US Hostility Toward the Island was Never Really About the Cold War: America’s Cuba
December 22, 2014
US Hostility Toward the Island was Never Really About the Cold War
America’s Cuba
by CHRIS LEWIS
President Barack Obama announced on December 17th that the United States would begin normalizing relations with the island, as both governments agreed to a prisoner swap: Cuba released imprisoned USAID contractor Alan Gross and a US intelligence operative, while the United States released three Cuban intelligence agents arrested in the 1990s while spying on militant Cuban exile groups. The countries will begin talks with the goal of opening embassies, Obama will ease travel and financial restrictions for American citizens, and Cuba will release a group of detainees that the US has designated political prisoners. The US trade embargo remains in place, and requires Congressional action to repeal.
“U.S. to Restore Full Relations With Cuba, Erasing a Last Trace of Cold War Hostility,” the New York Times proclaimed. The notion that the US embargo is a Cold War relic that has outlived its usefulness has long been a common assertion among American critics of Cuba policy. Democratic Senators, the editor of The Nation, progressive NGOs, and even Forbes columnists and the Cato Institute have framed the conflict in these terms.
US-Cuban relations have undoubtedly been shaped by the Cold War, but the narrative of Cold War conflict between the two countries is a historically dubious rendering, obfuscating a long record of US intervention in Cuba and the rest of Latin America.
The Cuban revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in January 1959 was led by a group of liberal-minded young nationalists, united by their opposition to military dictator Fulgencio Batista. They displayed few socialist tendencies and no open hostility toward the United States. Far from demonizing the revolutionaries, the United States immediately recognized the new government when it took power.
The amity didn’t last long. In May 1959, Fidel Castro unveiled the revolution’s land reform program, which called for breaking up holdings larger than 1,000 acres and distributing them to small farmers. It also specified that only Cubans would be allowed to own land, and promised compensation for confiscated lands. In an era of worldwide land reform this was hardly radical, but US officials perceived the move as a threat to the vast property owned by American companies in Cuba. According to historian Richard Gott, a June 1959 meeting of the National Security Council concluded that Castro couldn’t be allowed to stay in power. By October, the CIA had drafted a program that “authorized us to support elements in Cuba opposed to the Castro government, while making Castro’s downfall seem to be the result of his own mistakes.” The Eisenhower administration began plotting with Cuban exiles in Florida.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/22/americas-cuba/
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That was when Cuba was known as the "Whorehouse of the Caribbean."
In later years, the Batista supporters in South Florida have tried to tell people that Cuba didn't have that name until long after they LEFT! Yeah, sure.
Fulgencio Batista, the violent, corrupt dictator, who was up to his nose in business with the Mafia, used his wife's brother to go around to the hotel casinos every night to pick up the payoffs. Mafia, and US celebrities couldn't stay away from Havana. It must have driven them insane seeing the people of Cuba emptying the casinos out into the streets, and burning their roulette wheels, etc.
[center]
Slum (bohio) dwellings in Havana, Cuba in 1954, just outside Havana baseball stadium.
In the background is advertising for a nearby casino.
Constantino Arias' photo titled Ugly American, showing a 1950s Batista-era tourist in Havana, Cuba.
Batista with U.S. Army Chief of staff Malin Craig in Washington, D.C., riding in an Armistice Day parade, 1938
Batista's soldiers executing a rebel by firing squad in 1956
Batista (left) with his first wife Elisa Godinez-Gómez on a 1938 visit
to Washington, D.C., greeting the Cuban ambassador, Dr. Pedro Fraga
"The Dictator from Cuba arrives. Washington, D.C., Nov. 10. Col. Fulgencio Batista, Cuba's Dictator, arrived in Washington today, he was met at the Union Station by General Malin Craig, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, who invited the Colonel to the Capitol, and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, as well as a hundred Cubans who bowed to the Colonel as he passed thru Union Station, left to right. Sumner Wells, Batista, Craig, and the Ambassador from Cuba Dr. Pedro Fraga, 11/10/38" (Title from unverified caption data received with the Harris & Ewing Collection.) [/center]
Photos from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista#mediaviewer/File:Batista25355a_crop4.jpg
We never hear about the Batista era death squads.
We never hear about the Batista era rape squads.
We never hear about the Batista era police routinely beating and murdering minorities, and union organizers.
We never hear about the Batista era slave labor sugar plantations, and all related slave cruelty & murder.
We never hear about the Batista era impoverishment of the majority of Cubans (we only hear about how great it was for one percenters, Batista lackeys, mobsters, and tourists).
There's lots more cruelties and atrocities we never hear about the Batista regime.
The Movimiento 26 de Julio was vastly popular. The Batistanos couldn't murder enough of them to stop them.
Each murder and rape by the Batistanos fortified the resolve and numbers of 26 de Julio.
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Big Ag is already drooling at the prospect of killing Cuba's unique and sustainable agricultural revolution, and turning the land into more corporate-owned monoculture, just like their other vassal countries.
