Where is Cuba located and what is it like geographically? What was it like before 1492? What role did Christopher Columbus play in the history of Cuba? How did Spanish colonization influence the island? What role did the transatlantic slave trade play in the sugar industry, and how was Cuba involved? What role did Great Britain and the United States play in Cuba during the 1800s? Who was José Martí, and how did he influence Cubans? How did Cuba eventually gain its independence from Spain?
We answer these questions and many more in today's episode, Cuba 101, Part 1 of 3. Welcome to Wiser World, a podcast for busy people who need a refresher on all things world. Here we explore different regions of the globe giving you the facts and context you need to think historically about current events. I truly believe that the more we learn about the world, the more we embrace our shared humanity. I'm your host, Allie Roper. Thanks for being here.
from social posts to TikToks and flyers, all in just a few clicks. Get Adobe Express for free. Search for Adobe Express to find out more. Hey, everyone. I'm so happy to be back with part one of three of Cuba 101. Now, if you're not familiar with my 101 episodes, these are deeper dives into a country's history. I have my Know Before You Go episodes, which give more of a skim over history just in one episode.
episode, but these are where we go a bit deeper. It's meant to be an introduction to Cuba's history for those who know little to nothing about it, as if I'm teaching it in a classroom over a few days. like I used to. But just a reminder, this is not fully comprehensive. I mean, collectively, the series is going to be just under two hours.
please do more research, read more books, learn more about Cuba. Don't let this be your only learning experience about it. I do hope it's a great jumping off point for you and helps you feel more knowledgeable about Cuba so you can have better discussions and understand. the context behind current events, because that's really my goal here.
Today we are going to take Cuba from pre-1492 to Cuba gaining independence from Spain in 1898, so like almost 400 years in just this one episode. If this seems like old-timey stuff, like snooze... No, guys, this is some intense material and it lays the groundwork for Cuba today. We can't just...
skim over it. So in researching this episode, one of the books I studied was Cuba and American History by Dr. Ada Ferrer. And I will quote... from her or quote her from time to time I just have to say it won the Pulitzer for a reason it's very well done if you want a massive tome on Cuba I highly recommend it before we get into it just a reminder that if you want to stay updated on the podcast subscribe to it
on your favorite podcasting app so you're notified every time a new episode drops. If you want free email reminders and updates, you can do that by signing up on my website, wiserworldpodcast.com. And of course, if you want to support the podcast and get lots of additional resources like
images and maps and books and videos that go along with each episode, I do have a Patreon. You can sign up at patreon.com slash wiserworldpodcast. That's a way you can support me and learn in addition to these episodes. Okay, that's enough. Let's start Cuba. We're going to begin with geography because we've got to wrap our heads around where we are in the world.
So Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean. It's not a round island. It's a long, narrow island. It almost looks like an alligator. In comparison for square mileage, it's somewhere between the square... mileage of Pennsylvania and Tennessee U.S. states or Hungary and Portugal in Europe. So it's pretty big. It also has small islands that are considered part of Cuban territory today. It's located right where
three bodies of water come together. And those three bodies of water are the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Caribbean Sea. It's right underneath the U.S. state of Florida. The shortest distance between the two is is 90 miles or 145 kilometers. Cuba has lowland plains for agriculture. It has hills and mangroves and marshlands and mountains. It's very tropical. It has a wet season from May to October, a dry season from November to April. The climate is pretty much always warm.
I'll share some images on Patreon, but you can also Google them if you want to be able to picture this in your head. The weather supports growing a lot of crops like sugarcane, tobacco, coffee. These are all central to Cuba's economy. It is often hit with tropical storms in the late summer and fall. Hurricanes are pretty common and just a reality of living in Cuba. Now that we have a mental visual for Cuba, let's get into the history.
So the first known inhabitants of Cuba were indigenous peoples who arrived around 4,000 to 6,000 years ago from regions in South and Central America. Most grew crops. They hunted. They fished. They lived in homes with thatched roofs and lived off. the land growing cassava, tobacco. They would eventually introduce those to the Spanish. The dominant group at the time when the Europeans first made contact with Cuba were called the Taino. And though there were other groups, the Taino had
large villages, ceremonial practices, and a complex culture that was centered in nature. Then in 1492, there was a navigator. You may have heard of him. His name is Christopher Columbus, and he was from the city-state of Genoa, which is in modern-day Italy. At the time, everyone was trying to find new trade routes to Asia, where there were spices and silks, precious metals, gems, all these resources that were worth a lot. Still are. And at the time, most Europeans called Asia India.
That's what they called it. And the goal was to get there faster than everyone else. For a long time, everyone had traveled east through land travel. But Columbus had a theory that the best way to reach the east to reach. Asia, India, was to travel west. Despite being rejected multiple times, Columbus convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to fund a trip to test it out. hoping that it would, and he said this in his journal, it would take, quote, a few days with a fair wind.
It took a little longer than that. About two months and nine days on the ocean, Columbus and his crew landed on a small island. Thinking they were somewhere in India, they claimed the island for Spain. This island was not Cuba. It was a small island in the Bahamas. He kept going west. claiming small islands until October 28th. 1492, when he landed on a large island with mountains and fruit trees and dogs that did not bark, and he called it, quote, the most beautiful that eyes have seen.
end of quote. This was the moment that began one of the most momentous chapters in world history. He had landed in Cuba. The people there called it Cuba or Kubanakan, but Columbus insisted that it was an island near Japan.
and then changed his mind and decided it was part of China. It didn't have the big cities or the gold and silver that he was expecting. So after a month, he left to look for gold elsewhere. And he wrote The King and Queen that what it lacked in gold, it made up for natural resources.
and in peoples that could be converted to Christianity. He sailed onto another island that he called Hispaniola, which is modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and he established the first permanent settlement there in what they called the New World, since it was there that he felt there was a higher chance of finding gold on that island than in Cuba. Then he left for Spain. He was hailed a hero. He made another expedition with a much bigger group and this time brought sugarcane cuts.
Christian missionaries. He did stop in Cuba, but eventually he made himself governor in Hispaniola. Again, that's modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic. Just a fun fact, Columbus never actually set foot in the modern United States of America. that's something that I feel like people should know
Hispaniola was where European conquest really began to unfold. The Spanish colonization process really hit there first. And immediately there were issues. There were disputes on authority within the Spanish and even more with a suffering. of the native peoples who were removed from their villages and sent to work in mines far from their families, causing them to fight back. By 1500, that's only seven years, it is believed that more than eight of every 10 natives were dead.
because of work, war, malnutrition, and disease. The native people simply did not have the immunity against the diseases the Europeans brought, like smallpox, measles, influenza, and it's estimated that the native population declined about 96% in the first 35 years. Again, these are just... estimates, but even so, that's insane. The Europeans began to look for slaves on other islands.
to staff their minds. So they start stealing people from Cuba and other islands in the Bahamas. And when that wasn't enough, they began to look elsewhere for options. In 1511, Diego de Balazquez, a fellow explorer of Columbus, became the first governor of the first Spanish settlement on Cuba. And when he got there, there were Taino natives who had...
fled from nearby Hispaniola to Cuba, and they knew what was going to happen because they had experienced it in Hispaniola. And so they started fighting back right away. However, the Spaniards conquered them. quite quickly burned their leaders to death, and they set up a governing system that involved a Spanish governor ruling over local rulers and their villages, and laborers were sent to mines miles away on the island for months.
at a time to mine for gold, also going over to Hispaniola as well. Despite Taino resistance, disease and malnutrition left their villages obviously very compromised. and some of them even took their own lives. By 1519, explorers began to look elsewhere for gold. They found some on Cuba, but they wanted more. So, for example, Hernan Cortes, he left Cuba to go to Mexico to conquer the Aztecs. So hopefully this is all kind of.
forming together. Within just a few years, the Spanish had poured into Cuba, and then quite quickly they were pouring out. And during this time, African slaves were being brought in. to the island for labor because, again, the native population had really been decimated. By 1544, Cuba had only 900 free native people.
700 enslaved people, and 122 Spanish heads of household. That's not really a lot of people. Also, it had a lot of pigs. The Europeans had brought them over and they had spread like wildfire. But anyway, the human population soon began to grow. And for the next 300-ish years, Spain became one of the wealthiest empires in the world because it used the Gulf Stream.
to carry precious metals from its conquest in the Americas back to Europe. And since Cuba sits right in the middle of the Gulf Stream, The small town of Havana became very important because it's where Spanish ships usually stopped to rest and restock before they crossed the Atlantic. Pirate attacks became a problem, so the Spanish made a fortress in Havana with annual arrivals of treasure fleets, and Havana was called the key to the Indies.
French, Dutch, English came to Havana to trade. It grew to be the third largest city in the, quote, new world, even bigger than any city in the British colonies that would one day become the United States. African slavery grew in Cuba, and by the early 1600s, about half of Havana's population was African. Not only did Africans produce the food for Havana and everyone coming in and out, but they also built the forts, they made cannonballs, they mined copper.
minerals found in Cuba. The women cooked, cleaned, did laundry. Slaves in Cuba did have some rights. For example, they could denounce the abuse of their masters. They could change masters, purchase their own or another's freedom with extra money they made. This is why the term free people of color. is often used when talking about Cuba. Sometimes enslaved men were also given their freedom if they fought for Spain in one of their wars. However, even with these rights, most slaves had
terribly, terribly difficult lives. Probably can't even fathom it. They play a major role in Cuban history. But slavery would exist in Cuba until 1886. And we'll get to how that ended in just a minute. In 1762, Havana became a British territory for a second there.
It was due to a war that you don't really need to know about right now. But for a minute, it was a British territory. And the British had a quick and massive impact on Cuba when it came to the sugar industry. People all around the world were starting to eat more sugar. than ever before. There's a huge market for it and they can make a lot of money. So growing and harvesting sugar requires huge amounts of labor.
And they needed more of a labor force. And a free labor force was the easiest way to make that money. So at the time, the British were the main players in the transatlantic slave trade. For the 10 months that it ruled Cuba, the slave population in Cuba grew 80%. and the sugar industry skyrocketed. And it continued to be a very important part of Cuba's economy for centuries after. When that war ended in 1763, Britain...
gave Havana back to Spain, so long as Spain handed over Florida. This was a big blow to Spain, but they did it. So Florida was now in the hands of the British, and the Spaniards that had been living in Florida weren't going to stay. So they went to Cuba. So many North Americaners grew interested in Cuba and ties between the two began to grow. Because...
You'll remember that we're sitting in the 1760s, 1770s. This is the time when the British colonies were getting fed up with Great Britain. Many were calling for revolution, the American Revolution, and the revolutionaries knew that they couldn't win a war. against Britain on their own.
they needed foreign help. So they started traveling to Europe to get support, and Spain was on their list. If you look at this from Spain's perspective, there were many good reasons to not support the American Revolution. I mean, they were a monarchy. They had a lot to lose. right? They had many colonies themselves. But they hated Britain, and they wanted to reclaim Florida. So Spain decided to support the American Revolution.
And you guessed it. They sent money and silver and supplies, even some troops through Cuba. The Spanish also helped capture territory from the British. One big moment was the Battle of Yorktown. If you've listened to the Hamilton soundtrack or seen the play, there's a whole song about it. It's called the Battle of Yorktown. This was in 1781. And George Washington's troops were in
dire need of assistance, as the song says. There was no money. And so they asked Havana for money, and the local citizens raised enough money within six hours to help Washington. And that changed the course of the war, the Battle of York. Yorktown was the most decisive battle in the American Revolution, turned the tide for the Americans to win, and Cuba helped to make that happen.
When the war ended in 1783, the U.S. again is no longer British, and Spain did get Florida back. But Spain quickly began to get more nervous about what this new country was going to become. They feared that it would want in. on Spain's wealthy colonies. After all, the new United States did have expansionist dreams. So the Spanish ordered for Havana to restrict trade with the United States. And they even told all North Americans, get out of Cuba.
This didn't last very long. Within five years, the United States and Cuba were back to number one trading partners, largely because the slave trade was just too lucrative and they wanted in on the money. Basically, Spain supported the American Revolution. While they got some of what they wanted in the end, they got Florida back. This is the beginning of a complex relationship between the United States and Cuba.
Now, in the late 1700s, Cuba was participating in the slave trade, and there were certain rules involved, like certain countries could trade slaves, some could not. It was not an open market. But then... A Cuban lawyer convinced Havana to expand the sugar industry. And the best way to do that was to expand the slave trade to allow for anyone to sell African captives in Cuba. And the Spanish crown signed off.
on it. And within two years, the number of slaves brought to Cuba tripled. In fact, by 1817, there were more black people on the island than white people. This also meant that the sugar production in Cuba started to boom quickly. Cuba became a leader in sugar exports.
using slave labor to do it. Sugar is a really demanding crop. Again, it's very labor intensive and it's pretty much around the clock. You have to clear the land, which you'll remember Cuba is very tropical. So this is a huge amount of effort. Then you have to dig trenches, plant sugar cane cuttings.
spend months tending to those, weeding and controlling the pests. This is an intense heat, humidity, so many bugs, tropical diseases. Then you have to harvest the sugar cane. That involves cutting the stalks with machetes, stripping the leaves, loading it on cars.
And then you have to do this really fast because the cane spoils very quickly. Then you take the sugar cane to the mills, which have rollers that are powered by animals where the cane is crushed into juice. But the slaves had to hand feed. heavy stalks into the rollers. This often ended in injuries, amputations. Then the juice is boiled under extreme heat, again exposing these slaves again to terrible conditions as they'd have to skim impurities from the boiling liquid.
transfer it to vats and then molds to be drained and dried. Now most of this is mechanized, but... this was done for generations by slaves slave housing was overcrowded poorly constructed very little protection insane hours lack of proper food and water no medical treatment this meant that many slaves died of all kinds of
ailments. And those who died had to be replaced, which meant the plantation owners had to get more Africans to do the work. This is what kept the slave trade going. Since it was a free trade policy, there were plenty of replacements for deaths and injuries and so plantation owners had really few issues working their people to death and they're really
isn't any like there's no good words for the unimaginable suffering and complete unfairness of this entire practice. But it did happen. It's a huge part of Cuba. And slaves did find ways to rebel. Small acts of defiance most common. Some tried to escape. But again, plantation owners used severe physical abuse and torture to keep resistance down, which meant very few options for these slaves.
Now, if we zoom out a little bit, the American Revolution had sparked many other revolutions throughout the world and colonies who also wanted to be free from... For example, in the late 1700s, early 1800s, Haiti had its revolution against the French. Very simply put, Haiti had a group of rebels that destroyed.
thousands of plantations, and eventually the French abolished slavery. They named all people living in their colonies French citizens. And by 1804, Haiti was an independent nation founded by former slaves and was seen as an all-black republic. Again, much more complicated than that, but for our purposes, we're going to leave it there. Now, this is a huge deal for Haiti and a big win for abolitionists and slaves.
It was also terrifying for the Spanish and for slave owners who were making fortunes off of slave run sugar, coffee and tobacco. So Spain. It's getting nervous here, right? It had begun to lose some of its other colonies to revolutions. And since Haiti was so close to Cuba, it feared that some of those ideas from Haiti were going to hop over to Cuba.
And they were right. There were waves of conspiracies and rebellions all over Cuba after the Haitian Revolution. It really emboldened people. But all these rebellions were put down quickly and brutally. Most of the rebels were publicly executed. And their remains were left open in the public to warn other people, this is what's going to happen to you if you...
stand up to us. The Spanish elite in Cuba doubled down and began supporting more policies to expand agriculture and keep the slave trade open. Their entire economy was basically based in agriculture and completely reliant on the slave labor. As a longtime foreign correspondent, I've worked in lots of places, but nowhere as important to the world as China.
I'm Jane Perlez, former Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times. On Face Off, the U.S. versus China, we'll explore what's critical to this important global relationship. I do see a potential Nobel Prize, peace prize for Trump. It sounds so ridiculous because we are in a Cold War. If we can end this Cold War before it goes further. The guy deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. We'll discuss Trump and Xi Jinping, plus TikTok, AI, and even Hollywood. New episodes of Face Off are available now.
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While some Cubans wanted independence, many of the Cuban elites were more interested in staying with Spain because it was the safest way for them to keep their wealth and their lifestyle. The U.S. ended up annexing Florida, or it became a part of the U.S., and Spanish rule was beginning to go downhill in Cuba as well. So plenty of nations had their eye on Cuba, like Mexico, France, Britain. They all had some sort of plan. But it was the U.S.
that in particular felt like Cuba was a natural extension off of Florida. And they felt like it only made sense to have it join, have Cuba join the United States. It was just a matter of time. And they knew that whoever controlled Cuba was very important. because they controlled the waters that led to New Orleans, which was a major hub for trade.
for the US. Also in the early 1800s, the international slave trade was on the decline. Britain had ended their involvement in the slave trade in 1807, and they made it illegal to sell or buy people in their colonies. And they were encouraging other countries to do the same. The U.S. had stopped the slave trade to its shores, but they had not freed any of their current slaves. They still had a robust slave economy within especially the southern states that it heavily relied on.
signed an agreement with the British that they would end the slave trade, which they did. However, Spain did not clamp down very hard on the rules and an illegal slave trade immediately started up and thrived. Even more Africans were brought to Cuba illegally than legally. The U.S. helped with this. They built ships and went.
to West Africa, then took them to Cuba and other Caribbean areas, and they sold people at very high prices. Many U.S. families, including politicians, were made very rich from their rum and sugar refineries in the U.S. that came from slave-grown Cuban sugar. There were also many U.S.-owned plantations in Cuba, and the price of sugar was directly correlated to the price of slaves in Cuba at this time.
Now we know that the U.S. had its eye on annexing Cuba in the early 1820s. Britain also had a similar dream. And everyone knew that if Britain got Cuba, Britain was going to immediately end. slave trading. This made some people pretty nervous, worried about profits, worried about a Haiti repeat, worried about
Cuba becoming independent. So in 1823, President Monroe of the United States gave the Monroe Doctrine, which essentially declared the whole Western Hemisphere as off-limits to more European colonization. Now, this played a few roles for Cuba. First, Cuba would remain under Spanish control for the time being so the U.S. could benefit from Cuba's economy. It also kept Britain at bay, right? This made Cuban elites... more loyal to the United States and less likely to support.
Cuban independence. But many in Cuba were not in line with the Cuban elites and they were becoming more and more ready for a revolution. The abolitionist movement was growing with all kinds of people. There were British abolitionists, free mixed race and black people.
And even some white plantation owners would begin to see the wrongness in owning slaves. And from 1843 to 1844, there were more orchestrated rebellions and insurrections on various plantations. There were large-scale rebellions where slaves... were setting everything on fire. But within days, they were shut down by mass executions, imprisonments. And for about a year, thousands of enslaved and free people of color were tortured, imprisoned, executed, or exiled under suspicions of...
participating in these rebellions. And plantation owners would often tie these rebels to Ladders, head down, whip them sometimes to death. And this year is a year that left a huge scar in Cuba. It discouraged many people from pushing for independence. And again, it made... the wealthy community even more nervous about further insurrections. And the illegal slave trade continued to boom in Cuba throughout the 1850s, and the United States continued to support it with
their slave ships. One thing that I find especially interesting during this time period is that in 1853, Franklin Pierce became president, and his choice of vice president, William Rufus King, was a southern state slaveholder. And he was sick with TB during the inauguration. And so he was sworn in on a plantation in Cuba. I was blown away by that. I can't imagine the US VP being sworn in on a plantation today.
The U.S. and many Cubans began to push more for Cuba becoming part of the U.S., and the U.S. even tried to buy Cuba, but Spain just wasn't having it. The U.S. Civil War broke out in 1861. It lasted until 1865. This was the North. also known as the Union, against the South, also known as the Confederacy. There are many reasons why the U.S. went to war, but one of the major reasons was over slavery. Inside the U.S., but also outside of the U.S., the Union wanted to abolish slavery.
wanted to keep it. And because the U.S. and Cuba had intertwined economies, Cuba had some stake in what happened with this war. Think about it. For years now, Cuba has wondered. Are we going to stay with Spain? Are we going to go to the U.S.? Are we going to go to Britain? Are we going to become independent? And in the U.S., southern elites saw Cuban slavery as vital to their economic and racial order.
During the Civil War, they actually smuggled in supplies through Cuban ports, and some southern plantation owners moved their slaves to Cuba to keep or to sell them. You can't make this stuff up, guys. The Cubans were torn on which side they supported. Cuban elites tended to support the Confederacy. Abolitionists and enslaved people and free people of color obviously rooted for the Union and loved Abraham Lincoln, were devastated when he died. When the South lost the war,
Any hope of annexing Cuba had pretty much died, but some wealthy Confederates moved to Cuba after the U.S. Civil War, and they bought estates, hoping that they could keep their lifestyle there. Most ended up coming back to the U.S. after a few years. because Cuba was now gearing up for its own civil war. Three years later, in 1868,
A man named Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a sugar planter and slave owner, freed the enslaved people on his plantation and called them citizens and invited them to join the fight for liberty. He essentially declared Cuba as independent from...
Spain. I mean, this is a bold move. And the governor of Cuba is like, I'm not worried. He told Madrid, this is just a little rebellion that's not going to last. But that was not the case. The first Cuban war of independence actually lasted over 10 years and there were two major sides there was the cuban rebels called the liberation army and there was a spanish and the rebels established their own government it was kind of like a wartime republic there's a president they had a legislature
And the leader of the Liberation Army was white. However, much of the rebels were former slaves. So this is a mixed race army. And Cespedes told slave owners that if they joined the independence movement and gave up their slaves, they would be... compensated and their slaves would be freed. So this was an incentive for many people. They made an emancipation declaration. They declared all enslaved workers who had joined up.
as citizens of Cuba. So many rose to positions of leadership. In fact, one of the most important generals was Afro-Cuban, named General Maceo. And the rebels also began calling each other fellow citizens instead of categorizing each other by race. But even within the rebels, there was fear of Cuba becoming Haiti. The white rebels wanted independence for Cuba. but they just didn't want an all-black republic as the final result. So there was some tension there.
Like all civil wars, it wasn't pretty. The Spanish really wanted to hang on to one of its last colonies in the Americas, and it was not going to go down without a fight. Spain dug a trench between the east and the west. the eastern side ended up being more devastated. Rural areas were decimated. Some cities were burned. Sugar mills and farmhouses were destroyed by the guerrilla warfare tactics of the rebel army, as well as the more traditional tactics of the Spanish.
After 10 years, this is 1878. Both sides were worn out and a peace pact was made, but it did not recognize Cuba's independence from Spain. However, it did allow for political parties. It pardoned all the rebels and it gave freedom to anyone who had fought. in the war.
So this peace pact wasn't great. It was really too open to be successful. And the Cuban rebels were divided between those who had signed the peace treaty and those who were like, nope, this is not full emancipation, people. So things got tense and slaves began to see. more formally enslaved black soldiers who are now free. And so they began to rebel against their masters. And another war broke out within 18 months. It hardly lasted a year before another set of peace negotiations were made.
And Cuba again remained Spanish. However, the biggest win to come out of this second short independence war was that slavery was abolished in Cuba. So this is a huge win. The year is now 1880. Just like in the U.S., when slavery was abolished, it wasn't overnight. The new laws didn't free slaves immediately. It actually took about six years. But the end of slavery did bring significant social and economic changes. I mean...
How could it not? For hundreds of years, the economy had relied on slaves. So many freed people struggled to find work. Others moved to cities in search of work. The sugar industry had to adapt. And many of the wealthiest people in Cuba lost some of their wealth. their power. But even though slavery was now illegal, Spain still ruled Cuba and the independence movement was not over. They had two major hurdles. The first was the economy.
And the second was racial tensions. And remember, this is the late 1800s. This is when the U.S. had abolished slavery, too, but was living under Jim Crow laws that supported racism. really pretty common in the American South. And the U.S. is very close to Cuba and is trading regularly with them, right? So Cubans who wanted independence began to focus on racial unity for Cuba, to see themselves as Cuban.
fighting for Cuba rather than Black mixed race or white people fighting for Cuba. They felt like independence had to transcend race. One of the major players in Cuba finally becoming independent was a man named Jose Martí. Now, Martí was born to Spanish parents, so he was white. And by the age of 16, he was publishing a pro-independence newspaper. And he was sentenced to six years of...
hard labor in a whites-only work unit in Havana. By 1871, they had banished him to Spain because he had poor health, and there he got a university education, and he wrote his first work showing his anger at the situation in Cuba. In his late 20s, he ended up in New York and quickly became...
A philosopher and a speaker made a name for himself, giving public lectures, writing, and he was friendly with other exiled Cubans in Manhattan. And there were parts about the U.S. that he respected, and there were parts that he hated. He especially hated the division environment. and wrote about a public lynching that he had seen that just really disturbed him. And in 1891, he wrote an essay called Our America, where he talks about Latin American unity and warns his readers.
of the United States and the negative influence that they could have on Cuba in particular, especially around race. He believed that Cuba had to create a republic that could overcome racial division and promote. equality, an egalitarian society. And he especially wanted Cuba to be independent from both Spain and the United States and was very anti-colonialism for all of Latin America. So to be clear,
Marti was not a fan of U.S. expansionism. Marti wrote, quote, Men have no special rights simply because they belong to one race or another. When you say men, you have already imbued them with all their rights. end of quote. So he was clear he did not want Cuba to be black or white or mixed race. He wanted it to be Cuban. And Martí and other exiles, like some of the former military leaders of the first wars of independence, like Maximo Gomez and
Antonio Maceo, they were all exiled and they began to form a political party called the Cuban Revolutionary Party. And they organized plans for another war, which began in 1895. Now, this new war of independence actually... worked. They do kick out Spain, but it's not quite how you might think. This liberation army invaded Cuba.
from the West and pushed East, which had never been done before. And they recruited so many soldiers along the way that they finally had to turn people away. But the Spanish weren't going down without a fight. The governor of Cuba ordered anyone who lived in the countryside.
to move to special areas that the Spanish had designated. And this is so sad because what it did was it made it impossible for people to help the rebels. And then he sent soldiers to destroy everything left behind so the rebels would have nothing to benefit from.
animals to eat, no homes to stay in, no crops. So not only is this bad for the rebels who needed local support, but the families, they lost their homes and their livelihoods, and they often died of hunger and disease because all the resources had been destroyed. This stuff just makes me sick because I feel like the vulnerable, you know, women, children, men who just want to mind their own business and farm for their families, they end up getting hurt the worst.
Anyway, I digress. Jose Marti died in battle within the first three months. And to add insult to injury, the Spanish then said, when we kill Maceo, we will make a broom with his beard. Oy. The rebels fought hard, but sadly, General Maceo died in battle and everyone mourned, even New York mourned. But they did not make a broom out of his beard. Thank goodness, that's ghastly. But now the movement had lost Martí and Maceo, yet Spain...
still wasn't winning. And in the late 1890s, 1897, Spain removed the Cuban governor and promised Cuba that it was going to be able to elect its own government, have control over its own domestic affairs. Spain would still rule them, but... We'll give you some concessions. The rebels were like, nope.
We're doing this all the way. It's peace. We're not having peace without independence. We've done that twice. It's independence or bust. Some Cubans actually approached the U.S. and they're like, hey, maybe a deal can be struck here. But that's not what Martí had wanted. wrote the day before his death that there should be no master of Cuba, either Yankee or Spaniard.
End of quote. U.S. leaders were nervous about a victory for Cuba. They'd been OK with Cuba being ruled by weak Spain. But when Spain was starting to lose, it was making the U.S. nervous. So they sent a U.S. battleship, the USS Maine, to Havana. harbor to protect US citizens and interests. Then one day, the USS Maine just exploded. To this day, no one knows.
What caused it? Spain and Cuba believed the U.S. had done it to themselves to get a foot into Cuba. The U.S. said, no way, this is Spain. And the American public wanted war. After two months, Congress declared war on Spain. This is April 1898. And the U.S. promised it wasn't going after Cuba. They basically said, we will leave Cuba once the Cubans can govern themselves and things are peaceful. We're doing this to get back at Spain.
Some historians think that the U.S. joined the war to unite the North and South since it was having its own issues after the Civil War and needed something to bring it together. Some say it was because it did want control over Cuba and it wasn't going to admit it. Others say the U.S. just really wanted to overthrow a European colony in the Americas. Even Teddy Roosevelt wrote he was, quote, a quietly rampant Cuba Libre man.
end of quote. And he felt like it was America's duty to intervene in Cuba and to, quote, take this opportunity of driving the Spaniards from the Western world, end of quote. They ended up calling it the Spanish-American War. Even though, from my point of view, it really was just a continuation of the War of Independence that Cuban rebels were fighting against the Spanish. The U.S. had just added their support, but they rebranded it as the Spanish-American War.
It took only four months for Spain to give up. It was a great day for Cuba. It was finally free of Spanish rule. However, we know that after a war, it takes time to figure out what things are going to look like. And the U.S. had said, we've got no intention of annexing or controlling Cuba long term. There's something called the Teller Amendment, basically stated once peace has been restored to Cuba, the Cuban people will govern it. However, here's where it gets a little sketchy.
In the days after the fighting had ended, there was so much uncertainty that there became a bit of a power vacuum, and it seems as though the U.S. stepped into it. The American generals suddenly wouldn't let Cuban forces into some cities. and American leaders kept Cuban representatives out of some of the most key negotiations with the Spanish. Cubans quickly began to feel like the U.S. didn't see them as capable.
to govern themselves and began to worry that the U.S. was not going to partner with them, that they were going to dominate them. And in the end, not a single Cuban representative was present when Spain and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Paris, which What resulted from that was that Spain relinquished control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. This is December 1898.
I'll be honest, my personal opinion, looking at this from our modern perspective, this is not a good look. This is not a good look for the U.S. And on January 1st, 1899, Spanish flags came down across Cuba, but instead of a Cuban flag being raised, the U.S. flag. was raised. And Cuban military leaders and veterans watched in frustration and uncertainty. Like, what's going to happen to Cuba? It's not Spanish anymore. They've taken all of their soldiers and they're gone. But now Cuba is...
more or less occupied by the U.S. military under the terms of pacification. And U.S. authorities took control of many aspects of the government. They began appointing mayors, disbanding the army, replacing it with something else called the Rural Guard. which favored more elites. Now, you'll remember, the U.S. was under Jim Crow laws at this time, and so a multiracial army like the Liberation Army was not...
very comfortable for them. People within the U.S. and Cuba began to push for Cuba to have full independence right away. There were rallies and articles, and the U.S. governor of Cuba said the troops wouldn't leave until Cuba could prove that they could self govern, which was kind of ambiguous. This was a different time. It wasn't like they laid out a binder of exactly what has to be done to get the U.S. to leave.
The U.S. began to shape Cuban laws, social programs like education. They opened hundreds of schools. Students began to learn U.S. history. U.S. citizens in Cuba were treated. differently, better, and were able to invest more easily than Cubans. For example, there were some policies that allowed US investors to buy up land that left many small Cuban landowners out of good options. This benefited the US, but it really...
didn't help people who were rebuilding their lives after a tragic war. And in 1901, the U.S. made the Platt Amendment, which gave the U.S. more influence over Cuba, rights to maintain a naval base in Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay is in the southeast of Cuba. It's a very strategic place for monitoring the Caribbean from a military perspective.
And there were protests over the Platt Amendment. Many people in the U.S. and Cuba wanted the U.S. out. So finally, in May of 1902, the U.S. governor handed over power to Cuba's new president, Tomás Estrada. Palma, and Cuba became a democratic republic. However, the Platt Amendment remained in force, and the U.S.
was more or less allowed to intervene in Cuba's foreign relations, finances, other things. So many did not feel like Cuba had full sovereignty. And this is important because it sets the stage for further unrest in Cuba for... the next 60 years, which we'll cover in parts two and three. So we're going to stop there. We have covered so much. Cuba's been through a lot in the 400 years that we've covered. So let's review.
Cuba is the largest Caribbean island. It's in a strategic location. Indigenous peoples lived there for many years before 1492 when Columbus claims it for Spain and initiates Spanish settlement. as well as devastation of the native population. As the native population declines, African slaves are brought in to work in agriculture and mining. The money begins to flow. Havana becomes a key port for the Spanish. It grows into a major city. Cuba even helps out in the American Revolution.
In the late 1700s, Cuba's sugar industry boomed. relied heavily on African slaves under brutal conditions. Despite British bans on the slave trade, an illegal market thrived. And as the U.S. expanded, it had its eye on Cuba and they became close trade partners. listeners.
Inspired by Haiti's revolution, Cuban abolitionists and slaves staged many rebellions. They were brutally repressed. When slavery was outlawed in the U.S., Cuba became ripe for its own war and the first war of independence lasted for... 10 years. Eventually, slavery was abolished. Still, Cuba was Spanish. Rebel leaders began to emphasize racial unity more and more as the fight for independence continued. From 1895 to 1898, rebels fought against the Spanish. This includes José Martín.
Generals Gomez and Maceo. And the U.S. jumped in for the last four months. The U.S. calls this the Spanish-American War. The Cubans call it the Cuban War of Independence, their third one, to be exact. It's a little mini war in between the first and third. The U.S. steps in after the war and they govern. And under the premise of pacification to help Cuba get ready to govern itself, they also secured many American financial prospects.
process. This frustrated many Cubans who wanted full sovereignty, full independence. In 1902, Cuba became a republic with a Cuban president, but the U.S. still had powerful sway in what would happen. due to the Platt Amendment. In 400 years, Cuba has changed a lot. Look at where it started to look at where it is in 1902.
And in parts two and three, we're going to take it from 1902 until 2025. So that's a lot. We've got Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs, Revolutions, Fidel Castro. There's a lot that's going to come in parts two and three. And we've just built... we've just built the foundation here we're building momentum here with part one to help explain why some of those things happened right because
the past history informs our current events. So I'm going to leave it at that. I'm not going to give a takeaway yet because I have takeaways for parts two and three, but this kind of the foundation. I really enjoyed making this episode. Thank you so much for listening, for sharing the podcast, for supporting on Patreon. That's patreon.com slash wiserworldpodcast if you want more images, maps, additional resources to help you learn. And thank you.
you so much again for learning with me. And I hope that until part two comes out in a couple of weeks that we can all go out and make the world a little wiser.