"History They Didn 't Teach You in School"--Sept. 29th: U.S> Invades Cuba : Houston Indymedia

On September 29th 1906, the United States assumed military control of Cuba under the Platt Amendment, following the reelection of an American puppet government, which caused a nationalist uprising.

By that time, the US had a long history of interest and involvement in Cuba. In 1848 President James Polk tried to buy Cuba for $100 million, but Spain refused. After that, southern planters began to create and fund private militias, called filibusters, to invade Cuba or to induce the federal government to purchase the island from the Spanish in the hopes of expanding their agricultural, slave sytem into the Caribbean.

One such efforts occurred in 1849, when General Narcisco Lopez attempted to invade the island, with an army made up primarily of veterans of the Mexican War, who were induced to join with promises of "plunder, women, drink, and tobacco" and offers of a $1000 bonus and 160 acres of land if the plan were to succeed. The first attempt was foiled when the U.S. navy blockaded his troops, but in August 1851, he launched another invasion of Cuba with 500 mercenaries, while the federal agents stationed in New Orleans looked the other way. However, in a preview of what would happen in April 1961, the filibusters were routed and 50, including Lopez, were executed.

Even after that failure, southerners still dreamed of integrating Cuba, with its plantations and sugar trade, into their agricultural economy. In 1854, with President Franklin Pierce adamant about acquiring the island, the American ministers to Spain, France and Britain met in Ostend, Belgium and issued the so-called Ostend Manifesto, which declared that the U.S. would be willing to pay Spain up to $120 million to Spain for Cuba, but if Madrid refused then Washington was justified "by every law, human and divine" to simply take it. Word of Ostend leaked out, however, and, amid the Kansas-Nebraska Crisis, there were howls of protest from free-soilers and abolitionists and the plan was scotched as critics attacked the "southern slave conspiracy." By 1860, with the ascendancy of the Republicans and election of Lincoln, the plan was dead.

Just after the Civil War, however, Americans saw new opportunities in Cuba. Beginning in the late 1860s, liberation fighters opened a new battle for independence, with U.S. backing. Under the rhetoric of anti-imperialism, American supported the Cubans, principally because they hoped that Spain's ouster would put them in a position to dominate the island. Thus, when Jose Marti and the rebels intensified the fight against Spain in the 1890s, the U.S. supported the insurgents efforts, politically and financially.

The rebels, however, were wary of American motives. Marti had referred to his time in the U.S. as "living in the belly of the beast" and saw America as an aggressive and imperial nation "full of hate" and "spiritual coarseness." Marti's apprehension was well-founded. In 1898 the U.S. intervened in Cuba to oust the Spanish. Instead of turning over the country to the Cubans, however, the Americans denied the island its independence, claiming it was not ready for or capable of self-government and would need American supervision and control in the interim, precisely the argument being made today in Iraq. American intervention in 1898 was thus directed as much against Cuban independence as against Spanish imperialism, as the prominent historian Louis Perez has maintained.

In truth, the U.S. had over $200 million of investments in Cuba and feared the emergence of a nationalist government there. Accordingly, Washington set up a protectorate over the island, with a military governor, General Leonard Wood, wielding summary power over Cubans. Then in 1901 the Secretary of War, Elihu Root, and a Connecticut Senator, Orville Platt, wrote the Platt Amendment. This law prohibited the Cubans from making treaties with other countries and it said that, if Cuba did not protect "life, property, and individual liberty"–essentially meaning American capital investments and physical plants–the US had the right to intervene unilaterally there. Two years later, the U.S. built a naval base at Guantanamo Bay and claimed rights to it in perpetuity. At the same time, American investement in sugar, tobacco, mining, transportation, utilities, and cattle ranching grew steadily.

This economic penetration, coupled with the collaboration of Cuban puppet leaders, caused angry Cuban nationalists to revolt in September 1906 after the rigged reelection and inauguration of an American puppet, Tomas Estrada Palma, who was described as "more plattish than Platt himself." President Teddy Roosevelt was furious at the nationalists Cuba and wished he could "wipe its people off the face of the earth."

Roosevelt settled for less, sending American troops to the island on Sept. 29th , under provisions of the Platt Amendment, to assume military control and restore "law and order."–and above all to crush the uprising.

Cuba remained a client of the U.S. from then until January 1st 1959, when Fidel Castro's revolution ended over a half-century of American imperialism on the island, imperialism that could be traced to U.S. intervention at the turn of the century and enforced by military campaigns such as the invasion of September 1906.

For more information on this subject, consult the works of Louis Perez, especially Cuba Under the Platt Amendment.

For an entire listing of all previous entries, see http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/historythey.html