Third U.S. intervention in Cuba

INDEPENDENT PARTY OF COLOR UPRISING

GABRIEL MOLINA FRANCHOSSI

THERE have been three U.S. military interventions in Cuba rather than the two generally admitted. In his book The History of Guantanamo Bay 1494-1964, Rear Admiral M.E. Murphy states that the Black rebellion of 1912 forced the United States to once again intervene in Cuba, this time in Oriente province.

Liberation Army Officers Pedro Ivonet and Evaristo Estenoz, assassinated during the repression.

He states that a Black uprising, organized by the Independent Party of Color Party in May 1912, assumed such proportions that, on May 23 the United States Department of the Navy dispatched marines to the Guantánamo Naval Base.

On May 20, 1912, the Independent Party of Color (PIC) called for an armed uprising, more symbolic than otherwise, which was utilized as a pretext to massacre more than 3,000 African and mixed race Cubans. Members of the PIC were demanding the repeal of the Morúa Law, which prohibited the formation of political unions based on race, and fighting alongside other sectors of society the prevailing discrimination against non-whites, instigated in the republic at the express will of U.S. interventionists.

On the pretext of protecting the lives and property of U.S. citizens, as was the case in the second U.S. intervention in 1906, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was organized under the command of Colonel Lincoln Karmany and stationed in Guantánamo Bay. The base central command dispatched various detachments to "occupy and defend strategic points."

THE RIPE FRUIT

The real reason for these interventions and the current blockade of Cuba can be found in a number of U.S. official documents, such as the statement by John Quincy Adams, President Monroe’s Secretary of State, who wrote in 1823, "…the annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself." Monroe designed the strategy of waiting for the moment when "the ripe fruit" would fall into the hands of the United States.

President McKinley believed that the fruit was ripe in 1898 and decided to launch the first U.S. military intervention in Cuba, in order to prevent the Mambi independence fighters triumphing over a Spanish army exhausted by the three wars it had been forced to wage in the metropolis over 30 years.

When the protests by PIC members began, figures partial to the occupation and annexation of the island, such as Knox, President William Taft’s Secretary of War; Arthur Beaupré, Minister of the United States in Cuba; and Frank Steinhart, president of the Havana Central Railroad Company, hastened to secure an intervention which would serve their spurious interests. On May 1, Beaupré proposed that the government dispatch a warship transporting marines.

Taft then sent an ultimatum threatening intervention if the movement was not swiftly crushed by President José Miguel Gómez who, for electoral reasons, was trying to negotiate pacifically with the PIC. Presented with this threat, Gómez replied that he had taken measures to crush the rebellion and did not consider intervention necessary.

Nevertheless, Karmany’s brigade, comprising 69 officers and 2,008 troops was assembled in Norfolk, Virginia, together with the 1st Regiment of 29 officers and 756 men under the command of Colonel George Barnet. They embarked aboard the USS Prairie and the USS Paducah on May 23, 1912 and landed in Guantánamo five days later, remaining there until August.

The 2nd Regiment of 40 officers and 1,252 men under the command of Colonel James E. Mahoney, sailed aboard the U.S. Atlantic Fleet May 25-27 and landed five companies in Guantánamo Bay in early June. On June 11, the USS Eagle transported a detachment of U.S. marines from the USS Ohio, under the command of Captain R.C. Hooker, from Guantánamo Bay to Nipe, where they landed on June 12. Another detachment, composed of 27 men from the USS Nashville and 27 from the USS Paducah, under the command of Lieutenant E.P. Finney, landed in Preston, Bay of Nipe, and was taken by railroad to the Spanish American Iron Works, in Woodfred, Cuba, to protect U.S. properties there.

Various cities and towns in the vicinity of Santiago de Cuba were occupied by American soldiers. Brigade troops were dispatched to Guantánamo, Soledad, Los Canos and San Antonio. With the burden of the occupation assumed by the marines, the national army created by the United States in Cuba, which virtually excluded African Cubans, had sufficient strength to suppress the uprising.

The uprising had begun on May 20, the 10th anniversary of the declaration of a neocolonial republic occupied by the U.S. army, a species of transaction in the face of the ironclad opposition of the Mambi officers and troops to Washington’s annexationist designs. Protests by PIC members in Pinar del Río, Havana, Matanzas and Las Villas were speedily crushed. But they were more vigorous in the eastern area of the country, headed by the leadership –Liberation Army officers General Pedro Ivonet and Evaristo Estenoz – in Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Holguín, El Cobre, Alto Songo and San Luis.

The bloody repression, which included the assassination of Ivonet and Estenoz, was led by General José de Jesús Monteagudo, with forces from the Rural Guard, the national army and volunteers. It lasted two months and 22 of the General’s troops were killed.

INTERVENTION IN THE CARIBBEAN FROM GUANTANAMO

From February through June 1913, Colonel Karmany placed another large unit in Guantánamo: the 2nd Provisional Brigade, comprising 72 officers and 2,100 men. In 1915, this brigade intervened in Haiti from the base, and occupied the country until 1932. M.E. Murphy states that the period 1915-1918 kept the marines in Guantánamo very busy. In rapid succession, came actions in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the "Sugar Intervention" in Cuba. The 24th Company, part of the permanent garrison on the Naval Base, was dispatched to Haiti on July 20, 1915. U.S. interventions reached all of Latin America in some form or other.

José Martí, writing to his Mexican friend Manuel Mercado, was a visionary in this context. "I am in daily danger of giving my life for my country and duty, for I understand that duty and have the courage to carry it out, the duty to prevent – with Cuban independence – the United States from extending itself through the Antilles and, with that additional strength, falling upon our lands of America."

GRANMA