![]() ![]() I remember him telling me how as a teenager with one of the few cars at the time – a Pontiac his father had gifted him for his 15th birthday – he shuttled anti-Machado protestors and arms from one Havana safe house to another. This is where my grandfather, Dionisio, at least in my mind, enters the pages of the book. In the 1920s, Machado, a veteran of the war for independence, assumed the presidency and ruled over Cuba with a mix of intimidation and bribery, sparking an era of student-led anti-Machado protests and violent government retaliation. involvement for decades to come and become a major rallying cry for revolutionaries. Martí was prophetic: Americans penned the treaty that ended the war without Cuban input and later added an amendment – known as the Platt Amendment – that allowed U.S. “I lived in the monster, and I know its entrails – and my sling is the sling of David,” he wrote.Ĭuba’s independence from Spain in 1898 was won in large part due to American troops in Cuba, including Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. designs for his Caribbean homeland and predicted the complicated relationship to come.ĭays before dying in battle in Cuba, Martí warned a friend that Cuba’s independence could prompt a takeover by the United States. The revolution’s best-known author, Cuban author and rebel José Martí, who lived a chunk of his life in New York, felt firsthand U.S. The Americans won at Yorktown, a key victory in the war.Ĭuba’s own revolutionary fight against its colonial overseer would arrive nearly a century later and the United States again would quickly be entangled in the outcome. Within hours of their arrival, Saavedra and his French counterparts collected 500,000 pesos in silver and returned to Virginia, funding the battle and turning the tide of the war. A Spanish emissary, Francisco Saavedra, convinced French allies to sail to Havana and raise funds for the effort. At the famed 1781 battle of Yorktown, General Washington’s troops were penniless and demoralized. Cubans at Yorktownĭespite that troubling history – or perhaps because of it – trade between Cuba and Britain’s 13 North American colonies flourished and, during the American Revolution, Spain tentatively supported the anti-monarchy rebels. Under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Britain gave up Havana while Spain ceded Florida – “the first time, but certainly not the last, that the fates of glorious Havana and swampy Florida became entangled,” Ferrer writes. It rippled through the British ranks and led to deserters as early as the fourth day after landing, even though British troops vastly outnumbered the Spanish. The Spanish called it "vómito negro" – black vomit – because of how blood in the vomit of the stricken made it appear black. ![]() Hatuey answered he preferred hell, “so as not to be where Spaniards were.”įerrer delves into the 13-month British occupation of Havana beginning in June 1762 with robust detail, showing how climate and disease – not Spanish guns – were the main forces rebuffing British occupancy of the New World’s most coveted port. The chief asked whether Christians went to heaven. As he awaited his death sentence, a priest asked him if he’d like to convert to Christianity, save his soul and ascend to heaven. When their chief, Hatuey, refused to accommodate the new visitors, the Spaniards condemned him to burn at the stake. In Cuba, Columbus saw a vast shoreline with soaring mountains, lush green overgrowth and perfumed flowers, calling it “the most beautiful that eyes have seen.” The natives, known as Taínos, of course, knew that already. ambitions on Cuba shaped its history from the beginning. history begins with Columbus’ arrival – even though he never reached the shores of present-day United States – is no mistake: U.S. Colonial beginnings and black vomitįerrer’s braided history of Cuba and the United States begins, rightly, in 1492, with Christopher Columbus’ landing on Cuba’s north shore. ![]() The book is particularly relevant after mass protests erupted across Cuba in July, leading to widespread arrests and re-questioning the United States’ entangled relationship with the island nation. I saw my grandfather, Dionisio Rossie, in the pages of the book, navigating Havana’s streets in a starched, white guayabera shirt as student protestors detonated bombs against President Gerardo Machado’s regime or Castro nationalized companies – my grandfather’s among them – and led enemies to the firing squad wall. The book offered vivid context and detail to stories that for years I heard as vague family musings over steaming cups of café cubano at the dinner table, coloring in memories that were long just broad outlines. For me, "Cuba" was also a personal revelatory journey: My family left Cuba in the 1960s in the wake of Fidel Castro’s revolution, settling in Miami, where I was born. ![]()
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