I hope with this to begin a (very modest, given that I am not a historian) sort of retrospective series on US relations with Cuba. Why should this be of any interest now to Daily Kos readers? This particular diary harks back to the Spanish American War and the subsequent occupation of Cuba by the United States following victory over Spain. Its parallels with the current debacle in Iraq are striking and hence hold out some lessons for our congressional leaders to take into account while they grapple with our nation's policy in that country and the wider Middle East. Join me in the first part of what I hope will be an interesting series.
The 24th of February will mark 50 years since the New York Times correspondent and editor Herbert L. Matthews (no relation to me) published his first in a series of articles on Fidel Castro, marking the 26 of July Movement's first steps out of the Sierra Maestra mountains and toward its eventual ascendency to power in Cuba. Criticized as partial to Fidel Castro, Matthews nevertheless spoke words that would prove prophetic and resonate throughout Latin America:
One might say Fidel Castro was like Pandora. The box was there and all the troubles were in it – and he opened the box. Latin America is moving fast, and not necessarily with us or toward us. The social and economic pressures have revolutionary possibilities. Our policies to date have not been successful. They have been too negative, too little, too closely tied to dictators and to small ruling classes who will become victims of the new social pressures if they do not move quickly and make necessary reforms. Stability and the status quo are dreams of the past. We have lost the Cuba we knew and dominated, or influenced so greatly. Our relations with Cuba will never be the same , even when they become friendly again, as they must. (Herbert L. Matthews, The Cuban Story, New York: Braziller, 1961, p. 273)
The United States is going to continue to have a difficult time dealing with Fidel Castro’s legacy, even after his passing. It is no secret that the US had actively sought to depose and even eliminate the Cuban leader in order to replace the island’s communist government with one favorable to US interests. Instead of passing judgement on Castro’s years in power as supreme leader of Cuba, I would instead like to go back in history to examine to some degree why someone like Castro came to power in the first place. I do it in the hopes of contributing to the examination of the roots of animosity and outright rebelliousness of not a few Latin American administrations towards the US government and its policies (notice that I am - purposely - not using the phrase "roots of anti-Americanism").
As author Thomas G. Paterson writes in the first chapter of his 1994 book Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, in the mid nineteen fifties:
Castro had no ties with Cuba's Communist Party – at least not at this time. His dissident organization actually distrusted the Communists because of their onetime sordid alliance with Fulgencio Batista, the very dictator the rebels intended to topple. Castro's most conspicuous model in the mid-1950's was the hero of the 1890's Cuban Revolution José Martí, not Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong or Josef Stalin. (pages 15-16).
So what happened?
Historians have long debated whether Castro, once in power, was pushed by the Eisenhower administration into the arms of the communists, or if he had come to power with the intent of converting the island to communism all along. That debate is not as interesting as why there may have existed in Cuba (and, for that matter, elsewhere in Latin America) a widespread distrust of and even antagonism towards the United States government in the first place. In fact, I believe the debate about Fidel’s intentions was largely settled by Allen Luxenberg in his 1988 article "Did Eisenhower Push Castro into the Arms of the Soviets", (Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 1 pages 37-72.)
(The above photo was taken by my father, Dr. Thomas G. Mathews)
It is evident that when Castro came to power, his seemingly abrupt repudiation of the United States came as a shock to many ordinary Americans. As Louis A. Perez Jr. expressed in "Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of US Policy toward Cuba",
North Americans viewed early developments in Cuba with a mixture of incomprehension and incredulity. Much had to do with the pace of events: everything moved so quickly, as events with portentous implications seemed to accelerate from one day to the next in vertiginous succession. There was no frame of reference with which to take measure of developments in Cuba: no precedent, no counterpart, but most of all there was no understanding of the larger historical circumstances from which the Cuban revolution had emerged. (Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 34, Part 2, May 2002, page 229)
It is precisely these historical circumstances that must be reviewed to understand why someone like Castro could emerge as a leader of a Latin American country. Cuba’s hostility toward the United States can be attributed in part to U.S. policies toward the island since 1898. That was the year of what North Americans have dubbed the Spanish American War. (note: I am at great pains to recommend a single book as the definitive account of the "Spanish American War", since there are many writings on the subject as well as diverse interpretations of the events; nevertheless, I am advised that David Trasks’ book is among the best one might find in a single volume). Herein lays one of the main roots of the historic US-Cuban discord.
Cubans have resented the US depiction of the war as primarily a battle between Spain and the United States. As Lars Schoultz expounds in his commentary Blessings of Liberty: The United States and the Promotion of Democracy in Cuba:
The Cuban contribution had been considerable: after three years of warfare the rebels had pinned down nearly all of the 200,000 Spanish troops on the island, and that alone explains why Cubans have always been upset by the term US citizens use for the conflict – the Spanish American War – which overlooks their role in the proceedings. (Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 34, Part 2, May 2002, page 399)
One of the great heroes of what Cubans prefer to call the Spanish-Cuban-American War was General Antonio Maceo Grajales, a black man who was popularly known as the Titan of Bronze. Described as one of the outstanding guerrilla leaders in nineteenth century Latin America, Maceo’s
...most famous campaign in the War of Cuban liberation was his invasion of western Cuba when his troops, mostly Afro-Cubans on horseback, covered more than 1,000 miles in 92 days and fought the enemy in 27 separate encounters.
Noted historian Ada Ferrer points out that the presence of blacks among Cuban revolutionaries brought anti-racism to the fore in the struggle for independence. (See also the historical references to the Mambises) The experiences of these black insurgents became fundamental to the unfolding of the new republic and held out the promise of the eventual establishment of a color-blind nation.
While Spain was defeated in the war, what took place in its aftermath clearly dismayed the brave Cuban fighters. As Lars Schoultz explains,
No Cuban helped to negotiate the armistice signed by Spain and the United States in Washington in August; it required the Spanish to relinquish sovereignty over Cuba pending negotiation of a treaty of peace, which was signed in Paris in December, again without Cuban participation. It declared that Cuba ‘is, upon evacuation by Spain, to be occupied by the United States’. (page 399)
And this in the face of a US Congressional War Resolution known as the Teller Amendment that explicitly stated that the US would not annex Cuba. It is important to note that while the United States supposedly joined the war to assist the Cubans in liberating their country from the yoke of the Spanish, the tables were now turned and Cuba had actually become a war booty with the US presence emanating from the "right of conquest" instead of any invitation or formal understanding with Cuban leaders.
General John R. Brooke, to who the Spanish formally turned over the Cuban capital in 1899 (and who became the first US military commander of the island) exemplified the condescending and paternalistic approach which would characterize the US occupation of the island. According to Lester D. Langley:
Having condemned Spain for its backward colonialism, Brooke... accepted the Spanish characterization of Cubans as people incapable of self-rule who required enlightened guidance. (...) In assuming power, Brooke retained much of the Spanish administrative structure, modifying it to meet the current requirements; he even kept a number of Spanish bureaucrats. (The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century, Fourth Ed., U. of Georgia Press, 1989: pages 18-19)
Meanwhile, in the eastern part of the island, the eventual successor to Brooke was already stamping his imprimatur on the American occupation by implementing a
regimen which included, among other punishments, public whippings for those who violated his civic code. (Langley, page 19)
This individual was General Leonard Wood, who would become a particularly notorious irritant to the Cubans. Leonard Wood (who would later go on to notoriety as the butcher of Muslims in the Phillipines) was one of a group of likeminded government functionaries, that included such "luminaries" as US President McKinley’s Secretaries of War, Elihu Root, and State, John Hay, that disliked the Teller Amendment and clearly favored annexing Cuba to the United States. Lars Schoultz documents the racist nature of the US occupation under Leonard Wood:
But the Cubans could not be convinced so quickly to become part of the United States, and so Governor-General Wood tried to extend the transition period. ‘We are going ahead as fast as we can,’ he wrote the president in 1900, ‘but we are dealing with a race that has steadily been going down for a hundred years into which we have got to infuse new life, new principles and new methods of doing things. This is not the work of a day or of a year, but of a longer period.’ (...) ...the president ordered Wood to accelerate the transition.
The first task was to disenfranchise that part of the Cuban population which had gone furthest downhill. By decree Wood restricted suffrage to Cuban born males over the age of twenty who could meet one of three requirements: the ability to read and write, the possession of property valued at $250 or more, or military service in the insurgent forces. This eliminated two thirds of Cuba’s males over the age of twenty, and ...Elihu Root congratulated his general when he learned that ‘whites so greatly outnumbered blacks’ in the truncated electorate. (pages 400 – 401)
Next Time: The Platt Amendment