CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Two Centuries of U.S. Contempt For Cuba

“I do believe I’ll be . . . .having the honor of taking Cuba.” – Donald Trump

“I do believe I’ll be . . . .having the honor of taking Cuba.”

Donald Trump tightened already suffocating sanctions on Cuba on May 1, at the same time as he made renewed threats to “take” the island as soon as he finishes committing the greatest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history in Iran. The new measure to heap further unmerited suffering on Cubans was justified on the laughable pretext that their government poses an extraordinary national security threat to the United States, which, if it were true, would constitute an equally extraordinary confession of military impotence on the part of the United States.[1]

That point aside, it’s a simple historical fact that U.S. contempt for Cuban sovereignty long predates Washington’s fixation on “national security” as a pretext for its interventions, so the problem does not lie in Havana.

Over two centuries ago, Washington was already firmly opposed to independence for the island, mainly because it was “strategically situated and rich in sugar and slaves,” in the words of U.S. foreign policy expert Piero Gleijeses. Such advantages were not to be sacrificed to a heavily mixed-race population of “mongrels” achieving independence, to use the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny.[2]

Thomas Jefferson recommended that James Madison offer Napoleon a free hand in Spanish America in return for the gift of Cuba to the United States. Writing to Madison in 1823, he said that the U.S. should not go to war over the island, since “the first war on other accounts will give it to us, or the Island itself will give it to us, when able to do so,” sounding very much like Donald Trump today. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams explained Cuba’s strategic value, describing it as “an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union.” He, too, favored it remain under Spanish control until it fell into U.S. hands by “the laws of political . . . gravitation,” a “ripe fruit” ready for harvest. This view was almost universal in the U.S. Executive Branch and Congress at the time.

Concern over Cuba on explicitly political grounds arose with the coming of its national liberation movement in 1868. A key concern was the movement’s democratic tendencies, which included such heresies as democracy, freedom, and equal rights for everyone, not just white property owners. This was the familiar imperial fear of a bad apple spoiling the barrel, in this case Cuban independence possibly succeeding and inspiring other colonized peoples to similarly strive for national independence. If Empire is to exist, that kind of example has to be stamped out.[3]

Some U.S. lives and property were lost in the initial stages of Cuba’s war for independence, but the real crisis came in 1873 when Spain seized the Virginius, a ship flying the U.S. flag and carrying weapons to the Cuban revolutionary forces. The Spanish executed fifty-three crew members. Hamilton Fish, President Grant’s secretary of state, resisted calls for revenge knowing that the ship had been breaking the law and wanting no part of the multiracial Cuban population. When a cabinet member raised the idea of annexing Cuba, Fish quashed the idea with a reminder that the U.S. already had terrible racial problems in “South Carolina and Mississippi.”

In the end, Spain paid an $80,000 indemnity for lives of the crew members and remained in control of Cuba when the war ended in 1878.[4]

The war did not resume in full force until 1895, when Madrid’s empire was near collapse. For years it had been forced to simultaneously fight liberation movements in Cuba and the Philippines. Its colonies on the American mainland had been liberated in 1825, but it clung hard to the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, the last of its colonial possessions in the Americas. Meanwhile, U.S. influence had grown to the point that it could ignore British power and conquer Cuba, just in time to prevent victory by what it openly regarded as the indigenous lesser breeds. The New York press described the latter as “ignorant niggers, half breeds, and dagoes.” General Samuel B. M. Young of the U.S. military command was of a similar view, dismissing Cuban soldiers as “a lot of degenerates,” and “no more capable of self-government than the savages of Africa.”[5]

By late 1895, the rebels claimed to have established a provisional government. But neither Grover Cleveland nor William McKinley were willing to recognize the revolutionary forces. To have done so would have released Spain from the obligation to protect $50 million in U.S. property in Cuba. The U.S. government preferred to hold “civilized” Madrid responsible for that property and U.S. lives on the island, while pressing the Spanish government to give the “uncivilized” Cuban rebels enough autonomy so they would lay down their arms.

Spain, however, refused to grant the autonomy, at least at first. Its formerly global empire had withered away to just Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and no Spanish government could expect to remain in power if it lost control over any of these. The Spanish took a hard line, sending 150,000 soldiers who tried to destroy rebel support by rounding up thousands of Cubans and locking them in barbed-wire concentration camps. But the revolution continued to spread, and insurgents adopted a scorched earth policy that destroyed U.S. property.

Cuban suffering was incalculable. Typhus, smallpox, and cholera stalked the island, and famine was widespread. A huge portion of the population was sunk in disease, death, and despair.[6] As Spain lost control over the deteriorating situation riots broke out in Havana in late 1897. McKinley moved a warship, the Maine, into Havana harbor to protect U.S. citizens and property. Days later an explosion sank the Maine, killing more than 268 U.S. sailors. A naval court of inquiry investigating the sinking could not determine blame for the disaster.

Nevertheless, egged on by a sensationalist press that eagerly pinned the blame on Spain, excitement for war with Madrid mounted. President McKinley opposed it, but he also wanted U.S. property in Cuba protected, the Cuban revolution prevented from turning sharply left, and restored confidence in the U.S. business community, among other concerns. These outcomes could only be achieved through war.

Two months after the blowing up of the Maine, Congress authorized it and events proceeded in rapid-fire succession. Madrid broke off relations with Washington; the jingoist press chorused, “On to Havana!”; a million........

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