The longest-running dispute in History

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

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.)