A warm, sun-bathed land lying in the shadow of the ‘new world’, gentle surf, chilled dark rum drinks and great music. Who wouldn’t be attracted? The Caribbean was a rich bauble, replete with islands ripe for pickings, and Cuba was its crown jewel.
When a small band of ideologues overthrew the corrupt military regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, it sent shock waves across the Western Hemisphere. Batista had been elected President in 1940 and, with the blessings of the U.S., became military dictator in 1952. It was an instant haven for organized crime. Only 90 miles away, gambling and prostitution were profitable businesses for the mob.
Fidel pled his case to Ike’s people and was rebuffed. He reluctantly joined his brother, Raul, his friend, Che Guevara, and their small group of followers, preaching Communism. With disgruntled peasants behind them, they took over the island.
Those who had shared in Cuba’s prosperity fled to Southern Florida, but the greater number of Cubans prayed that for the first time since the Spanish had landed, nearly 400 years earlier, they might have a say in their own future.
It’s been a rocky relationship since then. The financially comfortable and educated Cubans prospered in capitalist America while retaining a festering hatred for what they’d lost. We were angry as well. We embargoed Cuba’s sugar and cigars. We prohibited tourism and capital investment. We supported an invasion…it was an abysmal failure. We even tried to assassinate Fidel with an exploding cigar.
In 1962 an American U-2 spy plane photographed the pending installation of missiles enroute from the Soviet Union. The United States would be at risk as never before. For 13 days we worried that World War III was imminent. It was high stakes chess. The Soviets decided Cuba wasn’t worth it. Their ships, and the missiles, turned home and the world breathed a little easier.
The détente between Cuba and the United States has ebbed and flowed often because of the politics of Florida. In 1999 a young boy, Elian Gonzalez, was found adrift a few miles off Florida’s coast. His mother and others had tried to escape their island. Their boat had capsized, and Elian’s mother had died. Now he was living with relatives in south Florida while his father, in Cuba, brought legal action to get his son returned.
Return this boy to terrible Fidel? Never, said the large Cuban community. But the father prevailed and when armed ATF agents took the boy by force and cameras captured the event, the emigrants were outraged. They took their outrage out on the Democrats who had allowed it to happen. George Bush won Florida by a ‘hanging chad,’ and with it, the Presidency.
Bush continued to keep a tight rein on American relations with our island neighbor. Obama loosened it. Trump tightened it once again. The younger Cubans in Florida are not as militant as their parents. Fidel has died and memories fade.
The music of Gloria Estevan and the Miami Sound Machine, the music of the Buena Vista Social Club, and others, stir us. I’m going to fix myself a Cuba Libre, turn up the music, and dream of sunny beaches and saner times.