), and apathetic. Whatever was left of the depressed sugar aristocracy had finally succumbed. Thus Cuba could no longer count on the stabilizing influence of a strong civilian elite.
It is true Cuba had developed a well defined Spanish type of society, and that a real national tradition had been in the making in the country for many decades. But the loyalist merchants, speculators, and government officials had also lost their preeminence, and many Cubans had come to hate and despise everything Spanish, thinking only of the corruption and oppressiveness of Spanish rule. There were, too, upper class Cubans (and Spaniards, of course) who did not share the independentistas love of the fatherland and its symbols: flag and anthem. These elements thought of the rebellion against Spain as a racial and social struggle for control of the island, and predicted that upon the withdrawal of the Spaniards it would sink into anarchy, racial warfare, and perhaps an Hispaniola-like division into two parts, sought annexation to the United States as a means of preserving their wealth.
This attitude was partly due to the fact that among noncombatant Cubans there was none of any social standing capable of exercising some sort of leadership at the time. In the other Spanish American republics, during the critical transition to independent life, there had been at least one institution endowed with influence and authority: the Catholic Church. But since the bishops of the Cuban Church as well as many priests identified themselves totally with the Spanish side during the war, at war's end the Church was politically discredited as an institution. It had reached the nadir of its prestige. In 1898 consequently there was only one political force still operative on the Cuban scene, and that was that of the partisans of independence, of whom the most compact and substantial component was the liberating army. When Washington entered the Cuban struggle for independence and eventually destroyed the rebel military organization and the institutions it had created, Cuba became a tabula rasa politically once more.
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The Spanish and New World Slavery
Just as Castilian concessions in 1479 helped put Isabel on the throne of Castile, similar recognition of Portuguese claims in Africa in 1494 helped to secure Spanish interests in the Americas. As a result, it was Spain, rather than Portugal, that first made extensive use of enslaved Africans as a colonial labor force in the Americas.
Amerindian Slavery and Coerced Labor
Soon after his famous 1492 voyage, with the backing of the Spanish Crown and over one thousand Spanish colonists, Genoese merchant Christopher Columbus established the first European colony in the Americas on the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Columbus is believed to have had prior experience trading in West Africa, and had certainly visited the Canary Islands, where indigenous people known as Guanches had long been enslaved and exported, in small numbers, back to Spain. Though Columbus was primarily interested in finding gold, he also recognized Caribbean islanders’ potential value as slaves. In early 1495, preparing to return to Spain, he loaded his ships with five hundred enslaved Taínos from Hispaniola; only three hundred would survive the voyage. Columbus’s slaving exploits—often viewed as an attempt to compensate for the gold that was not forthcoming—were quickly cut short by the Spanish monarchs, Fernando II of Aragon and Isabel I of Castile. Nevertheless, coerced Amerindian labor grew increasingly important within the Spanish Royal policies regarding Amerindians were in many ways contradictory. The Spanish Crown intended to protect Amerindians from abuse, but at the same time expected them to accept Spanish rule, embrace Catholicism, and conform to a work regimen designed to render Spain’s overseas colonies profitable. Thus in 1501, for example, the monarchs ordered Hispaniola’s governor to return all property stolen from Taínos, and to pay them wages for their labor. Further reforms were outlined in the Laws of Burgos (1512), and later in the Laws of Granada (1526), though both appear to have been largely ignored by Spanish colonists.
Meanwhile, Spain’s monarchs broadly granted colonists dominion over Amerindian subjects, compelling native populations to pay tribute, often in the form of labor. The latter practice was largely an extension of the medieval encomienda, a quasi-feudal system in which Iberian Christians who had performed valuable military service were granted authority to govern people and resources in lands conquered from Iberian Muslims. Also, despite their objection to a trans-Atlantic slave trade of Amerindians, the Crown permitted their outright enslavement and sale within the Americas. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Spanish colonists conducted raids throughout the Caribbean, bringing captives from Central America, northern South America, and Florida back to Hispaniola and other Spanish settlements. Two of the principal arguments used to justify the enslavement of Amerindians were the concepts of “just war” (i.e. the notion that anyone who refused to accept Christianity, or rebelled against Spanish rule, could be enslaved), and “rescate” or ransom (the idea that Amerindians held captive by other groups could be purchased in order to Christianize them, and to rescue them from captors who were allegedly cannibals).
In most of the Caribbean, even before the mid-sixteenth century, it was evident that Spanish colonization based on the mass forced labor of Amerindians was not a viable option. In addition to the demands of Spanish colonists, Old World diseases such as smallpox, measles, chicken pox, and typhus decimated native populations, and reduced workforces to unsustainable levels. Vocal advocates of reform, most notably Bartolomé de las Casas, persuaded many in Spain that the abuses suffered by Amerindians at the hands of Spanish colonists were unacceptable on moral and religious grounds. Worried by the catastrophic decline of native American populations, and faced with growing opposition to Spanish mistreatment of Amerindians, Emperor Charles V passed a series of laws in the 1540s known collectively as the “New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians,” or just the “New Laws.” Among the first royal decrees issued in 1542 was the abolition of Amerindian slavery. Furthermore, Amerindians were no longer required to work without pay, and Spanish colonists’ children could no longer inherit encomiendas. These changes were met with heavy resistance from colonists in Mexico and Peru, where some colonists possessed vast encomiendas resembling small kingdoms and because of their complaints, some of the New Laws were only partially enforced in these colonies, and some traditional practices were partially reinstated. But in the Spanish Caribbean, Amerindians’ rapidly declining populations led Spanish colonists to look elsewhere for laborers long before the 1540s. With the Portuguese slave trade thriving, they increasingly looked to Africa.
Spain's Leader Accused of Going Soft on Cuban Human Rights
MADRID - Leaders of Spain's seven-month-old socialist government are being forced to explain their intentions after a high-profile visit to Cuba by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Aides to Sanchez, who pledged to "deepen" ties with the Communist-led island during the late November visit, insist the trip was intended to boost Spain's financial interests and promote dialogue. But Spanish opposition parties accuse the prime minister of turning a blind eye to human rights and abandoning his predecessors' effort to promote change in the former Spanish colony.
Some of the most virulent criticism has come from Santiago Abascal, head of a rising far-right movement which scored an upset victory in a Dec. 2 regional election. He has denounced Sanchez as an "accomplice" of "Castro-Chavismo" — a term used to describe what some conservatives see as an alliance between Cuba and Venezuela to spread leftist authoritarianism.
Albert Rivera, head of the centrist Citizens' Party, has decried Sanchez's "fanciful posturings with violators of human rights." And officials of the center-right Popular Party similarly accused Sanchez of ignoring human rights and demanded that he do better during a visit to Madrid by China's President Xi Jinping that followed the Cuba trip.
Government officials say that their priority is promoting trade. They are eager to open markets in China, which runs a $20 billion trade surplus with Spain and owns a portion of its public debt. Spain also has economic interests in Cuba where some of its major hotel companies are heavily invested.
Since assuming office in May, Sanchez has focused on repairing ties with leftist governments which deteriorated under former prime minister Mariano Rajoy. Rajoy's Popular Party government had supported the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba and Venezuela and was sharply critical of their policies.
When called in for Senate questioning, Foreign Minister Josep Borrell defended his government's engagement with Cuba and Venezuela as a way to promote democratic changes. A memo signed in Havana by Sanchez and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel calls for annual consultations in which human rights will be on the agenda.
But days before the Havana trip, representatives of Sanchez's Socialist Party voted in the European Parliament against a resolution calling on Cuba to stop persecuting its opponents. The resolution also urged Havana to stop "imposing censorship online by blocking internet sites for the sole purpose of limiting political criticism and restricting access to information."
Cuban dissidents
Critics also point out that Sanchez failed to meet with Cuban dissidents despite requests by opposition groups on the island including the "Ladies in White," an internationally recognized association of mothers and spouses of hundreds of political prisoners.
The last Spanish prime minister to visit Cuba, Jose Maria Aznar who traveled there to attend an Iberian-American summit, met with dissidents despite loud objections by then-president Fidel Castro. U.S. President Barack Obama also met with dissidents during his visit in 2015.
Spanish diplomatic officials say Sanchez managed to persuade Diaz-Canel to modify new restrictions on economic freedom, which are alarming thousands of Spanish small businessmen who were drawn to Cuba by a recent opening to small-scale private initiatives.
According to a foreign ministry source, Spanish construction companies also want better access to Cuba's market after watching French and German firms snap up recent contracts, including for an expansion of Havana's airport.
EU sanctions
The Sanchez government has also softened Spain's support for EU sanctions on Venezuela, which has responded to a collapsing economy with help from Cuban security advisers and Chinese loans.
At a meeting of European foreign ministers last month, Borrell opposed further sanctions on Venezuelan officials accused of supervising mass arrests, as proposed by former prime minister Rajoy.
The EU external affairs council released a statement which refrained from blaming President Nicolas Maduro for the crisis that has seen some 3 million refugees flee Venezuela. It called, instead, on the opposition to hold a "dialogue" with the government to resolve a " breakdown in the institutional order."
But Venezuelan opposition leaders say they are not interested in new talks with Maduro. Exiled Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma says any further negotiations would serve only to legitimize the government as it steps up repression with mass arrests.
Sanchez has also been slow to criticize the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which is being investigated by the United Nations and Organization of American States over hundreds of alleged extrajudicial executions. He made no mention of the issue at this year's Iberian American summit in Guatemala, declaring instead that Latin America is free of the "xenophobic" and "racist" discourses "afflicting" the United States and Europe.
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These battalions arose in 2007 by an agreement between the MININT Counterintelligence Services and the Union of Young Communists (UJC).
By Roberto Álvarez Quiñones
April 24, 2021Benito Mussolini created the fascist detachments facii di combatimento, later called Black Shirts because of the color of their uniforms. Adolf Hitler organized his own, the Brown Shirts, and the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro created his Blue Shirts, under the name of Revolutionary National Militias. They then founded the Rapid Response Brigades (BRR) and later the UJC-MININT Battalions, both head-to-toe fascist creations.That explains why any study of the similarities between Castroism and fascism in Italy and Germany, however cursory, always leaves everyone speechless.Because we are not talking about regular military forces or the internal order of a government, but about paramilitary brigades outside the law and the Constitution, not subject to regulations or supervision of any kind, that respond only to the chieftain: in Italy , the Duce; in Germany, the Führer; and in Cuba, the Commander in Chief.In Italy, with the motto "Serving God and the Fatherland" the Black Shirts were in charge of doing the dirty work of Mussolini's fascist party. They brutally repressed civilians who demonstrated against the fascist ideology. With them at the fore, the fascist leader had taken power in 1922. The same mission was carried out in Hitler's Germany by the Nazi Brown Shirts, who ended up as fanatical assault troops who murdered civilians in the streets or beat them in front of their homes. 
(Benito Mussolini ¨el Duce ¨ and Adolf Hitler ¨el Führer¨)Except for the Red Guards of Mao Tse Tung, who in China sowed terror and assassinated thousands of people during the "Cultural Revolution" of the 1960s, in no other communist country were there such repressive paramilitary militias directly manipulated by civilians dictator. In the Soviet Union and other communist countries it was the official government police who were in charge of repressing, not irregular forces of alienated fanatics.Although the Castroist Blue Shirts (militias) were not used to beat defenseless men and women in the streets, or to torture or kill, they did constitute trained and armed paramilitary forces to prop up the dictatorship, always with the tale of supposed preparations of a Yankee invasion, or to intimidate the "worm" population with parades and expressions of "patriotic" national-socialism, similar to those that existed before in Italy and Germany.
(In the photo above: militiawoman of the National Revolutionary Militias (MNR) of the 60s; 
in the photo below: militiamen and militiamen of the Militia of Territorial Troops (MTT) of the National Television News (NTV) popularly known as Nobody sees you-)As the fidelista hypnotism that had numbed their neurons evaporated, many Cubans realized that Castroism was the great scam of a group of livelihoods. And with the devastating crisis of the "Special Period", in the 1990s the Castros, fearing "the masses" that they hypocritically swore to defend, created the Rapid Response Brigades (BRR), clearly fascist detachments for, at an order of "up" to beat civilians in the streets, and physically and verbally assault those who wanted to emigrate.One of them, the Blas Roca Contingent, struck with irons and baseball bats and seriously injured protesters during the Maleconazo of Havana in August 1994.One of them, the Blas Roca Contingent, struck with irons and baseball bats and seriously injured protesters during the Maleconazo of Havana in August 1994.One of them, the Blas Roca Contingent, struck with irons and baseball bats and seriously injured protesters during the Maleconazo of Havana in August 1994.Not satisfied with that, as the opposition organizations, politicians, human rights activists and independent journalists gained strength, the Castro brothers went further and in 2007 they took the UJC-MININT Battalions, even more fascist than the BRR, onto the streets.Paramilitary gangs such as fascist Italy and GermanyThey are paramilitary hordes that operate outside the law, little known to the public, and totally unknown by international humanitarian organizations. Today they constitute a fundamental force within the repressive machinery of Castroism, or rather neo-Castroism, after the VIII Congress of the PCC.The structure and functioning of the UJC-MININT Battalions have been learned from the testimony of Dannier Nocedo, former provincial chief of those battalions in Las Tunas (until 2018), who explained to an independent journalist that these militias are a repressive arm directly managed by State Security.
These battalions even violate the Communist Constitution because of their paramilitary character, as did Mao's Black Shirts, Brown Shirts and Red Guards. They arose in 2007 by an agreement between the MININT Counterintelligence Services and the Union of Young Communists (UJC).Although made up of civilians, they are militarily organized into detachments, companies and squads. Its main mission is to repress political opponents, human rights defenders, journalists and independent artists. Nocedo explained that the MININT summons the leaders of the CDRs and gives them the details of how to repress and carry out the act of repudiation in question. Each battalion carries posters, photos, revolutionary slogans and music prepared for the occasion by the UJC for the fascist act."They hit him so hard in the belly that he was spitting blood"
Dannier said that in Providencia 4, a small town in Las Tunas, they organized an act of repudiation of UNPACU activists. "I didn't see that part because we were late," he said, "but they told us that it was brutal. As soon as the activists got off the pachanga, there were already repressive groups waiting for them and they beat them in tremendously: they had to score points on the tongue and another had an ultrasound because they hit him so hard in the belly that he was spitting blood ".Those battalions are also the ones that mount guards in front of the homes of journalists, opponents and other activists, and prevent them from going out into the streets for days, or permanently. And so that nothing fails, they are always directed on the ground by a regular MININT officer. In all provinces these battalions function in the same way.
Before repressing or making an act of repudiation, a member of the battalion goes to the neighborhood, meets with the leaders of the CDR and invents nefarious stories of false common crimes, large-scale defamation, about the opponent who is going to be repudiated. Many cederistas yell at the activist without knowing if what the UJC militant told him in the meeting they had is true or a lie.
(Rapid Response Brigade (BRR) burning copies of the Declaration of Human Rights)
They are as anti-Cuban as the Creole volunteers in the 19th centuryIt is a national shame that at this point in the suffering of the Cuban people, hungry, without medicine, even with scabies and a pandemic that is spreading due to the disastrous health system, there are young Cubans who join paramilitary forces to repress those who they want the freedom of the country.They are as anti-Cuban as were the young anti-patriotic and pro-colonial Cubans who, during the wars of independence, joined the Spanish Volunteer Corps to repress the Cuban independence supporters.
(Dismissal of troops from the Corps of Volunteers of Order, misnamed Corps of Spanish Volunteers, to go on the campaign against the Mambi troops of the Liberation Army)Those joint Spanish and Cuban troops (some 60,000 Creoles in four and a half decades) terrorized supporters of independence and maintained a tight grip on the urban population. And they were, by the way, those who arrested and then shot the eight Cuban medical students, all innocent, in Havana on November 27, 1871. In the last War of Independence (1895-1898) of the 4,219 volunteers who died 1,480 were unpatriotic Cubans; 35% of them.The young people recruited for the UJC-MININT battalions have to take an oath to defend the "revolution", which translates into defending the criminal satrapy that is ending Cuba.
The young people recruited for the UJC-MININT battalions have to take an oath to defend the "revolution", which translates into defending the criminal satrapy that is ending Cuba.So to finish, nothing better than a suggestion and a conclusion. Suggestion: to the UJC leadership that remove the faces of Mella, Camilo and Che from the organization's logo, and put those of Mussolini, Hitler and General Fedrico Roncalli, captain general of Cuba, who in 1850 created the Corps of Spanish Volunteers.And the conclusion can be summarized in two questions: Is that what the UJC has been for, to emulate with the fascist hordes of Mussolini and Hitler, Mao's Red Guards, or with the Cuban volunteers of the 19th century who repressed their independence compatriots? Has the UJC finally been left to do the dirty work of Castroism-fascism?These and many other questions should be answered urgently in the UJC Base Committee from Cabo de San Antonio to Punta de Maisí.
From http://baracutey.cubano.blogspot.com
The conflict between empire and democracy
Trouble in Cuba
A splendid little war
Consequences of the Spanish-American War
Spain punishes Cuban dissidentsMARY ANASTASIA O'GRADYDay 06/18/2011Despite the 21 percent unemployed and the looming debt crisis, Spain is still considered one of the world's great travel destinations. Unless, of course, one is a Cuban prisoner of conscience deported and released in Spain by the military dictatorship of Havana. In that case, life as a foreigner in the sunny Iberian Peninsula is economically and psychologically painful.
Over the past 11 months, the Cuban regime has suddenly removed 115 political prisoners from their jail cells and exiled them to Spain, calling this exile "liberation." Many of them are part of a group known as "the 75" who were arrested in March 2003 for activities such as collecting signatures for a democracy petition, leading peaceful demonstrations or writing for independent newspapers.I have met 10 of them in Spain. His stories about the years in Cuba's dungeons and the widespread repression across the island are chilling. One of them showed me some clandestine photos inside the famous Combinado del Este prison, a filthy and infectious facility not suitable for animals. Some prisoners of conscience have spent years there.
After three days of interviews, I began to sink under the weight of the Cuban reality. But the cloud that darkened my spirit was not due to anything that these patriots had revealed about that seedy place known as Cuba. I know very well Castro's human rights record. The truly alarming part of the prisoners' stories is the absolutely amoral role played by the socialist government of Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which has helped the Cuban dictatorship to disguise the deportation as "liberation." It's what one might expect from those who rule Burma, North Korea or Iran.After seven years of a horrific life in prison, many of the "75", some of whom were serving sentences of more than two decades, showed no signs of budging. Orlando Zapata Tamayo began a hunger strike and died at the hands of the regime in February 2010. The beatings of Castro's thugs of the Ladies in White - the wives, sisters and mothers of political prisoners - were captured with mobile phones and they spread like a virus over the Internet. Another dissident on hunger strike, Guillermo Fariñas, was seriously ill.
"The 75" had become a huge public relations problem for the regime. As governments and intellectuals around the world condemned systematic brutality, it became clear that more than half a century of Cuban propaganda promoting the image of a socialist paradise was in danger of going bankrupt. To minimize the damage, the regime not only had to get the prisoners out of the country by announcing it as a "release," but it also had to ensure that they would be forgotten. Spain agreed to help, and why not? The then Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, maintains a cordial relationship with the Castro government and was a regular VIP guest on the island.
Family members, concerned that their loved ones might die in jail, asked them to take the Spanish exit. Once in Spain, they realized that they had been deceived. They were clearly political refugees, and under Spanish law they had the right to claim that designation. But for Spain, admitting that they were victims of political persecution would be tantamount to denying the entire objective of the maneuver, which was to present Castro as a great benefactor who had liberated them. This is why many of those I spoke to are still in legal limbo.The transition to democracy in Cuba depends on two things: new leaders in the country and international solidarity with their fight for freedom from abroad. Zapatero has betrayed the Cuban people on both fronts.
The foreign accomplices of castrism
More than sixty years have not sufficed for those who dare to present the thee as connoisseurs of the reality of our country and – above – to ensure that castrism tends towards democratic change
Cuban Independence Movement
Dissatisfied with the corrupt and inefficient Spanish administration, lack of political representation, and high taxes, Cubans in the eastern provinces united under the wealthy planter Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, whose declaration of independence in October 1868, the Grito de Yara (“Cry of Yara”), signaled the beginning of the Ten Years’ War, in which 200,000 lives were lost. Céspedes had the support of some landowners, whose main interest was economic and political independence from Spain, whereas the farmers and labourers were more concerned with the immediate abolition of slavery and greater political power for the common man.
In 1876 Spain sent Gen. Arsenio Martínez Campos to crush the revolution. Lacking organization and significant outside support, the rebels agreed to an armistice in February 1878 (Pact of Zanjón), the terms of which promised amnesty and political reform. A second uprising, La Guerra Chiquita (“The Little War”), engineered by Calixto García, began in August 1879 but was quelled by superior Spanish forces in autumn 1880. Spain gave Cuba representation in the Cortes (parliament) and abolished slavery in 1886. Other promised reforms, however, never materialized.
In 1894 Spain canceled a trade pact between Cuba and the United States. The imposition of more taxes and trade restrictions prodded the economically distressed Cubans in 1895 to launch the Cuban War of Independence, a resumption of the earlier struggle. Poet and journalist José Julián Martí, the ideological spokesman of the revolution, drew up plans for an invasion of Cuba while living in exile in New York City. Máximo Gómez y Báez, who had commanded the rebel troops during the Ten Years’ War, was among those who joined Martí’s invasion force. Although Martí was killed (and martyred) in battle about one month after initiation of the invasion on April 11, 1895, Gómez and Antonio Maceo employed sophisticated guerrilla tactics in leading the revolutionary army to take control of the eastern region. In September 1895 they declared the Republic of Cuba and sent Maceo’s forces to invade the western provinces.
By January 1896 rebel forces controlled most of the island, and the Spanish government replaced Martínez Campos with Gen. Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, who soon became known as El Carnicero (“The Butcher”). In order to deprive the revolutionaries of the rural support on which they depended, Weyler instituted a brutal program of “reconcentration,” forcing hundreds of thousands of Cubans into camps in the towns and cities, where they died of starvation and disease by the tens of thousands.
In 1897 Spain recalled Weyler and offered home rule to Cuba, and the next year it ordered the end of reconcentration. In the meantime, the rebels continued to control most of the countryside. Perhaps more important, they had won the sympathy of the vast majority of the Cuban people to their cause. Moreover, news of Spanish atrocities and tales of rebel bravery were splashed in the yellow journalism headlines of William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, which beat the drums of war.
When the USS Maine sank in Havana’s harbour in February 1898 after a mysterious explosion, the United States had pretext for going to war, and the Spanish-American War ensued. By the time of the American intervention in Cuba in April 1898, Maceo had been killed, but the war proved to be brief and one-sided. It was over by August 12, when the United States and Spain signed a preliminary peace treaty. By the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898, Spain withdrew from Cuba. A U.S. occupation force remained for more than three years, leaving only after the constitution of the new Republic of Cuba had incorporated the provisions of the Platt Amendment (1901), a rider to a U.S. appropriations bill, which specified the conditions for American withdrawal. Among those conditions were (1) the guarantee that Cuba would not transfer any of its land to any foreign power but the United States, (2) limitations on Cuba’s negotiations with other countries, (3) the establishment of a U.S. naval base in Cuba, and (4) the U.S. right to intervene in Cuba to preserve Cuban independence. Thus, the creation of the Republic of Cuba was effected on May 20, 1902.
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