Sample Entries
Sample Entries
from the Introductory
Chapter
1801-1808 In his first presidential inaugural
address March 4,
1801, Thomas Jefferson declares that the people of the United States
are
blessed by "possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our
descendants
to the thousandth and thousandth generation." Two years later the
Jefferson
Administration approximately doubles the size of the original states
with
the Louisiana Purchase from France. In 1808, Jefferson sends General
James
Wilkinson to Cuba to find out if the Spanish would consider ceding Cuba
to the United States. Spain is not interested.
April 28, 1823 Having acquired East and
West Florida from
Spain a few years earlier, the United States has expanded to within 90
miles of Cuba. In a letter to Minister to Spain Hugh Nelson, Secretary
of State John Quincy Adams describes the likelihood of U.S. "annexation
of Cuba" within half a century despite obstacles: "But there are laws
of
political as well as of physical gravitation; and if an apple severed
by
the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground,
Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain,
and incapable of self support, can gravitate only towards the North
American
Union, which by the same law of nature cannot cast her off from its
bosom."
Cubans calls this policy la fruta madura (ripe fruit);
Washington
would wait until the fruit is considered ripe for the picking.
October 10, 1868 The Ten Years' War or
Cuba's First War
of Independence begins when plantation owner Carlos Manuel de
Céspedes,
accompanied by 37 other planters, proclaims the independence of Cuba in
the Grito de Yara issued from his plantation. Céspedes
frees
and arms his slaves. Two days later the brothers Antonio and
José
Maceo--free blacks--join the rebel ranks. Some Dominican exiles,
including
Máximo Gómez, help to train the rebels, using their
experience
from fighting against Spain on nearby Hispaniola.
April 25, 1898 The U.S. Congress formally
declares war
[against Spain], saying that the state of war between the United States
and Spain began April 21. In the United States, this is known as the
Spanish-American
War. In Cuba, it is known as the U.S. intervention in Cuba's War of
Independence.
August 12, 1898 Spain and the United
States sign a bilateral
armistice. Cuba is not represented at the negotiations.
1901 To codify control of Cuba, the U.S.
Congress on March
2 adds the Platt Amendment to an Army Appropriations bill. The
amendment
provides that Cuba has only a limited right to conduct its own foreign
policy and debt policy; the United States may intervene militarily at
any
time....Since the U.S. Government makes it clear that its military
occupation
will not end until this amendment becomes part of Cuban law, Cuba
incorporates
the Platt Amendment into its 1901 Constitution.
September 5-10, 1933 A junta (the Pentarquía--
Ramón Grau San Martín, Sergio Carbó, Porfirio
Franco,
José Miguel Irisarri, and Guillermo Portela) runs the country.
Ambassador
Welles describes the rebels as having "communistic" ideas and on
September
7 he asks for U.S. military intervention. President Roosevelt, despite
his promotion of the Good Neighbor Policy toward Latin America, orders
at least 29 warships to Cuba and to Key West, alerts the U.S. Marines,
and prepares bombers for use if necessary.
1952 Fidel Castro, who graduated from law
school in 1950,
is running for Congress as a member of the Orthodox Party (Partido
del
Pueblo Cubano--Ortodoxo). General Batista runs for president but
has
little chance of winning. On March 10, Batista stages a coup, suspends
the Constitution, cancels the elections and becomes dictator. The
Truman
Administration quickly recognizes his government and sends military and
economic aid. Organized resistance begins.
Sample Entries
from 1959-1995
1959
January 1 Troops under the command of Che Guevara
take Santa Clara,
and General Fulgencio Batista flees to the Dominican Republic in the
early
morning hours. Revolutionary forces assume control in Havana. Fidel
Castro
and his troops enter Santiago de Cuba and seize the Moncada Army
Barracks
without firing a shot as 5,000 soldiers surrender to the July 26
Movement.
Castro calls a general strike to prevent a counterrevolutionary coup.
Cubans
whose sympathies are with Batista start leaving Cuba while many Cubans
in exile begin returning. In Washington, supporters of the revolution
take
over the Cuban Embassy.
January 7 The United States recognizes
the new Cuban Government,
already recognized by several countries in the Western
Hemisphere.
January 8 After marching across the
country from Oriente
province, Fidel Castro and the main body of the revolutionary army
enter
Havana.
January 10 Earl E. T. Smith resigns as
U.S. ambassador
to Cuba. Philip W. Bonsal will replace him.
October 11-21 Three raids by planes
flying from the United
States bomb sugar mills in Pinar del Río and Camagüey
provinces.
Cuba is making efforts to purchase planes for its defense.
October 16 The United States tells
Britain that it opposes
a British plan to sell jet fighters to Cuba. Britain later cancels the
sale, saying U.S. pressure has nothing to do with the decision.
October 22 In Las Villas province, an
airplane strafes
a train full of passengers. Responding to such attacks, Cubans form
popular
militia.
1960
January Cuba expropriates 70,000 acres of property
owned by U.S.
sugar companies, including 35,000 acres of pasture and forests owned by
United Fruit Company in Oriente province. United Fruit owns
approximately
235,000 acres in addition to this. By confronting United Fruit (later
United
Brands and Chiquita Brands), Cuba is antagonizing a powerful
organization
that played a major role in the 1954 overthrow of the elected Arbenz
Government
in Guatemala. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles has been both a
stockholder
and a longtime legal adviser for the company, including preparation of
contracts in 1930 and 1936 with the Ubico dictatorship in Guatemala;
his
brother Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA, was once president of the
company; UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge has been a member of its board
of directors; Walter Bedell Smith, head of the CIA before Dulles,
became
president of United Fruit after the overthrow of Arbenz.
August The CIA takes steps to recruit
members of organized
crime for help in assassinating Prime Minister Castro. According to
testimony
by Colonel Sheffield Edwards on May 30, 1975, to the Senate Select
Intelligence
Committee on Assassinations, Richard Mervin Bissell Jr., former Yale
professor
turned CIA chief of covert operations, asks Edwards, director of the
CIA's
Office of Security, to locate someone who could assassinate Castro.
Bissell
confirms this in his own 1975 testimony.
1961
January 3 The U.S. Government breaks diplomatic
relations with Cuba
and arranges for the Swiss Embassy in Havana to assume its diplomatic
and
consular representation in Cuba. Later the Czechoslovakian Embassy in
Washington
provides the same service for Cuba.
January 5 The UN Security Council rejects
without a vote
Cuba's charge that an invasion is being planned by the United States,
which
formally denies any such plan.
April 7 The New York Times runs
an article about
the plan for invasion. Originally the article was to appear under a
four-column
headline, but it is cut to one column. The published article omits the
original's mention of the role of the CIA. Instead, it refers to
"experts"
who have been training "anti-Castro forces" in Guatemala, Florida and
Louisiana.
This training is "an open secret" in Miami, says the Times, and
couriers' boats "run a virtual shuttle between the Florida coast and
Cuba
carrying instructions, weapons and explosives."
April 17 Before dawn, a CIA public
relations man releases
to the press a message supposedly from the president of the
Revolutionary
Council, José Miró Cardona, but actually written by CIA
agent
E. Howard Hunt Jr. It announces that "Cuban patriots" have begun "to
liberate"
Cuba. The CIA's Radio Swan broadcasts to the Cuban people a call to
arms.
The CIA's invasion force, Brigade 2506 of some 1,200 men, invades at
Playa
Girón (Girón Beach) on the Bahía de Cochones (Bay
of Pigs). (In Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion is known as the Battle of
Girón.) The invaders are led and commanded by CIA agent Grayston
(Gray) Lynch and CIA operative William (Rip) Robertson....The internal
support anticipated by the CIA fails to materialize.
November 1 In a memo to President
Kennedy, Richard Goodwin,
the White House specialist on Latin America, advises that Attorney
General
Robert Kennedy would be the most effective commander of a new plan to
overthrow
Prime Minister Castro: Operation Mongoose. Goodwin and the Attorney
General
have been joined in planning Operation Mongoose by CIA operative
General
Edward G. Lansdale, who engineered the presidency of Ramón
Magsaysay
in the Philippines against the Hukbalahap rebellion and then went to
Vietnam
where he set up the Saigon regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.
1962
February 3 The Kennedy Administration announces a
total embargo
of trade with Cuba to take effect February 7. Since the prohibition of
exports (see October 19, 1960), the embargo has become
extraterritorial
with regulations barring re-export to Cuba of any commodities or
technical
data that originate in the United States.
1977
March 19 President Carter does not renew the ban
(renewable every
six months) on travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and
North Korea.
March 21 As a corollary to ending the
travel ban, the Carter
Administration lifts the ban on U.S. citizens' spending dollars in
Cuba.
In addition, surveillance flights over Cuba have been quietly suspended
(satellites continue to provide surveillance).
1982
April 19 The Reagan Administration re-institutes
the travel ban,
announcing that, effective May 15, U.S. citizens are prohibited from
making
expenditures incidental to travel to Cuba, effectively banning such
travel
for the ordinary U.S. tourist despite the fact that U.S. courts have
upheld
the constitutional right to travel.
1983
March 23 Launching plans for "Star Wars,"
President Reagan shows
on television some high-technology, aerial photographs of what he calls
threatening installations in Cuba, Grenada, and Nicaragua, including
the
airport being built in Grenada, which Reagan maintains is for military
use. The United States turned down Grenada's request for aid to build
the
9,000-foot runway, the minimum length for accommodating jumbo jets
needed
to compete for tourism in the Caribbean. Layne Dredging Ltd., a Miami
company,
working with Cuban engineers, recently completed a $2.9 million
dredging
contract. Another U.S. company designed the fuel storage tanks shown in
the photo. The prime contractor is Plessey Airports, subsidiary of the
British conglomerate, Plessey, with a $9.9 million contract
underwritten
by the British Government. Cuban construction workers are providing
labor.
More than a dozen countries are involved, including Canada.
October 28 White House deputy press
secretary Les Janka
writes a letter of resignation (effective October 31) because he
believes
his credibility has been damaged "perhaps irreparably" by the erroneous
information he has disseminated about the invasion of Grenada.
1990
September 28 In a major speech, President Castro
declares there
is no doubt that Cuba is entering "a special period during peacetime"
when
the unreliability of former CMEA [Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance,
a trade alliance of socialist countries from 1949 until disbanded in
February
1991] trading partners creates scarcities in Cuba of a magnitude
similar
to what would be caused by a wartime naval blockade. CMEA members have
been accounting for 85 to 88 percent of Cuba's trade.
1992
February 5 Representative Torricelli (D-New
Jersey) introduces the
"Cuban Democracy Act" (see July 31, 1991) in the House of
Representatives.
Bob Graham (D-Florida) introduces the same legislation in the Senate.
The
bill would tighten the embargo in many different ways, including
punishment
of third nations which trade with Cuba and prohibition of trade with
Cuba
by U.S.-owned subsidiaries in third countries, thus incorporating the
Mack
Amendment (see July 20, 1989). Cuban Americans divide sharply
over
this legislation. While the Cuban American National Foundation helped
write
the CDA, many Cuban Americans, even those who oppose President Castro,
believe that tightening the embargo will only lead to more economic
hardship
for the Cuban people. For Torricelli, this is precisely the purpose;
later,
he tells a Georgetown University audience that he wants to "wreak havoc
on that island."
October 7 From an offshore speedboat, a
group from Comandos
L [Cuban American group based in Miami] fires shots at the Hotel Melia
on Varadero Beach. Owned jointly by Cuba and Spain, the Melia is one of
Cuba's main resort hotels.
October 14 The Miami Herald
reports that Comandos
L faxed this "war communique" to the Herald: "On the evening of October
7, 1992, Comandos L attacked a military objective off the coast of the
province of Matanzas, Cuba." The fax does not mention that the
"military"
target is a tourist hotel and that the "military objective" would be to
scare tourists away from Cuba.
October 14 Cuba sends a letter formally
protesting the October
7 terrorist attack to the State Department, which refers the protest to
the Justice Department, which in turn asks the FBI to investigate.
Cuban
officials present to the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana
two volumes of evidence, including eyewitness accounts, photographs,
and
bullets taken from the Hotel Melia.
1993
January 7 At a news conference, [Comandos L
leader] Tony Bryant
announces plans for more raids against targets in Cuba, especially
hotels.
Warning tourists to stay off the island, he declares, "From this point
on, we're at war," adding, "The Neutrality Act doesn't exist."
1995
February 9 Senator Jesse Helms introduces the
"Cuban Liberty and
Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act" that would tighten the embargo.
Ignacio
Sánchez, a trustee of the Cuban American National Foundation,
helped
draft this legislation, including the following measures: Cuban
Americans
would be empowered to make new claims on property expropriated decades
ago; the International Claims Settlement Act of 1949, which currently
applies
only to U.S. citizens at the time of expropriation, would be amended to
allow retroactive claims by any Cuban who has since become a U.S.
citizen;
U.S. citizens who formerly owned property in Cuba could pursue claims
in
U.S. courts against those who "traffic" in such properties; it would be
unlawful for any U.S. "person" (citizen or corporation) to extend
financing
to any foreign person who "traffics" in Cuban property claimed by a
U.S.
person; within 90 days of enactment and each year thereafter, the
President
would have to submit a report to Congress on all foreign commerce with
Cuba, including joint ventures merely "under consideration" along with
names of the parties involved; no foreign "corporate officer,
principal,
or shareholder of an entity" involved in deals concerning any property
claimed by a U.S. person could enter the United States nor could such a
person's husband or wife or child. The bill describes the kind of
"transitional"
government that would be acceptable to Washington, including an edict
that
neither Fidel Castro nor Raúl Castro could participate in "free
and fair elections."
February 14 Representative Dan Burton
(R-Indiana), chair
of the House International Relations (formerly Foreign Affairs)
Committee's
Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, introduces the House
version
of the Helms bill. Cuba begins nationwide teach-ins to inform the Cuban
people that Cuban Americans could try, under the Helms-Burton law, to
seize
private homes, public schools, union halls, day-care centers, sugar
mills,
and other property.
April 17 Appearing at a rally in Miami
alongside Jorge Mas Canosa,
Senator Jesse Helms endorses the Cuban American National Foundation's
call
for a naval blockade of Cuba. The Baltimore Sun reports that a
fund-raiser
adds $75,000 to Helms's re-election campaign during this visit.
May 2 The Clinton Administration
announces the new migration
agreement. The U.S. Government will allow all of the 20,916 Cubans held
at Guantánamo to enter the United States at a rate of around 500
a month (some 6,000 were already scheduled for entry). About 5,000 will
be eligible for entry on the same grounds as over 11,000 who have
recently
been admitted (children, the elderly, the medically ill, with their
families);
the remaining number, approximately 15,000, will be credited against
the
20,000 annual Cuban migration figure at the rate of 5,000 per year for
three years, beginning in September 1995 regardless of when they arrive
in the United States. Cuba agrees to accept all Cubans who want to
return
or who are deemed ineligible for U.S. entry. To avoid another wave of balseros
(rafters), the U.S. Coast Guard will return Cubans picked up at sea to
Cuba once it is determined that they have no acceptable claim to
asylum.
Attorney General Janet Reno says Cubans who reach the U.S. mainland
will
be processed like immigrants from any other country.
May 12 The New York Times reports
that U.S. intelligence
officials, speaking anonymously, say Cuba has neither the money nor the
will to support anti-American guerrillas and that of the seven
countries
labeled sponsors of terrorism by the State Department--Cuba, Iran,
Iraq,
Libya, North Korea, the Sudan, and Syria--only Iran promotes
"terrorism"
aimed at the United States and its allies.
June 23-30 On a trip organized by the
Freedom to Travel
Campaign, 34 U.S. students, ages 10 to 24 years, challenge the travel
ban
by going to Cuba on vacation. Prior to departure they received a letter
from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control warning
that they could receive sentences of ten years in jail and $250,000
each
in fines.
August 17-18 President Castro attends the
Summit Meeting
of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad
and Tobago. Because of Cuba's membership, the U.S. does not allow
Puerto
Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands to participate as observers.
September 22 Cuba establishes diplomatic
relations with
Swaziland. Cuba has diplomatic relations with more than 150
countries.
October 19 The Senate passes the
Helms-Burton legislation,
minus Title III, with a vote of 74 to 24. Before this bill can be sent
to President Clinton for signature or veto, it must go to a
House-Senate
conference to resolve differences between Senate and House versions. On
March 12, 1996, President Clinton signs this bill, including Title III,
into law.
October 22 While President Clinton hosts
a party for heads
of state excluding the Cuban leader, President Castro returns to Harlem
for the first time in 35 years. Invited by a coalition called Africans
in the Americas Committee to Welcome Fidel Castro, he addresses more
than
1,300 people in Reverend Calvin Butts's Abyssinian Baptist Church,
filled
to overflowing with invited guests, including Representatives Charles
Rangel,
José Serrano, and Nydia Velazquez, all Democrats of New York. He
elicits one of several standing ovations with an offer to send Cuban
doctors
to help look after people in Harlem or any place in the United States
in
need of medical care.
November 2 For the fourth year in a row,
the United Nations
General Assembly votes overwhelmingly for a Cuban resolution calling
for
an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. The vote is 117 to 3
(the
United States, Israel and Uzbekistan) with 38 abstentions and 27 not
voting.
November 8 A group of U.S. veterans--from
World War II,
Korea, and Vietnam--arrive in Havana from Cancún, Mexico, on the
seventh Freedom to Travel Campaign, challenging the travel ban by not
requesting
permission for going to Cuba.
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