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The Bush government’s so-called “plan
for assistance to a free Cuba” is nothing more than
the last piece of a history almost 200 years old
stemming from the annexationist voracity of the
United States. This brief summary, taken from
diverse bibliographies, includes a resume — in
quotations taken mainly from U.S. sources, of what
could be considered as:
The longest-running dispute in
contemporary history
BY LAZARO BARREDO MEDINA
IN
the spring of 1995, I was part of a group of
politicians, economists and intellectuals who went
to the offices of the Council on Foreign Relations
in New York to participate in a discussion on
economic, cultural and political aspects concerning
Cuba and the United States. It was an academic
exercise in an attempt to exchange opinions within
the framework of profound differences between the
two nations.
On
the U.S. side, several former assistant secretaries
of state were present who had been associated with
anti-Cuba policies under previous governments, along
with academics from different institutions and
individuals from the Council.
While it was a relaxed atmosphere of dialogue, from
the very start disagreements were plenty, given the
perceptions found on different subjects.
The
meeting’s tone rose with each issue. When it came to
the discussion on politics, the difference of
opinion was total.
The
speaker for the Cuban side said that a lack of
pragmatism was manifest in U.S. policy on Cuba,
while at the same time the United States was fully
normalizing its relations with China and Vietnam and
taking steps toward reaching an understanding with
North Korea, countries with which it went to war in
the latter half of the 20th century, and where more
than 100,000 Americans died and a large number went
missing. The wars in Korea and Vietnam deeply
traumatized U.S. society.
And
he immediately emphasized that in the case of Cuba,
where there had been neither wars nor deaths, where
U.S. flags were not burned, where there was neither
provincialism nor xenophobia when it came to
learning about and expanding U.S. culture, where
there was no environment of opposition to any U.S.
citizens who visited the island, despite the
terrible damages wreaked by the policies of
aggression, there was not even a willingness [on the
part of the U.S.] to sit at the negotiating table to
at least discuss their disagreements.
A
gentleman named William D. Rogers, who was assistant
secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs
during Henry Kissinger’s two mandates, interrupted
the Cuban speaker and said, “All of that about
China, Vietnam and Korea is true, but the Cubans
cannot lose sight of the fact that for the vast
majority of U.S. politicians, Cuba is a different
matter.” And, to reiterate, he added: “For the vast
majority of U.S. politicians, Cuba is an emotional
issue...”
That
had a huge impact on me. If Cuba is an emotional
issue today, that means attaining respect for Cuba’s
complete self-determination requires waiting for a
political class to emerge in the United States that
is willing to acknowledge a simple, seven-word
sentence: “Cuba is a free and independent country.”
Commenting on the details of that meeting to a Latin
American friend, his lack of understanding on the
historical depth of the matter came to the surface,
and he wanted to attribute responsibility for the
entire conflict to Fidel Castro’s defiance, based on
the idea that with the death of the Cuban
Revolution’s historic leader, those differences
between the two countries would end.
And
I say lack of understanding about the historical
depth of the matter, because differences of opinion
between Cuba and the United States are older than
“Methuselah”...
Those who study Cuba-U.S. relations and immerse
themselves in historical events going back to the
late 18th century can confirm that problems between
the two countries go beyond any ideological
differences and come down to the crossroads of
independence and annexation.
By
reading different Cuban and U.S. documents and
bibliographies, one can see how the conflict between
the two nations is the longest-running dispute in
contemporary history, going back to the independence
of the 13 British colonies themselves, and lasting
until our time, with the Helms-Burton Act, and more
recently with the 450-page “tome” that contains more
than 600 measures for determining Cuba’s future
under the concept of “violent transition,”
established by the W. Bush administration under its
so-called “plan for assistance to a free Cuba.”
For
almost 200 years, Cuba, like nobody else on this
Earth, has had to deal with U.S. foreign policy
dedicated to establishing that the United States is
not an ordinary country but an exclusive one,
“destined” (Manifest Destiny) to a “civilizing”
mission of bringing the “American way of life” to
other nations.
CUBA, BY NECESSITY AND BY RIGHT, SHOULD BELONG TO
THE UNITED STATES
“I
candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as
the most interesting addition which could ever be
made to our system of States,” wrote Thomas
Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United
States of America, in 1897.
Later, in 1823, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy
Adams, launched the term of Cuban geographic destiny
into publicity with his “ripe fruit” doctrine:
“...if an apple severed by the tempest from its
native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground,
Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural
connection with Spain, and incapable of self
support, can gravitate only towards the North
American Union, which by the same law of nature
cannot cast her off from its bosom.”
It
was during this time that James Monroe, the creator
of the famous “America for the Americans” doctrine,
was U.S. president, and Thomas Jefferson wrote to
him saying that Cuba’s annexation to the federation
was “exactly” what was needed for rounding out
national power and taking it to the highest degree
of interest.
In
May 1847, the New York Sun newspaper noted in
one of its editorials that Cuba, because of its
geographical position, “by necessity and by right
should belong to the United States; it can and
should be ours.”
One
year later, then-President Polk approved the start
of talks with Spain to acquire Cuba via its
purchase. A Creole newspaper in New Orleans
reflected the essence of this Yankee craving: “Cuba,
by divine providence, belongs to the Untied States
and must be Americanized.”
The
process of “Americanizing” Cuba that shaped up
during the 19th century as part of U.S. political
thinking was expressed via absolute disdain toward
the Cuban people.
In
1852, an article in the daily Delta of New
Orleans said: “Their language (that of Cubans) will
be the first to disappear, because the bastard Latin
language of their nation would hardly be able to
resist the competitive power of the robust, vigorous
English... Their political sentimentalism and
anarchic tendencies will rapidly follow language,
and gradually, the absorption of the people will be
complete, all owing to the domination of the
American mind over an inferior race.”
Of
course, geographic prominence makes itself felt
immediately in the economic aspect. Back in 1828,
39% of total Cuban imports came from the United
States; only 26% were from Spain. By 1860, the
dependence was greater: the United States absorbed
62% of Cuban exports; Britain was buying 22% and
Spain was buying only 3%.
In
1881, the U.S. consul in Cuba was already able to
affirm in his consular report: “Commercially, Cuba
has become a protectorate of the United States, but
politically, it continues to be dependent on Spain.”
In 1884, the United States absorbed 85% of Cuba’s
total production.
CLEANING UP THAT COUNTRY, EVEN BY MAKING IT A SODDOM
AND GOMORRAH
In
the 1890s, U.S. political sectors began reaching the
conclusion that the “Cuban fruit” was just right for
gobbling up. In November 1891, Munsey Magazine
insisted once again on buying the island of Cuba,
arguing that its geographic location was essential
to U.S. defense interests, and that it was a
destination for surplus products from the United
States, while also clearly expressing a willingness
to do whatever was necessary to take over that
territory, affirming: “It may almost certainly be
declared that before long Cuba will be ours.”
Another publication, the American Magazine of
Civics, summed up in 1895 diverse opinions about
Cuba’s annexation, including that of prominent Wall
Street figures like Frederick R. Condert, who
stated: “My mouth waters when I think about Cuba
being one of the states in our family.”
“If
we do not take over Cuba, it will continue to be in
the hands of a weak and decadent nation, and the
possibility of acquiring Cuba could be considered
lost forever,” wrote Theodore Roosevelt, assistant
secretary of the U.S. Navy at the time, on September
23, 1897. “I do not believe that Cuba can be
pacified with autonomy (promised for the island by
Spain at the time), and I trust that in a not too
distant time, such events will occur there that will
require us to intervene.”
The
true objectives that determined the intervention
were revealingly expressed in a communiqué sent on
December 24, 1897 from Breckenridge, assistant
secretary of war of the United States, to Army Lt.
General N. S. Miles, appointed general-in-chief of
the forces that would be used to carry out the
intervention.
What
did that communiqué say?
“The
island of Cuba, a larger territory, has a greater
population density than Puerto Rico, although it is
unevenly distributed. This population is made up of
whites, blacks, Asians and people who are a mixture
of these races. The inhabitants are generally
indolent and apathetic.
“It
is obvious that the immediate annexation of these
disturbing elements into our own federation in such
large numbers would be sheer madness, so before we
do that we must clean up the country, even if this
means using the methods Divine Providence used on
the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“We
must destroy everything within our cannons’ range of
fire. We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger
and its constant companion, disease, undermine the
peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army. The
allied army must be constantly engaged in
reconnaissance and vanguard actions so that the
Cuban army is irreparably caught between two fronts
and is forced to undertake dangerous and desperate
measures.”
The
imminent victory of the Cuban patriotic forces was
snatched away by U.S. intervention, removing the
possibility of the emergence of a new state as had
occurred in the rest of Latin America, given the
maintenance of the colonial power structures at
their services to take forward the plans drawn up
for the island’s total dependence.
Perhaps because of that conviction regarding
annexation in the United States, the first decision
made by Tomás Estrada Palma once U.S. forces
intervened in the Cuban-Spanish conflict was to
betray the memory of José Martí and dissolve the
Cuban Revolutionary Party, which the country’s
national hero had been able to make into the
unifying element of the independence struggle, thus
facilitating the later fragmentation of the Cuban
revolutionary movement into 57 (!) political parties
and organizations.
With
his intervention objectives met, General Leonardo
Wood, U.S. military governor in Cuba, wrote to U.S.
Defense Secretary E. Root:
“All
Americans and all Cubans who look to the future know
that the island will be part of the United States,
and that it is as much in their interest as it is in
ours to take a solid position on it.”
The
evidence of that desire to maximize their unlimited
powers for serving their interests was the fact that
Leonardo Wood, for example, who governed Cuba from
December 1899 to May 1902, handed over 223
concessions to U.S. companies for exploiting the
island’s most valuable natural resources.
Along with that was Military Order No. 62 by Wood,
better known by Cubans at the time as the “Law of
Dispossession,” and the incredible paradox that U.S.
President McKinley had more powers in a foreign
country than in his own, exemplified by the fact
that he could change Cuban tariffs when he could not
do so in the United States, given that was a
Congressional power. Such changes brought ruin for
pro-independence Cuban producers, and the loss of
their properties.
A
newspaper in the state of Louisiana commented at the
time:
“Little by little, the entire island is coming into
American hands, which is the shortest and safest way
to obtain its annexation to the United States.”
WITH
THE PLATT AMENDMENT, WE HAVE LEFT THEM LITTLE OR NO
INDEPENDENCE
Zeal
on the part of the great European powers for
dividing up territory in the late 19th century and
the U.S. diplomatic need to avoid friction in the
midst of those contradictions, together with the
resistance by majority of the Cuban people to
annexation, forced the United States to find a
formula for Cubans to have their republic, but
always wielding influence on the election of leaders
who yielded to U.S. interests.
It
was on that basis that on February 9, 1901, U.S.
Defense Secretary E. Root sent a letter to Governor
Wood, defining for him the five conditions of the
foundations for Cuban-U.S. relations:
1.
Recognition of the right of the United States to
intervene in Cuba’s internal affairs;
2. A
limit on Cuba’s right to sign agreements and
treaties with foreign powers or to concede to them
any type of privilege without previous U.S.
agreement;
3. A
limit Cuba’s right to obtain loans abroad;
4.
Recognition of the U.S. right to acquire land and
maintain naval bases in Cuba;
5.
Recognition and observation by Cuba of all laws
passed by U.S. military authorities and rights
stemming from those laws.
Senator Orville H. Platt, who introduced an
amendment to the U.S. Congress, took these five
points and added three clauses:
6.
The Cuban government would execute, and when
necessary, extend, the plans already devised or
other plans to be mutually agreed upon, for the
sanitation of the cities of the island, to the end
that a recurrence of epidemic and infectious
diseases may be prevented, thereby assuring
protection to the people and commerce of Cuba, as
well as to the commerce of the southern ports of the
United States and the people residing therein.
7.
The Isle of Pines would be omitted from Cuba’s
boundaries as set forth in its Constitution, from
the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the
title thereto being left to future adjustment by
treaty.
8.
The Cuban government would insert the previous
provisions into a permanent treaty with the United
States.
That
was how the Platt Amendment, passed by the U.S.
Congress, came into being, and the Cuban people were
forced to add it to the Constitution of their
Republic.
A
few days after the Platt Amendment was passed,
General Wood wrote to Theodore Roosevelt, who was
vice president at the time: “Of course, with the
Platt Amendment, we have left little or no
independence to Cuba... The practical thing now is
to achieve annexation. This would require some
time... With the control which we now have over
Cuba... we shall soon practically control the sugar
destiny of the whole world... I believe Cuba to be a
most desirable acquisition for the United States.”
Wood
not only brought heavy pressure to bear on a large
number of Cuban voters for achieving these goals, he
also maneuvered to limit participation by the Cuban
people during the mid-term elections of June 1900,
with regulations imposed by the U.S. authorities
that allowed only 7% of the population to vote. Of
the 1,572,797 inhabitants, only 150,648 could
register to vote due to the electoral law proclaimed
by Governor Wood; only 110,816 people ended up
voting. Those were the first “democratic” elections
in Cuba organized by the United States.
The
concept of a Cuban republic was outlined in 1900 by
the periodical Review of Reviews, when it
admitted: “The new Cuba may be a nation, but not a
sovereign power. Within, it may possess the
independence that its people desired and for which
they have fought. Without, it will be a protectorate
and will be under the protection of America’s great
power.”
That
was guaranteed by the composition of the first
government of the Cuban Republic. Of the ministers
or secretaries who shared the leadership of the
pseudo-republic along with Tomás Estrada Palma, nine
of them had belonged to the defunct Autonomist
Party, whose top leaders served the Spanish colonial
power in administering its Cuban colony; six were
members of prominent families in the native-born
sugar oligarchy, and another six — including
individuals who in one way or another participated
in the 1895 Revolution — had held high-ranking posts
in government under the U.S. occupation.
The
disdain on the part of the U.S. rulers for the Cuban
people was described by Gonzalo de Quesada, who
early in the century was Cuba’s ambassador to the
United States: “Today, (in the United States) they
are trumpeting our inability to run ourselves
without foreign help. Our failures are highlighted,
and our men are mocked...The hundreds of millions of
pesos invested in Cuba are, in their eyes, worth
more than our intellectual and moral future. What is
now demanded is stability, tranquility,
prosperity... and peace, even if it is that of the
tomb.”
WHAT
THE PROCONSULS THOUGHT
The
rest of the story is the conduct of proconsuls with
their “self-granted rights,” which I will outline
with several examples:
Charles Magoon, “provisional governor” from 1906 to
1909, would clearly note in his report to the U.S.
government the nature of Cuba’s multi-party system,
when he told his superiors that party ties did not
hold much sway in Cuba, and that there were few
bases, if any, involving essential points of
national policy or genuine differences in political
principles.
Charles Magoon arrived as part of the first U.S.
intervention into Cuba’s internal political life, in
line with the regulations of the Platt Amendment,
but with the intention of expediting the opening of
every door to Yankee businessmen. As U.S. historians
Scott Nearing and Joseph Freeman noted in their 1925
book, Dollar Diplomacy, from the first U.S.
military intervention until the third in 1917, U.S.
economic interests expanded on the island. The value
of investments grew from $50 million in 1898 to $141
million in 1909, and then shot up to $1.25 billion
in the mid-1920s.
Likewise, it is worth noting the real powers of
General Enoch Crowder, who arrived in Havana as a
U.S. envoy in 1921 and completely meddled in the
Cuban government via 15 memorandums, with more
powers than the Cuban president himself, against
every attempt that to induce any move toward
independence.
Later, in the 1930s, Ambassador Summer Welles, in
correspondence with his superiors, admitted that the
president consulted him daily on all decisions
affecting government, ranging from questions of
domestic policy and army discipline to the
appointment of personnel to all branches of
government.
Later, Ambassador Jefferson Caffery would arrive as
the personal representative of President Roosevelt;
his intervention was manifested to the extent that
Cuban history identifies the creation of one of the
republican governments with his name.
The
security felt by the United States regarding its
neo-colony was demonstrated by an article from
The Washington Daily News, in its May 30, 1934
edition, the day after the Platt Amendment was
“abolished,” saying that Cuba would continue being
the economic charge of the United States. It added
that as long as U.S. capital continued to dominate
the industries, lands and banks of that country, and
as long as Cubans depended on U.S. trade, their
government and national life would be influenced in
many ways by the United States.
That
security was provided by the existence in Cuba of
more than 300 U.S. companies. “Free enterprise” made
it possible for 28 U.S. corporations to control
one-fourth of the Cuban nation’s productive land,
along with ownership of 36 sugar mills, railroad
companies, mines, telephone companies, electric
companies and much, much more, while maintaining the
Guantánamo Naval Base and commitments to military
reciprocity.
But
also by the fact that the abolition of the Platt
Amendment was nothing more than a symbolic publicity
act.
In
an editorial in its June 18, 1934 edition, The
Washington Post affirmed, in that respect, that
the United States had renounced its responsibility
for maintaining “law and order” on the island, but
that “our right to intervene for the protection of
American lives and property” still stood.
The
new Permanent Treaty on bilateral relations, signed
in 1934, made it clear that the rules of the game
were not being changed, which was explicit in
Article 2 of the treaty: “All the acts effected in
Cuba by the United States of America during its
military occupation of the island, up to May 20,
1902, the date on which the Republic of Cuba was
established, have been ratified and held as valid;
and all the rights legally acquired by virtue of
those acts shall be maintained and protected.”
The
“status quo” of the Platt Amendment continued to be
valid, and proof of that was the confession by one
of the last U.S. ambassadors in the 1950s, Earl
Smith, who acknowledged years later in his memoirs
that during his mandate, until the first days after
the triumph of the Revolution, the U.S. ambassador
was the No. 2 man on the island, and sometimes
played a role even more important than the Cuban
president.
The
U.S. government in 1958 was on the verge of
implementing the “right to intervention” under the
Platt Amendment in face of the successful advance of
the rebel forces led by Commander Fidel Castro,
which — despite all of the U.S. military support —
were defeating the army of dictator Fulgencio
Batista, who took power in a coup d’état years
earlier with U.S. complacency. A note from the State
Department went so far as to announce the
possibility of U.S. intervention in the military
conflict, as occurred in 1898. But this time, things
would be different.
FIDEL CASTRO’S NEUTRALITY IS A CHALLENGE
There is currently an attempt to distort things in
the eyes of the world, but the facts are in black
and white, and show very eloquently the historic
reality of this dispute.
What
triumphed in January 1959 was nothing more than
determination for national independence, sustained
for more than one century by Cuban patriots.
The
Cuban Revolution was victorious on January 1, 1959.
Fidel Castro and the Rebel Army entered Havana one
week later. As early as January 15, 1959 — one week
after his victorious entrance into Havana —
Commander-in-chief Fidel Castro gave an interview to
the magazine U.S. News and World Report, in
which he said, referring to Cuba-U.S. relations: “We
want good relations with the United States, but
submission — no.”
This
comment by Fidel, in which he announced from a
position of sovereignty that Cuba was not disposed
to permitting intervention in and disrespect towards
its self-determination, was interpreted as
aggression by the U.S. rulers.
There were still a few months lacking before Cuba
adopted its first revolutionary law, which was the
Agrarian Reform Act in May of that year; it was
still a long time before the ideas of socialism took
root in the Cuban national consciousness; however,
already by January 1959, U.S. politicians were irate
about that demand for the right to
self-determination.
In
its April 6, 1969 edition, Time magazine
reflected disagreement among the U.S. rulers with
that stance on independence, and affirmed in an
article that “Castro’s neutrality is a challenge for
the United States.”
The
Cuban government could not even be neutral regarding
the United States!
From
that moment, a ruthless war would begin, failing in
its every attempt to overthrow the Cuban nation, and
recently exhausting — with the Helms-Burton Act and
the new series of measures by W. Bush — its entire
arsenal of political, economic and diplomatic
reprisals.
And
all of that on the part of a gigantic country that,
coming into being on July 4, 1776, led its people to
pass a Declaration of Independence in which, as its
first unwavering postulate, the inherent right of
every people to decide their fate for themselves.
(Translator’s note: some quotes in this article were
re-translated into English from their Spanish
translation.)
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