During the administration of George W. Bush, relations between Washington and Havana went from bad to worse. Restrictions on trade and travel became tighter than ever. Antigovernment agitation within Cuba was financed and directed by the US Interests Section in Havana. Most ominously of all, in early 2003 US pundits began talking openly about invading Cuba—a discussion that was put on hold only after the invasion of Iraq proved so daunting and costly.
Under the Barack Obama administration in 2009, relations with Havana showed limited improvement. Some travel restrictions against Cuban artists and intellectuals were lightened but the trade embargo remained in place. Regardless of political party, US rulers continued to treat Cuba as an antagonist. Why so?
In the early days of 1959, the Cuban people, led by Fidel Castro and his guerrilla forces, overthrew the US-supported right-wing dictatorship of General Fulgencio Batista. Some five months after taking power, the revolutionary government promulgated an agrarian reform calling for state appropriation of large private landholdings. Under this new law, US sugar corporations eventually lost about 1.6 million acres of choice land and many millions of dollars in future cash-crop exports. The following year, President Dwight Eisenhower, citing Havana’s “hostility” toward the United States, cut Cuba’s share of the American sugar market by about 95 percent, in effect imposing a total boycott on Cuban sugar. (The only thing saving Havana from complete economic disaster at that point was the Soviet Union’s willingness to buy Cuban sugar at top market prices.) A few months later, in October 1959, the Cuban government nationalized all banks and large commercial and industrial enterprises, including the many that belonged to US firms.1
Cuba’s break away from a free market system dominated by American corporations and toward a not-for-profit socialist economy caused it to become the target of an unremitting series of US attacks that included sabotage, espionage, terrorist attacks, hijackings, assassinations, trade sanctions, travel restrictions, embargo, and outright invasion. The purpose behind this aggression was to undermine the socialist revolution and deliver Cuba safely back to the tender mercies of the free market.
In 1960 President Eisenhower issued an executive order, “Program of Covert Action against the Castro Régime,” giving official approval to all kinds of illegal operations aimed at overthrowing the revolutionary government. A paramilitary force was organized that secretly entered Cuba to train terrorist groups, waging armed attacks and killing campesinos in the island’s central mountains, along with a clandestine group that provided intelligence and engaged in numerous acts of sabotage.2
Eisenhower issued instructions that the hand of the United States should remain hidden in all this skulduggery. He made those present at the signing of the executive order swear to silence. In his memoirs Eisenhower acknowledged what happened next: “I ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to begin organizing the training of Cuban exiles in Guatemala. . .. Another idea was to set up an anti-Castro force inside Cuba. Some thought the United States should quarantine [i.e., blockade] the island, arguing that if the economy suddenly collapsed, the Cuban people themselves would overthrow Castro.”3
The US policy toward Cuba was in keeping with Washington’s long-standing goal of treating as a dangerous enemy any country or political movement that pursues self-development outside the global free market system. In contrast, countries deemed “friendly toward America” and “pro-West” are those that remain at the disposal of large corporate investors on terms totally favorable to the investors.
This is not what US rulers have been telling the American people. As early as July 1960, the White House charged that Cuba was “hostile” to the United States (despite Havana’s repeated overtures for normal relations). The island government was a cruel dictatorship, in Eisenhower’s words, “dominated by international communism.”4 Washington policymakers never explained why they were so suddenly concerned about bringing freedom and democracy to the Cuban people. In the two decades prior to the Cuban Revolution, successive administrations in Washington manifested no opposition to the brutally repressive Batista autocracy. Quite the contrary, they sent Batista military aid and carried on a vigorous business with him.
The significant but unspoken difference between Castro and Batista was that dictator Batista ruled Cuba as a perfect US satellite, wide open to the empire’s capital penetration. Cuba’s tourist trade, sugar and tobacco production, nickel mines, and oil refineries were owned by US corporations and a small, rich Cuban investor class. In contrast, Castro and his revolutionary movement nationalized US holdings and renovated the class structure toward a more egalitarian mode. It was this socialistic agenda that made the Cuban government so insufferable to Washington—and still does.