The truth about May 20th and Cuba’s independence

PRIOR to the revolutionary triumph of 1959, circles of power in Cuba celebrated May 20th as Independence Day. It was said that this day, in 1902, saw the birth of the independent republic, that Spanish colonial domination had come to an end and Cubans were able to enjoy complete freedom. Statements added that all of this was thanks to the "generous aid" of the U.S. government.

It is a fact that history was totally falsified in the interest of governments of the time and their imperial masters. The stark truth is that on May 20, 1902, Cuba moved from being a Spanish colony to becoming a neocolony of the United States.

In 1898, after 30 years of heroic struggle, the Cuban Liberation Army had virtually defeated the Spanish colonial army. Spain could no longer sustain the war from the military, economic and political points of view. Colonial morale had plummeted against the force of the independence movement.

That was the moment which the U.S. government used to its advantage to satisfy its long-held desire to intervene in Cuba and undertake its annexation. The participation of the U.S. forces was confined to landing, with the support of the Cuban Liberation Army and engaging in a few battles with the scattered remnants of the Spanish colonial army.

The leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, described the ill-named Hispanic-Cuban-American war as the first imperialist war in the history of humanity.

However, when the war ended in 1898, was Cuba a genuinely free nation?

On December 10 of that same year, the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended Spanish colonialism in Cuba, was signed. The first major injustice and offense to the Cubans was their exclusion from these negotiations. The United States negotiated a freedom that it had not won and Spain renounced a right which it had lost to the Cuban people.

The United States was not prepared to engage in a war with a Cuban revolutionary army that had defeated a colonial power after 30 years of heavy fighting. It therefore prepared the conditions to appropriate the island by less costly means in a way that it could also take credit as the liberator.

With the war over, the U.S. army remained in occupation and the freedom and independence of the Cuban people remained in its hands and in those of the country’s government.

Under Military Order 164 issued by the U.S. army, the first elections of mayors, councilmen, treasurers and municipal judges took place on June 16, 1900. So-called American democracy revealed its real essence. Voting rights were limited to men aged 21 years and over, who were able to read and write, who possessed capital of no less than 250 pesos or had served in the Liberation Army without any adverse reports in their file.

Given these and other restrictions, only around 10% of the adult population were able to exercise their vote.

Similar elections were held in June 1901, with further limitations in conjunction with coercive and fraudulent measures designed to guarantee a majority for candidates representing U.S. interests.

Another military order, No 91, established the rules for these elections. Those able to vote could only elect 60% of councilmen. Other restrictions included the loss of voting rights for participants in the wars of independence against Spain.

In the 1901 presidential elections, the outrages against Cuba went much further. Initially, three candidates ran for office. Perceiving the manipulation of the process, Generalissimo Máximo Gómez Báez, hero of the Cuban wars of independence, withdrew. Another patriot, Mayor General Bartolomé Masó, who refused to comply with the U.S. designs in relation to these elections, did likewise.

This left just one candidate, Tomás Estrada Palma, who had succeeded José Martí as the Cuban Revolutionary Party delegate and, in order to run for election, had to renounce the U.S. citizenship he had held for 26 years. Estrada Palma, who had betrayed Martí’s ideals and cause, was an unconditional supporter of the yankee government and came to power through elections in which barely 7% of Cubans old enough to do so, voted. But this was not enough for U.S. interests in Cuba. Something more secure, more efficient was needed, hence the emergence of the Platt Amendment.

On February 28, 1901, U.S. Senator Orville H. Platt proposed an amendment to the Army Appropriations Bill which, once approved, would be added to the constitution of the new Cuban Republic. If the amendment was not accepted, military occupation of Cuba would continue. That was the dilemma of an amendment which bound Cuba militarily, politically and economically to U.S. designs.

One of its articles removed the Isle of Pines (now the Isle of Youth) from Cuban jurisdiction, an affront maintained until 1925. Another attributed to the United States the right to military intervention in Cuba, under the false pretext of preserving its independence, maintaining good governance, protecting lives, properties and freedom.

Cuba was also obliged to hire U.S. defense and protection services, which resulted in what is currently the Guantánamo Naval Base, maintained by the U.S. government against the will of the Cuban people and utilized as an international concentration and torture camp, in spite of demands for its return in the highest international forums.

Additionally, Cuba was prevented from establishing treaties or agreements with any other power, or acquiring debts not contracted with the imperial government.

It was Tomás Estrada Palma himself who dissolved the Cuban Revolutionary Party founded by José Martí to win independence and subsequently direct the destiny of the Cuban nation. The Liberation Army had also been dissolved. What remained of Cuba’s independence when the Republic was proclaimed on May 20, 1902? After 30 long years of struggle, an independent Republic or a U.S. neocolony?

Genuine independence, freedom, sovereignty and full self-determination would have to wait a further 60 years until, on January 1, 1959, Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro proclaimed the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

Meanwhile, for the counterrevolution located in and sustained by the United States, May 20th continues to be a patriotic date.

GRANMA