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In 1868 and 1878 Cubans fought to be free of Spain. They however did not win but did end up abolishing slavery in Spain and Cuba.

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In 1868 and 1878 Cubans fought to be free of Spain. They however did not win but did end up abolishing slavery in Spain and Cuba.

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At the same time the U.S. was having a lot of Cubans immigrate to America. The U.S. was spending over 100 million dollars in trade with Spain at the same time

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At the same time the U.S. was having a lot of Cubans immigrate to America. The U.S. was spending over 100 million dollars in trade with Spain at the same time

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United States capitalists invested in sugar cane plantations, but the Cuban economy collapsed in 1894 when a tariff on sugar was imposed.

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United States capitalists invested in sugar cane plantations, but the Cuban economy collapsed in 1894 when a tariff on sugar was imposed.

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In 1895 Cuba declared war once again with Spain and fought for their independence. They destroyed sugar plantations built by the United States which caused America to take action.

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In 1895 Cuba declared war once again with Spain and fought for their independence. They destroyed sugar plantations built by the United States which caused America to take action.

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https://loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/trask.html

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The Spanish-American War - The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War (Hispanic Division, Library of Congress)

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The Spanish-American War - The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War (Hispanic Division, Library of Congress)

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The battleship USS Maine was in Cuba to protect Americans, On February 15, 1898, the ship exploded.  Americans blamed Spain. On April 20, 1898, the United States went to war with Spain. 

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The battleship USS Maine was in Cuba to protect Americans, On February 15, 1898, the ship exploded.  Americans blamed Spain. On April 20, 1898, the United States went to war with Spain. 

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During the war Spanish Ships tried to leave the harbor, but their fleets were destroyed. Which caused Spanish to surrender on July 25.  The Treaty of Paris was agreed to give Cuba independence from Spain. The United States also paid Spain 20 Million dollars for the annexation of the Philippines Islands.

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During the war Spanish Ships tried to leave the harbor, but their fleets were destroyed. Which caused Spanish to surrender on July 25.  The Treaty of Paris was agreed to give Cuba independence from Spain. The United States also paid Spain 20 Million dollars for the annexation of the Philippines Islands.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zIIBP4wMQ0

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Cuba and the United States: a Complicated History

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Finally in the 1900s America tried to imperialize Cuba by adding the "Platt Amendment". This amendment  gave America the right to intervene or buy any Cuban land in which they wanted. Cuba became partially by the U.S. and gave them economic utilities.

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Finally in the 1900s America tried to imperialize Cuba by adding the "Platt Amendment". This amendment  gave America the right to intervene or buy any Cuban land in which they wanted. Cuba became partially by the U.S. and gave them economic utilities.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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The United States and Cuba share a long, complex history-first as allies and trade partners, and later as bitter ideological enemies.

For four centuries after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, Spain ruled Cuba as its main colony in the Caribbean, but the U.S. long coveted the island just off its southern coast. America provided major markets for Cuba's sugar, tobacco, rice and coffee exports, while the island played a key role in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.

After America helped Cuba break free from Spanish rule in 1898, the U.S. government continued to intervene militarily and American businesses continued to invest economically, while U.S. mobsters made the island their money-laundering playground. But after the Cuban revolution installed the Western hemisphere's most stringent socialist regime in 1959 and nationalized U.S.-owned businesses, relations quickly frayed. Even after the Cold War ended, the clash of capitalist and socialist ideologies continued.

This timeline shows how closely entwined America and Cuba have been over the last two centuries.

19th Century: US Seeks More Trade-and Control

1818: Spain opens Cuban ports for international trade, helping make America the island's principal trading partner.

1854: The U.S. government's Ostend Manifesto- a secret plan to buy Cuba from Spain for $130 million-fails when anti-slavery campaigners expose the scandal.

1868-78: The Ten Years War. While America's government remains officially neutral to Cuba's first rebellion against Spain, U.S.-based sympathizers smuggle men, money and munitions to the rebels. During the turmoil, U.S. investors buy large tracts of land at low prices and thousands of Cubans emigrate to America. According to U.S. State Department records, by the end of the war, Americans purchase almost all of Cuba's exports and by 1895, do more than $100 million a year in trade.

1898-1902: Spanish-American War and US Military Control

1898: The Spanish-American War. In February, the USS Maine mysteriously explodes in Havana Harbor, killing more than 250 American sailors. The tragedy fuels calls for America to liberate Cuba militarily and protect U.S. business interests there. Fighting starts in April. By December, Spain has surrendered, ceding Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris.

1901-02: Military control. America enacts the Platt Amendment, consenting to withdraw troops from Cuba once the island territory agrees that the U.S. has an ongoing right to intervene militarily to protect strategic and business interests. It also leases land at the southern portion of Guantanamo Bay to build a naval base.

1902: Cuban Republic. U.S. ceases military occupation of Cuba and establishes diplomatic relations, effectively launching the Republic of Cuba.

1903 to 1958: Uprisings, Coups, Dictatorship

1933: Military coup. After the American military quashes three Cuban uprisings in as many decades, the U.S. backs a military coup led by Sgt. Fulgencio Batista. Whether as president or as a strongman behind other presidents, Batista takes control.

1952: Batista grabs power. Deposing President Carlos Prio Socarras, Batista abandons the constitution and halts elections, continuing his corrupt rule that favors U.S. interests and Cuban aristocrats while leaving the poor destitute. One year later, Fidel Castro stages a failed coup.

1920s-1958: American economic dominance. Americans in the Prohibition era swarm to casinos and lavish hotels in Havana. U.S. corporations thrive during the Batista years as organized crime figures find a welcoming and safe "playground" to grow illegal businesses. American tourism to Cuba flourishes.

1959-61: Cuban Revolution, US Tension

1959: Cuba's Revolution triumphs. Six years of guerrilla warfare against the dictatorship ends when Batista, no longer getting weapons from the U.S., flees Havana on New Year's Eve 1958. The U.S. recognizes Cuba's new government a week later. Rebel leader Fidel Castro becomes prime minister within a month.

1960-61: Hostilities begin. Cuba nationalizes all U.S. businesses-with no financial redress. The U.S. severs diplomatic ties with the new regime, imposing a partial trade embargo. Cuba turns to a new trading partner, the Soviet Union.

1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion. According to CIA internal documents, a battalion of about 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles fail in an invasion at Cuba's Bay of Pigs (Playa Girón) and nearly 1,200 are taken prisoner. Castro uses the embarrassing botched invasion to call for the Cuban people to defend the revolution.

1959-62: Waves of exiles start. President John F. Kennedy establishes the Cuban Refugee Program in 1961. From the revolution to the final commercial flight between Havana and Miami in October 1962, nearly a quarter-million Cubans flee to the U.S., including some 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children in Operation Pedro Pan.

1961: "Socialism or Death." Castro proclaims Cuba a socialist state.

1962-Late 1970s: Cuban Missile Crisis, Exiles Flow Both Ways

1962: Cuban Missile Crisis. After months of CIA-coordinated terrorist bombings, military sabotage and assassination attempts on Cuban leaders, tensions peak when U.S. reconnaissance planes take photos of Soviet forces building silos for intermediate-range missiles in Cuba. To end the standoff that has brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, the Soviets remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for the American withdrawal of nuclear missiles from Turkey.

1965: Freedom Flights. With Castro's blessing, about 3,000 Cubans leave for the U.S. during one month in the fall. That lays the groundwork for the " Freedom Flights " air bridge between Varadero and Miami, which brings more than a quarter-million more Cubans to the U.S. by the time its last flight lands in 1973.

1966: Permanent Residence. Congress greenlights the Cuban Adjustment Act, granting Cubans permanent residence in the U.S. under more favorable terms than other immigrant groups.

1977-78: Tensions Briefly Ease. Both countries establish limited diplomatic ties in 1977. Cuban government officials and 75 exiles meet in Havana in 1978 to negotiate family reunification, travel to Cuba and the release of political prisoners. More than 100,000 exiles visit Cuba the following year.

1980s: Mariel Boatlift, Another Exodus

1980. Mariel Boatlift: About 10,000 Cubans seeking political asylum cram into the Peruvian embassy in Havana. Castro responds by stating that anyone who wants to leave Cuba can do so through the Port of Mariel. Some 125,000 people leave in what becomes known as the Mariel boatlift.

1984: Immigration agreement. Cuba accepts the return of 2,746 Mariel refugees with criminal records. The U.S. agrees to accept up to 20,000 Cuban immigrants annually.

1985: Radio Martí. During the Reagan administration 's hardline stance against communism, the U.S. begins broadcasting news and information to Cuba on the new Radio Marti, named after the Cuban national hero, poet and martyr José Martí. Cuba's response? Canceling family visits and suspending the previous year's immigration pact.

1990s-Early 2000s: Pendulum of Hostility

Early 1990s: Cuba's "special period." Soviet Union collapses. Without its economic patronage, so does the Cuban economy. Food shortages abound. The U.S. allows private aid groups to deliver food and medicine to Cuba. The Cuban government legalizes use of the U.S. dollar by Cubans, creating a dual-currency system that heightens inequality.

1992: Tighter sanctions. U.S. Congress hardens sanctions, prohibiting U.S. subsidiaries in other countries from conducting trade with Cuba.

1994: Rafter Crisis. To quell riots, boat hijackings and break-ins at ambassadors' homes, Castro announces that all wishing to leave Cuba can do so. For five weeks starting August 13, some 31,000 desperate Cubans climb on makeshift "vessels" mostly made of doors, inner tubes and beams held together by cords. Thousands plucked from the open seas are held in tent cities on the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, with many allowed to enter the U.S. starting the following year. An estimated 16,000 to 100,000 Cubans die at sea. In September, the U.S. agrees to issue 20,000 visas a year for Cubans, and Cuba agrees to stop the exodus.

1995: Wet foot, dry foot policy: President Bill Clinton changes part of the longtime favorable immigration policy for Cubans: Those who reach U.S. soil could stay; those saved at sea would be taken back to Cuba or to a third country.

1996: Brothers to the Rescue. Cuba shoots down two small planes from the Brothers to the Rescue organization, killing four Cuban exiles planning to release anti-Castro pamphlets over Cuba. In response, President Clinton and Congress strengthen the embargo to block foreign companies from trading with Cuba and punish those who traffic in property confiscated during the revolution.

1998: Cuban Five. Five Cuban spies are arrested in the U.S. for infiltrating activist groups like Brothers to the Rescue. Cubans call for the "imperialist bully" to release them.

2000: Elián Gonzalez. The U.S. government forcibly removes 5-year-old Elián Gonzalez from his relatives' home in Miami's Little Havana to reunite him with his father in Cuba after a protracted international custody battle. Found drifting at sea in an inner tube, Elián is one of three who survived the voyage from Cuba on a ramshackle "vessel" where his mother died. The decision to return Elián to his father becomes an international controversy fueled by the Cuban exile community that vehemently fought his return to a regime so many had fled.

2008-2021: Steps Forward, A Step Back

2009-13: The thaw begins. President Barack Obama lifts limits on remittances and U.S. restrictions on family travel, along with travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba for cultural and educational exchanges. The Cuban government liberalizes some travel restrictions and issues passports to dissidents to travel abroad.

2014: Prisoner swap. The last three of the "Cuban Five" spies still in jail in the U.S. are exchanged for a U.S. spy behind bars in Cuba.

2015: New embassies. Both countries restore diplomatic relations and open embassies.

2016: Presidential visit. President Obama travels to Havana, the first sitting president to visit Cuba since 1928. Commercial flights resume-the first between both countries since 1962. Upon leaving office, President Obama nixes the 20-year-old "wet foot, dry foot" policy regarding the arrival of Cuban refugees.

2017: New restrictions. President Donald Trump reverses some of Obama's Cuban initiatives, restricting individual people-to-people travel, and prohibiting U.S. business transactions with Cuban institutions run by the military.

2017: Sonic attacks. State Department personnel at the embassy in Havana are ordered to leave Cuba after mysterious "sonic attacks" against 24 employees. The U.S. expels 15 diplomats from the Cuban embassy in Washington.

2019-20: More restrictions. Trump bans most commercial flights and cruise ships from traveling to Cuba. The U.S. blocks remittances to Cuba through companies controlled by the Cuban military. Western Union closes 407 money transfer stations on the island.

2021: A parting shot. Upon leaving office, Trump reinstates Cuba to the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, a move Obama had reversed as part of his thaw on Cuba relations.

2021: Taking to the streets. Thousands of Cubans protest lack of food, fuel, medicine and freedom in rare massive demonstrations throughout the island. The Biden administration expresses its support of the people's right to peaceful demonstrations and criticizes Cuba's violent crackdown on protesters.

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A Timeline of US-Cuba Relations | HISTORY

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Before Fidel Castro and the Cold War chill, America and Cuba shared close economic and political ties.

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The reading given in class
Module 15-2 The Spanish-American War

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José M. Hernandez

In 1898 Cuba was a geopolitical aberration. Lying only 90 miles from the Florida keys, astride the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, it was separated from Spain by the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet Cuba remained one of Spain's two colonies in the New World. (The other was Puerto Rico.) It was governed from Madrid much as it had been governed since it was first occupied and settled by the Spaniards in 1511.

Not that Cubans were as compliant in 1898 as they had been during most of the colonial period, especially when the other Spanish Americans severed their ties with the mother country in the 1820s. At that time Cuba was evolving from a slowly growing colony into the world's leading sugar producer, a development that required the importation of steadily increasing numbers of African slaves. As a result, by 1840 there were in the island approximately 430,000 slaves, approximately 60 percent of the population was black or mulatto. Fearing a repetition of the upheaval that wiped out Haiti's white planter class in 1791, Cuban creoles (native born Cubans of European descent) refrained from imitating their mainland counterparts and risk all in a bloody and ruinous confrontation with the metropolis' military might.

After the rest of the Spanish American empire disintegrated, nevertheless, Cuba's colonial government gradually turned more despotic. The members of the planter class and the intellectuals who had initially opposed independence then began to show their dissatisfaction. Some, favoring reform over revolution, opted for demanding self-government within the framework of the empire. Others sought annexation to the United States as a means of gaining political and economic freedom while preserving slavery. Neither movement made any headway. Annexationism became impractical after the U.S. Civil War. And the prospect of concessions from Spain faded out after the failure in April 1867 of the Junta de Información convened by the Madrid government to discuss the reforms demanded by the Cubans. Feeling the impact of increased taxation and an international economic crisis, a group of planters, cattlemen and other patriots raised the banner of independence on 10 October 1868.

Thus began the Ten Years' War. The Cubans were unable to overthrow Spanish power in the island, but nevertheless the old colony based on slavery and aristocracy passed away after the strife had ended with a "no-victors" peace in 1878. The long- established dictatorial government machine was dismantled, and, at least in theory, Cubans were assured representation in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament) and some elective institutions at home. An emancipation law was enacted in 1880, and six years later slavery finally came to an end. Cuban society then began to evolve gradually toward a more egalitarian pattern of racial relations, which were markedly less tense than in the United States. At the same time, owing to a great influx of Spanish immigrants (about 709,000 arrived between 1868 and 1894), Cuba's population underwent a process of intensive Hispanization, particularly noticeable in the principal cities.

Cuba's economy became even more closely linked with that of the United States than it had been earlier in the century. On the one hand, the tobacco industry was partially transplanted to the North American south. On the other, due to a sharp drop of sugar prices that took place from early 1884, the old Cuban "sugar nobility," unable to mechanize and cut costs, began to disintegrate and lose its dominant role in the island's economy and society. This facilitated U.S. penetration of the Cuban economy. Sugar estates and mining interests passed from Spanish and Cuban to U.S. hands, and it was U.S. capital, machinery and technicians that helped to save the sugar mills that remained competitive with European beet sugar. Furthermore, as the dependence of Cuban sugar on the U.S. market increased, the Cuban sugar producers were more and more at the mercy of the U.S. refiners to whom they sold their raw sugar. In 1894 nearly 90 percent of Cuba's exports went to the United States, which in turn provided Cuba with 38 percent of its imports. That same year Spain took only 6 percent of Cuba's exports, providing it with just 35 percent of its imports. Clearly, Spain had ceased to be Cuba's economic metropolis.

By this time the nationalistic spirit ignited and solidified by the Ten Years' War had brought forth an organized pro- independence movement such as had never been seen in Cuba before. It was a multiracial and multiclass movement, with a strong grass-roots character. Its leaders were no longer members of the creole elite, but men of modest social origin. Its inspirational guide and promoter was José Martí, a middle class poet and journalist. Sometime in 1894 Martí determined that conditions in the island were ripe for another bid for independence. The economic situation was critical as a consequence of the cancellation of a trade agreement with the United States. It had become clear, besides, that Spain's much heralded plans for ruling Cuba as just another Spanish province were mere "traps for the gullible." Fighting broke out again on 24 February 1895 with several uprisings in the east of the island. Blacks and mulattoes became the backbone of what subsequently came to be the Cuban liberating army.

The new war was still raging in 1898, notwithstanding the 220,285 men sent by Spain to choke it off, the largest army ever to cross the Atlantic until the Second World War. At first the rebels had been able to wage a successful campaign and push on from the east to the west, where the sugar heart of the island was located. But then Spain had bestirred itself and appointed as commander-in- chief ruthless General Valeriano Weyler, who regained the initiative with the support of substantial reinforcements. Seeking to starve out the rebels operating in the countryside, he herded the rural population into garrisoned towns, where bad and inadequate food and lack of sanitation brought death to thousands of peasants -- some 50,000 in Havana province alone. These extreme measures nevertheless failed to crush the insurrection, because the rebels retreated to rural areas in the eastern provinces and from there carried on guerrilla operations. The war thus settled down to one of attrition and destruction. Since the Spaniards were unable to defeat the rebels and the rebels lacked the resources to drive them from the island, no one knew for certain how long it would continue.

This is not what Martí (who was killed in one of the first skirmishes) had had in mind. Having lived for many years in New York as an exile, he knew that the United States had always coveted Cuba and was aware of the circuitous ways of North American expansionism. He feared that if Cuba's struggle for independence continued indefinitely without the imminent prospect of success it would create conditions leading to U.S. intervention and ultimately to the annexation of the island. At one point he even came to believe, rightly or wrongly, that there existed an "iniquitous plan to put pressure on the island and drive it to war so as to fabricate a pretext to intervene in its affairs and with the credit earned as guarantor and mediator keep it as its own." For this reason he thought that Cubans had to achieve a quick victory and then present Washington with their political emancipation as an accomplished fact. Otherwise, they could very well shed their blood merely to exchange one master for another.

Martí's fears would have been even greater had he had an inkling of how vulnerable to foreign penetration Cuba would be after three and a half years of devastating military operations. The island lay in ruins. The conflict, combined with the Spanish- U.S. tariff controversy of the 1890s, had destroyed two-thirds of its productive capacity. Close to 20 percent of its prewar estimated population of 1,800,000 had perished, and for those who survived the future was bleak indeed. Cubans had no capital and were heavily in debt. They lacked the resources needed for the reconstruction of the country. The poverty-stricken masses, which included a sizable (roughly 500,000) and even poorer black or mulatto minority, was inarticulate, largely illiterate (about 60 percent of the total), and apathetic. Whatever was left of the depressed sugar aristocracy had finally succumbed. Thus Cuba could no longer count on the stabilizing influence of a strong civilian elite.

It is true Cuba had developed a well defined Spanish type of society, and that a real national tradition had been in the making in the country for many decades. But the loyalist merchants, speculators, and government officials had also lost their preeminence, and many Cubans had come to hate and despise everything Spanish, thinking only of the corruption and oppressiveness of Spanish rule. There were, too, upper class Cubans (and Spaniards, of course) who did not share the independentistas love of the fatherland and its symbols: flag and anthem. These elements thought of the rebellion against Spain as a racial and social struggle for control of the island, and predicted that upon the withdrawal of the Spaniards it would sink into anarchy, racial warfare, and perhaps an Hispaniola-like division into two parts, sought annexation to the United States as a means of preserving their wealth.

This attitude was partly due to the fact that among noncombatant Cubans there was none of any social standing capable of exercising some sort of leadership at the time. In the other Spanish American republics, during the critical transition to independent life, there had been at least one institution endowed with influence and authority: the Catholic Church. But since the bishops of the Cuban Church as well as many priests identified themselves totally with the Spanish side during the war, at war's end the Church was politically discredited as an institution. It had reached the nadir of its prestige. In 1898 consequently there was only one political force still operative on the Cuban scene, and that was that of the partisans of independence, of whom the most compact and substantial component was the liberating army. When Washington entered the Cuban struggle for independence and eventually destroyed the rebel military organization and the institutions it had created, Cuba became a tabula rasa politically once more.
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subpage_keywords spanish american war united states cuba philippines puerto rico spain 1898

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In 1898 Cuba was a geopolitical aberration. Lying only 90 miles from the Florida keys, astride the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, it was separated from Spain by the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet Cuba remained one of Spain's two colonies in the New World.