U.S. Dept. of Treasury Cuba Sanctions/Regulations
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Spanish Conquest Independence Movement Dictatorship Revolution Communism and the 1960s |
1970s Soviet Domination 1980s Dissatisfaction 1990s Crisis and Change U.S. Pressure in the 1990s Recent Events |
Spanish Conquest
Cuba was visited by Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus) during his first voyage to find a westerly route to the Orient on 27 October 1492, and he made another brief stop two years later on his way from Hispaniola to Jamaica. Columbus did not realize it was an island when he landed; he hoped it was Japan. He arrived on the north coast of 'Colba,' but found little gold. He did, however, note the Indians' practice of puffing at a large, burning roll of leaves, which they called 'tobacos.' Cuba was first circumnavigated by Sebastián de Ocampo in 1508, but it was Diego de Velázquez who conquered it in 1511, and founded several towns, called villas, including Havana.
The first African slaves were imported to Cuba in 1526. Sugar was introduced soon after.
Tobacco was made a strict monopoly of Spain in 1717. The coffee plant was introduced in 1748. The British, under Lord Albemarle and Admiral Pocock, captured Havana and held the island in 1762-63, but it was returned to Spain in exchange for Florida.
Independence Movement
Towards the end of the 18th century Cuba became a slave plantation society. By the 1860s, Cuba was producing about a third of the world's sugar and was heavily dependent on slaves to do so, supplemented by indentured Chinese laborers in the 1850s and 1860s. An estimated 600,000 African slaves were imported by 1867. Independence from Spain became a burning issue in Cuba as Spain refused to consider political reforms which would give the colony more autonomy. The first war of independence was in the eastern part of the island between 1868 and 1878, but it gained little save a modest move towards the abolition of slavery; and complete abolition was not achieved until 1886. Many national heroes were created during this period who have become revolutionary icons in the struggle against domination by a foreign power. One consequence of the war was the ruin of many sugar planters. U.S. interests began to take over the sugar plantations and the sugar mills, and Cuba became more dependent on the U.S. market.
From 1895 to 1898, rebellion flared up again in the second war of independence under the young poet and revolutionary, José Martí, together with the old guard of Antonio Maceo and Máximo Gómez. José Martí was tragically killed in May 1895, and Maceo in 1896. Despite fierce fighting throughout the island, neither the Nationalists nor the Spanish could gain the upper hand.
However, the United States was now concerned for its investments and strategic interests. When the U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor on 15 February 1898, killing 260 crew, the United States declared war on Spain. American forces landed; a squadron blockaded Havana and defeated the Spanish fleet at Santiago de Cuba. In December, peace was signed and U.S. forces occupied the island for four years.
The Republic of Cuba was proclaimed in 1902, and the Government was handed over to its first president. However, the Platt Amendment to the constitution, passed by the U.S. Congress, clearly made Cuba a protectorate of the United States. The United States retained naval bases and reserved the right of intervention in Cuban domestic affairs, however, to quell growing unrest, repealed the Platt Amendment in 1934. The United States formally relinquished the right to intervene, however, retained its naval base at Guantánamo.
Dictatorship
Around two-thirds of sugar exports went to the United States under a quota system at prices set by Washington; two-thirds of Cuba's imports came from the United States; foreign capital investment was largely from the United States and Cuba was effectively a client state. Yet its people suffered from grinding rural poverty, high unemployment, illiteracy and inadequate health care. Politics was a mixture of authoritarian rule and corrupt democracy.
From 1924 to 1933, the 'strong man' Gerardo Machado ruled Cuba. He was elected in 1924, on a wave of popularity, however, a drastic fall in sugar prices in the late 1920s led to strikes. Nationalist popular rebellion was harshly repressed. The United States tried to negotiate a deal but nationalists called a general strike in protest at U.S. interference, and Machado finally went into exile. However, the violence did not abate, and there were more strikes, mob attacks and occupations of factories.
In September 1933, a revolt of non-commissioned officers including Sergeant Fulgencio Batista, deposed the government. He then held power through presidential puppets until he was elected president himself in 1940. Batista's first period in power, from 1933-44, was characterized by nationalist and populist policies set against corruption and political violence. In 1940, a new Constitution was passed by a constituent assembly dominated by Batista, which included universal suffrage and benefits for workers such as a minimum wage, pensions, social insurance and an 8-hour day. In 1944, Batista lost the elections but corruption continued. Batista, by then a self-promoted general, staged a military coup in 1952. Constitutional and democratic government was at an end. His harshly repressive dictatorship was brought to a close by Fidel Castro in January 1959, after an extraordinary and heroic 3-year campaign, mostly in the Sierra Maestra, with a guerrilla force reduced at one point to twelve men.
Revolution
Fidel Castro, the son of immigrants from Galicia and born in Cuba in 1926, saw José Martí as his role model and aimed to follow his ideals. In 1953, the 100th anniversary of José Martí's birth, Castro and a committed band of about 160 revolutionaries attacked the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba on 26 July. The attack failed; Castro and his brother Raúl were later captured and put on trial. Fidel used the occasion to make an impassioned speech denouncing corruption in the ruling class and the need for political freedom and economic independence. In 1955, the Castros were given amnesty and went to Mexico. It was there Fidel continued to work on his essentially nationalist revolutionary program, called the 26 July Movement, which called for radical social and economic reforms and a return to the democracy of Cuba's 1940 constitution. He met another man of ideas, an Argentine doctor called Ernesto (Che) Guevara, who sailed with him and his brother Raúl and a band of 82 like-minded revolutionaries, back to Cuba on 2 December 1956. Their campaign began in the Sierra Maestra in the east of Cuba and, after years of fierce fighting, Batista fled the country on 1 January 1959. Fidel Castro, to universal popular acclaim, entered Havana and assumed control of the island.
Communism and the 1960s
From 1960 onward, in the face of increasing hostility from the United States, Castro led Cuba into socialism and then communism. Officials of the Batista regime were put on trial in 'people's courts' and executed. The promised new elections were not held. The judiciary lost its independence when Castro assumed the right to appoint judges. The free press was closed or taken over. Trade unions lost their independence and became part of government. The University of Havana, a former focus of dissent, and professional associations all lost their autonomy. The democratic constitution of 1940 was never reinstated. In 1960, the sugar centrals, the oil refineries and the foreign banks were nationalized, all U.S. property was expropriated and the Central Planning Board (Juceplan) was established. The professional and property-owning middle classes began a steady exodus which drained the country of much of its skilled workers. CIA-backed mercenaries and Cuban exiles kept up a relentless barrage of attacks, but failed to achieve their objective.
The Bay of Pigs invasion, a fiasco which was to harden Castro's political persuasion, took place in 1961. Some 1,400 Cuban émigrés, trained by the CIA landed, in the Bahìa de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs), but the men were stranded on the beaches when the Cuban air force attacked their supply ships. 200 were killed and the rest surrendered within three days. In his May Day speech, Fidel Castro confirmed that the Cuban Revolution was socialist. The U.S. reaction was to isolate Cuba, with a full trade embargo and heavy pressure on other American countries to severe diplomatic relations. Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the OAS imposed economic sanctions. In 1961-62, the trade embargo hit hard, shortages soon appeared and, by March 1962, rationing had to be imposed.
In April 1962, President Kruschev of the USSR decided to send medium-range missiles to Cuba, which would be capable of striking anywhere in the United States. This episode, which became known as the 'Cuban Missile Crisis', brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, defused only by secret negotiations between John F. Kennedy and Kruschev. Without consulting Castro and without his knowledge, Kruschev eventually agreed to have the missiles dismantled and withdrawn on condition that the West would guarantee a policy of non-aggression towards Cuba. Economic policy during the 1960s was largely unsuccessful in achieving its aims. The government wanted to industrialize rapidly to reduce dependence on sugar. However, the crash program, with help from the USSR, was a failure and had to be abandoned. The whole nation was called upon to achieve a target of 10 million tons of sugar by 1970, and everyone spent time in the fields helping towards this goal. It was never reached and never has been. Rationing is still fierce, and there are still shortages of consumer goods. However, the Revolution's social policies have largely been successful and it is principally these achievements which have ensured the people's support of Castro and kept him in power. Education, housing and health services have been greatly improved and the social inequalities of the 1940s and 1950s have been wiped out.
1970s Soviet Domination
During the second decade of the Revolution, Cuba became firmly entrenched as a member of the Soviet bloc, joining COMECON in 1972. The Revolution was institutionalized along Soviet lines and the Party gained control of the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the local and national assemblies. A new socialist constitution was adopted in 1976.
Cuba's foreign policy changed from actively fomenting socialist revolutions abroad (such as Guevara's forays into the Congo and Bolivia in the 1960s) to supporting other left wing or third world countries with combat troops and technical advisers. Some 20,000 Cubans helped the Angolan Marxist government to defeat a South African backed guerrilla insurgency and 15,000 went to Ethiopia in the war against Somalia and then the separatist rebellion in Eritrea. Cuban advisers and medical workers went to Nicaragua after the Sandinista overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979; advisers and workers went to help the left wing Manley government in Jamaica and to the Marxist government in Grenada (until expelled by the U.S. Marines in 1983).
In September 1979, Castro hosted a summit conference of the non-aligned nations in Havana, a high point in his foreign policy initiatives.
1980s Dissatisfaction
By the 1980s, the heavy dependence on sugar and the USSR, coupled with the trade embargo, meant the expected improvements in living standards were not being delivered as fast as hoped and the people were tiring of being asked for even more sacrifices. In 1980, the Peruvian embassy was overrun by 11,000 people seeking political asylum. Castro let them go and he opened the port of Mariel for a mass departure by sea. He also allowed prisoners to head for the United States in anything they could find which would float. It was estimated that some 125,000 embarked for Miami.
This was the decade of the Latin American debt crisis, and Cuba was unable to escape. Development projects in the 1970s had been financed with loans from western banks, in addition to the aid from the USSR. When interest rates went up in 1982, Cuba was forced to renegotiate its USD$3.5 billion debt to commercial banks, and in 1986, its debt to the USSR. The need to control public finances brought more austerity.
Before the collapse of the Soviet system, aid to Cuba from the USSR was traditionally estimated at about 25% of GNP. Cuba's debt with the USSR was a secret; estimates ranged from USD$8.5 billion to USD$34 billion. Apart from military aid, economic assistance took two forms: balance of payments support (about 85%), under which sugar and nickel exports were priced in excess of world levels; and assistance for development projects. About 13 million tons of oil were supplied a year by the USSR, allowing 3 million to be re-exported, providing a valuable source of foreign earnings. By the late 1980s, up to 90% of Cuba's foreign trade was with centrally planned economies.
The collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe, followed by the demise of the USSR, very nearly brought the end of Castro's Cuba as well. There were signs that a power struggle was taking place at the top of the Communist Party. In 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa, a hero of the Angolan campaign, was charged with drug trafficking and corruption. He was publicly tried and executed along with several other military officers allegedly involved.
1990s Crisis and Change
In an effort to broaden the people's power system of government introduced in 1976, the central committee of the Cuban Communist Party adopted resolutions in 1990, designed to strengthen the municipal and provincial assemblies and transform the National Assembly into a genuine parliament. In February 1993, the first direct, secret elections for the National Assembly and provincial assemblies were held. All 589 official candidates were elected. October 1997 saw the first stage of the third elections for delegates to the municipal assemblies of People's Power (these serve a 2-year term). The electoral process concluded with general elections in 1998, when provincial delegates and national deputies were elected for a 5-year term.
Economic difficulties in the 1990s brought on by the loss of markets in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, together with higher oil prices because of the Gulf crisis, forced the slag Government to impose emergency measures and declare a special period in peace time.
Rationing was increased, petrol became scarce, and the bureaucracy was slashed. As economic hardship continued into 1993, Cuba was hit by a storm which caused an estimated USD$1 billion in damage. In mid-1994, economic discontent boiled up and Cubans began to flee for Florida in a mass exodus similar to that of Mariel in 1980. It was estimated that between mid-August and mid-September 30,000 Cubans had left the country. Eventually, the crisis forced President Clinton into an agreement whereby the United States was committed to accepting at least 20,000 Cubans per year, plus the next of kin of U.S. citizens, while Cuba agreed to prevent further departures.
As the economic crisis persisted, the government adopted measures which opened up many sectors to private enterprise and recognized the dependence of much of the economy on dollars. The partial reforms did not eradicate the imbalances between the peso and the dollar economies, and shortages remained for those without access to hard currency. Cuba intensified its economic liberalization program allowing farmers to sell at uncontrolled prices once their commitments to the state procurement system were fulfilled. Importantly, the reforms also allowed middlemen to operate. Markets in manufactured goods and handicrafts also opened and efforts were made to increase the number of self-employed.
U.S. Pressure in the 1990s
Before the Revolution of 1959, the United States had investments in Cuba worth about USD$1,000 million, covering nearly every activity from agriculture and mining to oil installations. Today, all American businesses have been nationalized; the United States has cut off all imports from Cuba, placed an embargo on exports to Cuba, and broken off diplomatic relations. Prior to the 1992 U.S. presidential elections, President Bush approved the Cuban Democracy Act (Torricelli Bill) which forbade U.S. subsidiaries from trading with Cuba. Many countries, including EC members and Canada, said they would not allow the U.S. bill to affect their trade with Cuba and the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution calling for an end to the embargo. The defeat of George Bush by Bill Clinton did not, however, signal a change in U.S. attitudes, in large part because of the support given to the Democrat's campaign by Cuban exiles in Miami.
In 1996, U.S. election year, Cuba faced another crackdown by the U.S. administration. In February, Cuba shot down two light aircraft piloted by Miami exiles allegedly over Cuban air space and implicitly confirmed by the findings of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) report in June. The attack provoked President Clinton to tighten and internationalize the U.S. embargo on Cuba and, on March 12th, he signed into law the (Helms-Burton) Cuban Freedom and Democratic Solidarity Act. The new legislation allows legal action against any company or individual benefiting from properties expropriated by the Cuban government after the Revolution. It brought universal condemnation: Canada and Mexico (Nafta partners), the EU, Russia, China, the Caribbean Community and the Rìo Group of Latin American countries all protested that it was unacceptable to extend sanctions outside the United States to foreign companies and their employees who do business with Cuba.
Recent Events
The Cuban Communist Party held its 5th Congress in October 1997, timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia, whose remains were returned to Cuba in July. Immediately afterwards, Cuba began a week of official mourning for Che and his comrades in arms, where vast numbers filed past their remains in Havana and Santa Clara, where they were laid to rest on October 17th.
In January 1998, the Pope visited Cuba for the first time. During his 4-day visit he held open air masses around the country. The Pope preached against Cuba's record on human rights and abortion while also condemning the U.S. trade embargo preventing food and medicines reaching the needy. The visit was a public relations success for both Castro and the Pope. Shortly afterward, 200 prisoners were pardoned and released and more were expected.
