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HISTORY OF CUBA |
Christopher Columbus landed on the island of
Cuba on October 28, 1492, during his initial westward voyage. In honor of
the daughter of Ferdinand V and Isabella I of Spain, his benefactors,
Columbus named it Juana, the first of several names he successively applied
to the island. It eventually became known as Cuba, from its aboriginal name,
Cubanacan.
Colonization by Spain
When Columbus first landed on Cuba it was inhabited by the Siboney, a
friendly tribe related to the Arawak. Colonization of the island began in
1511, when the Spanish soldier Diego Velázquez established the town of
Baracoa. Velázquez subsequently founded several other settlements, including
Santiago de Cuba in 1514 and Havana in 1515. The Spanish transformed Cuba
into a supply base for their expeditions to Mexico and Florida. As a result
of savage treatment and exploitation, the aborigines became, by the middle
of the 16th century, nearly extinct, forcing the colonists to depend on
imported black slaves for the operation of the mines and plantations.
Despite frequent raids by buccaneers and naval units of rival and enemy
powers, the island prospered throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.
Restrictions imposed by the Spanish authorities on commercial activities
were generally disregarded by the colonists, who resorted to illicit trade
with privateers and neighboring colonies. Following the conclusion of the
Seven Years' War in 1763, during which the English captured Havana, the
Spanish government liberalized its Cuban policy, encouraging colonization,
expansion of commerce, and development of agriculture. Between 1774 and 1817
the population increased from about 161,000 to more than 550,000. The
remaining restrictions on trade were officially eliminated in 1818, further
promoting material and cultural advancement.
During the 1830s, however, Spanish rule became increasingly repressive,
provoking a widespread movement among the colonists for independence. This
movement attained particular momentum between 1834 and 1838, during the
despotic governorship of the captain general Miguel de Tacón. Revolts and
conspiracies against the Spanish regime dominated Cuban political life
throughout the remainder of the century. In 1844 an uprising of black slaves
was brutally suppressed. A movement during the years 1848 to 1851 for
annexation of the island to the United States ended with the capture and
execution of its leader, the Spanish-American general Narciso López. Offers
by the U.S. government to purchase the island were repeatedly rejected by
Spain. In 1868 revolutionaries under the leadership of Carlos Manuel de
Céspedes proclaimed Cuban independence. The ensuing Ten Years' War, a costly
struggle to both Spain and Cuba, was terminated in 1878 by a truce granting
many important concessions to the Cubans.
In 1886 slavery was abolished. Importation of cheap labor from China was
ended by 1871. In 1893 the equal civil status of blacks and whites was
proclaimed.
Independence
Although certain reforms were inaugurated after the successful revolt, the
Spanish government continued to oppress the populace. On February 24, 1895,
mounting discontent culminated in a resumption of the Cuban revolution it's
well known as " El grito de Baire" o "Grito de Yara"
, under the leadership of the writer and patriot José Martí and General
Máximo Gómez y Báez. The U.S. government intervened on behalf of the
revolutionists in April 1898, precipitating the Spanish-American War.
Intervention was spurred by the sinking of the battleship Maine in the
harbor of Havana of February 15, 1898, for which Spain was blamed. By the
terms of the treaty signed December 10, 1898, terminating the conflict,
Spain relinquished sovereignty over Cuba. An American military government
ruled the island until May 20, 1902, when the Cuban republic was formally
instituted, under the presidency of the former postmaster general Tomás
Estrada Palma. The Cuban constitution, adopted in 1901, incorporated the
provisions of the Platt Amendment, U.S. legislation that established
conditions for American intervention in Cuba.
Certain improvements, notably the eradication of yellow fever, had been
accomplished in Cuba during the U.S. occupation. Simultaneously, U.S.
corporate interests invested heavily in the Cuban economy, acquiring control
of many of its resources, especially the sugar-growing industry. Popular
dissatisfaction with this state of affairs was aggravated by recurring
instances of fraud and corruption in Cuban politics. The first of several
serious insurrections against conservative control of the republic occurred
in August 1906. In the next month the U.S. government dispatched troops to
the island, which remained under U.S. control until 1909. Another uprising
took place in 1912 in Oriente Province, resulting again in U.S.
intervention. With the election of Mario García Menocal to the presidency
later in the same year, the Conservative Party returned to power. On April
7, 1917, Cuba entered World War I on the side of the Allies.
Growing Instability
Mounting economic difficulties, caused by complete U.S. domination of Cuban
finance, agriculture, and industry, marked the period following World War I.
In an atmosphere of crisis, the Liberal Party leader, Gerardo Machado y
Morales, campaigned on a reform platform and was elected president in
November 1924. Economic conditions deteriorated rapidly during his
administration, the chief accomplishment of which, an ambitious public-works
program, was achieved by floating huge loans abroad. Before the end of his
second term, he succeeded in acquiring dictatorial control of the
government. All opposition was brutally suppressed during his
administration, which lasted until a general uprising in August 1933,
supported by the Cuban army, forced him into exile. A protracted period of
violence and unrest followed Machado's overthrow, with frequent changes of
government. During this period the United States instituted various
measures, including abrogation of the Platt Amendment, in an effort to quiet
popular unrest on the island. A degree of stability was accomplished
following the impeachment in 1936 of President Miguel Mariano Gómez by the
senate, which was controlled by Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar. With the support
of Batista, the head of the Cuban army and unofficial dictator of Cuba, the
new president, the former political leader and soldier Federico Laredo Brú,
put into operation a program of social and economic reform. Batista won the
presidential contest of 1940, defeating Ramón Grau San Martin, the
opposition candidate. The promulgation in 1940 of a new constitution
contributed further to the lessening of political tension.
In December 1941 the Cuban government declared war on Germany, Japan, and
Italy; consequently it became a charter member of the United Nations (UN) in
1945. The presidential election of 1944 resulted in victory for Grau San
Martin, the candidate of a broad coalition of parties. The first year of his
administration was one of recurring crises caused by various factors,
including widespread food shortages, but he regained popularity the
following year by obtaining an agreement with the U.S. government for an
increase in the price of sugar. In 1948 Cuba joined the Organization of
American States (OAS).
Fluctuations in world sugar prices and a continuing inflationary spiral kept
the political situation unstable in the postwar era. Carlos Prio Socarrás, a
member of the Auténtico Party and a cabinet minister under Grau San Martin,
was elected president in June 1948. Shortly after his inauguration a 10
percent reduction in retail prices was decreed in an attempt to offset
inflation. Living costs continued to rise, however, leading to unrest and
political violence.
The Batista Regime
In March 1952 former president Batista, supported by the army, seized power.
Batista suspended the constitution, dissolved the congress, and instituted a
provisional government, promising elections the following year. After
crushing an uprising in Oriente Province led by a young lawyer named Fidel
Castro on July 26, 1953, the regime seemed secure, and when the political
situation had been calmed, the Batista government announced that elections
would be held in the fall of 1954. Batista's opponent, Grau San Martin,
withdrew from the campaign just before the election, charging that his
supporters had been terrorized. Batista was thus reelected without
opposition, and on his inauguration February 24, 1955, he restored
constitutional rule and granted amnesty to political prisoners, including
Castro. The latter chose exile in the United States and later in Mexico.
In the mid-1950s the Batista government instituted an economic development
program that, together with a stabilization of the world sugar price,
improved the economic and political outlook in Cuba. On December 2, 1956,
however, Castro, with some 80 insurgents, invaded. The force was crushed by
the army, but Castro escaped into the mountains, where he organized the 26th
of July Movement, so called to commemorate the 1953 uprising. For the next
year Castro's forces, using guerrilla tactics, opposed the Batista
government and won considerable popular support. On March 17, 1958, Castro
called for a general revolt. His forces made steady gains through the
remainder of the year, and on January 1, 1959, Batista resigned and fled the
country. A provisional government was established. Castro, although he
initially renounced office, became premier in mid-February. In the early
weeks of the regime military tribunals tried many former Batista associates,
and some 550 were executed.
Cuba Under Castro
The Castro regime soon exhibited a leftist tendency that worried U.S.
interest in the island. The agrarian reform laws promulgated in its first
years mainly affected U.S. sugar interests; the operation of plantations by
companies controlled by non-Cuban stockholders was prohibited, and the
Castro regime initially de-emphasized sugar production in favor of food
crops.
Break with the United States
When the Castro government expropriated an estimated $1 billion in
U.S.-owned properties in 1960, Washington responded by imposing a trade
embargo. A complete break in diplomatic relations occurred in January 1961,
and on April 17 of that year U.S.-supported and -trained anti-Castro exiles
landed an invasion force in the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba. Ninety of the
invaders were killed, and some 1200 were captured (see Bay of Pigs
Invasion). The captives were ransomed, with the tacit aid of the U.S.
government, in 1962, at a cost of about $53 million in food and medicines.
American-Cuban relations grew still more perilous in the fall of 1962, when
the United States discovered Soviet-supplied missile installations in Cuba.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy then announced a naval blockade of the island
to prevent further Soviet shipments of arms from reaching it. After several
days of negotiations during which nuclear war was feared by many to be a
possibility, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed, on October 28, to
dismantle and remove the weapons, and this was subsequently accomplished.
For the rest of the 1960s U.S.-Cuban relations remained hostile, although,
through the cooperation of the Swiss embassy in Cuba, the U.S. and Cuban
governments in 1965 agreed to permit Cuban nationals who desired to leave
the island to emigrate to the United States. More than 260,000 people left
before the airlift was officially terminated in April 1973.
Despite several efforts by Cuba in the United Nations to oust the United
States from its naval base at Guantánamo Bay, leased in 1903, the base
continues to be garrisoned by U.S. Marines.
Isolation Period
Many of Castro's policies alienated Cuba from the rest of Latin America. The
country was expelled from the OAS in 1962, and through most of the 1960s it
was persistently accused of attempting to foment rebellions in Venezuela,
Guatemala, and Bolivia. In fact, Che Guevara, a key Castro aide, was
captured and summarily executed while leading a guerrilla group in Bolivia
in 1967. Meanwhile, Cuba continued to depend heavily on economic aid from
the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc countries. In 1972 it signed several pacts
with the USSR covering financial aid, trade, and deferment of Cuban debt
payments, and also became a member of the Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance (COMECON).
The first congress of the Cuban Communist Party was held in late 1975. The
following year a new national constitution was adopted. Among other
provisions, it increased the number of provinces from 6 to 14 and created an
indirectly elected National Assembly. The assembly held its first session in
December 1976 and chose Castro as head of state and of government.
International Role
In the mid-1970s Cuba emerged from diplomatic isolation. At a meeting in San
José, Costa Rica, in July 1975, the OAS passed a "freedom of action"
resolution that in effect lifted the trade embargo and other sanctions
imposed by the organization against Cuba in 1964. Relations with the United
States also began to improve; U.S. travel restrictions were lifted, and in
September 1977 the two nations opened offices in each other's capitals. The
United States, however, warned Cuba that relations could not be normalized
until U.S. claims for nationalized property had been settled and Cuba
reduced or terminated its activities in Africa.
Cuban presence in Africa had begun inconspicuously in the mid-1960s, when
Castro provided personal guards to such figures as President Alphonse
Massamba-Débat of the Congo. It was not until 1975, however, that Cuban
combat forces were actively engaged on the continent, fighting for the
Marxist faction in Angola. Cuban troops later shored up the Marxist regime
in Ethiopia, providing the winning edge in its war with Somalia over the
Ogaden region. By 1980 Cuban activities had expanded into the Middle East
(Southern Yemen). In both regions the Cuban presence was generally seen by
the West as the spearhead of a growing Soviet thrust. In return, the Cuban
economy continued to be supplemented by some $3 million in daily Soviet aid.
Despite its relationship with the USSR, Cuba in 1979 played host to a
meeting of the so-called nonaligned nations, at which Castro was chosen the
group's leader for the following three years.
In 1980, when Castro temporarily lifted exit restrictions, some 125,000
refugees fled to the United States before the outflow was again halted. The
U.S. government accused Cuba of aiding leftist rebels in El Salvador;
another sore point in U.S.-Cuban relations was the aid given by Cuban
advisers to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Several hundred Cuban
construction workers and military personnel were forced to leave Grenada as
a result of the U.S.-led invasion of that island in October 1983. Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Havana in April 1989, when the USSR and
Cuba signed a 25-year friendship treaty, but Castro explicitly rejected the
applicability of Soviet-style political and economic reforms to his country.
In July four army officers were executed and ten others sentenced to prison
for smuggling and drug trafficking, in the worst scandal since Castro came
to power.
With the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s, Soviet-bloc aid and trade
subsidies to Cuba were ended, and Soviet military forces were gradually
withdrawn. After the United States tightened its sanctions against trade
with Cuba, the UN General Assembly in November 1992 approved a resolution
calling for an end to the U.S. embargo. By 1993 all of the Soviet troops
sent to Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis had been withdrawn. Cuba's
sugarcane production dropped to a 30-year low in 1993 and worsened in 1994,
precipitating an economic emergency. As the effects of this poor yield
filtered down through the population, greater numbers of Cubans attempted to
flee the country for economic reasons. One such group hijacked a ferry and
and attempted to escape, only to be challenged and sunk by the Cuban Coast
Guard. The sinking sparked violent antigovernment demonstrations, to which
Castro responded by removing exit restrictions from those who wished to
leave for the United States. Already facing an influx of refugees from
Haiti, the United States countered by ending automatic asylum to fleeing
Cubans because the United States considered that they were fleeing economic
rather than political conditions. More than 30,000 people were picked up at
sea by the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base or to
refugee camps in Panama. The crisis came to an end when the United States
agreed to issue 20,000 entry visas each year to Cubans wishing to enter the
country.
In February 1996 Cuban authorities arrested or detained at least 150
dissidents, marking the most widespread crackdown on opposition groups in
the country since the early 1960s. Many were members of the Concilio Cubano,
a fledgling coalition of more than 100 organizations dedicated to political
reform.
Later that month, Cuban jet fighters shot down two civilian planes that Cuba
claimed had violated Cuban airspace. The planes belonged to Brothers to the
Rescue, a U.S.-based group headed by Cuban exiles dedicated to helping Cuban
refugees. The group used small planes to spot refugees fleeing the island
nation and then reported their positions to the U.S. Coast Guard. The United
States condemned the shootings as a flagrant violation of international law;
the United Nations also criticized the downing of the planes. Cuba said that
planes from the same group had previously flown into Cuban airspace and
dropped antigovernment leaflets, but Cuba's repeated diplomatic complaints
to the United States about the incidents had gone unheeded. Castro said he
did not directly order the shootings, but acknowledged that in the weeks
prior to the incident he had given the Cuban Air Force the authorization to
shoot down civilian planes violating Cuba's airspace.
As a result of this incident, U.S. President Bill Clinton abandoned his
previous resistance to stricter sanctions against Cuba and in March 1996
signed into law the Helms-Burton Act. The legislation aimed to tighten the
U.S. embargo by making it more difficult for foreign investors and
businesses to operate in Cuba. It made permanent the economic embargo, which
previously had to be renewed each year, and threatened foreign companies
with lawsuits if they were deemed to be "deriving benefit" from property
worth more than $50,000 that had been confiscated from U.S. citizens during
the Cuban revolution. Canada, Mexico, and the European Union complained
about the U.S. law, claiming that the United States was trying to export its
laws and principles to other countries.
Later that month, the Central Committee of Cuba's Communist Party held a
rare full session and endorsed a harder stance against dissidents, as well
as against Cuban businesses that had been allowed to engage in free-market
joint ventures with foreign companies. The committee had met only five times
since Communists took over the Cuban government in 1959. Cuban officials
said that dissidents, self-employed workers, and Cuban intellectuals were
being manipulated by Cuba's foreign enemies to undermine the authority of
the Communist Party. Castro vowed to step up the government's efforts to
silence opposition groups and enforce compliance with the party's economic
and ideological beliefs.
(From Microsoft Encarta 97, "Cuba/History/") |
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INFOCUBA
