by WAYNE ELLWOOD
Who said living next door to a superpower was easy? Not the Cubans, that’s for sure.
After the US intervened to help drive out the Spanish in 1898, the relationship between the two countries has been chequered. Cuba has been hectored and bullied by its northern neighbour ever since. The island is the biggest in the Caribbean, with Havana just 370 kilometres from the glitter of Miami.
With the Spanish vacated, the Yankees moved in – investing massively in the sugar industry and stage-managing the government. The Platt Amendment, passed by Congress after the Spanish-American conflict, put US interests front and centre, as well as securing the infamous naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Rum and Coke (the highball cocktail known as Cuba libre) became the national drink and baseball a Cuban obsession.
A series of corrupt dictators followed, linking their fortunes to US corporate interests in sugar and rum. In the 1920s and 1930s Havana became an exotic destination for wealthy northerners. It was a convenient spot for the mafia to launder money while profiting from gambling and prostitution. A local elite (white with Spanish roots) prospered while the poor majority (mestizo and black) starved in feudal conditions in the countryside.
All that changed on New Year’s Day 1959, when the charismatic young lawyer Fidel Castro and his followers marched into Havana, set up headquarters at the Hilton hotel and proclaimed a revolutionary, democratic government in the service of ordinary Cubans.
Hours beforehand, the dictator Fulgencio Batista and a small band of loyalists had fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic. But not before looting the treasury of a small fortune.
As Fidel and his cohorts began to nationalize US companies wealthy Cubans jumped ship. They funnelled their cash out of the country, shuttered their mansions and headed to Miami and New York.
Castro’s initial policy goals were rooted in social justice and equity: land reform was a priority, followed by healthcare and literacy.
But Washington wasn’t having any of it.
In an attempt to throttle the revolution, they halted the import of Cuban sugar which comprised the bulk of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. Sensing a potential satellite on America’s doorstep, Moscow stepped in, agreeing to buy all the island’s sugar. This paved the way for Soviet economic support of the Cuban experiment, until the USSR’s 1989 collapse.
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