Journal of the mental environment
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever”
Just a few weeks before the next president of the United States takes the oath of office this January, Cubans will mark the 50th anniversary of the rise to power of America’s great nemesis, Fidel Castro.
Though many in the United States have denounced Castro (and his brother Raúl, who recently replaced the ailing Fidel) as a ruthless dictator, those same critics may wish to consider how the US created the climate that gave rise to Cuba’s communist revolution in 1959.
Though initially supportive of Cuba’s bid for independence from Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the US quickly turned Cuba into a “quasi-colony.” In 1910, Congress passed the Platt Amendment, which gave America almost complete control of Cuba’s foreign and debt policies. It also secured the rights to the Guantánamo Bay naval base, which is now home to America’s “enemy combatants” in its War on Terror. All major decisions concerning Cuba went through the US ambassador.
David Welch, a political science professor at the University of Toronto says that “the Cubans believe very strongly that the Americans imposed themselves as colonial masters and made the country their own private playground.”
A recent story in Maclean’s magazine pointed out that Cuba was known as “the whorehouse of the Caribbean” and that it gained a reputation as “the capital of American vice” shortly after the start of Prohibition in 1920 when Cuba was used as “a giant warehouse” for liquor smuggled into the US.
Infamous American mobsters such as Meyer Lansky, Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Giuseppe Bonanno were given free reign. The most influential mafia members would meet in Lansky’s suite at Havana’s Hotel Nacional and divvy up the proceeds from prostitution and casinos. Lansky was the kingpin, having arrived in Cuba about a decade before to help boost the revenues of two casinos at Havana’s famous Oriental Park racetrack.
The Americans came in hordes. Few Cubans benefited, aside from the Cuban military, which controlled most of the country’s gaming operations and which included Fulgencio Batista, the US-backed Cuban general who would twice take control of the country by coup. By the time of the 1959 revolution, Cuba was a perfect storm of heavy-handed US government policy and illicit business activity.
Growing up, Castro was well aware of the American presence, though he wasn’t always a fierce critic. A young Castro wrote a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking for a “ten dollar bill green American” and, as an adult, Castro spent a three-month honeymoon with his first wife in Miami and New York.
Still, the social justice-tinged education Castro received in high school from the Jesuits made him increasingly wary of the heavy American influence. After graduating with a law degree in 1950, he set up a legal practice for a mainly impoverished clientele disconnected from the American wealth surrounding them.
Castro had a “very, very strong contempt for games and casinos,” and they were the first to be dismantled when Batista’s regime fell, says Yvon Grenier, chair of the political science department at St. Francis Xavier University. “These money machines were seen as symbols of corruption of the Batista regime.”
But had history not unfolded as it did, Cuba could have become one of the top entertainment hubs for Americans. Its gaming industry was ramping up in the 1950s, with Luciano running several casinos sanctioned by Batista.
Meanwhile, Lansky became a major investor in the city’s Hotel Habana Riviera, which was poised to rival the Flamingo hotel and casino he was involved with in the Nevada desert. “Havana would be Las Vegas today if there had not been a revolution,” says Welch. “It would have been a destination for gambling, prostitution and all the rest of it.”
Cuba’s moral arena and the freedoms that the country has given up, willfully or because of sanctions, often define outside perspectives of the country. Prostitution is a thriving industry while many luxuries, such as cell phones, were largely banned until recently. Now, under Raúl, changes are occurring quickly. Cubans can purchase computers and, if they can afford it, stay at the beach resorts created for rich westerners.
A positive future relationship could emerge between the US and Cuba, should Democrat Barack Obama succeed in winning the presidency in November and follow through with his intent to begin a dialogue with Raúl Castro. There is increasing debate in the US about lifting the trade and travel embargo.
Whatever the future of this proudly independent country might be, it seems the tiny island may never entirely shake the influence of its giant neighbor.
Photo: Coca-Cola ran this Cuba-themed ad in National Geographic in February 1958, one month before Castro issued a manifesto calling for “total war” against the Batista regime.
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Comments
hey anonymoushoyden, id like to respond to what you had to say. to answer your first question, no actually i didnt know those facts. i feel like your statement was rude, actually. im glad that adbusters is so awesome to put this article up for me to read for free. you see, it isnt fair to assume that everyone has the privilege or access to be educated, such as yourself. everyone has a different situation and opportunity in life around the world. perhaps you should re-examine your thought on this.
other than that, thanks for contributing your knowledge.
sorry this has nothing to do with the article in and of itself.
oh our sweet influence
the american way
floating down sewer drains
into the sea
back into clouds
reigning down upon our dearest neighboors
these lives we live are just so
lavish
our happiness is more abundant than
trees
lead by soldiers down dusty trails
who could not want to follow this path?
i fucking hate this country.
And I'll be here.
There, round
a river falling again
near the twisted
road, your delicate
footprint portrays
a profile, and also
a new atmosphere,
backwards, like the
sound of a dreamland
in the feast of a
beautiful sky.
Francesco Sinibaldi
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, glasnot and perestroika, Cuba was also a different place. The heavy Soviet influence had various effects, but one thing it meant is that Cuba used more industrial fertilizer and fossil fuel than any other small Third World country, courtesy of their satellite export status - they got fuel and machine parts, and in return exported agricultural products back to the USSR - standard imperial relationship, which was the same as the USSR-Romania/Bulgaria setup, USSR - Central Asia setup, etc. When the USSR collapsed, so did Cuba's fossil-fueled industrial agriculture system, around 1993 or so - resulting in a large-scale economic collapse, a drop in child birth weights due to a reduction in the amount of food available to the public, and breakdown of transportation. Cubans had to relearn all the traditional low-energy agricultural methods (oxen, say). They did manage to do this to some extent, and their efforts are worth looking at as fule prices explode globally: http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php
Cuba was also liberated from the Spanish by the US, thus removing a European colonial power from what was a particularly brutal control over a nation in our hemisphere. That it became what it did was not the desired outcome of American policy. It was the inevitable outcome of the choices made by the Cuban people at that time in history.
A board of inquiry found that the Maine was almost certainly sunk by the Spanish, and not a conspiracy by McKinley to get us into a war. He wanted nothing more than to avoid this war, having seen the carnage of the Civil War personally.
Not everything the US does is wrong. Wake up.
Yeah, I knew most of this, but it's interesting nonetheless to see it summed up (I got it all from different sources, including the Macleans magazine you cited).
Poor Cuba, they Fidel banked on the wrong ally (USSR), although right now he's under better light right now with Monkey Boy giving the Yanks a bad rap.
Cheers,
Marty
Do people really not know those basic facts? Seems pretty ABC to me...PS you forgot to mention the Americans planning the blowing up of the USS Maine as a premise to get involved in the Spanish war in the first place...like the 2nd World War, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. America only gets involved in 'independence struggles' when there is booty to be had. Oh, and they sometimes sabotage their own territory/vessels/ports and blame it on 'the enemy' to gain popular support. But after 9/11, we all figured that out. I think.