bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1992) — Spring 1992 // Printemps 1992, pp. 45–47
The United States and the Origins of the
Cuban Revolution: An Empire of Liberty
in an Age of National Liberation by Jules
R. Benjamin, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, N.J., 1990. US$55.00.
Fidel Castro’s social revolution struggles to survive, no longer able to rely on the unstinting support it has depended on for thirty years from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There, socialism has vanished in the twinkling of an historical eye. How much longer can it last in beleaguered Cuba?
There are no doubt many in Washington who are watching events in Havana with eager expectation, hoping to celebrate the death throes of a regime the United States has hated but has been unable to overthrow. In this context, Jules Benjamin has written a timely study of the United States-Cuban relations. It should be read by those policymakers in Washington or elsewhere who may still harbour the dangerous and naive illusion that the collapse of socialism in Cuba automatically will bring back the good old days of close American-Cuban ties when the United States played all the tunes and the Cubans danced obediently.
Benjamin’s historical overview offers ample proof that in the good old days the Cubans were kept in various demeaning forms of dependency on the United States. His book also reaffirms that the Cuban policies of the United States during the Castro regime, and Cuban reaction to them, cannot be understood without having a solid grasp of their historical background. Two centuries of aggressive American behaviour directed at Cuba and over a century of acquisitive. designs on the island have shaped Cuban responses to its preponderant neighbour. Whatever Cuba’s internal direction may turn out to be in the future, successive American administrations apparently have been unable to accept the idea of a Cuba whose policies and regime function with complete independence from the United States. The question of future American policy towards Cuba should begin with a fundamental re-thinking of the premises of past American foreign policy.
Benjamin’s book also offers a deflating message to Canadian policymakers. Canada is not mentioned once, a harsh reminder of just how marginal Canada continues to be in this relationship. Canadian officials have long hoped that Canada might play a positive role in improving American-Cuban
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Suite 205, 1419 Carling Avenu (613) relations. These hopes were voiced yet again following the decision to become a full member of the OAS. The reality is that the key issues between the United States and Cuba will continue to be bilateral ones, to be resolved by direct negotiation without third party involvement. Canada has her own Caribbean interests to protect and, in common with other American nations, looks forward to the day when Cuba and the United States will be on friendlier terms. But, until that time comes, Canada should not try to mediate where she is not wanted.
The first half of Benjamin’s book summaries material he has covered in greater detail in an earlier study of United States hegemony in Cuba during the period, 1880-1934. The second half focuses on American policy in the years leading up to and immediately following Castro’s revolution. Benjamin has immersed himself in the available American diplomatic archives to write this monograph. He produces no tantalizing new theories to explain the failures of American policy, but by writing a concise summary set in a broad historical context, his book is a useful primer for the student of American-Cuban relations.
What is lacking, however, in his analysis is the Cuban side of the story. The topic cries out for an integrated analysis of American- Cuban foreign policy, drawing equally on American and Cuban sources, when the latter become available. They are not now, but how complete can such a study be when only one side is examined thoroughly? Even before the Castro revolution, but certainly since, each American action has precipitated multiple waves of Cuban reaction and each of Castro’s moves has compelled an immediate American response. Like two spiders locked in a mortal embrace, neither country has been able to ride itself of the other. Benjamin has made the most of what was available to him, but the full story awaits as detailed an investigation of the Cuban sources as Benjamin has devoted to the American archives.
American politicians, as Benjamin relates, have eyed Cuba covetously ever since John Quincy Adams formulated his law of political gravitation which prophesied that Cuba’s inevitable destiny was to drop into the lap of the United States just as “an apple severed by the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but to fall to the ground.” Cuba was buffeted by many tempests during the nineteenth century, but it remained a Spanish colony even if Spain’s hold became ever more tenuous. By the end of the century, the United States again was ready to “take” the island and “free” Cuba because many Americans believed that the Cubans were incapable of sustaining their own independence. War with Spain gave the United States an opportunity to carve out her own sphere of influence in the Age of New Imperialism. The Platt Amendment effectively limited Cuba’s independence but, as Benjamin argues, even more important was the steady Americanization of the island’s business, education and politics. Cuba’s foreign trade and foreign investment in Cuba came to be almost wholly American.
One outcome of the invasion and occupation of Cuba from 1898-1902 was the creation of what Benjamin terms ’the Semi- Sovereign Republic of Cuba”. A better term was coined by Louis Perez who termed Cuban sovereignty “fictional”. Certainly, it was not real and the United States proved unable to resolve the dilemmas it had created. As Benjamin says, “If North American hegemony failed to solve the problem of differing USA economic interests, its political hegemony failed to solve the problem of Cuban nationalism”. The relationship slowly crumbled as the natural desire of the Cubans for full independence clashed with the United States’ desire to manipulate Cuban politics and the Cuban economy.
Benjamin provides ample documentation for his thesis that American officials misread and misinterpreted events in Cuba leading to Castro’s revolution. The few diplomats stationed in Santiago, who correctly assessed Castro’s growing strength in 1957 and 1958, were ignored by the USA Embassy in Havana and by officials in Washington. By the fall of 1959, the State Department discovered to its horror that the United States had run out of Cuban politicians to manipulate. Now “Washington was forced to do business with a man who was as physically elusive as he was uncompromising”. American hegemony quickly unravelled in the last hours of the Batista regime. For the first time since 1898, the United States was powerless either to control or to change the course of events in Cuba.
Fidel Castro has answered Jose Marti’s question, who will drive the United States out of Cuba once it is in, but the answers to the questions confronting Cuba today are less clear. Will socialism survive? Will the United States permit Cubans to evolve a destiny of their own, genuinely independent of their enormous neighbour? Can the two countries find a way to live in mutual harmony? Jules Benjamin’s book does not look into the future, but it provides a useful road map to the past.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1992) — Spring 1992 // Printemps 1992, pp. 45–47. Read the rest of this issue →
