Cuba has an extensive colonial history as one of the last Spanish colonies to gain independence. At the gateway of the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba was one of the first places Christopher Columbus landed on his initial voyage to the Americas. Under Spanish rule, slave labor was exploited to produce mass amounts of sugar, the geographic positioning along with sugar cane and tobacco productivity made Cuba a valuable colonial asset1. Cuba was governed oppressively from Madrid; at one point Spaniards forced thousands of Cubans into concentration camps to suppress revolutionary efforts2. The country remained under Spanish rule from the beginning of the 16th century until the collapse of the Spanish Empire during the Spanish-American War of 1898, when Cuba became a democracy.
During the 1850s in the US, some pro-slavery states were motivated to annex Cuba, but this did not come to fruition. President William McKinley declared war on Spain after the explosion of the USS Maine, which was stationed in Havana Harbor in February of 18983. This presented an opportunity for the US to expand their imperial dominance under the guise of spreading their democratic values. Spain, too weak to remain control, surrendered and the US had to make a decision: liberate Cuba and allow them to govern themselves as a sovereign nation OR annex them as their own. Senator Henry Teller (CO) proposed an amendment to the declaration of war supporting quasi-independence, which stated that the US would not establish permanent control over Cuba. This was succeeded by the Platt amendment, which proposed that the US would have “the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence” and lead to the establishment of a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay4.
As a semi-sovereign nation, Cuba was a democratic state and relied on exporting sugar to the US to buoy the economy2. During the Cold War, Cuba fell under a military dictatorship regime led by Fulgencio Batista, which ended in 1958 when Fidel Castro rose to power during the Cuban Revolution6. This is when the US imposed an embargo as a statement against communism. This remained in place for 60 years until Obama began reconciliation with Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother who took control in 2008, and Pope Francis to re-open Cuba’s border to trade with the US. Today, Cuba’s top exports include7:
- TOBACCO ($275 million)
- NICKEL MATTES ($148 million)
- RAW SUGAR ($121 million)
- HARD LIQUOR, such as rum ($91.8 million)
CREDITS: All photos are sourced from Kris Homsi, taken during the Spring of 2016.
- https://guides.loc.gov/world-of-1898/cuba-overview ↩︎
- https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-Independence-Movement ↩︎
- https://opb.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/e750af9d-28e8-4912-9ce3-3cc9b22d10c2/spanish-american-war/ ↩︎
- https://guides.loc.gov/world-of-1898/teller-platt-amendments ↩︎
- https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-Independence-Movement ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chYBlArm9Ao ↩︎
- https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub ↩︎