Factually! with Adam Conover - The Intertwined History of America and Cuba with Ada Ferrer

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

It’s impossible to discuss the history of Cuba without talking about the history of America; the stories of the nations are simply too intertwined. To unpack this complex and fascinating history, on the show this week is Professor Ada Ferrer. You can check out her book, Cuba: An American History, at factuallypod.com/books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way I don't know what to think I don't know what to say Yeah, but that's alright Yeah, that's okay I don't know what to say Hello and welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover.

Thank you so much for joining me on the show once again. It's a delight to have you listening. It's a delight to be recording this podcast. It's the best part of my week, and we're going to have some fun together. If you live in the United States, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and hope that the upcoming month of December treats you well. Let's talk about Cuba this week. Despite being just, you know, 90 miles from Key West, Florida, many in America think of Cuba as an especially foreign place. We have a tendency to treat the island as special, as different from other islands and nations in the region, and as an especially worrying one. You know, we're not blocking trade with the Dominican Republic or limiting tourism to the Bahamas. It's difficult to even imagine what it would be like for Barbados

to be a topic for every presidential debate over the last 60 years. But Cuba somehow takes that place. It looms large in the American imagination as something that's scary, a frightening specter just looming over the horizon. Why is that? Well, our thinking on Cuba is very much colored by the Cold War and the fact that Cuba, to an extent, played for the red team. We all grew up being taught about Fidel

Castro, the near apocalypse, the Cuban Missile Crisis, how Cuba was a lurking communist threat to our national security, right in our own backyard. But here's the strange thing. That view of Cuba is just the most recent chapter of U.S.-Cuba relations. And it's a very narrow way to look at the relationship

between our two countries. Like, it's not as if Cuba just emerged from the bottom of the Caribbean during the Eisenhower administration. Cuba has actually been there just as long as the United States has. In fact, even longer. And the truth is, far from being a foreign, other place,

Cuba's history is deeply intertwined with the United States and has been from the very beginning. You know, as a global hegemon, we love to imagine that history is divided into us, what happens in America, and them, what happens everywhere else. But the truth is, our histories are deeply interrelated in countless ways, and you simply cannot tell the history of one place without also telling the history of the other. And that is the project that today's guest has embarked upon. Our guest today is Ada Ferrer, a historian at NYU and the author of Cuba and American History. This conversation was fascinating, and I know you're going to love it. Please welcome Ada Ferrer. Ada, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thanks for having me.

Looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, me too. So tell me, your new book is titled Cuba and American History. Tell me about that title. How is the history of Cuba tied up with the history of America? Yeah, well, the title has multiple meanings. One, I like to have readers question some of their assumptions from the start. So I say to them in the beginning that if you look at America from the outside in, from the perspective of the rest of the world, it isn't even really America because the term America is actually used to describe a whole hemisphere, right? North, South, Central America, the Caribbean. So one thing is to trouble that assumption that America is an easy or unproblematic synonym for the United States. It isn't.

But the most important meaning for me of the title is that Cuba and the U.S. have such a long connection going back centuries, going back to the time of the U.S.'s founding, even before that. So, and the U.S. has played an outsized role in Cuban history. Cuba has also been a recurring presence the U.S. has been so present historically, that looking at that history is also a way to look at U.S. history. To look at U.S. history from the outside in, from the perspective of an outsider, from the perspective of another part of the world. And I think it's valuable for Americans to think about their own country as it appears through the eyes of another. So that's kind of what I wanted to do, to look at, to have people engage with the history of Cuba as the history of Cuba, but also as a kind of partial, selective, outsider's view of U.S. history itself. That's really fascinating. Thank you. I want to hear more about it, but it does, you know, really, it always strikes me how much the history of the places are entangled in a more complicated way than we often, like, you know, I grew up in America, you know, being told, or in the United States being told, this is the United States. And, you know, I grew up in America, you know, being told or in the United States being told this is the United States. And, you know, these are the other countries. Right. And these are sort of like set in stone, which are which. And then, you know, it just happened that a couple

months ago, I was in the US Virgin Islands, and to a place I'd never been to St. Croix, which is part of the United States, but everybody drives on the other side of the street, everybody drives on the left in St. Croix, right? And maybe start reading on Wikipedia, what's the history of this island, et cetera, et cetera, and looking at, you know, all the islands in the region. And it made me start thinking about like, oh, all of these, like all of these islands, their history happened simultaneously, right? As they did in the, you know, with the United States itself. All of this stuff is happening simultaneously. Some of those islands ended up being part of the United States.

Some didn't. But they were all, like, interwoven at every point. Like, you know, they were all colonized during the same period. Right. And so, of course, their histories are intermingled. Yes. And actually, Cuba came very, very close to becoming part of the United States. Really? In the 19th century at several points. Yes. And actually, Cuba came very, very close to becoming part of the United States in the 19th century at several points. Yes. Even, you know, Thomas Jefferson,

shortly after US independence, says that the ideal map of the United States would include Canada on the north and Cuba on the south. He prophesied, or he wanted, he fantasized, that the southern border of the U.S. would be the southern coast of Cuba. And that was, I believe, in the late 1780s. You know, after that, many, many people tried to make that happen. John Quincy Adams used to say that Cuba was like a ripe apple on a tree, and a ripe apple always has to fall. And when the ripe apple of Cuba fell, it had to fall into the United States, which would, you know, receive it as part of the country. And a lot of people really tried to make that happen, especially in the 1840s, 1850s. Yeah.

And why didn't, I'm sure that's a very, a much easier question for me to ask than it is for you to answer, but I had no idea of that history. Why then, if so many presidents were trying and people thought it was inevitable, why didn't it happen? Well, a lot of it has to do with the history of slavery, actually. You know, a lot of, for a long time, the impetus to making Cuba part of the United States was to strengthen the power of slavery here in the US. So a lot of the proponents of annexing Cuba, that's what they called it, annex, it's annexation, the annexation of Cuba to the United States, were powerful southerners. And they imagined annexing Cuba as two or three or even four slave states, because they thought that would increase

that would obviously increase their power in Congress if there were four, you know, three more slave states to protect the interests of slavery. So that was the impetus in the 1840s. In the 1850s, there were actually expeditions launched from the US South from New Orleans and organized in places across the South, you know, that intended to do that. And they believe that just as Mexico, you know, think of Texas, you know, Texas had been Mexican, and then it was a territory, and then it was annexed to the U.S., right? And that's fully what they expected that would happen in Cuba.

Part of the reason it didn't ultimately was that, you know, with slavery ending in the U.S. as a result of the Civil War, Southerners' interest in annexing Cuba waned because what would be the point of it? Cuba at that point still had slavery. So if the U.S. added Cuba after the Civil War, it would mean adding Cuba to liberated slaves. And Southerners had no interest in doing that. So interest in that waned quite a bit. Got it. So it became less appealing to whatever forces, the forces in the United States that wanted to annex Cuba. But Cuba also simultaneously had its own history happening. It wasn't just sitting around waiting for America to decide whether or not to annex it. Well, let's start a little bit earlier. Let's go back to the beginning. I mean, the story of how America was colonized

by the British and other nations is very well told, partially on this show. We've had episodes on that before. What was that history for Cuba? Yeah, well, you know, Cuba was, you know, it's an island. It was and is an island in the Caribbean. It was inhabited by indigenous people that most of which came to be called the Taino. Christopher Columbus, on his very first voyage to the New World, landed in Cuba and spent about three weeks there. Then he returned on a second voyage. Really full-fledged Spanish colonization of Cuba began in 1511. And initially, you know, the Spanish wanted to find gold and they wanted to find native communities able to mine it. And Cuba didn't have large sources of gold.

And the indigenous community was quickly declining due to war and disease, suicide events. Suicide was rampant among the indigenous during the early colonial period. And when the Spanish then went on to Mexico, and later to the Andes and discovered these massive indigenous empires, the Aztecs and the Inca and massive stores of gold and silver, the Spanish focused more on those. And Havana or of a little bit of a backwater because most of the attention was paid to these other places rich in mineral wealth. But what ended up happening is the rest of the European powers, the British, for example, or the French, realized the wealth that Spain was acquiring from these empires. that Spain was acquiring from these empires, those other countries started attacking Spain, and they attacked it on the high seas by, you know, commissioning privateers and corsairs,

pirates, etc., to attack Spanish ships full of gold and silver. And so, at that point, the Spanish responded by militarizing and fortifying some of the sites in the New World. And Havana, in particular, became kind of a Spanish fortress. So they started building forts to repel pirates. Havana sits at a really interesting place. If you look at a map, it sits kind of where the Gulf Stream gathers in between the Gulf of Mexico, the meeting of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. And so the Gulf Stream is a really rapid current that goes up, you know, through the Bahamas and up along the coast of North America and then out into the Atlantic Ocean and to Spain. out into the Atlantic Ocean and to Spain. Because it gathers in Havana, it made, you know, Havana became this place where all the Spanish treasure ships would meet to then make the journey across the Atlantic.

Because there was like a highway meeting. Yeah, sea highway. This is the rest stop on the sea highway. Yeah. So, yeah. And so you had like dozens and dozens of ships carrying, you know, lots of gold and silver that would winter there waiting for the right time. And so if you think about the early colonization of Cuba, that's a major part of

the story. Wow. Well, okay, but I know that when I think of Cuba, I think of sugar. I know that sugar is a very important part of the story. Where does that come in? So sugar's there. I mean, Columbus brings, you know, he stops in the Canary Islands on the way to the New World, or what, you know, what was then called the New World. It wasn't new to the people who had lived there for ages and ages. Yeah, certainly not. Right. But he, so he brought sugar cuttings from the Canary Islands in his first voyage. And there was a nascent sugar industry in places like, you know, what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic that was then Española. There was sugar in Cuba in that early period. the dominant crop and the focus of the whole Cuban economy and determines the character of the Cuban economy and Cuban society beginning in the late 18th century. So that's really when it

takes off. And it takes off for various reasons. The Spanish realize on their own that there's other kinds of colonial wealth. Not all colonial wealth has to be in minerals. You could have, you know, you could have an empire of commerce in these agricultural, valuable agricultural goods like sugar. And so they realize that and they're more open to it. There's another very important moment, which is the British actually attack Havana during the Seven Years' War, and they defeat the Spanish there, and the British become the rulers of Havana for about 10 months in 1762. Yeah, so Havana becomes part of the same system as, you know, Virginia and South Carolina and Massachusetts and so on, briefly for about 10 months. But in those 10 months, the British really try to develop sugar.

And so they remove taxes on sugar. Most importantly, they drop all restrictions on the entry of slave ships. drop all restrictions on the entry of slave ships. And so there's the importation of enslaved and captive Africans escalates under the British in that brief period. So that's enormously important. But the main thing happens a little bit later with the start of the Haitian Revolution in 1791. So the Haitian, I don't know if you've had episodes

on the Haitian Revolution in 1791. So the Haitian, I don't know if you've had episodes on the Haitian Revolution here. We did. We did on our, an episode of our TV show, we talked about very briefly about the Haitian Revolution, which is one of the most interesting events I have learned about in world history. Like, tell me. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's one of the most interesting and important events in world history. So the Haitian Revolution occurred in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue. So obviously France was in the throes of a revolution beginning in 1789. Saint-Domingue was its wealthiest, most important colony. It produced most of the sugar consumed

in the world. It produced, it was responsible for a huge part of the French economy and was incredibly profitable. And during the revolution, enslaved people there begin their own revolution in August of 1791. And the rebels begin, you know, they take to the mountains, they burn plantations, and the French are unable to defeat them. And so the Haitian Revolution goes, you know, ends with Haitian independence on January 1st, 1804. And this is one of the world's, my understanding is and this is one of the world's my understanding

is this is one of the world's only successful slave revolution or in which a slave state the slaves revolted you know threw off their shackles and created a new nation right correct yes that's correct i mean it lasted a really long time and there's you know it's it's an incredibly complicated event the enslaved at times alive with the French. Anyway, so it's lots of ups and downs. History is a mess, but it's a cool story. to throw off their shackles permanently. And they created an independent state that was led by Black men, former slaves. And if you think about that moment when that happened, you know, Haiti, they called it Haiti, which was the original indigenous name for the island. It's surrounded by these islands that are colonies and that are slave states. And here you have Haiti standing as the opposite of that, an independent island,

an island in which there will never be slavery. And their constitution made that really clear, slavery will never exist in Haiti. But, you know, what that means in terms of the Cuban story, well, it means a lot of things for the Cuban story. But one thing it means is that the Cuban planters, the sugar planters said, and one of them said this explicitly, the hour of our happiness has arrived. Yes, we Cuban planters or we plant, you know, we feel bad for the French, but really this is our chance. And the sugar industry, because of the revolution, declines in Saint-Domingue. And this is their opportunity to kind of sweep in and develop their own sugar industry much more. You're saying the capitalists saw it as an opportunity.

Yes, absolutely. And it worked, you know, Cuba became the largest producer of sugar in the world. Wow. After the, after, by the 1820s. So in the aftermath. They weren't worried they were going to, they weren't worried they were going to have their own slave rebellion? Yes. one of the other things it meant that, you know, they, you know, they were developing this society built on slavery, built on sugar, built on the sugar plantation, but in a moment that that comes

after the Haitian Revolution, so they know that example exists. But basically, what they, since they know that it's a possibility, they protect against it. And they're always aware of it. They do kind of white colonization things so that the population imbalance is never as great as in Haiti. That's one of the things they do, for instance. And they're more aware that it's a possibility. So they can step in to repress any movement quite brutally. And the other thing that it means for Cuba is if you think about it from the perspective of the enslaved themselves, they're seeing two things happen at once. You know, they're seeing that there are more and more of them.

There are more and more Africans arriving in chains. The pace of work is increasing because the sugar industry is taking off, so there's more demands. So they are living, right, body and soul, the hardening of slavery, the transformation of slavery into an even more brutal system. So, on the one hand, they're living through that. And on the other hand, they're living in a moment where they can see what's going on. And they can, they hear about the things that the Spanish do, one of the things that the Spanish are, is they're amazing record keepers, you know, and whenever there was a suspicion that enslaved people were conspiring, or when they did conspire and rise up, which they did, there was a huge number of slave rebellions in Cuba in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution. None of them were successful. But the Spanish would bring in people and question them about what their plans were, who they talked to, how they thought they could defeat the Spanish or the whites. And one of the things that comes up in among the enslaved themselves is the example of Haiti. So they say, we talked about we talked about, you know, they didn't call it Haiti yet then, but we talked about Haiti. And we knew that we wanted to be like Toussaint

or Jean-Francois. So, they would refer to some of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution. The Haitians became, they say, became masters of the land. They became masters of themselves. they say, became masters of the land. They became masters of themselves. And so they were very, you know, inspired by that. So yes, the Haitian Revolution had a huge impact materially, economically, socially, even, you know, intellectually in Cuba. Can I ask, because I think we only discussed it very briefly, what, at this period, you know, what became of the indigenous population of the Ayala Taino? Yeah, yeah, right.

Well, there's debates about the extent of the death and of the genocide. There's no question that it was genocide. Some estimates say that nine out of ten indigenous people died as a result of the conquest. But, of course, not every indigenous person died. And because the Spanish then went off to Mexico and other places, there were indigenous communities that did survive,

and they kind of tried to survive, you know, in the mountains and places that were more remote and less easily accessible. So, there is an indigenous community. There are indigenous communities that survived, but there's also, but it's a tiny fraction of what was there to begin with. So, it doesn't But it's a tiny fraction of what was there to begin with. So it doesn't lessen the brutality of the conquest. And then there was also a lot of mixture with other communities on the island, both Spanish and increasingly African. But there's also a way in which indigenous culture survives in Cuba. And a lot of Cubans don't even recognize it as indigenous culture.

Really? Yeah. So, it's especially noticeable in the language. There's all these words that aren't just Cuban words. They're Spanish words. And some of them have even made it into English that are original Taino words. So, things like hurricane. Really?

Yes. Hurricane comes from huracan, which comes from an original Taino words. So things like hurricane. Really? Yes. Hurricane comes from huracan, which comes from an original Taino word. That's one of the most, you know, the same is true for the Spanish word for shark. Tiburón also has a Taino root. So there are ways like that in which indigenous culture survived. And then, you know, really interesting. So these Cuban scholars have done these studies and they found that about a third of Cuban women have mitochondrial DNA that goes back to an indigenous woman. That is the line that is the maternal line that gets passed only from woman to woman. About 30% of Cuban women have that.

Wow, that's incredible. Well, let's talk about, I mean, there's so much ground to cover. We only have a limited amount of time. So, you know, we're in this period where Cuba is a Spanish colony. America has long held dreams of annexing Cuba than it does not. Cuba eventually has its own revolution, though, and becomes free of Spain. How does that happen? Yeah. So the Cuban movement for independence really takes off in 1868. You have the First War of Independence, which lasted 10 years.

So it came to be known as the Ten Years' War. And there's many interesting things about it. One is that it is started by a sugar planter, a white sugar planter in eastern Cuba. Eastern Cuba is kind of this area that's not as technologically advanced as central and western Cuba. So if you think about the large sugar plantations with massive enslaved populations, those are not in the east. Those are in the center and west. So in the east, you have kind of smaller plantations, a lot of coffee. And there, this planter, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, begins the first war of independence against Spain by freeing his own slaves.

So he gathers about 40 people who are enslaved on his sugar mill. And he says, you are free, you are citizens. And he invites them to participate in the wars, in the war against Spain. And the war lasts 10 years. Many, many enslaved people join the forces of the rebels. Many free Black, because there's a significant free population of color in Cuba historically, and they're especially strong in eastern Cuba. Many free men of color also join the movement, and they ascend through the ranks. So you end up having men of color who are generals and, you know, lieutenants and corporals and captains. And so here in a society that's still a slave society, you have this fascinating institution created, the Liberation Army,

fascinating institution created, the Liberation Army, that really, you know, has to confront the question of race and slavery. And that kind of, that disrupts a lot of assumptions and a lot of hierarchies, sometimes unintentionally. But yeah, so that begins, they're defeated. Yeah. Well, let me ask what what started that revolution? You said at the beginning, it was a white sugar planter. And that makes me think at first of the American Revolution, which was, you know, led by the wealthy landowners, right by the people who owned the plantations who said, Well, we want to we want to run things rather than having, you know, the British monarch. But it was ultimately, you know, it was the it was wealthy whites, right? Right, right. Who began the revolution, but then the picture you just drew

of the army is very different. So yeah, so because basically, it wasn't the wealthiest white. So if you think about the the really powerful white planters, they're not they're not in eastern Cuba, they're in the central west. And they're basically, they support Spain. They support Spain because they see it as a, you know, as a, you know, as a status quo. And they're fine with the status quo. And also Spain has given them concessions that allows them to trade with the United States. Their main market is in the United States. So the U.S. is a major force in the United States. So the US is a major force in

the Cuban economy already in the 19th century. So the revolution begins in the East, more from these kind of middling whites, precisely because they've been left out of the island, and they want more power, and they begin this revolution not because they want to free the slaves, but they see it as kind of just as inevitable and as a necessary part of their struggle. and as a necessary part of their struggle. And right before the revolution happened, Spain had seemed willing to allow reforms and to give more, you know, a little more home rule to the island. And then that was frustrated.

It was quashed before it could happen. So I think it was a moment of escalating frustration with Spain. And so they began this war, but they couldn't win. It ended up being a guerrilla war where the Spanish ultimately had more power and it lasted 10 years and the rebels were defeated and demoralized, but still, it really transformed, or it had the potential to transform the way that Cubans thought about race, about slavery, and about the connections between all those. And it's what I wrote my first book about. My first book was on these wars of independence. And there's a lot there. There was a second war almost immediately after in 1879-80. Well, you lose one war, have a rematch right away.

Yeah, you have a rematch. And that, you know, it's a war that only lasts 10 months, but it's fascinating. At the end of the first war, in the treaty that's signed with Spain, Spain agrees to free from slavery all those people who participated in the war. So about 16,000 people gain their freedom that way for having participated. Oh, okay. So you get like a consolation prize. You lost the war, but kind of amnesty in a way almost. Yeah, for those. And then also it gives other things too.

It kind of loosens up censorship laws. So people are allowed to advocate independence publicly in writing as long as they don't advocate violence. And it allows for the reform. The peace treaty allows for the creation of Cuban political parties for the first time. So there are some concessions given. But, yeah, anyway, I, I could go on and on about this. I don't know how much further you want me to go. But I think, you know, maybe we could just, we could skip, maybe we could skip ahead to the final war, which is the one that, yeah.

This is the exciting one. So let's skip to it. Well, they're all really exciting. I can tell they are. I can tell they are but there's the one i have most the most questions about is the is the final war so yes final war actually wait wait let's take a really quick break so that i can read a couple ads and when we come back we will learn about the final exciting war i'm sure there's a lot of things that aren't exciting about that that are more uh war is never never something to savor but we'll be right back with more Ada Ferrer. Okay, we're back with Ada Ferrer. Let's talk about this final war and about how Cuba finally

won its independence from Spain. This is such a pivotal event in the history of this hemisphere. And yet it's one that I know surprisingly little bit about. So little about. So please, yeah, enlighten me. Yeah. So and it's actually a pivotal event for the history of the U.S. too. Which is very important for your listeners. So the final war begins in 1895, and one of the main

intellectual, the main intellectual leader is a man named José Martí, who spent most of his adult life in New York City. He was a New Yorker, but he was Cuban, and he advocated for independence from Spain. And he also thought that the coming Cuban Revolution, the one that began in 1895, was a revolution for independence, but that was also a kind of, he referred to it sometimes as a revolution for the world, that Cuba would be kind of a gift to the world after independence. And he saw, you know, the way I see it is that he identified it that way for two reasons. One is that he thought that Cuba could be an example of a new kind of republic, right? Cuba had been a slave society until slavery ended in 1886. But its independence was being forged by a community that was multiracial, black and white.

And he emphasized that there were black leaders of independence and white soldiers sometimes marched behind them because they were making this nation together. So for Martí, the independence would produce a kind of a new kind of republic that stood against the racial violence that you were seeing in that moment, in that very moment in the U.S. And which he wrote about also, because this is the you know, the it's after reconstruction in the U.S. and the escalation of lynching and other forms of violence. And let me just say, he's one of the fathers of this revolution. Yes. And I have to say, I have a lot of friends who are Cuban New Yorkers, and I think they might be very happy to hear that this is a Cuban New Yorker. Yeah, he is such a New Yorker. And he says, oh, New York, it's like death by a thousand cuts.

You know, like he talks about how, you know, he commutes on the ferry from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan. He's like an immigrant living in New York trying to make a living and working hard and yet, you know, involved in all this activism for Cuban independence. So he's very much a New Yorker. He's so Cuban, but he's also very much a New Yorker in my view. Anyway, so that was one way in which he thought the Cuban Revolution would be important for the world. The other thing he wrote about was Cuban independence serving as a kind of break or a check on U.S. expansionism. He thought that the U.S., you know, was looking at Latin America, you know, a little too covetously. They wanted Latin—the U.S. wanted influence and power in Latin America, you know, a little too covetously. They wanted Latin, the U.S. wanted influence and power in Latin America. But he said the U.S. never really understood Latin America. And he wanted,

you know, he was worried that the U.S. would come into Cuba, take it, and then from there kind of expand into Latin America. And so, he wanted true Cuban independence to kind of true Cuban independence to kind of not allow that to happen. Right? So, so both of us, so he, he favored this war as both a check on American expansionism as an, as an example of a, of an equal, of a republic built on racial equality. So that was his idea. But you know, he died, he was living in New York, he decided he was going to go back. He was an intellectual. He was a writer, but he thought he had to fight in the war and write about it from within. But he was killed, you know, like a month after he arrived there in battle. Oh, God.

So he didn't make it. This is why writers don't go pick up guns. Don't go pick up guns. Yeah. It's not. Just keep writing. Your pen is your sword. Right.

And then one of the other really important leaders is a man named Antonio Maceo, who was a man of color. You know, he was in the U.S. He would have, he's considered black. He'd never used that word for himself, but he called himself a member of the class of color. And he had fought in all three wars, became a captain like a few weeks after joining the first war in 1868. He was a general by the end of that war, and he was a general in this war in 1895. And he led the insurgents all the way from eastern Cuba to western Cuba. Everyone, you know, he was a hero. The whole, you know, there were people, young men in Havana wanted to be like him.

African Americans in the U.S. named their sons after him. So if you look at, you know, if you were to go into something like genealogy.com and search for first names, Maceo, M-A-C-E-O, you'd find all kinds of African Americans across the U.S. who began taking his name in the late 1890s. They generally pronounced it Maceo, M-A-C-E-O, you'd find all kinds of African Americans across the U.S. who began taking his name in the late 1890s. They generally pronounced it Maceo, not Maceo, but it was a common name among African Americans because he was a hero, a black man with tremendous military and intellectual gifts, a leader of an inspiring movement. Anyway, so all that happens. He's killed also.

Okay. All right. You know, in 1890, at the very end of 1896 in December. And, yeah, so what ends up happening, just to fast forward, by 1898, the Cubans are pretty convinced that they can win. The Spanish have tried all kinds of things against them. There was a Spanish governor who everyone nicknamed the Butcher, who experimented with something called reconcentration, concentration, which is a kind of precursor for later concentration camps in which he, basically, the rebels, the Cubans were really strong in the countryside, and he wanted to deny Cubans that support. So he had the Spanish army kind of move people from the countryside,

Cubans from the countryside into towns, so that they could not support the insurgents in the countryside. So he moved them into towns, but there wasn't enough food, there wasn't hygiene, there wasn't housing, there wasn't medical care. And you had, you know, over 100,000 people die as a result of that policy. And it didn't work. You know, it was it didn't defeat the Cuban army, then Spain tried giving them like partial independence, and that didn't work. So anyway, by the beginning of 1898, the Cubans were pretty convinced that they could win and that they would win before the year is out. Can I just ask a quick question? Just something that I'm very curious about as I hear you talk about this. How did a Cuban, you know, identity develop?

Because the history that you've told me thus far is, you know, there's an indigenous population there. Because the history that you've told me thus far is, you know, there was there's an indigenous population there. The Spanish came, you know, cover the whole thing in sugar plantations, bring a lot of slaves over. Right. And but now you're talking about you've got you've got people who consider themselves Cubans, multi-ethnic, you know, sort of coalition of folks. How does that, you know, what is the Cuban identity at that point grounded in when the entire island had basically been a gigantic plantation for, you know, a century at that point? Huh, that's a huge question. We can skip it and move on. Never mind.

Yeah. Okay, I'm perfectly happy to skip it and move on never mind yeah okay i'm perfectly happy to skip it and move on you know but um you know i i feel like there isn't one cuban identity yeah ever um or entirely you know i feel like there's there's different components of it yeah uh But I think this is a really important moment in which a majority of the Cuban people are supporting independence from Spain, although they don't always know what it's going to mean after the fact, right? They don't know what the republic is going to be, but there is support for that. And I think one of the things that I found just accidentally in my research is all these, you know, black Cubans, many descended, you know, from slaves, who in this period in the 1890s, or when they gained their freedom, the end of slavery was 1886, they gained their freedom,

they changed their last names to Cuba. And that just is, you know, incredible to think about. So I think it's something, I mean, I think Cuban identity was always a work in progress. It always had to grapple with the question of race and the place of slaves and former slaves in the polity. It had to deal with the questions of the place of Spaniards in the Cuban nation. It had always to deal with the question of the US and how much influence the US.S. would have. And would the U.S. and this was more a question for the 20th century, but would the presence of so many U.S. products and U.S. tourists kind of dilute Cuban identity? That was a question. So I feel like, you know, it's always

an open question. I don't think there's a definitive answer to it. Okay. Well, please go on with the story at that point. At that point. So they think they're going to win, you know, before the end of 1898. But in that moment, in February of 1898, do you know what happens in February of 1898? No, I wish I did. Once I say it, you'll say, oh, yes, of course. The American ship, the USS Maine, exploded in Havana Harbor. And the Americans blamed the Spanish, and the U.S. declared war on Spain by April.

war on Spain by April. So it's a hugely important event because one of the things that it does is transform this 30-year struggle for Cuban independence that had been, you know, this rich, complex event into something that Americans know simply as the Spanish-American War. And the Spanish-American War basically lasts four months. And the U.S. defeats Spain in Cuba and also in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. And the U.S., you know, and it kind of, it puts the Cubans in a terrible, terrible position because they've been fighting to defeat Spain for a really long time. The U.S. comes and kind of finishes the job after Spain is already really weak. Hey, we did it! We did it.

it. And then the U.S., you know, it doesn't let the Liberation Army come in to celebrate, to recognize the armistice, right? So, the Spanish will surrender a city and the U.S. prevents Cuban troops from entering. The U.S. signs a treaty with Spain, the Treaty of Paris, and doesn't allow the Cubans to the table in the negotiations. So basically, it turns a Cuban War of Independence and transforms it into a war between Cuba and Spain. Sorry, into a war between the U.S. and Spain, in which Cuba doesn't even deserve a mention. So it's hugely important.

And it's also, it has a lot of relevance going forward for two reasons. One that has to do with actual facts on the ground, and one that has to do more with questions of historical memory. So, in terms of historical memory, the Americans will always see, tend to, for decades after, would always refer to that moment as a moment, as a kind of benevolent moment, right? The U.S. went in and helped the neighbor in need. Cuba was suffering. They wanted their independence, and the U.S. went in and helped them win independence. The U.S. secured independence for Cuba. And therefore, Cuba owes us a debt of gratitude.

And that vision of kind of Cuba as indebted to the U.S. really marks the history of the relationship between the two countries up until the beginning of the revolution in 1959. When you say that the history of the revolution in 1959. When you say that the history of the countries are so entwined, I mean, that is very, very obvious from the fact that the United States meddled in the independence. And, you know, at the moment of the birth of the nation, the United States is like inextricably intertwined with it. Right, exactly.

And the Cubans see that moment very differently. So they, you know, they see it as the U.S. swooping in at the end and taking a victory that belonged to them. And so it's this moment where the two histories are completely intertwined, but the dominant vision in both countries is completely opposed, right? They see it completely differently. Yeah. Yeah.

So, there's a very important book that's published in Havana in 1950 that has as the title, Cuba Does Not Owe Its Independence to the United States. Yeah. It's a very blunt title, but But you know, again, it's that's like, it's, it's a source of dispute and tension for decades and decades. But so then Cuba is at that point, an independent nation with its own government. What does that government look like? Well, it isn't because, I mean, that's one of the that so that's one of the sources of the resentment. So when the war ends and they sign the Treaty of Paris, the U.S. occupies Cuba. So the government of Cuba, when the Spanish are finally defeated and Spain evacuates the island after 500 years of rule, or sorry, 400 years of rule, the government of Cuba is American. The Spanish flag

comes down, an American flag is raised in its place. The governor's palace is occupied by a U.S. governor. And it's a military occupation. So it's the U.S. Army that's in charge of Cuba for four years. Wow. Until 1902. So that's, again, another source of deep resentment. How long does that last? So about the first time, because it would happen again later, four years. So they occupy it officially beginning on January 1st, 1899. That's when the Spanish flag comes down. And they occupy it until the 20th of May, 1902. And so the government of Cuba

in that period is an American government. How do we then get to a point where, I mean, where Cuba is truly independent? Well, that's a source of debate, because the Americans do leave in 1902, but they only leave if the Cubans agree to include in their constitution, their sovereign constitution, an appendix called the Platt Amendment. And the Platt Amendment was, you know, proposed originally by a U.S. Senator, Orville Platt, and it gives the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuba militarily. Uninvited by the Cubans. So the Platt Amendment takes effect after the Americans leave.

And it basically says the U.S. has the right to intervene to preserve, you know, life, liberty, prosperity, happiness. I can't remember the exact wording right now. So it basically, you know, it only leaves after Cuba recognizes and cedes that right to the United States, the right of intervention. And then it also includes other things. And the Platt Amendment also says that the Cuban government cannot enter into a treaty with a third government. So basically, it doesn't give treaty-making powers to the Cuban government.

It also says that the Cuban government cannot contract debt with another government. So basically, it limits the rights of the Cuban government in really substantial fundamental ways. It also sets aside land for what becomes the Guantanamo Naval Base. Oh, I always wondered why. Yeah, now you know. Why do we have a naval base in Cuba? That seems odd. It's because it was literally, what, written into the Constitution of Cuba. Into the appendix. Yes, into the appendix. And that, no, actually, well, the land for the land for the naval and coaling stations was written into the constitution. And then there was a treaty a year after that, then granted the right to want Donovan set the terms.

But so, I mean, in the story of America meddling in, you know, Latin America and then, you know, other countries in this part of the world and, you know,

Marty's fear, right. That was the exact fear that you said he was worried about. I mean, that is, that's exactly what came to pass. I mean, essentially, exactly what came to pass. I mean, essentially, yeah, you can be your own country,

but you have to be like a client state of the United States. And just, you know, we can come and do whatever we want there whenever we feel like. We'll leave you alone for now, but watch your back. Yeah, exactly. Wow. So that's a very odd situation for a nation to be in. I want to make sure that we bring the story of Fidel Castro into this story and start weaving in that piece. So tell me, tell me about that. Yeah. So as a result of the plan amendment and this relationship to the U.S., you have over the course of the 20th century, you know, different intellectual and political positions emerge. So, in the 1920s, you have

what some historians called a nationalist awakening. And what that means is that people are, especially student, you know, university students, high school students, lawyers, feminists, others, are very vocal in rejecting U.S. interference in Cuba. So that becomes kind of a part of mainstream Cuban politics from the 1920s on. In 1933, there's a revolution that is seeking both progressive economic and social gains, economic and social gains like agrarian reform and other things, and that also wants to limit the place of the U.S. in Cuban politics. Okay, that revolution is defeated in an alliance between the U.S. ambassador and a man named Fulgencio Batista, who will be very important later on. But I say all that, we don't need to get into all the details about this, because it is a confusing political period.

But I say all that to just emphasize that when people think about Fidel Castro and what would happen later, they sometimes think that he kind of came out of nowhere, that he represents something that was more foreign and Soviet, etc. And I just want to emphasize that some of the things that he used to say before coming to power were things a huge part of his platform and of the platform of many others in the 1940s and 1950s. Anyway, so you have a society that's vibrant politically in which there's a strong tradition of civic protest. Labor unions are really strong. The students are an incredible, the university students are an incredible political force. And so that's kind of deep background stated very quickly. In 1952, there's a coup. You have Fulgencio Batista is

running for president. He's running a distant third, and he knows he's going to lose. So he stages a coup shortly before the election and takes power. Okay. At that point, Fidel was actually running for Senate in that election that the coup cancels out. So that happens in 52. In 53, Fidel Castro stages an attack on the Moncada barracks where he kind of, you know, attacks the second largest military installation in the country. He's defeated, you know, roundly. The attack is a total failure, though in historical memory would be, you know, the revolution would later cast it as kind of the point of origin of the revolution. So he comes out of that. But I also want to emphasize that because he would be the one

to take power in 1959, people assume, they assume two things. They assume that the revolution was his from the start, and it wasn't. There were many, many revolutionary groups fighting against Batista. And he wasn't really the most important or the most prominent until fairly late, until, you know, until mid-1957, say and it's just one of many and it's coming out of like a historic dissatisfaction with being ruled by other nations right whether it be spain or or the united states yeah that's part of it also uh you, economic frustration. One of the most important things to catalyze people in the movement is also against corruption. agrarian reform. It's anti-corruption. It's for the restitution of a progressive constitution that had been promulgated in 1940. Right?

He isn't explicitly anti-American. Yeah. So, yeah. And then the other thing is that when Fidel Castro comes to power, he comes to power as a result of this broad mobilization against Batista. And many, many different kinds of people took part in that. You had housewives, you had, you know, Catholics were really, Catholic students were really prominent in it, university students, feminists, etc. So, the Cuba's Communist Party did not support Fidel Castro's movement until the very end. Really? Until March of 1958, because the communists had been allied with Batista for a long time. So these are the things that just, they don't make sense. On some level, you think, you think about them, and it's like, they don't fit these preconceived boxes

that people have, because people tend, Americans tend to think of Fidel Castro as having, you know, having led this communist revolution, right? But the revolution in the beginning, when it was fighting to defeat Batista was not at all communist. The communist party didn't support it. The program of the revolution was not communist in content. It didn't foresee a centralized communist state or a socialist takeover of the economy. That was not part of the program of the revolution. So, which is really, really important. So, really, I mean, the revolution is, Fidel Castro declares the revolution socialist in April of 1961, in the immediate context of the Bay of Pigs. So, it's something that happens a little later. And those two years are just

fascinating because it's like so much is going on, you know, Batista leaves, but no one knows what's going to happen. No one knows what kind of, what's going to take Batista's place. So what you have is a scenario in which you have all these Cubans have contributed to this, right? But no one knows which of those Cubans is ultimately, or what group is ultimately going to determine the fate of Cuba. And nobody knows what the U.S. is going to do either, which is another major part of the equation, as always. Yeah. Well, and it goes to show how important it is to look at history from a non-American perspective, because that's, yes, I mean, I don't know where I absorbed it, but the ambient history I absorbed was that, yeah, the communist,

you know, Fidel Castro led a communist revolution that overthrew. I honestly wasn't really sure who, like, you know, my understanding didn't go that far back. You know, when we hear about Bay of Pigs, it's like very, a very limited bit of story and right we don't see it from that from that vantage point that's why god that's so fascinating okay well but you know castro's regime ends up like and there's all the you know you're we've described as a very long period of instability. And his regime ultimately lasts a very long time, does it not? Yes, yes. And so how is that? Yeah, like, that brings us to the modern period,

I guess. And what would you say characterizes it? If we look at it from this, you know, again, non-American perspective, how does it look from the other perspective? Yeah, one of the things when people think about, you know, the revolution and how we get to the present is they tend to think about the whole period as one thing, right? So they think about 62 years of X. And right now there's a lot of protests going on in Cuba. There's protests scheduled to happen today. People who support the protests will talk about 62 years of dictatorship, as if those 62 years were all one thing. But in the beginning, it was a social revolution. A social revolution is not a dictatorship.

So you have to kind of break down the period and think about when it changed and how it changed and what caused those changes over time. On the Cuban government side, they talk about 62 years of revolution as if it were all one thing, as if the government today was a revolutionary government, you know. Yeah. Exactly parallel to the revolutionary government of 1959 or, you know, or 70 or something. And that just isn't the case. There is nothing now that makes the Cuban government a revolutionary government. That's, you know, it's a government that's been in power for for over 62 years. Its power is completely consolidated. It controls media, education, every aspect of life. And there's no spontaneous mobilization supporting it.

So you can't talk about it as a revolutionary government. Yeah, there's no current revolutionary movement that's, that's, yeah, keeping it revolutionary. It's an entrenched, it's an entrenched government that's been in place and is seeking to, to maintain its power. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what is, I mean, when, again, the theme of your book is the intertwined relationship of Cuba and America, how does that intertwine continue? I mean, I know about the, you know, 60 odd years of American presidents fulminating about, you know, communist Cuba and dictatorship and whatnot. That's been my experience of it. But what are the what are the deeper intertwinings? The two governments, not just the governments, but the people,

the societies, the country still, you know, remained intertwined, remained intertwined today. And when a few years ago, when Obama opened up to Cuba and Raul Castro was obviously a part of that opening, one side couldn't have done it alone. There was a sense that the relationship might change, that something would shift, that the permanent state of hostility and animosity would, it wouldn't disappear entirely, but there would be more cracks in it and more opportunities for people to people contact. And I was in Cuba when Obama was there and talked to lots and lots of people. And there was a real sense of possibility and hope, the sense that something might shift a little bit.

People were starting to open little businesses because there were also some reforms on the Cuban side. And they expected more American tourists to come so their businesses would flourish. And they had really, they didn't think things would be suddenly paradise or anything, nothing like that, but they did expect a shift. And then all that was quashed with the election of Donald Trump. Many Cubans expected Biden to return, not to return to all of Obama's policies, but to start chipping away at Trump's new restrictions. And that hasnressively. And so it became hard in that context for Biden to ease restrictions without being seen to be, you know, placating the Cuban

government at a moment where he didn't want to be seen that way. And particularly when you think about the Florida vote, because U.S.-Cuba policy is always in part about the Florida vote. Well, and that's one of the really interesting things about Cuba, the United States, because it's one of the few nations that we have a, you know, large group of Americans who have a strong, I would maybe say nationalistic stance on the country. Israel is another example where there's a, you know, we have a, you know, it's part of American politics is wrapped up in, you know, expatriates who have, you know, very, very strong feelings and vote accordingly. I mean, I remember I was, you know, campaigning for a candidate for our local city council who has endorsed our local

city council candidate who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, which is a local group here, one of the many groups to endorse this candidate. And I was tabling and a guy walks by and says, I could never vote for her because she's endorsed by the Democratic Socialists. And I'm Cuban. That's crazy. I could never vote for her. And I was like, that's so this has nothing to do, the one has nothing to do with the other, right? But, you

know, that politics is so present for a lot of folks in the United States. And that's kind of unusual. I mean, you know, that's not the case with Japan or any, you know, many, many other countries that we have relations with, but that's something that, yeah, Biden would have to think about when coming up with thinking about his foreign policy. Absolutely. But, you know, many, many other countries that we have relations with. But that's something that, yeah, Biden would have to think about when coming up with thinking about his foreign policy. Absolutely. But you know, and one of the there's so many interesting things there, because a lot of times when people think about the Cuban lobby in South Florida, people think about that old Cuban guard who fled Fidel Castro to protect their properties and because they lost their properties, rather. And when, but that's actually, they're not so, they're not the

dominant group anymore. The majority, not the majority, but the largest group of Cuban Americans in South Florida right now are people who came to the U.S. after the 1990s, in the 1990s and after. So, people who arrived in the U.S. after the fall of the Soviet Union. So, these are not people who lost property to the Cuban Revolution. They were people who were educated, US after the fall of the Soviet Union. So, these are not people who lost property to the Cuban Revolution. They were people who were educated. They were the children of the revolution. They probably worked for the Cuban state. They went to Cuban state schools because all schools are Cuban state schools, right? So, their recent arrivals, they're not some wealthy like wealthy, you know, wealthy, old right wing, right there. But they are, they are among Trump's strongest supporters, the people who arrived more recently. Yeah. And why is that? Do you think?

I don't, I've never really seen a satisfactory, a completely satisfactory answer to that question. I think it has to do with something that the person who went by your table said. It's like, they've left, they've decided to leave, so they reject anything that reminds them of that. And of course, if you say someone's a socialist, that's what the cuban government was in theory yeah so so they reject that so it's the same name at the very least yeah at the very least right so they they reject anything that reminds them of that um yeah of of of their of their of their own government in cuba so it's, I think that's a large part of it. Well, let me ask you this to finish. I mean, you said that there was a sense that there was a new day in the relationship between the United States and Cuba when Obama,

you know, loosened some of those restrictions and the embargo. Do you feel that the relations are actually moving into a new period that will see something new in the relation between these two countries? No. I love the firm answer. You know, really, it's too soon to tell. I think a lot of it depends on what happens in Cuba in the coming days and weeks, right? There's the protests in July were brutally quashed, hundreds of people were arrested. Of those, hundreds still remain in jail. There's new protests that are planned for And the government, you know, the government's being really efficient in responding to it.

So it's not, you know, independent journalists are being not allowed to leave their houses or apartments to cover it. You know, known activists and dissidents have like state security forces outside their homes, not letting them leave. You know, some of the dissidents have said, put out, you know, white sheets as a sign of support and for the release of prisoners, etc. And if someone puts up white sheets, they're harassed, or they're taken down or they're right. So, so nobody knows, nobody knows what will happen today with the protests, much less what's going to happen, you know, what's going to happen weeks and months down the line. What I would say is that in general, when Americans take a hard, when the American government takes a hard line, it kind of, depending on how that's phrased and pursued, that can alienate a lot of the world. I think part of the reason Cuba retains so much support across the world is because it is a symbol of kind of standing up to U.S. interference, right?

Historically, going back decades. And the Cuban government knew how to use that to its advantage. And so when the U.S. government speaks in that kind of language of trying to, you know, it kind of alienates other countries. So for example, the US a few months ago tried to get a lot of the world to condemn the US. Sorry, the US tried to get a lot of the world to condemn Cuban attacks on the protesters and very few countries joined the US in part because of this older history. So I think the US should avoid anything that that smacks of overt interference. There are some elected officials in South Florida who begin always when something like this happens, begin calling for U.S. intervention. The U.S. should make clear that that is not an option. I think they would do well to soften the language and talk about the need for dialogue and negotiation. Yeah.

You know, because the U.S. isn't going to be served if there's a violent explosion in Cuba, right? That's not going to serve anyone, not the U.S., certainly not Cuba. So you want, most Cubans do want change, but they want peaceful change. want, most Cubans do want change, but they want peaceful change. And talk of intervention and really kind of hostile, aggressive talk doesn't serve that. Yeah, I mean, for all the, you know, failings of the government and everything else, it seems like a big part of the U.S. stance has been based on the U.S. not accepting that this is an independent nation, you know, that and, you know, we have our sphere of influence and we expect countries within it to, you know, be part of our sphere and not do their own thing. And, you know,

they, they defy us at their peril seems to be a big part of it. Right. And Cubans have always known how to, how to turn that to their advantage, the Cuban government. So, so it doesn't, it's, it's a, it's a foolish kind of policy to pursue. Well, Ada, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show to talk to us about it. Thank you. This has been fascinating. I really appreciate it. Thank you. The book is called Cuba and American History. Folks can pick it up at our special bookshop

that I will give the URL to in the outro or wherever you get your books. Ada Ferrer, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Well, thank you once again to Ada Ferrer for coming on the show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. If you want to check out her book,

Cuba and American History, once again, you can go to our special bookshop at factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books. I want to thank our producers, Chelsea Jacobson and Sam Roudman, our engineer, Ryan Connor, Andrew WK for our theme song, the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible custom gaming PC that I'm recording this very episode for you on.

You can find me online at Adam Conover, wherever you get your social media or at adamconover.net. If you want to send me an email, you can send it to factually at adamconover.net. And thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week on Factually.