Cuba: An American History

by Ada Ferrer

But even when the names of Black fighters did not survive, stories of their exploits did. Half a century later, José Antonio Aponte, a free Black carpenter and the grandson of one of the Black militiamen who defended Havana against the British, painted pictures precisely of scenes like this, of Black troops taking British men prisoner, of military encampments guarded by Black soldiers. Indeed, Aponte would use those pictures to recruit Black men to a major conspiracy against slavery.

The mastermind of this would-be revolution was a free Black carpenter named José Antonio Aponte. We have met him and his grandfather already, if only in passing. His grandfather had served in the city’s Black battalion and defended Havana against the British invasion of 1762. The younger Aponte, the leader of the 1812 conspiracy, was himself a veteran of Havana’s Black militia and had fought against the British in the Bahamas during the American Revolution. Now in 1812, Aponte plotted to attack the city and install a government that would end slavery and, with it, the power of planters and colonial officials.

Yet the vast majority of Africans brought to the island through the transatlantic slave trade arrived after the trade to Cuba became illegal. Indeed, of all the Africans forcibly transported there over three and a half centuries, more than 70 percent arrived after Spain illegalized the trade in 1820.23

The flag was red, white, and blue, with five stripes and one star—the star of Cuba soon to join the thirty then present on the American flag. It was the first time a Cuban flag was ever flown, and it was flown in New York to signal Cuba’s impending incorporation into the United States. Despite that history, it remains Cuba’s flag today, its annexationist origins curiously absent.

The policies of the US occupation had made land plentiful and cheap, and US citizens and corporations were the main beneficiaries. Estimates of the proportion of US-owned land varied greatly—anywhere from one-third to one-thirtieth. By 1907, foreigners owned an estimated 60 percent of all rural property in Cuba. Resident Spaniards owned another 15 percent, which left only a quarter of rural property under Cuban ownership. The number is so staggering it bears repeating in slightly different terms: less than a decade after independence, perhaps three-quarters of Cuban territory belonged to foreigners, a significant portion to Americans. In some regions, the proportion was even higher; in the central region of Sancti Spíritus, for instance, Americans owned about seven-eighths of rural land.

In some cases, US companies purchased land, divided it up, and sold it as individual parcels to American buyers. They touted the fertility of the soil, the perpetual sun, and the US government’s guarantee of property and stable government in Cuba. An outfit in New York purchased 180,000 acres in this manner; a Los Angeles company acquired 150,000; one in Pittsburgh snagged 135,000.

By 1903, there were thirty-seven such American “colonies” in Cuba; ten years later there were sixty-four; by 1920, about eighty. La Gloria, the largest of them, had at its height one thousand residents.

Chibás promised to present incontrovertible proof of the theft on his weekly Sunday broadcast of August 5, 1951. He appeared at the station with a small suitcase, which people assumed held the evidence. But for reasons that remain unclear, he presented none. He spoke passionately, repeating general accusations against current and past presidents and against present and former education ministers. Then his voice rose further: “For economic independence, political freedom, and social justice!” he shouted. “Let’s sweep away the government crooks! People of Cuba, rise up and move! People of Cuba, awaken! This is my last knock on the door!” Then he opened his briefcase, took out a gun, and shot himself on-air. But he spoke for too long, and just before the shot rang out, the program cut to a commercial for Café Pilón.

There Castro remained until his parents sent him to the eastern capital of Santiago to attend a Jesuit school. In 1942, he left for Havana and enrolled in the country’s most prestigious school, the Jesuit Colegio de Belén, earning a prize for the best all-around student athlete in the country.