Cuba - Lonely Planet [16]
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By this time Cuba was a mess: thousands were dead, the country was in flames, and William Randolph Hearst and the tub-thumping US tabloid press were leading a hysterical war campaign characterized by sensationalized, often inaccurate reports about Spanish atrocities.
Preparing perhaps for the worst, the US battleship Maine was sent to Havana in January 1898, on the pretext of ‘protecting US citizens.’ Fatefully, its touted task never saw fruition. On February 15, 1898 the Maine exploded out of the blue in Havana Harbor, killing 266 US sailors. The Spanish claimed it was an accident, the Americans blamed the Spanish, and some Cubans accused the US, saying it provided a convenient pretext for intervention. Despite several investigations conducted over the following years, the real cause of the explosion may remain one of history’s great mysteries, as the hulk of the ship was scuttled in deep waters in 1911.
After the Maine debacle, the US scrambled to take control. They offered Spain US$300 million for Cuba and when this deal was rejected, demanded a full withdrawal of the Spanish from the island. The long-awaited US-Spanish showdown that had been simmering imperceptibly beneath the surface for decades had finally resulted in war.
The only important land battle of the conflict was on July 1, when the US Army attacked Spanish positions on San Juan Hill, just east of Santiago de Cuba. Despite vastly inferior numbers and limited, antiquated weaponry, the under-siege Spanish held out bravely for over 24 hours before future US president Theodore Roosevelt broke the deadlock by leading a celebrated cavalry charge of the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. It was the beginning of the end for the Spaniards and an unconditional surrender was offered to the Americans on July 17, 1898.
On December 12, 1898 a peace treaty ending the Spanish-Cuban-American War was signed in Paris by the Spanish and the Americans. Despite three years of blood, sweat and sacrifice, no Cuban representatives were invited. After a century of trying to buy Cuba from the Spanish, the US – wary of raised voices among shortchanged Cuban nationalists – decided to appease the situation temporarily by offering the island a form of quasi-independence that would dampen internal discontent while keeping any future Cuban governments on a tight leash. In November 1900 US Governor of Cuba, General Leonard Wood, convened a meeting of elected Cuban delegates who drew up a constitution similar to that of the US. The then–Connecticut Senator Orville Platt attached a rider to the US Army Appropriations Bill of 1901 giving the US the right to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever they saw fit. This was approved by President McKinley, and the Cubans were given the choice of accepting what became known as the Platt Amendment, or remaining under a US military occupation indefinitely. The US also used its significant leverage to secure a naval base in Guantánamo Bay in order to protect its strategic interests in the Panama Canal region.
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In the 1880s there were more than 100,000 Chinese living in Cuba, mainly as cheap labor on sugar plantations in and around the Havana region.
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BETWEEN REPUBLIC & REVOLUTION
On May 20, 1902 Cuba became an independent republic. Hopelessly unprepared for the system of US-style democracy that its northern neighbors optimistically had in mind, the country quickly descended into five decades of on-off chaos headed up by a succession of weak, corrupt governments that called upon US military aid anytime there was the merest sniff of trouble. Intervening three times militarily in the ensuing years, the US walked a tightrope between benevolent ally and exasperated foreign meddler. There were, however, some coordinated successes, most notably the eradication of yellow fever using the hypotheses of Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay