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That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution
Lars Schoultz offers a comprehensive chronicle of U.S. policy toward the Cuban Revolution. Using a rich array of documents and firsthand interviews with U.S. and Cuban officials, he tells the story of the attempts and failures of ten U.S. administrations to end the Cuban Revolution. He concludes that despite the overwhelming advantage in size and power that the United States enjoys over its neighbor, the Cubans' historical insistence on their right to self-determination has been a constant thorn in the side of American administrations, influenced both U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy on a much larger stage, and resulted in a freeze in diplomatic relations of unprecedented longevity.
745 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2009
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April 8, 2024
That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, Lars Schoultz (1942- ), 2009, 745 pages, ISBN 9780807832608, Dewey 327.73
A litany of U.S. neocolonialism and bullying. Very readable.
"The president … lacks a sense of conviction on what is right and wrong." --Chester Bowles. p. 199.
"The U.S. had dominated us too long. The Cuban Revolution was determined to end that domination." --Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
410 BCE: "Right is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." --Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, book 5, chapter 17.
http://academics.wellesley.edu/Classi... p. 4.
Unless it would cost the strong too much. p. 6.
THOSE WHO OWN THE COUNTRY, GOVERN IT
1789-present: The secretary of state's job has always been to protect and promote U.S. interests abroad. No Cuban government could make any change without affecting U.S. interests. p. 98.
PIRACY
1822-1825: U.S. Navy and Marines invaded Cuba eight times to burn pirate stations and close a pirates' resale shop for plundered U.S.-shipping cargo. pp. 13, 572.
1868-1878: U.S. citizens aided an unsuccessful rebellion of Cubans against Spain. pp. 13-14.
RACISM
1869: "We have enough of inferior races in our midst without absorbing and not assimilating the Creoles and blacks of Cuba." --a U.S. congressman. p. 14.
BIG HELP
1895-1898: U.S. helped Cuba throw off Spanish control. U.S. would now control Cuba. pp. 14-33.
"Cuban heads of state are not representatives of a free Cuban people, but /administrators/ of American financial feudalism." --/The Nation/, 1933. p. 31.
1896: Cubans elected the wrong class of representatives to their U.S.-mandated constituent assembly. p. 24.
1897: U.S. investors were hungry for Cuban sugar and mining profits. p. 20.
RACISM
1897: "Cubans are no more capable of self government than the savages of Africa." --a U.S. Army general. p. 22.
1901: "No one wants more than I a good and stable government, of and by the people here [in Cuba], but we must see that the right class are in office." --Governor-General Leonard Wood. p. 8.
1903: U.S. investors in Cuban sugar were granted preferential access to the U.S. market. p. 28.
1926: Fidel Castro was born. p. 30. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel...
1933: U.S. overthrew Cuba's government, installed Batista as president. p. 32.
1933-1944, 1952-1958 Batista cared only about lining his own pockets. pp. 36, 45, 54-55. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulge...
Castro detailed Batista's abuses in Castro's speech, "History Will Absolve Me," 1953: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7... p. 93.
RED SCARE
1947: Truman administration started a second Red Scare, screening federal employees for possible association with communist or other unfavored groups. By the time of Castro's 1959 ascension, the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy had been cleansed of imagination and initiative. Elements of McCarthyism persist as of 2024. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCar... p. 90.
RACISM
1952: "Whether the new group under Batista will be any better is a question. Governments in Cuba are made up of Cubans." --a U.S. envoy. p. 49.
DICTATORS OK
[continuing through] 1952-present: Every U.S. administration supports right-wing dictators who support U.S. business interests. pp. 55-56, 58, 63, 247.
The U.S. arms, trains, and funds Latin American militaries so they can (1) keep a business-friendly tyrant in power, or, (2) overthrow their government if it becomes insufficiently friendly to U.S. business interests. pp. 60-61, 65, 67, 73.
Chile, 1973, Kissinger to Pinochet: "You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende. We want to help." p. 247.
SERFS
1953: More than half of rural dwellings had no toilet, inside or outside. Two percent of rural dwellings had running water. 80%-90% of rural children were infested with intestinal parasites. p. 53. More than half of Cuba's farmland was planted in sugar cane. More than 1/3 of Cuba's workforce was employed in sugar--most of them only for the 94-day harvest. p. 54.
CASTRO'S ACHIEVEMENTS
By 1975, Cubans were better fed, better housed, better clothed, better educated, and healthier than before the revolution and blockade. p. 268.
GUATEMALA
1954: The Eisenhower administration overthrew Guatemala's government[, beginning 40 years of terror. This taught Che Guevara that only armed force could bring justice]. p. 59.
CASTRO
1956-: Fidel Castro led a revolution against the Batista government. pp. 63-.
REWARDS
[continuing through] 1957-present: U.S. ambassadorships are rewards for financial contributions to the president's political party. p. 63.
CASTRO
1959: Fidel Castro's regime began. p. 83.
1959: Castro lowered rents and telephone rates. p. 94.
1959: Castro nationalized 3,750 square miles of cattle land, 3,000 square miles of sugarcane land, and 31 sugar mills. He offered investors tax value, which was 20% of market value, to be paid in 20-year bonds yielding 4.5% interest. He could not have paid cash, Batista having plundered Cuba's treasury. p. 95, 99. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=...
WHOSE CURTAIN?
1959: "We should not push Cuba behind an iron curtain raised by ourselves." --newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann. p. 100.
WITH US OR AGAINST US
1959: To Cold War Washington, a neutral Cuba would have the same effect on U.S. security as a communist Cuba. p. 106.
THREAT TO NEOCOLONIALISM
1959: "If Cuba gets by with actions against American property owners, our whole private enterprise approach abroad would be in serious danger." --Assistant Secretary of State R. Richard Rubottom Jr. p. 106.
CRIPPLE THEIR ECONOMY
1960: Cuba sold sugar to the USSR. The U.S. Government abandoned hope of friendly relations with Cuba. The CIA plotted overthrow. Cuba then appropriated U.S. investors' properties. The U.S. attacked Cuba's economy. The State Department told U.S. oil executives to refuse to refine Russian crude in their Cuban refineries. Cuba took over management of the refineries. The U.S. cut back sugar imports, Cuba's economic lifeblood. Cuba nationalized all U.S.-investor-owned commercial property. The U.S. closed Cuba's largest industrial plant, Nicaro nickel. Eisenhower curtailed exports to Cuba, canceled Cuba's sugar quota, and closed the U.S. embassy in Cuba. pp. 116-139.
Cuba's U.S. imports dropped 97%, 1953-1961. Cuban exports to the U.S. dropped from $490 million in 1958 to $35 million in 1961. p. 200. Eisenhower forbade U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. p. 203. By 1963, Cuba's gross national product per capita had dropped 30%. p. 207. The Johnson administration pressured other countries not to trade with or recognize Cuba. 226-236 Nixon followed suit. (Many of Nixon's papers are still classified, as of 2009.) pp. 245-247, 254, 261.
TRADE
In the mid-1950s, the U.S. had sold Cubans 187,000 tons of rice per year. By 1975, U.S. producers wanted to sell again. p. 267-273.
HUBRIS
1961: The Bay of Pigs fiasco. No one warned President Kennedy before the invasion that denial of U.S. involvement would be impossible. Eisenhower and Kennedy both considered it politically impossible to do the 3 days of pre-invasion bombing of Castro's air force that would've been needed for the invasion to succeed. pp. 160-161. CIA Director Allen Dulles assumed that Kennedy would send U.S. combat forces rather than let the invasion fail. pp. 162-164. U.S. officials thought the Cuban people would welcome Castro's overthrow. That a small invasion force would be joined by spontaneous uprisings of Cubans against Castro. pp. 164-165. Castro's domestic popularity soared. p. 169. And he was enabled to suppress all internal opposition. p. 172.
/I/ KNOW WHAT LET'S DO!
1961: Having failed to overthrow the government of Cuba, Kennedy's team suggested he overthrow communism in Vietnam. p. 170.
THE DANGER OF A GOOD EXAMPLE
Still, Castro couldn't be tolerated: his was a positive example of a working communist revolution. p. 172. "If Cuba succeeds, we can expect most of Latin America to fall." p. 182.
WE CAN'T STAND IT
By 1962, the world's largest CIA station was in Miami: its only job was to overthrow the Cuban government. p. 186-189, 221, 239. The Pentagon proposed the chemical and bacterial contamination of Cuba's food supply. p. 189. [The CIA under Jimmy Carter would mass-murder Jamaicans by poisoning flour and rice, after their government taxed bauxite extraction. --Killing Hope, William Blum, 2014, pp. 263-267.]
USSR
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis. pp. 183-187.
SABOTAGE
/Un/authorized (but CIA-funded) sabotage by freelance Cuban exiles was stopped if possible, but not prosecuted. The unauthorized saboteurs were caught and released. pp. 190, 214-216, 220. Every president tolerated freelance attacks on Cuba until 1977. p. 221. From 1977 to 1980, Carter grew ever closer to the hard-line Cold War views of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. p. 294.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
LBJ sent 20,000 marines to put down a rebellion against the Dominican government. p. 237.
HIJACKING
1961-1973: 159 U.S. aircraft were hijacked, 85 of them to Cuba. Some hijackers were Batistianos fleeing Cuba, beginning 1959. The U.S. and Cuba reached an agreement in 1973 to punish or return hijackers, after which hijacking mostly stopped. The "downside" of the agreement was increased calls from Americans for closer relations with Cuba. pp. 256-259.
Recommends:
/Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865-1900/, Eric T.L. Love, 2004. p. 572.
/Cuba y los Estados Unidos, 1805-1898/, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenting, 1949. p. 572.
Schoultz's web page as emeritus professor, University of North Carolina Department of Political Science:
https://politicalscience.unc.edu/staf...
A litany of U.S. neocolonialism and bullying. Very readable.
"The president … lacks a sense of conviction on what is right and wrong." --Chester Bowles. p. 199.
"The U.S. had dominated us too long. The Cuban Revolution was determined to end that domination." --Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
410 BCE: "Right is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." --Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, book 5, chapter 17.
http://academics.wellesley.edu/Classi... p. 4.
Unless it would cost the strong too much. p. 6.
THOSE WHO OWN THE COUNTRY, GOVERN IT
1789-present: The secretary of state's job has always been to protect and promote U.S. interests abroad. No Cuban government could make any change without affecting U.S. interests. p. 98.
PIRACY
1822-1825: U.S. Navy and Marines invaded Cuba eight times to burn pirate stations and close a pirates' resale shop for plundered U.S.-shipping cargo. pp. 13, 572.
1868-1878: U.S. citizens aided an unsuccessful rebellion of Cubans against Spain. pp. 13-14.
RACISM
1869: "We have enough of inferior races in our midst without absorbing and not assimilating the Creoles and blacks of Cuba." --a U.S. congressman. p. 14.
BIG HELP
1895-1898: U.S. helped Cuba throw off Spanish control. U.S. would now control Cuba. pp. 14-33.
"Cuban heads of state are not representatives of a free Cuban people, but /administrators/ of American financial feudalism." --/The Nation/, 1933. p. 31.
1896: Cubans elected the wrong class of representatives to their U.S.-mandated constituent assembly. p. 24.
1897: U.S. investors were hungry for Cuban sugar and mining profits. p. 20.
RACISM
1897: "Cubans are no more capable of self government than the savages of Africa." --a U.S. Army general. p. 22.
1901: "No one wants more than I a good and stable government, of and by the people here [in Cuba], but we must see that the right class are in office." --Governor-General Leonard Wood. p. 8.
1903: U.S. investors in Cuban sugar were granted preferential access to the U.S. market. p. 28.
1926: Fidel Castro was born. p. 30. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel...
1933: U.S. overthrew Cuba's government, installed Batista as president. p. 32.
1933-1944, 1952-1958 Batista cared only about lining his own pockets. pp. 36, 45, 54-55. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulge...
Castro detailed Batista's abuses in Castro's speech, "History Will Absolve Me," 1953: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7... p. 93.
RED SCARE
1947: Truman administration started a second Red Scare, screening federal employees for possible association with communist or other unfavored groups. By the time of Castro's 1959 ascension, the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy had been cleansed of imagination and initiative. Elements of McCarthyism persist as of 2024. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCar... p. 90.
RACISM
1952: "Whether the new group under Batista will be any better is a question. Governments in Cuba are made up of Cubans." --a U.S. envoy. p. 49.
DICTATORS OK
[continuing through] 1952-present: Every U.S. administration supports right-wing dictators who support U.S. business interests. pp. 55-56, 58, 63, 247.
The U.S. arms, trains, and funds Latin American militaries so they can (1) keep a business-friendly tyrant in power, or, (2) overthrow their government if it becomes insufficiently friendly to U.S. business interests. pp. 60-61, 65, 67, 73.
Chile, 1973, Kissinger to Pinochet: "You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende. We want to help." p. 247.
SERFS
1953: More than half of rural dwellings had no toilet, inside or outside. Two percent of rural dwellings had running water. 80%-90% of rural children were infested with intestinal parasites. p. 53. More than half of Cuba's farmland was planted in sugar cane. More than 1/3 of Cuba's workforce was employed in sugar--most of them only for the 94-day harvest. p. 54.
CASTRO'S ACHIEVEMENTS
By 1975, Cubans were better fed, better housed, better clothed, better educated, and healthier than before the revolution and blockade. p. 268.
GUATEMALA
1954: The Eisenhower administration overthrew Guatemala's government[, beginning 40 years of terror. This taught Che Guevara that only armed force could bring justice]. p. 59.
CASTRO
1956-: Fidel Castro led a revolution against the Batista government. pp. 63-.
REWARDS
[continuing through] 1957-present: U.S. ambassadorships are rewards for financial contributions to the president's political party. p. 63.
CASTRO
1959: Fidel Castro's regime began. p. 83.
1959: Castro lowered rents and telephone rates. p. 94.
1959: Castro nationalized 3,750 square miles of cattle land, 3,000 square miles of sugarcane land, and 31 sugar mills. He offered investors tax value, which was 20% of market value, to be paid in 20-year bonds yielding 4.5% interest. He could not have paid cash, Batista having plundered Cuba's treasury. p. 95, 99. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=...
WHOSE CURTAIN?
1959: "We should not push Cuba behind an iron curtain raised by ourselves." --newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann. p. 100.
WITH US OR AGAINST US
1959: To Cold War Washington, a neutral Cuba would have the same effect on U.S. security as a communist Cuba. p. 106.
THREAT TO NEOCOLONIALISM
1959: "If Cuba gets by with actions against American property owners, our whole private enterprise approach abroad would be in serious danger." --Assistant Secretary of State R. Richard Rubottom Jr. p. 106.
CRIPPLE THEIR ECONOMY
1960: Cuba sold sugar to the USSR. The U.S. Government abandoned hope of friendly relations with Cuba. The CIA plotted overthrow. Cuba then appropriated U.S. investors' properties. The U.S. attacked Cuba's economy. The State Department told U.S. oil executives to refuse to refine Russian crude in their Cuban refineries. Cuba took over management of the refineries. The U.S. cut back sugar imports, Cuba's economic lifeblood. Cuba nationalized all U.S.-investor-owned commercial property. The U.S. closed Cuba's largest industrial plant, Nicaro nickel. Eisenhower curtailed exports to Cuba, canceled Cuba's sugar quota, and closed the U.S. embassy in Cuba. pp. 116-139.
Cuba's U.S. imports dropped 97%, 1953-1961. Cuban exports to the U.S. dropped from $490 million in 1958 to $35 million in 1961. p. 200. Eisenhower forbade U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. p. 203. By 1963, Cuba's gross national product per capita had dropped 30%. p. 207. The Johnson administration pressured other countries not to trade with or recognize Cuba. 226-236 Nixon followed suit. (Many of Nixon's papers are still classified, as of 2009.) pp. 245-247, 254, 261.
TRADE
In the mid-1950s, the U.S. had sold Cubans 187,000 tons of rice per year. By 1975, U.S. producers wanted to sell again. p. 267-273.
HUBRIS
1961: The Bay of Pigs fiasco. No one warned President Kennedy before the invasion that denial of U.S. involvement would be impossible. Eisenhower and Kennedy both considered it politically impossible to do the 3 days of pre-invasion bombing of Castro's air force that would've been needed for the invasion to succeed. pp. 160-161. CIA Director Allen Dulles assumed that Kennedy would send U.S. combat forces rather than let the invasion fail. pp. 162-164. U.S. officials thought the Cuban people would welcome Castro's overthrow. That a small invasion force would be joined by spontaneous uprisings of Cubans against Castro. pp. 164-165. Castro's domestic popularity soared. p. 169. And he was enabled to suppress all internal opposition. p. 172.
/I/ KNOW WHAT LET'S DO!
1961: Having failed to overthrow the government of Cuba, Kennedy's team suggested he overthrow communism in Vietnam. p. 170.
THE DANGER OF A GOOD EXAMPLE
Still, Castro couldn't be tolerated: his was a positive example of a working communist revolution. p. 172. "If Cuba succeeds, we can expect most of Latin America to fall." p. 182.
WE CAN'T STAND IT
By 1962, the world's largest CIA station was in Miami: its only job was to overthrow the Cuban government. p. 186-189, 221, 239. The Pentagon proposed the chemical and bacterial contamination of Cuba's food supply. p. 189. [The CIA under Jimmy Carter would mass-murder Jamaicans by poisoning flour and rice, after their government taxed bauxite extraction. --Killing Hope, William Blum, 2014, pp. 263-267.]
USSR
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis. pp. 183-187.
SABOTAGE
/Un/authorized (but CIA-funded) sabotage by freelance Cuban exiles was stopped if possible, but not prosecuted. The unauthorized saboteurs were caught and released. pp. 190, 214-216, 220. Every president tolerated freelance attacks on Cuba until 1977. p. 221. From 1977 to 1980, Carter grew ever closer to the hard-line Cold War views of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. p. 294.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
LBJ sent 20,000 marines to put down a rebellion against the Dominican government. p. 237.
HIJACKING
1961-1973: 159 U.S. aircraft were hijacked, 85 of them to Cuba. Some hijackers were Batistianos fleeing Cuba, beginning 1959. The U.S. and Cuba reached an agreement in 1973 to punish or return hijackers, after which hijacking mostly stopped. The "downside" of the agreement was increased calls from Americans for closer relations with Cuba. pp. 256-259.
Recommends:
/Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865-1900/, Eric T.L. Love, 2004. p. 572.
/Cuba y los Estados Unidos, 1805-1898/, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenting, 1949. p. 572.
Schoultz's web page as emeritus professor, University of North Carolina Department of Political Science:
https://politicalscience.unc.edu/staf...
March 24, 2019
The definitive historical survey of how 10 US presidents tried and failed to overturn the Cuban Revolution.
What motivated US leaders to try to impose its will on a small, seemingly unthreatening island 90 miles away? Imperial entitlement above all, with economic, security, and political considerations as further inducements.
What motivated US leaders to try to impose its will on a small, seemingly unthreatening island 90 miles away? Imperial entitlement above all, with economic, security, and political considerations as further inducements.
May 26, 2013
A remarkably thorough summary of America's reprehensibly-misguided policies toward Cuba. Using the actual words of American and Cuban officials, Schoultz guides the reader chronologically from the origins of the Cuban Revolution up to 2008. The book is at its strongest and most fluid in its first half, but gets mired in legislative drudgery as it gets into the 90s. The author is clearly an opponent of the status quo--a position I entirely agree with--but he would have done better to detail more clearly Cuba's domestic front. The conclusion in particular oddly replicates the very same behavior it castigates embargo proponents for, focusing on Castro when the Cuban public should be taken into account.
As indicated in my rating, however, these criticisms diminish what could have been a great book to one that is merely especially good and indispensably informative for those looking for a crash-course in the two countries' tumultuous relations.
As indicated in my rating, however, these criticisms diminish what could have been a great book to one that is merely especially good and indispensably informative for those looking for a crash-course in the two countries' tumultuous relations.
November 29, 2012
A phenomenaly good book, it shows you exactly what the relationship between America and Cuba has been since before the Cuban revolution. America is a lying bully with a superiority complex when it comes to Cuba and indeed many of it's foreign relations.
Also there was a lot more racism then I thought there would be for some reason. That just made me disgusted even more with the Americans. Something I didn't think fully possible at this point.
A great read, it's well written and it really explains things in an interesting and readable way. The only downside is the subject matter itself which made me want to take the book, go back in time or simply down to America and beat the idiots over the head with it.
Ahaha, like that would even work.
Also there was a lot more racism then I thought there would be for some reason. That just made me disgusted even more with the Americans. Something I didn't think fully possible at this point.
A great read, it's well written and it really explains things in an interesting and readable way. The only downside is the subject matter itself which made me want to take the book, go back in time or simply down to America and beat the idiots over the head with it.
Ahaha, like that would even work.
May 21, 2009
Excellent political history of U.S. policy, with very close attention to detail and sprinkled throughout with humor.
September 1, 2016
Excellent history of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba from late 19th century through the administration of President George H. W. Bush (2007).
Read
March 23, 2016Perhaps the best synthesis of US-Cuba relations currently available. Schoultz offers a very nuanced approach to a very polarizing topic. His book is well researched, balancing archival and specialist sources, and is a great first step to those interested in reading more in depth analyses of specific moments in the last half century of Cuban-American relations.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews