A Brief History of Indigenous and European dynamics in Cuba and the United States. In the beginning human occupation of the Caribbean there were indigenous groups including Tainos, Arawaks and Caribs. The history and “pre” history of these peoples is not well known or understood. There is archaeological evidence that the ancient Cubans participated in the Pre-Columbian ball court system which involved ritual and sacrifice around a ball game that is also poorly understood. But this evidence does seem to indicate a broader participation in contemporary spheres of influence related to reigning dynasties and empires including Aztecans, Mayans and Toltecans. From what archaeologists and historians have pieced together the Caribs may have been a more aggressive folk who raided other groups for women and goods. Some scholars think the Tainos and Arawaks spoke related languages or even dialects, but all of this is subjective based on fragmented strands of early documents perceived and written by colonial invaders. It is tempting to characterize the Tainos as a more artisan race subjected to perhaps the violent proclivities of a more raucous people the Caribs, in a sociopolitical dance such as that between Mesoamerican empires to the western mainland and perhaps even the faraway island cultures of the Minoans and Mycenaeans in the Mediterranean some 2500 years earlier. Both stories share the outcome of an invasion by sea faring people. In both cases not much is left of these ancient cultures but remnants, relics, a fragmented history.
The solid history begins with the European invaders, who were expanding their empires by British, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Portuguese and others. Today the Caribbean reflects this multivocality of languages and ethnicities. According to Richard Gott, on October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed Baracoa, which is now in the province of Guantanamo, Cuba and claimed it for Spain.
The sordid genocidal and ethnocidal histories of Spaniard Conquistadors and other European invaders with their brutalities of forced enslavement, religious persecution, plundering mayhem, and vast introduction of diseases and plagues is a long tortuous chapter in the history of the Americas. Because of Cuba’s proximity to the North American continent and its large land mass, it became a political and economic focal point of interest and soon because a thriving colony for the trade of slave and lumber, the manufacture of rum and a significant source of revenue for the Spanish crown and a key locus for the infamous “middle passage” of legend and lore.
By the 1500s the French and the Spaniards were warring over nearby Florida. In 1565 the Spaniards establish St. Augustine which is now on record as the longest continuously occupied European city in the continental United States. As English colonists increased their hold to the north is what had come to been known as the Carolinas, runaway slaves and persecuted indigenous people (i.e. Creek, Yuchi, Choctaw, Chickasaw and many others) fled south, eventually creating the Seminole nation in the Florida sometime in the 18th century.
In the early 1800s, Irish Protestant Andrew Jackson invaded Florida on behalf of the U.S. and made his name by warring against Spaniards and Indian groups in what came to be known as the Creek War and the First Seminole War. Jackson also defeated a British attempt to lay claim to Florida in 1814. The U.S. acquired Florida from Spain through treaty in 1821. The indigenous people withdrew to the swamps and made their homes on pillars deep in the Everglades. In 1828 Jackson was elected President and in 1830 through the Indian Removal Act forced thousands of the remaining indigenous people in the Southeastern U.S. to move to Oklahoma territory part of the lands obtained through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 from the French, in what has become known as the “Trail of Tears”.
Many indigenous nations of what is now known as the Southeastern U.S. have transcended into myth and legend, much as the indigenous nations of Cuba did. But the Seminole tribe has thrived economically, first through raising cattle, and later through tourism, gambling, and tobacco sells. In 2006 they purchased the “Hard Rock Café” Chain for $965,000,000.00.
Back to Cuba, various European forces continue to compete for various islands and resources throughout the Caribbean as the Americans continue their continental expansion westward with significant influxes of immigrants from failing or impoverished European states. The Americans’ conflict with the Spaniards culminated in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Afterwards, the U.S. granted Cuba their independence because of its size and economic potential and proximity to the U.S. On the other hand the U.S. made Puerto Rico a protectorate because of its smaller size and distance from the continental U.S.
In 1902 the Platt Amendment reserved the right for the United States to occupy Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. In 1930 Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy helped ease U.S. /Cuba relations. This began a time of economic partnerships between American and Cuban financial interests and Cuba thrived as a resort destination place for well heeled Americans who fancied this tropical paradise and had the money to indulge. But throughout the first half of the 1900s a socialistic working class movement was brewing worldwide, and this class war led to several national revolutions, most notably in Russia (1905-1907 and 1917), Mexico (1910-1920) and Cuba (1953-1959).
In 1959 the top blew off the “good neighbor” relations when revolutionary Fidel Castro overthrew U.S. back President Fulgencio Batista and Castro assumed power. Remember this was at the end of the fierce McCarthy jingoistic demagogic anti-communistic decade in the United States and the proletariat was on the move many places in the world. Initially 200,000 affluent Cuban immigrants moved to the U.S., mostly to Florida, many with jewels and coins sewn into their clothing.
By the early 1960s we were in the midst of the significant Cold War standoff between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, first during the “Bay of Pigs” incident when Kennedy tried to use covert CIA forces to overthrow Castro in 1961 and the next year, when the Soviets tried to place armed missiles just off our coast in Cuba in what has become known as the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” Afterwards Cuba ceased to be a major battleground for the Cold War and its primary theaters moved back to Asia, setting the scene for the Vietnam War (1959-1975) and the Soviet War in Afghanistan (1979-1989). Between 1962 and 1965, 30,000 more refugees came via private planes, boats, rafts, and other makeshift vessels. Between 1965 and 1973, the Cuban government permitted two daily flights and another 300,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States.
In 1980 the so-called Freedom Flotilla allowed 124,000 Cubans to leave their homeland and they were granted asylum by President Carter. Unfortunately Castro used the opportunity to unload prison inmates and addicts. Although they were a minority of the new emigrants, most were still detained in Mariel, Florida in 1987 until their issues could be sorted out. They became known as the “Marielitos” and the stigma was not easily erased.
In 1990 Castro lowered the legal age for leaving Cuba to visit the U.S. from 60 to 20 years old, bringing about a new wave of immigrants of suspected backgrounds. In 1994, 24,000 Cuban refugees detained at Guantanamo Station until U.S. acceptance in April, 1995.
To sum up this movement of people, in 1960 there were about 79,000 Cubans-Americans in the United States. By 1990 there were over a million.
The Newest Chapter in Poor Relations: In 2002 the Naval Base at Guantanamo became the detainment prison for over 500 suspected terrorists labeled “unlawful enemy combatants” by the Bush administration. The Bush administration and their representatives have been accused of violations of the Geneva Convention including torture.
Most of the detainees have now been released to various countries throughout the world. So the land of multicultural roots, continues to send out seeds. Most were found to be not guilty of any crimes except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now about 220 remain. President Obama is trying to close the detention center, but weak-kneed members of Congress have refused to fund their transfer to Maximum Security Prisons in the United States. Apparently there is insufficient evidence to charge and try them for crimes or the evidence has been so badly tainted by unethical practices that it is not useable in a court of law. While members of Congress cry not in their back yard, every red blooded American knows that any detainees unlucky enough to escape (something never done from a max security prison in the U.S.) will be hunted down by every gun toting American from sea to shining sea.
The irony is that it now appears most of these detainees should never have been detained. A good number have probably turned against the U.S. by virtue of their inhumane detention. Some of these detainees have included children and ethnic minorities who fled China to because of religious persecution. If remaining bad guys are really bad, then locking them away in a maximum security prison is a sensible idea. It certainly makes good economic sense. Keeping the albatross of the Guantanamo Penal colony makes no sense. Its closure is one of the very few issues that McCain and Obama agreed upon. Whether we should even occupy Cuba remains another question for history, but closing the penal colony is a no brainer. But our ability, to do the right thing in Cuba for the first time in over a century, is blocked by chicken livered yellow bellied Democrats on one side of the aisle and obstructionist greedy and corrupt Republicans on the other. Let history decide which is more unpatriotic, the coward or the crook. If President Obama is unable to “deliver” on this campaign promise it is not because of the primary resident of the White House, but because of the self-serving crooked and cowardly dogs the house at the end of the mall.
Sources: Much of this is gleaned from various encyclopedic sources, Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” and ancient lecture notes from the late 1990s-early 2000s from my course ANTH/SOC 205: Ethnic Groups in Contemporary Societies. Therefore, it should be taken for face value, and nothing more. Virtually none of it is from primary research or first-hand knowledge.
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