Cuba on my mind.

A year ago today we were about half way through the first 100 days of DJT’s second term.  Speaking only for myself, back then I was suspecting the worst, but in retrospect I was grossly underestimating the reality to come, and we’re only in the second year.

Cuba is on the plate, and I think this is a good time to revisit a bit of our long history with our island neighbor near Florida – a world community which  has about 10 million people, and is about the size of Tennessee.

from A History of Latin America 2d Edition by Hubert Herring 1963 p 405

For me, and perhaps for most, Cuba’s history as a known place began with Fidel Castro in 1959.  There was no particular reason for a common individual to pay much attention to the Caribbean nation.

Years ago I found a 1963 college textbook, “A History of Latin America 2d Edition” by Hubert Herring (see note at end of post).  The topic of chapter 26 was Cuba;  22 most interesting pages.  The books publication was about the time of the Revolution that brought Fidel Castro.

Here is Chapter 26 of the over 800 page book: Cuba H Herring 1963.

If nothing else, read the last sentence of the chapter.  (Also, see NOTE at end of this post).

*

1898  was an important year in this history, at least insofar as Cuba is concerned: “Remember the Maine” the slogan.  Guantanamo Bay became a U.S. presence in the early 1900s, and has its own history.

Personally, I have never been to Cuba,  but I have always had curiosity about it.  Among my friends is a person who as a teenager was part of the Mariel boat lift, and has no fond feelings for Fidel Castro.

In January 1959, the year of the coup, I was a Freshman in College, and have no memories of, nor discussion about, the Cuban revolution.  Our small North Dakota college did have an “Afro-Cuban Review” lyceum program in about 1960 – Cuban dance and music performed by Cubans.  In 1961 came the Bay of Pigs debacle.  I didn’t much connect with that event either,  I likely attended the program, and the name of the Bay attracted the attention of a rural kid, but that’s about all.  I’d had no class on the subject, and thus no test to recall facts.

In 1962, my first stop after college was doing my time in the U.S. Army.  In October, 1962,  came the Cuban Missile Crisis which got everyone’s attention.  Russian missiles were set to arrive in Cuba, a short distance from our shores.  Fort Carson, where I served in Colorado. was a potential and reachable target for the missiles from Cuba.

The crisis was a major story in the Rocky Mountain News Oct 22, 1962: Cuba002.  

I was in an infantry company.  Along with a few other GI’s, I watched President Kennedy address the nation on the Mess Sergeants tiny TV.  It was a somber time.

The conflict was settled in the same week it became public knowledge in the U.S.  It was a very serious threat.  I think we soldiers mostly viewed it as a temporary inconvenience.  I was there, living in the same barracks with the others.  All we knew was that it was settled.

Then, for all the over 60 years since, Cuba has been the enemy, to be punished.

Many years after 1959, a relative of mine, a very prominent citizen of a Minnesota city, recalled the time of the revolution in a conversation.  He had made a bet with a friend at the time that the revolution would last less than six months.  “Lost that one” he said.

Let the conversation begin.

Personal Opinion: We have no reason to feel covered with glory by continuing the punishment of Cuba all these years.  We won’t by piling on again.  We should have normalized relations years ago.  Of course, we didn’t.

ENDNOTE:  The Herring volume (referenced above) is one of three I have that help illuminate Cuba before Castro.  It is available as a used book.

I also have “A Diplomatic History of the American People” 7th Edition by Thomas A. Bailey   This volume, also from the 1960s, has a number of references to earlier pre-revolution American dealings with the Spaniards and Cuba.  The inference I take from its references to Cuba is that the U.S. had an interest in Cuba, even as a potential state, but essentially as a slave state, about the time of our Civil War.

Perhaps some of the tension related to next door Haiti, whose slaves had overthrown the French in 1804, and our own slave-holding nation was not about to encourage another nation of freed slaves in North America.   Haitians have feelings, and have paid a heavy price, for their freedom in their long history, a few miles east of Cuba.

I also have the over 500 page “America’s War for Humanity” (cover photo below), about the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898.  The edition I have, apparently no longer available, is the original and focuses entirely on the Cuba campaign of 1898, with only a few pages at the very end about the Philippines and Porto [sic] Rico.  I would most like to learn of its history within my farm family, since my grandparents came to North Dakota in 1905, not long after the Spanish-American War.  And my Dad’s Dad – Grandpa Bernard – was in Manila in 1898 when the Spaniards surrendered.  He was an American soldier.

Of course, it would be interesting to learn even more, but these three books provide a lot of grist for further research.

COMMENTS (more below):

from Peter: Glancing at the first page [of the Harring chapter], I notice something that I think has remained unchanged: the notion that the original inhabitants “disappeared.”

Aside from the obvious, that they were all killed and stacked like cordwood wherever Columbus touched down, I know that the Taino people did not disappear, and remain among us. But Academe will insist that they are practically extinct.

A friend of mine from the pandemic years was an anthropologist who tracked the DNA of Caribbean peoples and verified this. However, when she attempted to report on this to universities, she was rebuffed rather disdainfully by the “experts”.

This book is no doubt a monument to such myths (not in the important sense of “myth” as a transmission of principles of life, but in the sense of a persistent lie embedded at the level of culture, which is now the primary selective process, having superseded natural selection after the last Ice Age.

As such it is extremely valuable, and thanks for sharing it!

from Brian:  I love your post.