The American eagle eye on Cuba

In Cuba the US’ attack on Venezuela and subsequent kidnapping of its president Nicolás Maduro looms large. The island, 90 miles off the coast of Florida, has a long history marked by US intervention, something many fear is coming back in style.

Although the relationship between Cuba and the United States has been ice cold for almost seven decades at this point, the two once fought as allies in the 1890s in the Spanish-American War. In 1895 Cuban national hero José Martí, among others, led a war for independence to liberate Cuba from Spanish imperial rule. Three years into the struggle an American warship – for disputed reasons – exploded in Havana. The event was sensationalized in the American press, leading to an upswing in the internal push for war against the Spanish.

By this point the United States had fully implemented the Monroe Doctrine, the policy of total American domination of the western hemisphere. War was declared and fighting between the US and Spain broke out not only in Cuba, but also in Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. Just three months into the war the Spanish opted for withdrawal and peace talks. The Cubans were completely excluded from the talks and were instead left with a remaining American occupying force.

Under the influence

The occupation ended only after the US managed to implement the Platt Amendment into what was now the Republic of Cuba’s constitution. The Platt Amendment was part of American law and conditioned Cuba to make concessions to the US. These included but were not limited to, giving the US the right to intervene militarily, the right to use Cuban land for military purposes, limiting Cuba’s trade with other nations, making it dependent on American investment and creating monopolies for American corporations. A protectorate, independent in name only.

In 1960, former United States ambassador to Cuba, Earl Smith, was quoted saying: "Until Castro came to power, the United States had such an irresistible influence in Cuba that the U.S. ambassador was the country's second personage, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president.”

During its days under US imperial influence Cuba’s latifundia – large tracts of exploitable and privately owned land – was mostly owned by American companies like the United Fruit Company – now Chiquita –, which helped the US overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. As Cuba’s sugar production grew large, as did the wallets of the owners of the latifundia. But Cuba suffered from underdevelopment and mass unemployment and thus had to export its white gold, and import the products it was used to manufacture in the United States. The farmers harvesting the sugar saw none of its fruits.

From the 1930s and onward turbulence was the default state of Cuba. It suffered through several coups d’état and eventually grew into a full-blown police state. Much of it under the eagle eye of the United States. In 1952, by way of a US backed coup, Fulgencio Batista assumed power and instigated a reign of terror. With the help of the CIA, he set up a secret police agency called the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities. Under their firm hand, torture and public executions would become custom; the CIA puts the number of people killed for political reasons under Batista at around 20 000.

A not so cold war

In 1956 a group of Cuban exiles led by Fidel Castro, with the help of his brother Raúl Castro and Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, stepped ashore on the beaches of the island in hopes of overthrowing Batista. By recruiting sugar farmers Castro managed to muster up the sufficient force to achieve his mission. On New Year’s Day of 1959, the rebel forces had captured Havana and Batista fled the country. The relationship between Cuba and the United States froze to ice overnight.

After having assumed power Castro had a mountain to climb in turning the sugar castles – the mansions of sugar plantation owners – into factories. A respect in which he was fairly successful. The land owned by American corporations was nationalized, and with the fruits of the sugar harvests staying on the island, Cuba was able to industrialize large parts of its economy. In his classic study of colonialism, Open Veins of Latin America, author and journalist Eduardo Galeano writes “The Revolution, after discovering that it had confused the knife with the assassin, turned sugar, which had been responsible for underdevelopment, into an instrument of development.”

But by the time Castro had come to power, Cold War tensions between the US and the USSR were running high. The Americans had already begun aiding and abetting in the toppling of the anti-imperialist governments of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran. Fidel Castro however, represented the Soviet friendly communist threat the US sought to extinguish much more clearly than either.

Shortly after the revolution many members of the Cuban elite, often Batista supporters, were either expelled or migrated to Miami. Over time the exodus also grew to entail members of the middle-class: professionals, managers etc. In 1961, with the help of roughly 1,500 Cuban exiles, the US attacked Cuba in the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs. The United States nevertheless continued its attempts to topple Castro. Throughout the Cold War the Americans used Cuban exiles to carry out acts of terrorism targeting civilians, orchestrated assassination attempts on Castro’s life and executed other covert operations in Cuba to try, but in the end fail, to achieve their goals.

In 1962, to veer off the supposed communist threat, US president John F. Kennedy imposed an embargo on Cuba. However later the same year the Americans got wind of the USSR supplying Cuba with ballistic missiles. Only the Americans had placed missiles of their own in Turkey, making it possible for both superpowers to destroy one another. But nuclear armageddon never came to pass, as they both agreed to withdraw their missiles, and Kennedy agreed to not invade Cuba. The Cubans were left defenseless and with an all-encompassing embargo that prevents almost all trade between the US and Cuba.

El bloqueo

64 years later el bloqueo (the blockade), as the Cubans call it, still remains as firm as it did the day the Soviets withdrew their warheads from Cuban soil. The goal of the embargo isn’t in any way a secret. It’s a tactic employed to strangle the Cuban economy in order to provoke regime change. In an infamous memorandum from 1960 the then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State detailed the outlines of what would become the embargo. He explained how the goal for a policy designed to weaken the Cuban economy should be “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”.

American sanctions, which the embargo is one of the most shining examples of, have a massive effect on not just the economies it targets, but on the populations of the countries it targets. A study published in Lancet Global Health found a significant relation between American sanctions and increased mortality rates. The reason being that US sanctions, unlike UN or EU ones, tend to target entire economies and not just individuals or corporations. The same study also estimates that sanctions are associated with 564 258 deaths worldwide annually.

In spite of the hardship the embargo has entailed, Cuba has long been a symbol of internationalism, providing a plethora of resistance movements in countries like Vietnam, Palestine, Angola etcetera, with military support and aiding medical help to people in need. Cuba frequently tops rankings for most doctors per capita in the world, with a large number of them, more than 30 000 in 2019, being sent abroad to aid people under duress. However Cuba's strained relationship with the US has made nations that align themselves with the Americans hesitant to return the favour.

Cuba has grown dependent on foes of the US, like Venezuela, for energy and resources. The consequences of the US’ actions in Venezuela have only signified an intensification of the embargo. By taking control of Venezuelan oil exports Donald Trump has literally hit the gas in the US’ economic war on Cuba, leaving the island without what used to be its by far largest supplier of fuel and energy. Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz-Canel has gone on record saying that the intensification of the embargo has transformed it into a “genocidal blockade”.

With the Venezuelan oil most Cubans had to live without electricity for large stretches of the day. Without it they have to face a reality with even scarcer access to electricity, evident by the increasingly recurrent blackouts plaguing the island. The energy shortage is leading to food rotting and critical conditions in Cuba’s hospitals. When a blackout occurs, nurses and doctors have to run to sick newborn babies, who are reliant on ventilators, to pump air into their lungs with the help of a rubber pump. With the clock ticking Cuba prepares for a severe energy and food shortage with potentially devastating humanitarian effects.

The dream of the Miami son

During his first presidential candidacy Donald Trump was actually a proponent of normalizing relations with Cuba. But in the early days of his first term he had a change of heart. After a push from the likes of Marco Rubio to harshen his stance on Cuba, Trump vouched to the exile-Cuban base he would roll back the normalization agreement made by ex-presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, a promise he would come to fulfill.

Although Marco Rubio’s parents left Cuba before Castro seized power, he’s been very vocal about his resentment towards the Castroist government. For the Miami son overthrowing the communists is literally a childhood fantasy. In his memoir he detailed his dream, “I boasted I would someday lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba”. In essence, a successful version of the Invasion of the Bay of Pigs.

In Miami, Rubio is by no means alone in his communist resentment. A significant population of Cuban immigrants residing there want to see what remains of the Cuban Revolution in ruins. The elite who once left Castro’s Cuba also make up a large part of the Cuban-American lobby, one of the wealthiest and most influential in Washington. The will of exiles who’ve seceded their favorable positions in Cuba is a serious force in the direction of American Western Hemisphere policy. 

The grudge of the Cuban-American lobby is a major part of the reason behind the push for regime change, though not the complete picture. In an address to the nation, where he declared the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel a national security threat, Trump made a row of baseless accusations against Cuba. But in one sentence he sprinkled in a bit of truth; Cuba often aligns itself with China and Russia. But as ideological squabbles aren’t really an interest of Trump's, Rubio has found him a hard nut to crack. He’s had to change his rhetoric and is no longer just opting for the “kick-out communism" argument, but now also the China/Russia-threat argument.

But whereas the US, in its effort to kick out Spain from Cuba, claimed to be liberating the Cubans, it is now claiming to be liberating them from their own government. At the same time the US is being transparent about wanting to rid Cuba of Russian and Chinese influence, evident by Trump’s reinvocation of the Monroe Doctrine, now dubbed Donroe Doctrine. By publicly stating part of his own motive, Trump is bringing what was usually discussed behind closed doors into the spotlight. Trump’s Cuba-policy is a play in the game of Western Hemisphere domination.

Cuba’s future

Reports regarding the Cuban government being willing to compromise and compensate for losses of property made to Cuban exiles after the revolution have nevertheless emerged. Trump has been quite vocal about wanting to strike a deal with Miguel Diaz-Canel, with the latter confirming that talks between governments are indeed taking place. A deal with the communists in Havana would however mean a knife in the back of the Miami-Cubans who support Rubio. He is thus continuing to insist on a change of both Cuba’s economic model and of its entire government. 

But the possibility of change of government and political system has been outright dismissed by members of the Cuban government, one of them being Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío. In an interview he claimed what the US wants with Cuba is “the restoration of capitalism, and the way capitalism was prior to the Cuban revolution. To force Cuba to be dependent, both economically and politically, on the United States”.

Whether the future brings skyscrapers with Trump’s gold-plated name on them to Havana, another Venezuela-situation or a continuation of the current political trajectory of Cuba remains to be seen. The Cubans have endured 64 long years under the boot of the embargo and still they’ve managed to be a leading exporter of humanitarian support. However if no one returns the favour, suffering will almost certainly ensue.

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Teodór Recabarren holds a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and Social Studies at Södertörn University and is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science also at Södertörn University. He has a particular interest in Latin American politics and international relations. He is also a member at UF Stockholm.