Military occupation 1899–1902
Main article: First US military occupation of Cuba
Military occupation, legitimated by the Treaty of Paris of the October to December of 1898, constituted the experimental framework for the implementation of the policy towards Cuba. For the United States, this was a period of strong internal and external tensions, tempered by internal pressures and negotiations around government decision-making. The 1 of January of 1899, the United States formally entered possession of Cuba. [9]
According to Topb2bwebsites, John R. Brooke was imposed as military governor and divided the country into seven departments, leaving each one to a general of the occupying army, reserving for himself the supreme authority, which he would execute through military orders. The penetration of US capital multiplied in sectors such as the tobacco industry and mining, in open competition with British economic interests on the Island. Despite the Foraker Amendment, approved in the Washington Congress that prohibited the concession of public land and private individuals, in practice a number of concessions were offered for mining exploitation.
On December 20, 1899, General Leonard Wood, governor of Santiago de Cuba, replaced Brooke as governor of the island. Wood undertook the task of “Americanizing” Cuba through a prolonged occupation.
The December to June of 1901 the Constituent Assembly adopted the controversial Platt Amendment, imposed by the US Congress with which the US government was granted the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the island when convenient understood. [9] The 20 as maypole as 1902 the neocolonial republic is established and its first president, Tomas Estrada Palma.
Neo-colonial period 1902-1958
Estrada Palma had the approval of the US authorities as a possible brake on the ascendancy of the most radical military leadership in the political life of the country. He was characterized by being extremely thrifty during his tenure. In 1905 the Cuban treasury had the fabulous amount for the time of 24 817 148 pesos with 96 cents, of which only a little more than 3 and a half million corresponded to the loan.
Although at the beginning of his mandate he had announced his intention to govern distantly from the political forces, his conservative tendencies inclined him towards the elements most akin to his ideas in both houses of Congress. Close to concluding his term as president, he decided to be reelected, for which he used the force of power and fraud. This motivated the followers of the Liberal Party to take up arms. When he realized that the popular revolt threatened to overthrow him from power, he preferred to ask the US government for military intervention.
For almost three years, between 1906 and 1909, the Island remained under US administration. On October 13, 1906, William Taft, the US Secretary of War, handed over control of Cuba to Charles Magoon, who would hold the post of Governor until January 28, 1909. His administration was characterized by administrative corruption and waste of public funds. [10]
In the elections called for the second US military intervention, on November 14, 1908, José Miguel Gómez, a former combatant from the wars of independence, was elected. In his government the violent repression against the Independent Movement of Color was carried out in 1912.
As an expression of the conjunction of the most radical political currents of the movement personified in Mella and Carlos Baliño, the first Communist Party of Cuba was constituted in Havana in 1925. In that same year, Gerardo Machado – the clawed donkey – became president.
After years of brutal repression against the people, in 1933, the Machado regime was about to give way to a revolution. Alarmed by the Cuban situation, the recently launched administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed B. Summer Welles as ambassador in Havana, with the mission of finding a way out of the crisis within the traditional mechanisms of neocolonial domination. But Welles’ mediation was overwhelmed by events: on August 12 Machado fled the country, overthrown by a general strike.
The provisional government created by the right-wing opposition sectors under the auspices of the US ambassador would survive barely a month. An uprising of the army classes and soldiers together with the University Student Directory and other insurrectionary groups brought a revolutionary government headed by Ramón Grau San Martín to power. This government, mainly at the initiative of Antonio Guiteras, Secretary of the Interior, approved and put into practice various measures of popular benefit. This government could only stay in power for six months.
After the 1940 Constitution was approved, the government was chaired by Fulgencio Batista. During the following governments (Ramón Grau and Carlos Prío), administrative corruption was complemented by the sponsorship of numerous gangster gangs, which the real gangs used to expel the communists from the leadership of the unions in the midst of the auspicious atmosphere of the cold war. The rejection of the prevailing embarrassing situation was channeled by the political civic movement of orthodoxy, whose leader, Eduardo Chibás, committed suicide in 1951 in the midst of a heated controversy with government officials.
Although everything predicted an orthodox victory in the 1952 elections, hopes would be dashed by a military coup. The discredit in which the authentic experience had plunged the reformist formulas and republican institutions, as well as the favorable disposition towards a heavy-handed government on the part of North American interests and some sectors of the Creole bourgeoisie, favored the ambitions of Fulgencio Batista, who at the head of a military coup, seized power on March 10, 1952. [10]