Thomas G. Patterson's Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban
In his book Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban, Thomas G. Patterson explores Cuban relationships with the United States during the Batista and Castro regimes. In the 1950’s, when Fulgencio Batista was in power, the United States had an almost imperialistic dominance over Cuba. Patterson uses the word “Hegemony” to describe this dominance. He defines hegemony as “the dominance or preponderant influence that permitted U.S. decisions to condition Cuba’s politics, economy, culture, society, and military. U.S. hegemony empowered North Americans to set and maintain most of the rules by which Cubans lived and by which the Cuban – American relationship was governed” (7). At this time, the U.S. was imposing it self on Cuba without really understanding the people or the culture. The U.S. viewed Cubans as an “emotional, romantic, and childish people suffering from excessive pride” (6). There was obviously little respect for Cubans from the U.S. Moreover, Cubans felt that the strong, multifaceted U.S. influence was causing Cuba to loose its “independent identity” (8).
Economically, Cubans “enjoyed one of the one of the highest standards of living in Latin America” (34). This is predominately due to the fact that Cuba exported half its sugar and two-thirds of it total exports into the U.S., and imported three-fourths of their total imports from the U.S. Although the U.S. (35). Although the U.S. boosted the Cuban economy, Cubans resented that they were still living at an economic level lower than Americans. The average Cuban income was one- third the average of Mississippi, the poorest state in the U.S. in th...
... middle of paper ...
...ail about the historical facts about the revolution. He provides a historiography that provides social and economic influences on the revolution and presents the events in a chronological order. What I liked about his book is that he presents a study of the U.S. influence on Cuba and the hegemonic relationship they had. He presents a bias against the U.S. not in favor of communism but in favor of Cuban sovereignty. I would recommend this book to specialists and undergraduates because it provides a different look at the revolution. However, even though this book provides historical information on Cuba, the fact that the author does present an opinion disqualifies it for use as a textbook.
Bibliography:
Paterson, Thomas G. Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. 352.
The exodus of the majority of skilled workers brought about a rapid change in the methods employed in educating Cuba’s population. If the revolution was to be successful, Cuba needed to replace the skilled workers that left with other skilled workers in the shortest amount of time possible. In 1961, the revolutionary government developed a nationwide campaign to rid Cuba of illiteracy. The program was given slogans like “ The people should teach the people and If you don’t know learn; if you know teach”. This program consisted of volunteer teachers who would help illiterate Cubans increase their education by teaching them the fundamentals. According to Fitzgerald, “(The literacy campaign) helped to integrate town and county and to galvanize support for revolutionary goals by bringing urban and rural populations into direct contact. ( p. 41)” Also, according to Fitzgerald, “ Enrollment in adult education rose dramatically from 66,577 students in the 1960-1961 school year to a peak of 842,024 students in the 1964-1965 school year, but plummeted to 309,717 students in 1969-1970. (P. 42)” This program benefited the poorer citizens of Cuba who remained in Cuba. They w...
On July 26, 1953, the war for Cuba’s independence began, and for 6 years many Cubans fought for their freedom. The most famous of these revolutionary icons being Fidel Castro, who led the main resistance against the Cuban government. On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and the rest of the Cuban's succeeded. This revolutionary war went on to affect the entire world and Eric Selbin believes it is still affecting it. Throughout Eric Selbin's article, Conjugating the Cuban Revolution, he firmly states that the Cuban revolution is important in the past, present, and future. Selbin, however, is wrong.
Long before our involvement, the Cubans had been leading revolts and revolutions against Spain. The Spanish empire considered Cuba to be its jewel, not only for its beauty but also for its economics. Cuba’s main source of income was from its expansive sugar plantations that greatly contributed to its wealth (more so to the Spanish Empires wealth). Ironically, even due to the high regard to Cuba, it was neglected and oppressed, as the Spanish Empire began its decline in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Empire was falling due to it slowly loosing its control over its territories, closer to the US then to Spain, because of a lack of industrializing. The Spanish would claim ownership, but never contribute back to their land. This opened the door for what is known as the 10-year war and the struggle for Cuban Independence. The United States never got directly involved, but it sympathized greatly with the Cuban’s cause, for ...
Thomas G. Paterson's essay, "Kennedy's Fixation with Cuba," is an essay primarily based on the controversy and times of President Kennedy's foreign relations with Cuba. Throughout President Kennedy's short term, he devoted the majority of his time to the foreign relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. After the struggle of WW II, John F. Kennedy tried to keep a tight strong hold over Cuba as to not let Cuba turn to the Communist Soviet Union. Kennedy seen Cuba and the Soviet Union as a major threat to the United States. As Castro fell farther and farther into the Communist party, he inched his way closer and closer to becoming a close ally with the Soviet's, As Kennedy seen this happen before his eyes, he was astonished. Kennedy, a newly formed president, did not want to seem like the kind to just sit back and roll with the punches, he wanted immediate action taken for these measures. "As someone said, Cuba was one of the four-letter words of the 1960s" (268). Cuba was not viewed as a very potential power before Fidel Castro took office. It was viewed more as a neutral country that we sent aide and military supplies to in exchange for sugar and other products. When Castro took office, things drastically changed. He started taking back land that we had set aside for military bases, he wanted the American forces no more than what they had in Washington, and he openly defied orders from America. Unknown to Kennedy Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, was also watching everything that played out between Cuba and the United States. President Kennedy, later realizing, would make a few decisions for the worst. These decisions would haunt him for the re...
Cuba and the U.S.: The Tangled Relationship. New York: The Foreign Policy Association, 1971. Flaherty, Tom.
The U.S.’s relationship with Cuba has been arduous and stained with mutual suspicion and obstinateness, and the repeated U.S. interventions. The Platt agreement and Castro’s rise to power, served to introduce the years of difficulty to come, while, the embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba, enforced the harsh feelings. The two major events that caused the most problems were the Bays of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.
The United States embargo of Cuba has its roots planted in 1960, 53 years ago, when “the United States Congress authorized President Eisenhower to cut off the yearly quota of sugar to be imported from Cuba under the Sugar act of 1948… by 95 percent” (Hass 1998, 37). This was done in response to a growing number of anti-American developments during the height of the cold war, including the “expropriation of United States-owned properties on the island… [and] the Soviet Union [agreeing] to purchase sugar from Cuba and to supply Cuba with crude oil” (Hass 1998, 37). Bad sentiments continued to pile up as Cuba imposed restrictions on the United States Embassy and especially when, after the United States “officially broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba, and travel by United States citizens to Cuba was forbidden ... Castro openly proclaimed his revolution to be ‘socialist’” (Hass 1998, 38). The day after this, the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred, but it failed in its job to topple Castro (Hass 1998, 38). Left with no diplomatic options and a failed military attempt, the United States decided that the only way to end Castro’s socialist regime was to sever all ties, and from 1961 to 1996, a series of acts were passed prohibiting the majority of trade and interaction with Cuba. (Hass 1998, 38).
What is clear is that, in Cuba and Puerto Rico, many viewed the American involvement initially as a positive development. What is equally apparent is that after the war and over time, these pro-American attitudes soured considerably. There were many reasons for this development. Leaving the economic, sociological, and psychological examinations of this large issue to other more ambitious endeavors, this paper aims to explore the way in which the intervention and occupation disrupted and complicated the normal political construction of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Also, in an effort to avoid the larger historiographical debate, political developments will be presented simply in response to conditions. The premise of this paper is that, intentionally or otherwise, the U.S. intervention and subseque...
Clarke, Philip. “Cuba’s Newest Revolution Bloodless but Plenty Bewildering as New President Breaks Army Grip, Aims at Democracy.” The Washington Post. 22 July. 1945: B3. ProQuest. James Madison University library. 16 September 2003
There may be some question over Fidel Castro’s achievements in providing economic success, or democracy to Cuba in the last forty five years or so. However Cuba’s record on providing egalitarian health care and education to the masses have generally been agreed as a success story, even by Castro’s old enemy the United States. “To be educated is to be free,” (Marti in Marshall, 1987, p146) has become one of the more popular revolutionary slogans and has been greatly adhered to by Castro’s government. While health care is articulated in the 1975 Cuban constitution as being “the right of all and the responsibility of the state” (Feinsilver, 1993, p26). The social political stance of Castro’s government has been the driving force behind the success in health care and education. Issues such as housing, employment, health care and education are viewed as a basic human right and are in theory guaranteed by the state to all. In Cuba, health care indicators are also seen as a measure of the government’s efficiency and performance. Other socialist states that have come and gone over the last century have also professed to put these issues at the forefront of priority. States such as Russia and China have to a lesser or greater degree failed to provide the standard of services provided in Cuba. “Until 1969 China’s health care system served only the urban population, which represented about 15 percent of the total population” (Feinsilver, 1993, p2). There are certainly factors that make this comparison unfair but Cuba’s achievements in providing these social services are still quite remarkable given its economic position. By truly placing education and healthcare as one of the fundamental priorities of the revolution, and developing specific programs and initiatives to deal with these two social issues, Cuba managed to succeeded where others more wealthy nations failed. The use of popular participation and central government control also were powerful tools in implementing these social policies. It would now be useful to look at some of these initiatives that have been taken by the Cuban government that enabled it to equal if no surpass education and health standards in many developed countries.
Cuba’s economy became stagnant, private businesses were confiscated, and due to fear of their leader and further collapse, the people fled for the United States in waves. As Charlip discussed, to keep the economy afloat, Castro had to open the country to foreign investment and introduce components of capitalism to the economy. These factors enabled Cuba’s economy to stabilize. It is interesting that when socialism failed, capitalism was the solution, particularly because Castro once said, “I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.” His frustration with the fall of the Soviet Union and the humiliation he faced with the U.S. for turning to capitalism was
The specter of colonial repression, imposed by the institutions of slavery and the plantation system, has incessantly haunted Cuban society, culture, politics, and ideology. The legacies of slavery and the plantation system imposed a structural and systematic practice of racial discrimination against Afro-Cubans, which suppressed any ambition for the pursuit of liberty and equality. Despite Cuba’s abolition of slavery in 1886 and its winning of independence in 1902, Afro-Cubans remained destitute, marginalized, and in the periphery of political autonomy within Cuban society. Thus, the origins of Cuba’s disdainful race relations emerge during the Spanish colonial tenure in Cuba.
On this day 191 years ago John Quincy Adams expressed his prediction for the future of Cuban-American contact. The Cuban wars of independence were only 15 years away from his prediction when he estimated. These independence wars continue to influence Cuba’s cultural and political attitude toward Europe and the United States; This in part due to the externalities involved in the remodeling of social structure in the aftermath of the revolution. The intentions and motives of each faction: rebels, United States government, Spanish government, United States public, and the Cuban public, varied widely to an extend that caused even more concern in the future. Depending on the point of view of an outsider the situation in Cuba seemed to be a continuation of revolution...
Cuba, an island country in the Caribbean, has struggled with maintaining democratic leadership since the Spanish American War. After the war, the United States declared that its presence in the country was temporary and sovereignty would be handed to the Cubans through the establishment of a Constituent Assembly. In his work “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development”, Mancur Olson (1993) explains that democracies usually prevail in combat with fascist or communist countries. The United States, being a democratic stronghold that held control of the government in Cuba, initially encouraged the transition from an autocratic to democratic government in the country. In contrast to other newly established democracies at the time, such as the democratization of Germany at the end of World War II, the new democratic structure in Cuba quickly collapsed. The Cuban Constituent Assembly that was established was a catalyst for the dissolution of any competing parties. The strict voting regulations for the election of the 31 delegates for the Constituent Assembly produced an overwhelming majority for the republican form of government, creating a gover...
However the US played a much larger role in Cuba’s past and present than the building of casinos and the introduction of the first taints of corruption. In the past, even before Batista, Americans were resented by Cubans because the Americans made a lot of Cuba’s decisions. Under Batista, 80% of Cuban imports came from the US, and the US controlled at least 50% of sugar, utilities, phones and railroads. If Cuba was a business in the stock markets, then the US would have been close to owning 50% of its shares. When combined with a long history of US-backe...