The thing about history is that no one really knows what happened because you weren’t there to see it with their own eyes. Yes, I know, there are those strange folks (called historians) who study the evidence and write what they think happened. I’m certainly no historian, but that’s what I’m going to do for the next several paragraphs, give you my version of what happened in Cuba. You can believe it or not.
In the beginning there were the indigenous peoples that for some reason we now call Arawaks. I’ve got no idea where they came from or how they got there. In any case, they lived here and multiplied presumably eating such as there was to be found in nature. This went on for a long time, and no one noticed. No one knows for sure, but I’m gonna say a couple thousand years.
On October 28, 1492, or thereabouts, Chris Columbus stumbled on the place on his way to Asia. He thought he was in India, but figured out he was wrong when he couldn’t get any chicken vindaloo. Just kidding. He didn’t stay long as he had other fish to fry, but left behind a few soldiers and a clutch of catholic priests. Things started to go down hill after that.
Pretty soon all the indigenos were killed off by small pox or the soldiers, so the Spaniards, who have never been known for their work ethic, started looking for some one else to do the dirty work. As Africa wasn’t all that far away, and the slave trade was booming in the region, they brought boatloads of them to Cuba. As far as I can tell, they are all still there, their ancestors, I mean. Cuba is today one of the most ethnically integrated societies in the world. It wasn’t easy though.
After a couple of hundred years, an energetic Cubano decided to cut down some of the long, skinny reeds he saw growing around his place and noticed clear sap oozing from the cut. He licked the sap and, presto, Cuba’s most important cash crop was born. Since it took a lot of work to harvest sugar cane and refine the sugar, and, as we’ve seen, the Spanish didn’t exactly like to break a sweat, the slaves were put to good use. A symbiotic relationship if there ever was one.
Spain ultimately grew tired of all the bother the Cuban colonists were causing trying to revolt against them, and they decided to give the island, lock, stock and sugar cane to the Brits in 1762. The Brits only kept it for eleven months and gave it back. Evidently they had no taste for black beans and rice. Now Spain was stuck with it and tried to make a go of it for the next two hundred hundred years.
In 1862 a Spanish emigre from Catalonia gave up his dry goods business and bought a couple of vats from a fellow down the street to experiment with turning sugar cane into whiskey; hence was founded the largest industrial complex ever in Cuba, The Bacardi Company was born. Cuba’s gift to the world.
In 1898 the US Navy, for some reason known only to them, decided to park one of its boats, the USS Maine, in Havana harbor for the boat to fill up on supplies and the sailors to fill up on rum. While it was there, a sailor who was most likely fairly well besotted with Cuban rum and women, flipped a lighted cigarette in the boiler room and the whole thing went kaboom. The ship, its sailors and the good will of the US Navy went to the bottom of Havana Harbor. The US government and the United Fruit Company had had its eye on this luscious piece of real estate for some time so they thought now was as good a time as any to run the Spanish out of our part of the world using the USS Maine as an excuse.
We sent Teddy Roosevelt. some horses and a few ships down Cuba way, and ten weeks later, bobs your uncle, the Spanish were back where they belonged, and not only did we have Cuba for ourselves, we got Puerto Rico and the Philippines to boot. If you don’t believe me, just check out the Treaty of Paris. I don’t know what Paris had to do with it, but I’ve reported the principle terms accurately.
Two years later, in what is one of the slickest diplomatic charades ever, we wound up controlling Cuba without having to be bothered with its welfare. Let me explain. The Cubanos, not knowing any better, thought what a keen idea it would be to be an independent country for the first time in their history. We, on the other hand, thought, how keen it would be to give them their independence but still get all the benefits but none of the responsibilities of ownership. Our congress, who was then just as clever as they are now, passed a bill known as the Platt amendment. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that in return for their putative independence Cuba had to amend their constitution to say that they had to do whatever we told them to do. Not only that, but we also formalized and extended our right to Guantanamo. In, perhaps an excess of fairness, we did agree to pay them four thousand dollars per year for the next one hundred years for the right to keep a lot of Arabs penned up there. In 1903 these terms were amended to allow the US a perpetual (as in forever) lease of the base gaining what is tantamount to sovereignty and a giant burr under Castro’s saddle.
The next fifty eight years (1900-1958) constitute what might be called The Golden Years of Cuba. An unlikely combination of Fulgencia Batista, Frank Sinatra, the United Fruit Company and mobster Myer Lansky (who was so crooked that Las Vegas threw him out) controlled the economy of Cuba and prospered mightily in doing so. In fact, everyone prospered, unless you wanted to include the former slaves, farmers, and anyone who actually worked for a living.
We’re almost to the good part, but I’ve more than exhausted my one thousand words, so I’m going to have to do this history in two parts. Stay tuned for Fidel, the embargo and the future.
