How did the U.S. influence Cuba while it was a U.S. protectorate? What role did the Platt Amendment play? What role did race play in Cuban society during the early 1900s? Who was Gerardo Machado and how did he become Cuba's first dictator? How did Cuban citizens fight back? How was the mafia involved in Cuba? Who was Fulgencio Bautista and how did he influence Cuban politics? Who is Fidel Castro and how did he and his fellow rebels launch a revolution that would change Cuba forever?
We'll answer these questions and many more in today's episode, Cuba 101, Part 2 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, Ali Roper. Thanks for being here.
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 US versus China. We'll explore what's critical to this important global relationship. Trump and Xi Jinping, AI, TikTok, and even Hollywood. New episodes of Face Off are available now. wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, hello. I am back with part two of three on Cuba today. And it probably goes without saying, but if you haven't listened to part one yet, please just press pause now. Go back and do that. Things will not make as much sense without it. That episode lays all the groundwork for this episode.
So before we get into it, just a reminder that I designed these episodes for people who know very little to nothing about Cuba. So you can walk away with a good... basic foundational history, but it's not completely comprehensive due to time.
I do leave things out, so as always, please do independent research from other sources because this history is complex and sometimes contested. If you need help to begin finding some good options, I will be sharing many through my Patreon, which you can sign up for at Patreon.
patreon.com slash wiserworldpodcast. I share a lot of pictures, maps, videos, articles, books that you can use to learn more about Cuba. And also just a quick content warning for this episode. I do talk briefly in a non-graphic way about prostitution.
in this episode. In case you have little ears around, maybe not for them. And I will be sharing my takeaways along the way this time, a little bit at the end too, but we're going to try something a little different this time because I have thoughts. All right. We ended part one in 1902.
You'll remember from part one that Cuba gained its independence from Spain in 1898, but it was still under U.S. control. Cuba had a U.S. governor with full administrative and military control until 1902. Fun fact. governor was a really good friend of Teddy Roosevelt's. During this time, the U.S. shaped much of Cuba, opening thousands of schools, giving teacher training, encouraging Cubans to take self-governance slowly, and more importantly, they influenced
the economy, especially with agriculture, where US investors were able to buy up land much more easily than smaller Cuban farmers. So Cuba did not have the full sovereignty that it really wanted. The U.S. had also introduced the Platt Amendment, which had conditions for Cuba should it become independent. So, for example, if Cuba were to become independent, it gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuba militarily. And they claimed this was an order to...
The Platt Amendment also made it so Cuba could not make treaties with foreign powers that could potentially compromise its independence. It also had restrictions on... debt so that Cuba wouldn't become financially independent on other nations.
The U.S. saw this as a favor to Cuba in many senses, but this irked many Cubans because they felt they couldn't make their own financial decisions without U.S. oversight, and they felt like Cuban order and protection of life and property was a Cuban responsibility. The amendment also allowed the U.S. to oversee public health efforts to prevent diseases.
Yellow fever was rampant at the time. One of the biggest things the Platt Amendment did was secure land ownership privileges for many American companies. After the wars of independence, large pieces of land had been devastated. leaving them ready for new development. And the prices of this land were so cheap for foreigners who had not been living through a war.
So that in a few years, about three quarters, roughly three quarters of the Cuban rural property was owned by foreigners, mostly from the United States. So that's a big deal. And the Platt Amendment helped make that happen. In fact, many small Cuban landowners lost their land to bankruptcy, and U.S. companies were right there to snatch up the land. And the Platt Amendment allowed the U.S. to establish a naval base in Guantanamo Bay, which is very strategic in the larger Caribbean space.
In late 1901, Cuba was pushing for full independence and had its first presidential election, and Tomás Estrada Palma was elected. But the U.S. said that the only way Cuba could become independent was to accept... the Platt Amendment. Now, most Cubans, if not pretty much all Cubans, detested this. That's really the only word for it. They detested it. But the U.S. leaders had made it clear that this really was their only option. So the Platt Amendment was included in the new Cuban constitution.
which... that whole process of making the Constitution was overseen by the United States. So Cuba gained its formal independence in 1902, but it became a U.S. protectorate, which means it had its own government, but the U.S. still had. had some level of control and influence.
Now, this is not normally how a country gains independence. In fact, it's pretty unusual. And many Cubans had doubts and concerns. But still, Cuba was happy to be more independent than it had been. And everyone celebrated that day. The protectorate ship. lasted for 32 years until 1934. And just a side note, the US does not have any protectorates today. While Cuba did benefit from many advancements that the Americans helped to provide, many Cubans
also felt jaded with being a U.S. protectorate. Even Cuban lawmakers and leaders were not super happy with this arrangement unless they were very directly benefiting from it financially. Right away, President Estrada Palma created a government of war veterans, mostly those with Spanish blood, some Afro-Cubans. The new government made trading deals with the United States, such as cutting tariffs and duties for Cuban children.
And this made the U.S. its closest trading partner. It looked like sugar trade was going to be the holy grail of prosperity for Cuba. Many U.S.-owned properties built huge sugar mills. Some of them had their own company towns like little American. kingdoms with housing and stores and schools and movie theaters and churches. And this naturally influenced Cuban farmers nearby and what they could grow. And it also influenced migrant workers who would come in from Haiti and Jamaica.
and would be housed in these company town barracks. So two examples of these U.S. owned mini worlds, more or less, would be the United Fruit Company, which had mills in other countries as well, and also Chaparra, which was founded. by a Texas congressman and run by a Cuban who would eventually become
president of Cuba later on. There were rumors that life in these company towns were not always what you think. Yes, there were more machines doing the labor that had been done by slaves for generations. We talked about that in part one. But many local farmers and migrant workers were not treated to the standards that we would expect today.
I think the key thing to understand here is that those benefiting the most from the sugar trade were not always Cubans. In fact, within 20 years, over half of the island's sugar harvest came from mills that were owned by Americans, which meant that a lot of the money did not stay in Cuba.
When a country's economy relies heavily on just one thing, it's called monoculture. And it can often lead to a resource curse where the country relies too heavily on one resource and can end up in financial distress should that resource decrease. because it hasn't diversified. And this kind of happened in Cuba because of the ease with which Cuba could get American goods without heavy duty prices. If you didn't work in sugar, you typically struggled. Cuba also...
didn't industrialize much. They really put their eggs in the basket of sugar. And we all know putting all your eggs in one basket usually doesn't pay out well in the long run. So early Republican Cuba in the 1900s became a world of extremes. Parts of Havana were very upper class, refined, well-educated, usually due to their proximity to sugar money or to politicians who had deals with sugar money.
was upward mobility there. And Havana seemed quite modern with electric streetcars and big homes and getting rid of some of the old colonial looks for more modern ones. There were even amusement parks and parts of the city became very fancy. Meanwhile, Other parts of Havana and the country.
were very run down and plagued by poverty. For example, thousands of impoverished women of various races and nationalities worked as prostitutes in a neighborhood right off of the city port, San Isidro, as it's called. It was designated... a tolerance zone. That's a euphemism where law enforcement kind of turned a blind eye to a bustling sex trade. This neighborhood became known all over the world. And the man who reigned over this was very politically connected.
And as I mentioned earlier, Presidente Estrada Palma made his new government with war veterans. But many men who had fought for independence, especially Afro-Cubans, who had made up much of the Liberation Army. They found themselves unemployed or excluded from both the public and private sectors. And when they complained of racial discrimination, Estrada Palma dismissed them as racist. So it was clear early on that inequality was not his...
highest priority and throughout my years of studying world history i have noticed a pattern that whenever we have big gaps between the rich and the poor we're getting ready for political tension right and that was the case here within just four years so during a strata re-election cycle, accusations of electoral fraud and racism against black people and violence began to circulate in Cuba.
One black general, Quintin Bandera, was especially vocal against the government. He was deeply discouraged that even he, as a former general in the Wars of Independence, could not find work. And at one point he had to be a garbage collector, which he did in his... general's uniform just to prove a point. In 1906, Bandera and another veteran named Evaristo Estenos built an army of rebels. Almost all veterans of the War of Independence and mostly Afro-Cubans who were very
very disappointed on how they were being treated by the government. Within a week, the cause was lost. It did not work. And when Bandera went to surrender, he was brutally assassinated. He was shot and attacked with machetes and his body. was displayed publicly without honor. Now, people were outraged and aggravated by this, and there were more pockets of violence cropping up. And Cuban politicians basically said, wait.
Platt Amendment, where are you? We've got a problem here. We need the U.S. to intervene. And President Teddy Roosevelt of the U.S. wasn't happy about it, but he did order a second occupation in 1906, and a new provisional U.S. administration stepped in to calm things down. This would last for another three years. So yes, Cuba is a...
protectorate, but it was occupied by the US for just those three years. But this did not settle the political rebellion for forever. What it showed was that Cuba's internal governance was relying on US intervention. And the U.S. was doing it because any Cuban faction could just call up the U.S. whenever it was mad and the U.S. would step in. And many Afro-Cuban veterans and small landowners and other minorities, racial or economic minorities, still felt very unheard.
So in 1908, that veteran we talked about named Evaristo Estenos, he founded the Independent Party of Color or PIC. Independent Party of Color. This was a political organization with the goal of advancing black rights in Cuba. Some key things in their platform. They wanted to advocate for equality. They publicly denounced violence. They wanted free compulsory education. And they wanted even...
land distribution. This is going to come up again. Even land distribution. Or other words, they wanted to make laws that changed the way that land was distributed in Cuba to make it more equitable. Many Cubans, in fact almost all of Congress, including black politicians, did not like the concept of a black-based party. They felt this exclusivity was racist at the core and could destroy national unity.
all of this, the U.S. withdrew from their second occupation and a new president was in office. In 1910, the Cuban government passed a law that banned race-based political organizations. In other words, they made the PIC illegal. Estenos campaigned to sway public opinion, but many members were arrested or suppressed for being a part of it or for sympathizing with the PIC. So the PIC decided to organize a public demonstration in 1912 that was meant to show a sign of black force against.
the law. They wanted the PIC to be legalized before the next election. And this was supposed to be just a peaceful protest, according to Estenos. However, there were tons of rumors about this all-black group in the press. For example, newspaper printed that PIC activists were going to, quote, kill all the whites, end quote. So many interpreted the PIC as starting a race war in eastern Cuba. Many became concerned that violence was coming.
So the U.S. sent hundreds of American Marines to protect U.S. property and even some warships. Now, the U.S. had already stepped in once when the Cubans had violence break out. So the Cuban president felt pressure to show he could contain this. And he sent... Thousands of soldiers in eastern Cuba, even civilian volunteers joined in to crush what they called a black movement. Many Afro-Cubans in eastern Cuba were killed indiscriminately, many of them unarmed. PIC rebel camps that were shot.
down by machine guns were later reported. Actually, they weren't rebel camps. They were small rural settlements. And it's estimated that two to six thousand people died and fewer than 100 weapons were confiscated from the protesters, which begs the question. Did they just hide their weapons or was there actually very little threat to begin with? With the evidence that we have now, it does appear as though the PIC movement was not as threatening as the government response showed.
was not equal to the response. And the head of the PIC, Estenos, was captured, executed, and newspapers printed photographs of his mutilated corpse. One of the most tragic parts of this was that most of the PIC were former veterans.
being shot at by comrades that they had fought with in the wars of independence. And this massacre essentially shattered the ideal of racial unity that we saw in the Liberation Army in part one, right, where they called each other fellow citizens. And Afro-Cuban activists...
became more cautious about challenging state policies. Of course, there were everyday people who believed in racial unity and lived as a norm, but the state policies were not showing the unity that they had originally preached.
Now, just a quick personal anecdote here, because we study history to learn from it, right? So what I've thought about when learning about this 1912 massacre is the power of the press. Now, the free press is really important. Don't get me wrong. But they're also a business and sensation.
if you print things like quote they're going to kill all the whites end quote that is going to incite public hysteria and the consequences of that can be tragic like in this case looking back there was very little to no evidence that that was going to happen. It was just hearsay. But look at how the 1912 massacre affected Cuba. So I think it's insightful to consider that we need to be careful with the press too. And in this day and age, it's really hard to know what media
trust. I struggle with this too. I will say that right now, my biggest tactic is to wait and see what is corroborated. So if it's just one outlet putting it out, even if it's a really big outlet. I still wait. I like to see what's being said on all spectrums across the aisle.
over the course of a few days or even weeks, and then I'll determine what I think about it. I really try to not jump to conclusions based off of one or even two sources. I really like this quote from James Clear. He says, quote, the student of one teacher. I think this is generally true, and I think that when it comes to... to consuming the media, we need a lot of teachers. And I just think you're safer when you have more options. So this massacre has taught me that lesson even more deeply.
Well, I've got the podcast for you. I'm Sean Piles and I host NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. On our show, we help listeners like you make the most of your finances. I sit down with NerdWallet's team of nerds, personal finance experts in credit cards, banking, investing, and more. We answer your real-world money questions and break down the latest personal finance news.
The NERJ will give you the clarity you need by cutting through the clutter and misinformation in today's world of personal finance. We don't promote get-rich-quick schemes or hype unrealistic side hustles. Instead, we offer practical knowledge that you can apply in your everyday life.
You'll learn about strategies to help you build your wealth, invest wisely, shop for financial products, and plan for major life events. And you'll walk away with the confidence you need to ensure that your money is always working as hard as you are.
So turn to the nerds to answer your real world money questions and get insights that can help you make the smartest financial decisions for your life. Listen to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. What's something you learned in history class? that you feel wasn't the whole truth. Better yet, what's something you didn't learn at all that was omitted completely? That's what I like to call redacted history. I believe that all history...
no matter how good or bad, needs to be told. There are wars, massacres, battles, and entire historical events that are just not in our school's history books. Have you ever heard of Mary Bowser? I didn't think so. My name is Andre White, the host of the Redacted History Podcast, the place where history's forgotten events, heroes, and villains get their story told, one episode at a time. So come huddle around the campfire with me.
And get ready to hear the stories that you were robbed of. And get comfortable. We're going to be here a while. The Redacted History Podcast. Real history never dies. Stream the Redacted History Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Well, the next year, 1913, a new president was elected. And during World War I, Europe's sugar beet fields became battlefields. And so Cuban sugar became even more critical around the world, which meant huge profits for Cuba more than any.
other time in their history, and many Cubans expected this boom to last, so they borrowed heavily to grow their businesses. But when the market collapsed after the war, so 1919-1920, there were widespread bankruptcies. In fact, 20 The American banks survived because they were backed by U.S. resources that were doing better than sugar, and many of them scooped up properties as the owners defaulted, so even more Cuban land was now in foreign hands.
This economic hit naturally caused unrest. President Woodrow Wilson dispatched a special representative who influenced Cuban policies by withholding or offering loans and the U.S. began importing many American goods to the Cuban market. Cars in particular, Fords especially, household appliances, radios, and smaller towns continued to lag behind while Havana became more and more modern. Not to mention that more and more people, especially from the United States, began to travel to Cuba.
The U.S. was doing well in the 1920s. There was a new, shorter work week, so people had more time. And the economy was doing well, so they had more disposable income. And there were far more millionaires and celebrities than in past decades. Everybody wanted a nearby exotic escape.
And also this was the season of prohibition, which was when the U.S. banned the production and sale of alcohol and Cuba had cocktails. Havana became known as a 700-mile playground where you could get divorced easily, you could gamble, and you could...
drink, which were all pretty much illegal in the United States. Nightclubs were huge in Cuba. Cuban baseball also became very big during this time. Babe Ruth and other US baseball players would come play winter ball in Cuba. And there were some amazing games between the
US and Cuban teams as well. Some Cubans loved the US dollars and they began naming their businesses in English and catering explicitly to honeymooners and business conventions and millionaires. But those outside of tourism were worried about Cuba's reputation.
culture. They were thinking, hey, is this going to become a hedonistic playground? Like what's going to be the legacy of Cuba's culture? And Cubans were also worried about their new president, whose name was Presidente Machado. He had been elected in 1924 and he was. becoming more and more authoritarian. In 1928, he rigged elections and changed the Constitution to extend his term to 1935, definitely giving him dictator vibes.
He then began to censor newspapers, arrest or assassinate political enemies, and torture and imprison opposition groups. He also had a secret police who used brutal tactics to silence his opponents. This is another theme hopefully you've learned from listening to the podcast. Secret police is a telltale sign of a dictator.
labor leaders and student activists would just go missing. As Dr. Farah writes, quote, the body of one washed up by the peers, decomposing and still weighed down by prison chains. The remains of another were allegedly found undigested in the belly. of a shark. The government's sudden ban on shark fishing after the incident led wary Cubans to speculate that the prisoners were being fed to sharks through an open trap door in the dungeons of the Cabana Fortress, end of quote.
So Machado is sketchy at best. At first, the U.S. supported Machado because he maintained economic stability and protected American business interests in Cuba, which caused some Cubans to complain of too much. U.S. power in Cuba and what they called Yankee imperialism. In the 1920s, Cuban citizens became more nationalistic as a whole. There was a lot more anti-government feelings going on in Cuba in the late 1920s.
calling for the end of the Platt Amendment, which again gave the U.S. quite a lot of power in Cuba. Then the Great Depression hit in the US in 1929, which devastated the US and thereby devastated Cuba's economy. Almost every industry was hurt. But just one example is that teachers weren't paid for six...
months. And when they threatened to strike, President Machado said that he would deploy the army on them. And eventually he just shut down all the schools. So that's just one example. But there were massive strikes and protests, especially by students and workers due to unemployment, which Machado suppressed with force.
As Cuba became more unstable, the U.S. stopped supporting Machado. Even the military leaders turned against him. There was a lot of violence and shootings during these riots, and it became clear that with Machado at the helm, there was going to be more bloodshed. 1933, Machado fled to the Bahamas and later settled in Miami, where he...
Cuba's first dictator lived in exile. This was a moment for Cuba. Who is going to step in after their leader has fled the country? I mean, this is a big deal. He just flew away. So a provisional government was set up, but most didn't see it. as legitimate. Political and economic stability and chaos just seized Cuba.
Mobs began to ransack the homes of former officials under Machado, targeting especially his secret police. More than a thousand of the high-ranking members of the regime were killed. There were strikes in every sector calling for economic relief and punishment for anyone.
who had worked for Machado. Students even released a manifesto demanding a new constitution free of U.S. meddling, women's suffrage, and the redistribution of land. So these riots had grassroots vibes. And to add to the chaos, of the Cuban military seized a base and announced that they were taking over.
they placed a man named Fulgencio Batista as the head of the Cuban army. Now, Fulgencio Batista was a stenographer for the army, meaning that he had sat in on many high-level military meetings because he was... So he wasn't a general or anything. He was kind of an unusual pick. And we're going to talk more about him. But together with university students, the soldiers took down the provisional government and put in a man named Ramon Grau San Martin. We're going to call him Grau.
And he was a university professor and had been supporting student protests for years. This is 1933, by the way. Some context. This is the same year that Adolf Hitler became chancellor in Germany. Just need some context around the world. Grau would not swear on the 1901 constitution. He said that the Platt Amendment had to go and Cuba needed a new social order. Instead, he held his hand out over the crowd and took his oath by, quote, vowing allegiance to the people.
End of quote. I mean, that's a serious power move. This was the first government of Cuba that did not have the approval of the United States and was seen as a de facto government. This naturally stressed out the U.S. ambassador to Cuba because a revolution was brewing and he knew it. Everyone was calling for an end to the Platt Amendment. The U.S. called in military ships that stayed out in the harbor, but the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration
was pretty wary to intervene since they had had some occupations in Latin America that were not viewed positively at the time, and FDR just did not want more anti-American sentiment in Cuba. So the U.S. ambassador to Cuba basically said, hey, this new government is anti-American, it's more socialist, and it has made explicit decisions against U.S. finance and business in Cuba. So let's just not recognize it.
And that's what the U.S. did. They just decided not to recognize Grau's government. So meanwhile, Grau's government made some huge changes. They allowed women to be able to vote. The university was separated from the government. Peasants were promised to be able to stay on the land that they currently work. Workers got minimum wage.
This upset many powerful mill owners who refused to follow the new government rules or to pay taxes. So one left-wing leader in the government even nationalized some of the mills, and many workers began seizing mills. forming Soviets and proclaiming socialist ideals. So this sheds light on a fracture in this new revolutionary government. There was this strong communist sentiment to the left. Then there's Graou, the president, who was a little bit more modern.
He didn't want things to swing quite so far. And on the other side was Batista, the stenographer who was running the military. Now, when the left wing was nationalizing mills, Batista was backing the mill owners and attacking the new nationalized sugar mills. As Dr. Farah writes, quote, one leader was too radical for the other, the other much too conservative. for the first, end of quote. Essentially, the new revolutionary government was fracturing from within. Grau's fledgling
Government didn't last more than a few months. And by January 1934, Grauz stepped down under military pressure and also the lack of American recognition. And a new president took over. But really, he was just a figurehead. Batista was running the military.
And he was thereby running the show. However, within just a few months, they abolished the Platt Amendment, which is kind of ironic that the former revolutionary government worked so hard for this, but it didn't come until after they were ousted. Now, Batista, he's not president, but he's calling the shots. He begins to purge the government of anyone who had been with Grau.
So this is assassinations, imprisonments. Now, remember, Grau was a university professor, and he'd been supporting the younger people and low-wage workers. So many fled the country to organize themselves abroad, usually to Miami. Batista is known for being very precise.
and for noticing everything. I mean, he was a stenographer. So he was an astute politician in many respects. But ruling by brutal force can only last so long. And within a few years, he began to realize that he had to soften somewhat to popular... demands for social justice if he was going to get support for other things that he wanted to do because he was very ambitious. For example, he put in place
A three-year plan that promised land reform, health insurance, higher wages, and he even allowed for government alliances with Communist Party leaders. And this widened his support base. Now you'll remember that the Platt Amendment was no more.
So Batista decided that Cuba needed a new constitution rather than the one that had been made under U.S. occupation in 1901. So he held a constitutional convention. He allowed exiled opponents to come, as well as any party that had previously been outlawed.
it spanned the political spectrum they had communists conservatives reformists all debating on national broadcasts this is viewpoint diversity at its finest side note from me i think this is beautiful i think we need to bring back respectful viewpoint diversity and true debate, but...
I digress. The Cuban population was very invested in these debates. They would listen in on their personal radios, or if they didn't have them, they'd go to hotel lobbies and listen to the radio together to hear these debates on the new constitution. And all of these debates made for the 1940s.
Constitution. And here's a few things that they included. Minimum wage, eight-hour workday, measures to nationalize large land holdings, and most hotly debated of all, protections against racial discrimination. This was a big shift for cuban politics a shift to a little more left a little bit more liberalism and it allowed cubans of all political beliefs to have a sense of ownership
However, many of the ideals of the Constitution were unrealized as time went on. You'll see why. But Batista then ran for president in 1940. He won. And under this new Constitution, and for the next four years, his presidency was... relatively democratic. We'll talk.
about what that looked like in a second. But just a side note, this is World War II time. And Cuba played a really small role in World War II in the sense that it mostly supported the US with exports. It was not highly involved in World War II. The 1940s was a time when Cuban artists became world-renowned, mambo music became popular, Cuban radio became huge, citizen activism became even more of a thing.
Journalists and voters began to denounce leaders more publicly and they demanded higher accountability and also economic diversification. The early 1940s on the outside was this season of democratic reform, right? But underneath this exterior, there was actually rampant corruption going on. And this would continue into the 1950s. For example...
So Batista left his presidency in 1944, and there were two more presidents. And in 1948, there was a massive scandal. I mean, guys, this is so big. I just have to share this. A new president had been elected, but due to a hurricane.
the power had gone out during the inauguration ceremony. So this new president, Carlos Prio, was speaking to a live group at the palace. However, During all of this, the outgoing education minister and his men were just casually loading millions of cash from the National Vault into suitcases.
This is during the inauguration and they took it all to Miami. Talk about a heist. This is a government leader who just stole so much money from the Cuban people. And then it came out that the politicians had actually appointed phantom workers to. government payroll. They were pocketing public funds. Many Cuban officials were treating public office as a personal cash machine. They were skimming budgets to purchase property and luxuries at home and in Florida. If this is giving you Sudan vibes,
If you've listened to my Sunan episodes, we're on the same page. The government also was allied with the American mob. also known as the mafia. For example, the mafia had met with Batista's regime and had laid plans to expand gambling, narcotics trafficking, and many other money laundering operations. And Cubans became more and more aware of the corruption.
And even Cuban radio hosts began railing against it. One man coined the phrase honor against money, and he made a political party with a broom as the symbol to show that they wanted to sweep out corruption. Now, you'll remember that Batista had left office in 1944, but in a twist of fate, in March 1952, Batista...
decided that he wanted to jump back into the picture. And he'd been living in Florida, but he decided to run again for president in Cuba. And when he realized he was going to lose, he carried out the biggest theft of all. He seized the presidency by force. It was a nearly bloodless coup. And very quickly, he came in and dissolved Congress and suspended the Constitution. Like...
What? When I was reading this, I was like, what is going on here? He became very quickly an authoritarian dictator. Again, like this is not on my 1952 bingo card. While many students and activists and lawyers. including a man named Fidel Castro, attempted to legally or socially resist him. Batista's coup was quickly recognized by the U.S. He allowed American companies to dominate Cuba's economy again, especially sugar and...
casinos, and tourism. He jailed, tortured, and killed political opponents and began restricting the press. And there was large economic growth during his early presidency because of this, but rural areas remained poor and the gap between And Batista became very brutal and corrupt. Very quickly, very, very few Cubans liked.
Batista during his second round after this coup. Remember, again, he had not been elected. He had taken it by force and people were not OK with that. And one of those people, again, was this ambitious young lawyer named Fidel Castro. He was young. In 1952, he was 26 years old. His father was from Spain and his mother was a Cuban peasant. And throughout school and law school, Castro was very into student politics. His brother, Raul, was five years younger than him.
I would put him at age 21. And Raul comes up more in part three, but they both did not like the Batista. regime. And shortly after Batista took over, Fidel Castro believed that only an armed uprising could end this guy. It was carnival season. If you don't know what carnival is, I have an episode, episode 21 on it. But this is usually a chaotic time. There's lots of travel and party and drinking. And Castro decided that on...
July 26th, 1953, he and a small force of about 100 people, including Raul, would attack barracks in Santiago de Cuba. That's a... city, a very important city. Their plan was to disguise themselves in army uniform and steal this second largest military installation when the police were drunk or hung over because of carnival. And this was called the Mankara Assault.
And it failed miserably. Batista's army crushed it. They took the rebels prisoner, soldiers tortured and murdered, many of them being much more vicious and brutal than many Cubans felt was necessary. For example, Dr. Ferrer writes, quote,
participated in the attack were burned with cigarettes. Authorities presented one of the women with a tray holding her brother's eyes and her boyfriend's testicles. Journalists and later historians called the government's response to the Moncada assault the largest mass killing of prisoners since the War of Independence, end of quote. This was the moment that most Cubans began to turn against Batista if they weren't already. When Castro and his other companions went to trial,
Fidel defended himself. Remember, he was a lawyer. He even had robes that he put on when he was playing the role of lawyer, and then he'd take them off when he wasn't. And he demanded his handcuffs be removed, and he denounced Batista's regime as unconstitutional. And he made a long speech, which is something that he...
becomes known for. He was known for giving long-winded speeches. But he gives this long speech where he compares himself to heroes like José Martí, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, and Antonio Maceo, as well as thinkers like Thomas Jefferson or Rousseau. And the speech ended with Castro's famous words, history will absolve me. Perhaps you've heard that. The judge didn't care. Fidel was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.
Prison, however, allowed Castro to read constantly, studying political theory and revolutionary tactics the most, sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day or more. He really enjoyed Karl Marx, a foundational communist thinker. He studied basically...
every revolution in the world and took notes like what worked, what did not, when did the revolution take off, what role did the press play. He admired the radicals of the French Revolution and he thought that revolutions often peaked when the most uncompromising leaders took charge he even wrote that he felt quote it was better to go too far than not to go far enough
End of quote. Castro also studied propaganda. He was obsessed with how important the press was in influencing the masses and started making conscious decisions early on on how he was going to use propaganda to get people on board with his goals. He began to blend the anti-Yankee imperialism of José Martí with the communist socialist ideas of Karl Marx, kind of creating a mixture there. And he organized a prison school.
to indoctrinate fellow rebels in history and public speaking and revolutionary ideology. And in these early days, he kept his cards close to his chest. He told everyone that he was not a communist, wanted a democracy and free elections for Cuba. However, later on, much, much later on, he ended up telling his biographer that he always was a, quote, utopian communist, end of quote, but that he concealed this out of strategy. So at the time.
It wasn't like Fidel Castro was coming out as I'm a communist. While Fidel was imprisoned, there were many others who challenged Batista's illegitimate rule. Students, political activists and other grassroots protesters demanded. Amnesty for these. political prisoners. Even moderates were pushing for this. There was a revolutionary directorate that made it their job to challenge Batista at every turn, and Batista needed to improve his image and reduce tension.
In May 1955, he gave mass amnesty to many political prisoners. By the way, this is pretty common in Cuba at the time. And Castro was released after only about 22 months of prison. This shows that Batista... didn't think Castro was a serious threat, even though many Cubans had kind of began to see him as the torchbearer of a future revolution.
Batista wasn't as worried about Castro. There were other student activist groups that were worrying him more at the time. And every time there was a brutal crackdown by the government because these groups would just incite public outrage. There was. a major unrest among sugar workers, for example. They were staging strikes and doing solidarity walkouts, and people were angry. And most Cubans were not taking Batista lying down. So Castro wasn't top of his list.
Instead, he put Castro under government surveillance and thought things would chill out. That's not what happened. Castro and his fellow rebels moved to Mexico a few months later, and Castro began to raise money from Cubans in the United States and other Latin American countries. And he even hit up exiled past Cuban presidents who wanted Batista.
gone and who donated a lot to Fidel's cause. He started making friends and alliances for a future armed expedition. And it was in Mexico that he met the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara. began to work on a detailed plan for dethroning Batista by building a little guerrilla army. And Raul Castro, the younger brother, was also a part of this too. So it was mainly Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, who again was an Argentine revolution.
and Raul Castro. Their plan was to coordinate an uprising in the eastern part of Cuba. The plan was that while the military was working on this uprising, Castro and his little small force of 82 fighters were going to arrive from Mexico on a yacht called the Granma.
From there, they would collect local peasant support and spark a nationwide revolution with guerrilla warfare. And they would build control as they launched major uprisings and eventually would take Havana. This was the plan. It was it was pretty vigilante. It really was. But the grandma yacht was old and it was slow. It was designed for less than 20 passengers, not 82 and all of their ammunition and equipment.
It started to leak almost immediately. It was overloaded with weapons. And then to boot, there was a storm and very rough seas. They lost a bunch of their men before they even got to Cuba. And when they did land, it was a full two days. later than the uprising that they had planned by that time batista's army had already crushed the uprising and castro's fighters were now stranded off the coast of cuba it was a botched mission
To say the least, they landed in a spot different from where they intended, where it was swampy, it was lots of mangroves, and they had to wade to shore in the muck. And the yacht was completely useless at this point. Batista's army was detecting them, and most of Castro's men were... killed, captured, or scattered immediately.
Only about 20 or 22 rebels survived, including Fidel, Raul, and Che Guevara, and they escaped into the Sierra Maestra Mountains. The fact that this whole thing didn't go down right at this moment is fascinating to me. like in any normal situation, this would have been the end because this team is ragtag at best right now. But shockingly, the revolution was not over. From the mountains, they began to recruit peasants, students, disillusioned soldiers.
For the next year and a half or so, Castro and his forces used these hit-and-run tactics to weaken Batista's army. And their methods were to surprise, attack garrisons, take supplies, ammunition. And really, it worked.
also knew that he needed support not just through violence. They used a secret revolutionary radio station to gain public support and to share propaganda about the movement. They called it the 26th of July movement. That hails back to the day that they... tried to take the military installation, right?
Now, Batista had printed in the Cuban newspapers that Fidel was dead. So Fidel brought in a prominent U.S. journalist, Herbert Matthews from The New York Times, to meet Castro in person in one of his hideouts in the mountains. As author Anthony De Palma writes, quote, Matthews portrayed Fidel in glowing terms, painting him as a Cuban Robin Hood, a heroically impressive young lawyer with a scraggly beard who promised to restore constitutional government and hold elections.
end of quote. So Matthews wrote a front page series in the New York Times, which brought Castro's movement to the masses and instant international exposure. Batista insisted that none of it was true. Matthews had photos of Fidel, and soon other American journalists were coming to talk to Fidel. The Times ran more than 31 articles on Fidel Castro, and the American public became quite enamored with him. Meanwhile, the revolutionary...
directorate and other urban groups were working in cities to raise hell for Batista. They tried to assassinate Batista multiple times. Batista's police always killed anyone involved on site. This led to a cycle of retaliation. And the Revolutionary Directorate would be violent. Batista would be violent. They'd be violent back over and over again. And many of the student and activist leaders were killed off.
And in only a short time, Fidel became one of the major voices against Batista that was still alive. Fidel was willing to work with moderates, exiles, leaders within the country, and it became clear that Batista was eventually going to go down. they started making more deals together on how governing was going to go down on the other side of Batista's end.
By 1958, Batista's forces were losing control and nearly all of Cuba was against his dictatorship and wanted him gone. A major blow was when the U.S. withdrew its support and refused to fund weapons to him. On January 1st, 1959, Batista fled Cuba.
for the Dominican Republic. And when the Cubans heard the news, they rushed into the street and celebrated honking horns, ringing church bells. Anti-regime activists began storming government buildings. Nobody stopped them. And seven days later, Castro... forces declared victory when they entered Havana. And this is what we call the Cuban Revolution.
I think this is a good place to stop. That was a lot of history. Next episode, we're going to cover everything from 1959 to today, but let's do a quick review. In 1898, Cuba kicks out Spain. From 1898 to 1902, Cuba is occupied by the U.S. The Platt Amendment gives the U.S. the right to intervene and control parts of Cuba's economy, among other things. U.S. investors buy a lot of Cuban land.
In 1902, Cuba becomes a U.S. protectorate. It has its own government. The sugar trade booms. Many company towns open up around U.S.-owned sugar mills. Smaller landowners suffer. Many Afro-Cubans feel sidelined. tensions. Groups like the PIC are created and are brutally taken down by government suppression. During World War I, Cuba's sugar soars, then it collapses. This leads to more land being bought up by U.S. owners.
There is economic instability. There's more of a wealth gap. President Machado comes to power and becomes the first dictator, rigging elections, censoring the press, repressing opposition. In 1933, Machado leaves. There's a period of... Political chaos where a provisional government takes over and introduces laws like women's suffrage and labor reforms. The U.S. doesn't recognize it. Then Fulgencio Batista, who is leading the military, begins to lead.
under another president and they make a constitution of 1940 with lots of political debate. between all sides. The 1940s is a time when many Americans travel to the island for vacation. There's also a lot of corruption in the government, and citizens begin demanding better accountability. In 1952, Batista sees
his power through a coup, dissolves Congress, establishes an authoritarian regime that favors U.S. business interests and suppresses opposition. The U.S. mob becomes more entrenched in Cuba. Then a young lawyer and activist, Fidel Castro, aged 26 in 1952, emerges as a leading critic of Batista. He organizes the July 26th, 1953 Mankata assault, and it fails miserably.
And then he delivers his famous history will absolve me speech during his trial. He's put in prison, studies like a madman about revolutionary theory. He's released early, exiled to Mexico. He meets Che Guevara and he launches a guerrilla. campaign from the Sierra Maestra mountains that ultimately forces Batista to flee on January 1st, 1959, marking the victory of the Cuban revolution.
All right. To wrap up, I have one final takeaway I just want to touch on quickly, and that is I want us to consider the role of discomfort in studying history, especially when it comes to your own nation. I don't know anybody who enjoys learning their country. made decisions that negatively affected a lot of people. So in this case, if you're a US citizen and you were unaware of the US backing to dictators in Cuba or the land ownership stuff, if that made you uncomfortable, you're not alone.
I personally disagree with many of those policies. And so I grimaced many times learning this history. And I'm not on a vindictive spree to make the U.S. look bad. This is just what happened in Cuba during that time. And these were the decisions that... were made. And I think that to learn the facts and sit with them is part of becoming a well-rounded person who's willing to learn from mistakes. And that's one of the best reasons to study history.
Part of loving your country means being willing to see it from all angles and acknowledging the strengths. Absolutely. But also acknowledging. the weaknesses. And some of the U.S. weaknesses were really showcased in this episode. And I'm going to address this more in part three, but...
I just want us to consider what role discomfort has as we learn history and that I think it's okay to sit in that discomfort and hopefully learn from it. That's the goal, right? So just consider that. Give it some thought.
If you enjoyed this episode or you learned something from it and you'd like to learn more, you can click the plus button on your favorite podcasting app to get part three when it comes out in the next few weeks. And thank you so much for sharing the podcast, for supporting on Patreon and listening. and learning with me and until part three let's go make the world a little wiser