Cuba: Overview

Introduction

Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean Sea. Its location and resources have long given it strategic importance in the region, which in turn has led to a complex relationship with the United States. From the late 1800s to the 1950s the US asserted strong political and economic influence in Cuba, but this changed drastically after the 1959 Cuban Revolution brought Fidel Castro to power and Cuba became a communist country. Castro's supporters hailed him as a great liberator and champion of the working classes, and he garnered significant influence throughout Latin America and beyond. However, opponents condemned him as a ruthless dictator, and the US government also considered the Castro regime an economic and political threat amid the Cold War. The US made several unsuccessful attempts, both militarily and economically, to force Castro from power, further ratcheting up tensions. In 1961, the US cut diplomatic ties with Cuba and declared a strict trade embargo against the country that would last for decades.

Even after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, US-Cuban relations remained largely hostile. Aside from the US government's ongoing opposition to all forms of communism, a sizable and influential group of conservative Cuban exiles wielded a powerful anti-Castro influence over US foreign policy. However, there were some efforts to improve the situation over the years. Most notably, in late 2014, US president Barack Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro (Fidel Castro's brother and successor) announced that the two countries would take historic steps toward normalizing diplomatic relations. Some US trade and travel restrictions were subsequently lifted or eased, and official embassies were opened in what became known as the "Cuban Thaw." Still, the US embargo remained in place (despite significant international criticism) and the two governments continued to criticize each other frequently. US policy on Cuba also remained subject to changing political attitudes. For example, the administration of President Donald Trump reversed many Obama-era concessions, while President Joe Biden then returned to loosening some restrictions in the early 2020s.

Understanding the Discussion

Communism: A system of government in which a one-party state controls all social and economic activity, and common ownership of property and the means of production is encouraged.

Dictatorship: A system of government in which absolute power is concentrated in the hands of one person or a small, well-organized elite.

Embargo: A government-ordered prohibition of commerce and trade with a certain country.

Exiles: A group of people forced to live outside their native country due to the threat of punishment or death.

History

Cuba was first settled by Amerindian groups around 2000 BCE, and was first sighted by Europeans in 1492. In 1511, Spanish conquistadors arrived on the island and began enslaving the native people, forcing them to work on large agricultural farms. Thousands died from overwork and newly-introduced European diseases. Due to this labor shortage, the Spanish colonialists imported thousands of African slaves to work in the large tobacco and sugar plantations. These two crops became the basis of the Cuban economy, and throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Cuba was one of Spain's richest colonies.

By the nineteenth century, Cuban sugar dominated the world market. A large amount of Cuban sugar went north to the neighboring United States, whose economy was growing exponentially. Flush with this new economic confidence, many Cubans began to call for independence from the Spanish crown. Throughout the nineteenth century, there were numerous rebellions by Cubans against the Spaniards, ultimately culminating in the Cuban War for Independence (1895–8).

The outbreak of war brought significant American support to the Cuban rebels. As a result of a media campaign to promote American sympathy and public support for a war against Spain, this war was initiated by the explosion and sinking of the USS Maine in Havana's harbor in the early spring of 1898. In the ensuing Spanish-American War (1898), the United States decisively defeated the Spanish, acquiring several former Spanish colonies and guaranteeing Cuban independence. After a series of negotiations, the United States acquired the naval base at Guantanamo Bay and, via the Platt Amendment (1901), the right to intervene militarily in Cuban domestic affairs.

For the next fifty years, Cuba existed as an independent nation in name, but remained closely linked with American business interests. American companies eventually acquired over 75 percent control over Cuban sugar fields. The Cuban capital of Havana became a famous tourist destination, and an underworld of narcotics, gambling, and prostitution flourished under the control of American organized crime groups.

While the Cuban elite profited from American investment, the vast majority of the populace suffered from endemic poverty. The Cuban government itself was compliant to American business interests, and was perceived as thoroughly corrupt by the Cuban people. During this period, the first of many Cubans began to immigrate to the United States to escape Cuban corruption and political persecution.

Following World War II, the Cuban government was led by Fulgenico Batista, a former soldier who had seized power on two occasions via military coups. Corrupt and autocratic, Batista was widely loathed by the Cuban people, especially after his 1952 coup on the eve of democratic elections. In the wake of Batista's seizure of power, Fidel Castro, a young lawyer, led an attack against the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953. While the attack failed and Castro was imprisoned, the event is generally viewed as the first attack against the Batista regime.

Freed under a general amnesty in 1955, Castro fled to Mexico, where he joined several other Cuban exiles in forming the 26th of July Movement, a group dedicated to the overthrow of Batista. Along with the Argentine Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Castro led a group of eighty men back to Cuba to initiate an armed rebellion. His efforts were ultimately successful, as a full-blown popular insurgency developed against Batista, who fled Cuba on January 1, 1959. Castro's forces seized Havana the following day.

The following two years were increasingly chaotic as Castro consolidated his grip on power. Several thousand Cubans fled the island as Castro seized large estates (including those belonging to American corporations) and persecuted political opponents. At the same time, Castro began to make overtures to align Cuba politically with the Soviet Union. These actions severely strained relations with the United States, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to plan a covert operation to remove Castro from power. After another round of land seizures directed against American-owned Cuban property, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba on January 3, 1961.

Three months later, newly sworn-in President John F. Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion. On April 15, 1961, a force of 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles attempted a landing on the Cuban mainland. The attack was repulsed with many casualties, and subsequently many in the Cuban exile community blamed the failure on Kennedy's refusal to authorize US air attacks in support of the landing. In response to this invasion, Castro declared Cuba a full socialist republic and publicly announced his alliance with the Soviet Union.

In February 1962, President Kennedy ordered a full trade embargo against Cuba. These events culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the Soviet Union and the United States almost went to war over the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba. There is a general consensus among historians that the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw the missiles in exchange for the United States' promise not to invade Castro's Cuba.

While the United States agreed not to use military means to eject Castro, covert and economic aggression against Cuba continued. Intelligence reports have revealed that there were at least eight confirmed CIA plots to assassinate Castro between 1960 and 1965. In addition, the CIA funded several Cuban exile groups to commit terrorist attacks against Cuba, including the 1977 bombing of a Cuban airline in which seventy-three people were killed. Economic sanctions against Cuba strangled the country's economy, resulting in massive Soviet financial assistance to fund Castro's regime. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, this assistance ended.

The end of the Cold War did not end US-Cuban tensions. The 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which significantly strengthened US sanctions against Cuba, was a failed attempt by the United States government to finish off Castro's regime by denying Cuba any outlet for foreign trade. Cuba remained a complex and controversial issue for many Americans into the twenty-first century. Critics pointed to the Cuban government’s poor record on human rights, as the Castro regime executed many political prisoners and banned nearly all forms of free speech and opposition political parties. To some, especially Cuban exiles in the United States, Castro was seen as a hated tyrant. However, others noted positive developments in Castro's Cuba, such as nearly universal literacy and a free national health care system. To many in Cuba and Latin America, Fidel Castro represented a world leader who successfully resisted American power.

Castro was in power in Cuba for more than forty years. After 2000, he enjoyed something of a revival in popularity throughout Latin America, mostly through the efforts of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who formed a public political alliance with Cuba, to the displeasure of the United States. In July 2006, however, Castro announced he was transferring presidential powers to his brother Raul, due to an intestinal illness. In 2008, Raul Castro was formally elected president by the Cuban National Assembly. In 2011, Fidel stepped down as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, thus ending his last formal role in Cuban government. Thereafter, he continued to comment periodically on international affairs and was regarded as a Latin American elder statesman.

Cuba Today

Under the administration of US president Barack Obama, US-Cuban relations underwent a historic thaw. In April 2009, Obama lifted restrictions on individuals visiting family members in Cuba and sending them remittances. Then, in December 2014, Obama made the surprise announcement that the United States and Cuba were moving toward normalizing diplomatic relations, at the end of a secret negotiations process facilitated by Pope Francis and the government of Canada. In April 2015, Obama announced the United States was removing Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, and in July 2015, the Cuban embassy in Washington and the US embassy in Havana reopened for the first time since 1961. Obama further called on Congress to end the US embargo against Cuba, but it remained in place.

In December 2015, the United States and Cuba reached an agreement to establish regular, direct airplane flights between the two countries. The first commercial flights between the United States and Cuba in more than fifty years took place in August 2016. The two countries also reestablished mail service, and on March 16, 2016, the first direct flight of mail from the United States to Cuba in fifty-three years took place. Also in March 2016, the US Coast Guard lifted its Port Security Advisory on Cuba, allowing for the potential of ferry and cruise ship service between that country and the United States. That same month, Obama arrived in Havana for the first visit by a sitting US president since 1928. He made a keynote address calling again for the embargo to be lifted, but also encouraging Cuba to reform its political system. Congress, however, remained reluctant to lift the embargo, and some influential Cuban American politicians criticized the détente as being unlikely to improve human rights in Cuba.

US policy on Cuba shifted again following Donald Trump's election as US president and the death of Fidel Castro in 2016. Trump and his staff noted that they planned to reverse President Obama's restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba unless the nation made significant reforms or at least presented a concrete plan for such reforms. In November 2017, the Trump administration barred "people-to-people" trips, which had allowed individual Americans to visit the island without tour groups, and outlawed financial transactions with any Cuban military-owned entities, including companies in the hospitality industry. In September 2017, the Trump administration recalled nearly all embassy employees and US diplomats from Havana after some two dozen individuals experienced mysterious neurological ailments, and in January 2018 the State Department launched an investigation into the cause of the health attacks. The episode further strained relations between the US and Cuba.

Miguel Díaz-Canel became the president of Cuba in April 2018 when Raúl Castro stepped down, but little else changed in Cuba in the immediate wake of the apparent transfer of power. Further US travel restrictions, including on cruise ships, were announced in June 2019. Just before leaving office in 2021, the Trump administration listed Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

After US president Joe Biden took office in 2021, his administration initially continued a strict approach to Cuban relations. Political analysts suggested that a fresh wave of social unrest in Cuba contributed to this stance. Biden later began to reverse some Trump-era policies, turning back toward the thaw begun under Obama. For example, in May 2022 the US government announced the resumption of more flights to Cuba and a family reunification initiative.

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