Introduction

In the months following the December 17, 2014 declarations by US President Barack Obama offering an end to the hostile stance of his country toward Cuba, the Cuban Revolutionary Government demanded many politically impossible conditions as prerequisite to a renewal of diplomatic relations between the two countries, making some observers wonder why Cuba did not accept without reservations the opening offered by its powerful neighbor after being hostile for five decades. These observers would have found an answer to their question by reflecting on the history of the people of Cuba since 1511: a settlement established there by a group of Spaniards in that year and become an European-style nation with one of the largest economies in Latin America where, 350 years later, in 1959, a critical majority following the leadership of Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz rejected the market economy that had made their island nation wealthy, and embarked on a global revolutionary mission. Since 1959, the government of the Caribbean island of Cuba, 90 miles away from the United States of America, has defied its powerful neighbor. The story of the improbable survival of the Cuban Revolutionary Government in its struggle against the most powerful country in the world has kept international attention on Cuba for more than half a century; but it has also overshadowed the brilliance of the hybrid culture developed in the island since the Spanish conquerors brought Western civilization to the Americas 500 years ago, and obscured the accomplishments of Cubans in the sciences, arts and letters before and after 1959. Icons of the Cuban Revolution of 1959 are recognized worldwide, but unfortunately there is not an equal awareness about Cuban contributors to world knowledge in natural history during the Enlightenment; appreciation of the influence of Cuban poets José María Heredia, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, and Julián del Casal in Spanish and Spanish American literature in the nineteenth century; or knowledge of the fact that a Cuban, Carlos J. Finlay, discovered that the mosquito was the transmission vector of yellow fever. Someone who does not know those names and what they represent in Cuban cultural history can hardly claim to know it. This book acknowledges the indigenous civilization existing in Cuba in 1511 at the time of its conquest by Spaniards led by Sir Diego Velázquez, and stresses pervading indigenous features in Cuban material culture, and the Spanish spoken in Cuba. Also it acknowledges the voluntary immigration of Europeans, and the

mostly forced arrival of Africans since that time. In the course of 500 years these circumstances formed the present characteristics of the Cuban population. It was the Spanish conquerors and their Cuban descendants that developed the commercial growth of tobacco and sugar cane as cash crops and of the manufactures based on them that formed the underpinnings of what was once one of the wealthiest economies of the Americas, a circumstance which, in turn, developed a solid Western-style culture in this Caribbean island. But those activities depended on the forced labor of thousands of African slaves and their Cuban descendants. The first two chapters of this book highlight how a Western-style culture had taken root in Cuba by the end of the eighteenth century; describe the flourishing in Cuba of the arts, sciences, and letters in the eighteenth century and in the nineteenth century; and present the formation of a civil society there fueled by an export economy dominated by sugar production in the nineteenth century. The names of prominent Cuban poets, artists, musicians and scientists mentioned in these chapters are important to this purpose, because they document the fact that in early modern Cuba there were Cuban producers of that type of culture, and that Cubans were not mere consumers of cultural products from outside. Visitors to Cuba who see churches like the cathedral in Santiago and academic institutions like the Economic Society in Havana (now the Instituto Fernando Ortiz) will appreciate their significance better if they know about composers like Esteban Salas, who composed music for the former between 1775 and 1804, and authors like José María Heredia, whose poems were first published in Revista Bimestre Cubana, published by the latter. In contrast to the many analyses that look at Cuba as a mere passive victim of imperialism, this volume looks at Cuban agency that between 1878 and 1898 was influential in bringing down not only slavery, but also the system of legal racial discrimination that had been erected in Cuba from 1511 to 1868, and in 1898 saw the implementation of universal male suffrage together with home rule under the Cuban Autonomous Government. We will examine the accomplishments as well as the problems of the Republic of Cuba (granted formal independence in 1902 by the United States after it wrested the island from Spain in 1898). Although it came into being with restricted independence, some of its leaders brought about important economic and social reforms that created sociopolitical and economic contradictions that fostered the rise of the Cuban Revolutionary Government. Finally, we will look at the accomplishments and the shortcomings of that self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist government; its troubled relation with the United States; and the global revolutionary mission that it has embraced since its inception. Cuba cannot be ignored by the United States, located as it is on the Caribbean south of Florida, between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Its size is 42,800 square miles, and its total population is over 11 million people, with a 95 percent literacy rate. This work is based on secondary and primary sources, and on knowledge acquired by the author during many years of research. Unlike most books about Cuba, it pays due attention to the first 400 years after the arrival of the Spaniards to the island, showing that a Cuban nation had developed from the European and African settlers with the indigenous population before the creation of the Cuban

Republic in 1902. It describes the accomplishments and failures of that Republic that made possible the rise of the Cuban Revolutionary Government. The legacy of a people is its culture, and the Spanish-American culture of Cuba can be appreciated in the works of poets like the pioneer of Romanticism in Hispanic letters, José María Heredia; musicians like the popular-classic composer Ernesto Lecuona, and painters like the world renowned Wifredo Lam. If there is a theme to this analysis of Cuban history and culture, it is that since the sixteenth century, Cubans have accomplished more than what many would expect from people in an island away from the centers of world power, and that since the middle of the eighteenth century Cubans have striven to make a mark at what they have undertaken: whether it might be the development of a wealthy sugar export economy or that of a Marxist-Leninist state. If there is something that this book does not want to be, it is teleological. In the course of Cuban history one can see many paths taken, and unexpected ways succeeding. Because this is a very short volume, I suggest to the reader in whom it may spark an interest in knowing more about Cuba to read one of two general histories of Cuba: the single volume Hugh Thomas’s Cuba or The Pursuit of Freedom (updated edition: New York, 1998), or the multi-volume Historia de la Nación Cubana, edited by Ramiro Guerra Sánchez at Havana in 1957, but still the most balanced history of Cuba from 1511-1950. Also, I suggest that readers consult the bibliography of specialized books in English at the end of this book for further reading on specific topics in Cuban history that they want to explore.