Cuba

A brief history of Cuba

Christopher Columbus, in his quest to find a westward route to India stumbled on the territories of America, a continent then unknown to the Europeans, and reached the shores of Cuba on October 27, 1492, where he is reported to have said “this is the most beautiful land my eyes have ever seen”. Columbus spent several weeks navigating along Cuba's north coast without realizing it was an island. Convinced he had discovered the East Indies he returned to Europe and went back to Cuba two years later. It was only in 1508, after another explorer, Sebastián de Ocampo circumnavigated it, that it was discovered that Cuba was an island.

Cuba was inhabited by aboriginal peoples, known as Indocubans. Their society subsisted peacefully from hunting, fishing and agriculture until the arrival of the first conquistador, Diego de Velázquez, in 1510, who landed with a small army at the southeast end of the island, a place known today as Guantánamo. The Indocubans, normally a peaceful people, offered fierce resistance under a brave leader named Hatuey, for a period of approximately three months, until his capture by the invaders. Once conquered, the Indocubans were nearly exterminated by the harsh working conditions imposed by the Spaniards and by diseases brought to the island by the new arrivals. To replace the dwindling indigenous labor force needed to work the gold mines, the cane fields and the tobacco plantations, the Spaniards started importing African slaves to the island and soon slave trade became one of the most profitable activities.

Velázquez established seven garrison towns along the island: Baracoa, Santiago, Bayamo, Camagüey, Sancti Spíritus, Trinidad and Batabanó. Because of the island’s location it became the stopping off point for the Spanish conquistadors going to, or returning from, Central and South America. Batabanó briefly became the principal stopping off point for the Spanish fleet until Havana, a better natural harbor, was discovered due north of Batabanó. Havana then became a flourishing trading post as increasing numbers of ships, on their way to Europe, stopped to take supplies for the journey as well as goods to trade with the Europeans.

Havana was occupied by the British during the Colonial Wars when the British confronted France and Spain and took over France's territories in Canada and the Island of Guadaloupe. Havana fell to the British on August 12, 1762, following a fierce, but unsuccessful, two-month resistance by the peasant population of Guanabacoa and Havana under the leadership of José Antonio Gómez better known in Cuban history as the national hero Pepe Antonio. Spain, realizing the strategic importance of Cuba recovered Havana from the British a year later in exchange for other of its major colonial territories. In the late 1700s Spain's grip on the economies of its American colonies started to relax and trade was allowed between Cuba and the United States. US trade with the island really took off following its independence in 1776.

To satisfy the growing demand for sugar in the US during the 1800s Cuban plantations were expanded and the number of African slaves brought to the island vastly increased. The new wealth created by sugar on the island gave rise to a local aristocracy that became increasingly at odds with the decisions of the Spanish central government. Discontent with Spanish domination extended from the aristocracy to other sectors of the population including the peasants and the African slaves and was manifested in different ways in the ensuing years. Of the various independence movements that were brewing all over Cuba, the first one of any importance erupted on October 10, 1868, at the sugar plantation “La Demajagua,” near Manzanillo, in Oriente, where plantation owner, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, considered the father of the nation, freed his slaves and, became the leader of an, ultimately unsuccessful, rebellion against Spain that would last until 1878, and would cost the lives of 250,000 Cuban rebels and 80,000 Spanish soldiers.

In 1892, José Martí and a group of Cuban exiles in Miami founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party and in 1895, a new uprising against Spain began. Although Martí was killed in the early stages of the fighting, Máximo Gómez, Antonio Maceo, and other revolutionary leaders continued the fight against the Spanish, and extended the rebellion across the island.

The fate of Spain, ironically, was sealed by the United States' decision to intervene in the war following the mysterious explosion on February 15, 1898, of the warship Maine, sent to Havana Bay by the US government to “protect U.S. citizens living in the city”. With the US intervention, the Cuban Revolutionary War became Spanish-American War, fought mainly on Cuban soil. By the end of the year the Spanish were defeated and US forces established a military occupation government which would last until May 1902. Although the US forces withdrew from Cuba, the Americans retained almost total control over the island and, under the Platt Amendment, kept the “right to intervene” in the island's affairs “for the preservation of Cuban independence, [and] the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, …”

During its occupation of Cuba, the US established a naval base at Guantánamo which they occupy to this day. On May 20, 1902, following the US military withdrawal, Cuba became an independent nation, though still under the control of the US, with Tomás Estrada Palma as its first president. The young country, with little experience in self-government, politically unsophisticated and with weak public institutions was plagued by corrupt governments which, combined with a growing economic dependence on the United States, resulted in many years of political turmoil and neglect of some sectors of the population and the steady deterioration of social conditions for many Cubans. The United States intervened several times to help settle revolts, reform corrupt administrations, and supervise elections.

In 1925, after several ineffectual presidents, General Gerardo Machado took power and established a harsh dictatorial regime that would last for eight years until the deteriorating economy provided the opportunity for his overthrow, on August 12, 1933. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, son of “el padre de patria” was named president, a position he held for only 25 days, from August 12, 1933, until September 6, 1933, when Fulgencio Batista led his “sergeants' revolt” establishing himself as the real power behind a string of “puppet” presidents. Batista was finally elected president in 1940, serving until 1944, when he retired from office.

Batista again seized power in another coup in 1952, and quickly established another brutal and repressive dictatorial regime. In reaction to Batista's oppression, new revolutionary movements started to spring across the island. These were formed by students, labor organizations, intellectuals, the middle-class, farmers, and peasants, and on July 26, 1953, a group of some 150 young revolutionaries, lead by Fidel Castro, launched an attack on the Moncada Barracks, in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba.

The rebels were defeated by Batista's troops and Castro and the other captured survivors were tried and imprisoned. The attack of Castro and his followers captured the people's imagination and the failed assault became the rallying cry against Batista and the beginning of a wider political movement that would come to be known as the Movimiento 26 de Julio. Increasing sympathy for Castro and his fighters soon translated into popular pressure that forced Batista to release his prisoners, who left for Mexico in May 1955.

Mexico brought together Castro and a young Argentinean physician, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Guevara joined the revolutionary group organized by Fidel Castro and together they planned a return to Cuba. With a group of 82 guerrillas they sailed from Mexico in a cabin cruiser, the Granma, and landed in the southeast coast of Cuba on December 2, 1956. In their first encounters with Batista's troops Castro's fighters were reduced to a handful of men who took refuge in the Sierra Maestra mountains where they regrouped, reorganized and launched guerrilla attacks that soon gained support from peasants in the countryside and urban clandestine groups in the cities. The fight against Batista, coordinated by the Movimiento 26 de Julio, gained the support of the Popular Socialist Party and other political and labor groups that together, after three years of growing and successful rebellion, forced Batista to give up power and on January 1, 1959, Batista and his collaborators fled to the Dominican Republic and a week later the Fidelistas were in control of Havana. Castro, at age 32, became premier.