History of Cuba
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2 Conquest of Cuba 3 Spanish Colonial Cuba 4 Cuba's Struggle for Independence 5 Cuba in the Early 20th Century 6 The Castro Revolution 7 Communist Cuba |
Before 1492, Cuba was populated by two very distinct aborigine groups: Taíno and Siboney or Ciboney. Both were Stone Age cultures, the Taíno being slightly more advanced, although their development was limited to rudimentary agriculture and construction of wooden structures. Taínos were arguably the inventors of smoking, since at the arrival of the first Europeans, they already cultivated and consumed tobacco, in the form of primitive cigars. The entire native indian population disapeared during the Spanish conquest, due to the cruelty of spanish conquistadores, and the diseases they brought with them and which were previously unknown to indians, such as Measles.
Cuba was first visited by Europeans with Christopher Columbus, who landed on the island for the first time on October 28, 1492.
Diego Velasquez de Cuellar lead the Spanish conquest of the Island.
The Spanish settlers established sugar cane and tobacco as Cuba's primary products. As the native Indian population died out, African slaves were imported to work the plantations. Slavery was abolished in 1886.
Cuba was the last major Spanish colony to gain independence, following a 50-year struggle begun in 1850. Jose Marti, Cuba's national hero, began the final push for independence in 1895, the same year that he died in the battle of Dos Rios. In 1896 Major General Jose Braulio Aleman, with contributions from others, wrote the Cuban Constitution at La Yara. This Constitution, which stood unamended until 1940, was completely revised by Fidel Castro in the 1960s. A significant feature of General Aleman's wording was that it gave women the right to vote, and re-affirmed the laws abolishing slavery that had been in effect in Cuba since 1886.
Before the USS Maine sank in Havana Harbor, came the much publicised letter to the Governor of Cuba from Enrique Dupuy De Lome, the Ambassador of Spain in the US. In the letter De Lome characterized American President William McKinley as more or less an idiot and a pawn of others. The letter was stolen by a Cuban revolutionary, and eventually made its way into the hands of an apparently sympathetic Randolph Hearst, whose hidden motives saw a Cuba free of Spanish rule as ripe for American business interests.
That same year, 1898, the USS Maine sank in Havana Harbor on February 15 due to an explosion of undetermined origin. Many years later the explosion was determined to be accidental, but at the time it was widely believed to have been the victim of a mine. The United States used this as a final pretext to enter a conflict (see: Spanish-American War), which was practically already won by Cuban revolutionaries. Spain sent over one million men to Cuba, and only about 200,000 returned. The rest either died in combat, succumbed to tropical diseases or stayed to avoid the widespread poverty in their home country.
In December of 1898, Spain relinquished control of Cuba to the United States with the Treaty of Paris.
On May 20, 1902, the United States "granted" Cuba its independence, but retained the right to intervene to preserve Cuban independence and stability under the Platt Amendment. This move inspired by big business in America seeking to plunder the island's resources was passed as a resolution by only a few votes. Among those opposing this was the principal author of the Cuban Constitution Major General Jose Braulio Aleman and many others, who feared what eventually came to pass, that Cuba's riches would taken by the US. It was that policy that shaped the history of Cuba up until the Cuban revolution in 1959 and Cuba was more or less an American protectorate during that time. This was seen (and still is viewed) as an affront to national sovereignty by all Cubans. American forces finally left Cuba on January 28, 1909.Pre-Columbian Cuba
Conquest of Cuba
Spanish Colonial Cuba
Cuba's Struggle for Independence
The Platt Amendment
Fulgencio Batista |
A key figure in the process was Fulgencio Batista, an army sergeant, who originally organized a non-commissioned officer revolt in September 1933. After some time, he decided to become de-facto dictator, wielding significant power behind the scenes until he was elected president in 1940 in an election which many people considered to be rigged. His rule was marked by corruption and violence to opponents. Batista was voted out of office in 1944.
He was succeeded by Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín, a populist physician who had briefly held the presidency in the 1933 revolutionary process. President Grau passed a number of populist measures favoring workers and also was instrumental in passing the 1940 Constitution, which has been widely regarded as one of the most progressive ever written in terms of worker protection and human rights.
Grau was followed by Carlos Prío Socarrás, also elected democratically, but whose government was tainted by increasing corruption and violent incidents among political factions. Eduardo Chibás was the leader of the Ortodoxo Party, a liberal democratic group, who was widely expected to win in 1952 on an anticorruption platform. Chibás committed suicide before he could run for the presidency, and the opposition was left without its major leader.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Batista, who was running for president in the 1952 elections, but had only a small minority of votes, seized power in a bloodless coup three months before the election was to take place. President Prío did nothing to stop the coup, and was forced to leave the island as a result. Batista suspended the balloting and began ruling by decree.
Fidel Castro, a young lawyer from a wealthy family, who was running for a seat in the Chamber of Representatives for the Ortodoxo Party, circulated a petition to depose Batista's government on the grounds that it had illegitimately suspended the electoral process. However, the petition was not acted upon by the courts.
On July 26, 1953 Castro led a failed attack on the Moncada army barracks near Santiago de Cuba and was jailed until 1955, when his powerful family secured a pardon from Batista. Castro subsequently went into exile in Mexico. While in Mexico, he organized the 26th of July Movement with the goal of overthrowing Batista. A group of over 80 men sailed to Cuba on board the yacht "Granma", landing in the eastern part of the island in December 1956. Most of Castro's men were promptly killed or taken prisoner by Batista's forces. Castro managed to escape to the Sierra Maestra mountains with only 12 men, from where, aided by urban and rural opposition, he began a guerrilla campaign against the regime.
Batista's dictatorial rule fueled increasing popular discontent and the rise of active urban resistance groups, a fertile political environment for Castro's 26th of July Revolutionary Movement. The country was soon driven to chaos, particularly by a very effective sabotage and urban warfare campaign conducted in the cities by supporters of Castro.
Faced with a corrupt and ineffective military, dispirited by a U.S. Government embargo on weapons sales to Cuba and public indignation and revulsion at his brutality toward opponents, Batista fled on January 1, 1959. Within months of taking control, Castro moved to consolidate power by marginalizing other resistance figures and imprisoning or executing opponents. As the revolution became more radical, hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the island.
See also: Cuban Revolution
Relations between the U.S. and Cuba deteriorated rapidly as the Cuban government expropriated U.S. properties, notably those belonging to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) and the United Fruit Company. In the Castro government's first agrarian reform law on May 17, 1959 it sought to limit the size of land holdings, and to distribute that land to agricultural workers in "Vital Minimum" tracts. In compensation the Cuban government offered to pay the landholders based on the tax assessment values for the land. Actual payment would be with twenty-year bonds paying 4.5% interest (instead of the then U.S. investment grade corporate bond rate of 3.8%). Landholders from most other countries settled on this basis. The problem was with the tax assessed values. Most of the large landholdings had been acquired in the 1920 period when world sugar prices were depressed, and the land could be bought at bargain-basement prices. In the intervening period Cuban governments friendly to these interests had kept these bargain prices as the basis for calculating property taxes, thus insuring that those taxes would be kept low.
In response, the United States imposed an embargo on Cuba in October 1960, and broke diplomatic relations on January 3, 1961. (The embargo is still in effect as of 2003, although some humanitarian trade in food and medicines is now allowed.) However, the embargo does not extend to other countries. Cuba trades freely with most European, Asian and Latin American countries. One major exception to the embargo was made on November 6, 1965 when Cuba and the United States formally agreed to start an airlift for Cubans who wanted to go to the United States. By 1971 these so-called Freedom Flights took 250,000 Cubans to the United States.
The United States then sponsored an unsuccessful attack on Cuba, using conservative political groups as the main source of support. The attack began on April 15, 1961, when exiles, flying planes provided by the U.S. bombed several Cuban air force bases. This attack did not succed in destroying all of Castro's air force. In response, Castro declared Cuba a socialist state in a speech on April 16, 1961.
On April 17, 1961, a force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles, financed and trained by the CIA, landed in the south at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA's assumption was that the invasion would spark a popular rising against Castro. Castro's forces were forewarned of the invasion and had arrested thousands of suspected subversives before the invasion landed. There was no popular uprising. In hindsight it seems unlikely that one would have occurred even had Castro not conducted the arrests. What part of the invasion force that made it ashore was quickly defeated as President Kennedy was unwilling to offer overt US military support, the only possibility to make the invasion succeed. Many believe that the invasion, instead of weakening Castro, actually helped him consolidate his grip on power.
For the next 30 years, Castro pursued closer relations with the Soviet Union until the demise of the USSR in 1991.
The Organization of American States suspended Cuba's membership in the body on January 22, 1962 and the United States Government banned all US-related Cuban imports and exports a couple weeks later on February 7. The Kennedy administration extended this on February 8, 1963 making travel, financial and commercial transactions by US citizens to Cuba illegal.
Tensions between the two governments peaked again during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the U.S. blockaded Cuba to force the USSR to withdraw their newly-installed MRBMs from the country. The USSR agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for an agreement that the United States would not invade Cuba. The U.S. has honored this agreement, although the CIA continued to support anti-Castro groups by mounting an extensive international terrorist campaign and several botched assassination attempt throughout the 1960s.
Castro's rule has been autocratic and dictatorial, with dissidents being heavily repressed, jailed, or forced to leave the island. Elections are limited to voters ratifying the official slate of candidates. There is no freedom of the press, and people are routinely jailed or harassed for expressing anti-government ideas. Organizations such as Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders have condemned the Cuban government for its record on human rights. The government counters that such repression is needed because of the many attempts by the U.S. and anti-Castro forces to overthrow the government.
Castro's military provided support to revolutionary regimes in Angola and Nigeria and to guerrilla groups in South America. During one such campaign, Ernesto Che Guevara, who has become a symbol of revolution in the world, was captured by U.S.-trained commandos in Bolivia in 1967 and later executed. In the late 1970s, Cuban forces defeated the stronger South African army in a major battle in Angola.
When USSR support was lost, Cuba's economy was essentially paralyzed, and living conditions in Cuba worsened. This led Castro to open the country to tourism from Europe and Asia, and to enter into several joint ventures with foreign companies for hotel, agricultural and industrial projects. As a result, the use of U.S. dollars was legalized in the late 1990s, with special stores being opened which only sell in dollars. This has created a social split in the island. Persons with access to dollars live much better than those who do not.
Some non-violent initiatives have been launched by Cubans in the island, aiming at political reform. In 1997, a group led by Vladimiro Roca, a decorated veteran of the Angolan war and the son of the founder of the Cuban Communist Party, sent a petition, titled "La Patria es de Todos" (the homeland belongs to all) to the Cuban general assembly requesting democratic and human rights reforms. As a result, Roca and his three associates were sentenced to jail, from which they were eventually released.
In 2001, a group backed by the powerful Catholic church collected thousands of signatures for the Varela Project, a petition requesting a referendum on the island's political system. The process was openly supported by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter during his historic 2002 visit to Cuba. In response, Castro backers formally proclaimed that Castro's brand of socialism would be perpetual.
In 2003 seventy-five anti-government activists were arrested and summarily sentenced to heavy jail terms. Cuban officials described it as a response to provocative actions by the head of the US interests section in Cuba, who had been travelling around the country holding publicized meetings and press conferences with the dissidents. Castro's action was widely criticised by mainstream human rights organizations and even by American leftists generally sympathetic to his government.
In an unrelated matter six men were sentenced to death for hijacking a ferry with guns and knives, steering it into international waters where it ran out of fuel, and threatening to kill the passengers. Some accounts confused the two and accused Castro of sentencing dissidents to death, something which did not happen.
See also: Cuba, Spanish colonization of the AmericasThe Castro Revolution
Communist Cuba
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuba after the Soviet Union