Cuba. Archipelago of the Antilles Sea, also known as the Caribbean Sea. Due to its geographical position at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, since colonial times it has been known as “La Llave del Golfo”. It is the largest island in the Greater Antilles. The closest countries are Haiti, the Bahamas, the United States, Jamaica and Mexico. Havana is the capital city of Cuba according to simplyyellowpages.
Ten Years War
Main article: Ten Years’ War
The movement broke out October of October of 1868, to the rise in arms Bayamo lawyer Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, one of the main conspirators, who in his ingenuity The Demajagua proclaimed independence and gave freedom to his slaves. [5]The uprising, seconded shortly after by the Camagüey and Las Villas conspirators, managed to assert itself, despite the ruthless Hispanic reaction.
The Cuban Liberation Army, after months of hard military training, achieved an offensive capacity that would be revealed in the invasion of the rich region of Guantánamo by General Máximo Gómez Báez and the brilliant actions carried out in the savannas of Camagüey by the cavalry in command. scored by Ignacio Agramonte. But this military advance was hampered by political differences in the revolutionary field, which led to the deposition of Céspedes from his post as President of the Republic (1873) and prevented the much-needed support in arms and resources from the emigrated patriots.
The Cuban military thrust reached its zenith between 1874 and 1875, first with the campaign of Máximo Gómez in Camagüey, marked by the victorious battles of La Sacra and Palo Seco and the battle of Las Guásimas – where the Cuban army defeated a Spanish force of more 4,000 men – and the subsequent invasion of Las Villas by the Mambi troops under the command of Gómez. The transcendental strategic advance was again distorted by internal dissensions that, by hindering the arrival of vital reinforcements, made it possible for the invasion to get bogged down without achieving its objective of bringing the war to the rich western territory of Cuba.
The unfavorable bias of the correlation of forces and the wear and tear in the insurgent camp, made it possible for an important sector of the independence movement to accept the proposals of the Spanish General Arsenio Martínez Campos. The peace without independence signed in Zanjón (1878) did not obtain the consensus of the Mambisa forces and in particular was rejected by General Antonio Maceo, chief of the forces of the easternmost part of the Island, who, despite his humble origin He had risen to the highest hierarchy of the Liberation Army by dint of courage and fighting capacity.
Although the insurrectionary military actions could not be sustained for long, the Baraguá Protest, staged by Maceo and his troops, who embodied the most popular sectors of the revolutionary movement, constituted the greatest evidence of the irrevocable will of the Cubans to continue the struggle for the independence. [6]
War of Independence in Cuba
Main article: War of Independence in Cuba
Delivered since his adolescence to the independence ideal, José Martí y Pérez (Havana, 1853) suffered imprisonment and exile during the Ten Years’ War.
His links with later conspiratorial movements allowed him to understand that the Cuban revolution had to be based on new programmatic and organizational bases, a task to which he gave himself entirely. Martí came to possess a deep political thought, enriched by the experience of his years of life in Spain, the United States and different Latin American countries.
His work of clarification and unification, focused on the nuclei of Cuban emigrants, mainly in the United States, but with wide repercussions on the island, crystallized in 1892 with the constitution of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Conceived as the sole organization of all Cuban independentists, the party had to obtain the material and human resources for the new emancipatory enterprise, and invest the military leaders with the essential political authority to unleash the Necessary War. [7]This broke out on February 24, 1895.
Martí, who landed in Cuba accompanied by Máximo Gómez, Chief of the Liberation Army, fell shortly after in the action of Dos Ríos. Despite this irreparable loss, the revolution unfolded in Oriente province, where Maceo – arrived on an expedition from Costa Rica – had assumed command of the Mambisa forces, and soon after spread to Camagüey and Las Villas. Meeting in Jimaguayú, the delegates of the Liberation Army drew up the constitution that would govern the destiny of the Republic in Arms.
In December of 1896 the fall of Maceo occurs in the battle of San Pedro, and is replaced in the office of Lieutenant General of the Liberation Army by Calixto García, another brilliant general of the Ten Years’ War. Gómez then decided to concentrate on himself the best of the Spanish forces, which he subjected to a devastating campaign of attrition in the center of the island. In this way, he left García’s hands free, who fought important battles in the East, and achieved the capture of the fortified squares of Las Tunas and Guisa. Meanwhile, in the West there are thousands of small and medium-scale actions. The fate of Spanish colonialism was cast.
In February 1898, the explosion of the Battleship Maine occurred in the port of Havana, a fact that Washington took as a pretext to mobilize public opinion and intervene directly in the war. [8] Although it formally admits the independence of Cuba, without recognizing its institutions, the United States goes to war with Spain and, with the collaboration of the Mambisa forces, lands its troops on the southern coast of the eastern part of Cuba. The actions are fought around Santiago de Cuba.
Military occupation 1899–1902
Main article: First US military occupation of Cuba
Military occupation, legitimated by the Treaty of Paris of the October to December of 1898, constituted the experimental framework for the implementation of the policy towards Cuba. For the United States, this was a period of strong internal and external tensions, tempered by internal pressures and negotiations around government decision-making. The 1 of January of 1899, the United States formally entered possession of Cuba. [9]
John R. Brooke was imposed as military governor and divided the country into seven departments, leaving each one to a general of the occupying army, reserving for himself the supreme authority, which he would execute through military orders. The penetration of US capital multiplied in sectors such as the tobacco industry and mining, in open competition with British economic interests on the Island. Despite the Foraker Amendment, approved in the Washington Congress that prohibited the concession of public land and private individuals, in practice a number of concessions were offered for mining exploitation.
On December 20, 1899, General Leonard Wood, governor of Santiago de Cuba, replaced Brooke as governor of the island. Wood undertook the task of “Americanizing” Cuba through a prolonged occupation.
The December to June of 1901 the Constituent Assembly adopted the controversial Platt Amendment, imposed by the US Congress with which the US government was granted the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the island when convenient understood. [9] The 20 as maypole as 1902 the neocolonial republic is established and its first president, Tomas Estrada Palma.
Neo-colonial period 1902-1958
Estrada Palma had the approval of the US authorities as a possible brake on the ascendancy of the most radical military leadership in the political life of the country. He was characterized by being extremely thrifty during his tenure. In 1905 the Cuban treasury had the fabulous amount for the time of 24 817 148 pesos with 96 cents, of which only a little more than 3 and a half million corresponded to the loan.
Although at the beginning of his mandate he had announced his intention to govern distantly from the political forces, his conservative tendencies inclined him towards the elements most akin to his ideas in both houses of Congress. Close to concluding his term as president, he decided to be reelected, for which he used the force of power and fraud. This motivated the followers of the Liberal Party to take up arms. When he realized that the popular revolt threatened to overthrow him from power, he preferred to ask the US government for military intervention.
For almost three years, between 1906 and 1909, the Island remained under US administration. On October 13, 1906, William Taft, the US Secretary of War, handed over control of Cuba to Charles Magoon, who would hold the post of Governor until January 28, 1909. His administration was characterized by administrative corruption and waste of public funds. [10]
In the elections called for the second US military intervention, on November 14, 1908, José Miguel Gómez, a former combatant from the wars of independence, was elected. In his government the violent repression against the Independent Movement of Color was carried out in 1912.
As an expression of the conjunction of the most radical political currents of the movement personified in Mella and Carlos Baliño, the first Communist Party of Cuba was constituted in Havana in 1925. In that same year, Gerardo Machado – the clawed donkey – became president.
After years of brutal repression against the people, in 1933, the Machado regime was about to give way to a revolution. Alarmed by the Cuban situation, the recently launched administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed B. Summer Welles as ambassador in Havana, with the mission of finding a way out of the crisis within the traditional mechanisms of neocolonial domination. But Welles’ mediation was overwhelmed by events: on August 12 Machado fled the country, overthrown by a general strike.
The provisional government created by the right-wing opposition sectors under the auspices of the US ambassador would survive barely a month. An uprising of the army classes and soldiers together with the University Student Directory and other insurrectionary groups brought a revolutionary government headed by Ramón Grau San Martín to power. This government, mainly at the initiative of Antonio Guiteras, Secretary of the Interior, approved and put into practice various measures of popular benefit. This government could only stay in power for six months.
After the 1940 Constitution was approved, the government was chaired by Fulgencio Batista. During the following governments (Ramón Grau and Carlos Prío), administrative corruption was complemented by the sponsorship of numerous gangster gangs, which the real gangs used to expel the communists from the leadership of the unions in the midst of the auspicious atmosphere of the cold war. The rejection of the prevailing embarrassing situation was channeled by the political civic movement of orthodoxy, whose leader, Eduardo Chibás, committed suicide in 1951 in the midst of a heated controversy with government officials.
Although everything predicted an orthodox victory in the 1952 elections, hopes would be dashed by a military coup. The discredit in which the authentic experience had plunged the reformist formulas and republican institutions, as well as the favorable disposition towards a heavy-handed government on the part of North American interests and some sectors of the Creole bourgeoisie, favored the ambitions of Fulgencio Batista, who at the head of a military coup, seized power on March 10, 1952. [10]
