CUBA'S FIRST DICTATOR, Gerado Machado, came to a crossroads in 1930. America's Ambassador in Havana, Harry Frank Guggenheim, posited that the Cuban dictator could (1) resign and chaos would follow; (2) he could be ousted by a coup and chaos would follow; (3) a coup would be unsuccessful; (4) he could remain in office for another two months; or (5) he could resign to be replaced by a provisional presidency. Machado had other ideas.

In December, 1931, Machado extended his presidency by executive fiat. Revolution erupted. Former Cuban president Menocal and other distinguished parties joined forces with townspeople and students, soldiers and sailors. They formed into “cells”, known as A, B, C, etc. They became known as the ABC Movement. 

ABC advocated a program of social and economic reform and pledged themselves to Machado's overthrow. They employed propaganda and terror. Public buildings were bombed, and assassinations were carried out on government, military, and police officers. One of their most ambitious plots resulted in the death of two of Machado's top lieutenants. Guggenheim called on Machado to extend reforms. Machado responded by organizing the remaining loyal elements of his military and police into death squads.

With the escalation of violence on the island and Guggenheim's failures, the age of American paternalism in Cuba ended. United States diplomats had exhausted themselves trying to make something of the Cubans that they weren't. We would keep Guantanamo. The rest was left to the Cubans, the businessmen, and the mafioso.

THE FAMILY OF the new American ambassador in Havana in 1929, Harry Frank Guggenheim, rose to economic prominence with global successes in mining and smelting. Ambassador Guggenheim was struck by the improvements in Cuba that he assumed had been the result of Machado's presidency. Cuba, which had been ravaged during the revolutionary years, now boasted modern roads, bridges, buildings, railroads, and other marks of a modern nation that he credited to a progressive government administration, just as Hitler would later be lauded for lifting Germany out of the depression.

Guggenheim also believed that Cuba was dominated by foreigners by the logical workings of a free enterprise economy. He argued that the average Cuban didn't have the personal drive to climb the ladder of success. Cries from island communities for economic reform were unreasonable. If Guggenheim saw any cause for criticizing the government, it was limited to the national lottery, frequent amnesty laws that pardoned criminals and undermined justice, and congressional licensing of immunity privileges. He singled out the lottery for particular scorn. 

Years later, well after Machado's fall, Guggenheim softened his stance in support of the Cuban President, but only after America had completely disassociated itself from it.

Machado's heavy-handed administration inspired sporadic outbursts led mostly by university students. Machado responded by closing the university. Violence begat violence and innocent bystanders were harmed. Machado blamed it on communist agitators, a cry that would reverberate among Latin American dictators for decades to come, and America would respond in every case with support for the worst tyrannies.

Why didn't America disavow Machado earlier? Some argue that the United States was an unwilling judge of the Cuban government under the terms of the Platt Amendment and the Permanent Treaty that provided for American intervention in case the island's government was imperiled by another revolution. However, it is clear that American businessmen exerted their influence in Washington in favor of any Cuban government that maintained the status quo and provided protection for their investments in the island.

A similar problem can be seen developing in America today. Washington appears loyal more to business interests than the electorate. Voters have abrogated their influence over Congress and the White House by either staying away from the polls or by reelecting incumbents without regard for their performance in office. Meanwhile, big money interests such as labor unions and quasi-governmental agencies (such as Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae) dictate the course of legislation and government administration.

AMERICAN DIPLOMATS CELEBRATED the Cuban elections of 1924 as heralding a new maturity in politics there. Opposition parties submitted to the inauguration of Gerado Machado as President. His election witnessed minimal disturbances. Everyone now expected an era of stability on the island. Unfortunately, these expectations weren't met. Within a few years, Machado consolidated his power and imposed one of the most brutal tyrannies in Cuban history.

Machado began innocently enough. He promised to respect individual liberties and bring honesty to business and government through a program of moralización. During the early months of his administration, the educational system was renovated and public works projects were started. Machado even managed to retard a precipitous fall in sugar prices that was crippling the island's economy.

Cuban intellectuals praised the Machado administration and dreamed of an end to the Permanent Treaty that allowed America to meddle in their affairs. Cubans organized a League Against The Platt Amendment, the provision of the Cuban Constitution that gave the United States a legal right to meddle. Machado himself grumbled publicly against the amendment.

Although Machado's foreign policy was anti-American and nationalistic in tone, it was pro-American in purpose. American diplomats and bankers trusted him more than any previous leader because Machado had financial interests in American-owned properties including Havana's public utilities. They realized that his nationalistic bombast was purely for public consumption.

Machado was the first to successfully crush his opposition and transform his presidency into a brutal dictatorship. He began by absorbing fringe political groups into his party thus forming an early version of a “Rainbow Coalition”. His enemies, the Nationalist Coalition, found itself cut off from all support. Machado then forbade the formation of new political parties, public assemblies, and criticism in the press. Crowder's election code was emasculated when the Cuban Congress extended the president's term in office to six years, thus setting him on the path to dictatorship.

Armed Machado thugs disrupted professional meetings of lawyers, doctors, engineers, and scientists until they elected pro-Machado leaders. Politicians, newspaper editors, and labor union leaders who attempted to defy the regime disappeared mysteriously. Cubans who escaped to America wrote of police visitations in the night, prison torturing, and official terrorizing.

The United States Senate reacted with far more alacrity than the State Department. The Foreign Relations Committee called for an immediate investigation of the Cuban government. But Machado answered their charges by improving only his treatment of American businessmen and their interests, and America sent a new ambassador to Cuba.

It is instructive to note that the rise of tyranny was preceded by an attack on the election process. It leads one to wonder if recent questionable activities in American elections and public loss of confidence in them could presage such trouble here. Why do so many American politicians recoil in horror at any suggestion of addressing these issues? Is it possible that we are not as "politically mature" as our forefathers?

THE DIVIDE BETWEEN progressives and conservatives has become rancorous of late. People of all ideological persuasions were at least respectful of the President regardless of their opposing views, in times past. Not so any more. Progressives never fully accepted the legitimacy of Bush's presidency. Nor have conservatives accepted the legitimacy of Obama's. Shades of election fraud lurk in every corner.

These events seem to coincide with those in Cuba in the early part of the Twentieth Century. It seems that American diplomats were correct in their judgment that internal turmoil, especially that engendered by dishonest elections, endangered national integrity. Thus, they focused on erecting legal and electoral arrangements to insure that people could trust that their will was heard. “Preventative Policy” was used to describe these measures.

Enoch Crowder, a native Missourian, led the diplomatic efforts to establish America's Preventive Policy in Cuba. He was sent to Cuba by Woodrow Wilson to erect a legal basis for Cuban elections. Crowder believed, as generations of Americans before him, that the Cubans were a pleasant people who were politically immature and required American guardianship.

The Cubans expected someone to monitor elections, much as Jimmy Carter has in recent times. However, they got a heavy handed negotiator, more like Nancy Pelosi, who promulgated legislation without regard for anyone else's wishes. On the surface, his plan seemed sensible. Well, at least it appealed to American sensibilities since it was modeled after the systems in place in the United States. It provided for two parties, separate ballots for national and local elections, judges and electoral officials would be selected by a means designed to prevent fraud, and the returns were subject to public audit.

One of the more interesting provisions that Crowder implemented gave the judiciary an important role in determining electoral victories. We saw how well that was received in the United States during the 2000 contest between Bush and Gore.

Crowder defended his work by asserting that America had a moral obligation to provide stable government in Cuba. He aimed to achieve this goal, not with intervention, but diplomacy. Unfortunately, the first test of the Crowder code, the Cuban elections of 1920, proved to be an embarrassment. President Menocal, in a desperate move to keep his party, the Conservatives, in power, united them with the Popular Alliance. He appointed military supervisors at polling places and stripped electoral powers from duly elected municipal and provincial officials. The Liberal Party retaliated by withdrawing from the process. How should America respond? They condemned the Liberal move as “undemocratic” and “as tending to undermine the foundations of popular government.”

Why did American diplomats side with Menocal? When disturbances broke out in Camagüey Province and threatened American property owners there, the President promised adequate protection. Furthermore, he quietly informed American diplomats that he would not object if the United States sent Marines into the province if needed. To be fair, it must be noted that the Liberals had sanctioned the Camagüey protest.

Crowder returned to Cuba in 1921 with a warning. The President was to abide by the electoral processes he had set up. As an inducement to accept his terms, Crowder was authorized to offer financial aid to the Cuban government. Ultimately, the United States used dollars rather than bullets to persuade the Cubans to become more politically mature. We may need the same remedy in the United States if things don't turn around.

AMERICAN INGENUITY INDUSTRIALIZED the sugar industry in Cuba. Larger mills were built. Railroads were added to carry the cane to centrales that now dominated Cuba's sugar production. Corporations, principal among them American Refining Company, Hershey Chocolate Company, Hires Root Beer Company, and Loft Candy Company, acquired the largest plantations. Production rose. Profits rose. The latifundia (large plantation system) thrived on cheap labor and American capital.

Unfortunately, the latifundia proved too successful. The island began producing more sugar than even the United States could consume. They turned to other markets but found them closed by World War I. Thus, the price of sugar plummeted and granitos or little farmers were forced to sell their cane to the centrales at lower and lower prices until they had no choice but to sell their farms to the larger plantations. The colonos or workers became vassals of the centrales. 

Until the 1920s, Cuba's economic policy had been guided by the Americans who insisted that the island could achieve prosperity and political stability through increased production of sugar. The capital investment in Cuban sugar and other properties which had increased from $50 million in 1898 to $1.25 billion by the mid-1920s, wasn't producing the expected return. Then came the Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922 which levied extra duties on Cuban sugar imported into the United States to offset the damage done to the sugar beet industry in Colorado and the competing sugar cane industry in Hawaii.

Thomas Chadbourne, a lawyer from New York, was retained to represent Havana at a convention in Brussels where ministers from the sugar producing nations were meeting. Together with Java, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, Belgium, and Hungary, they agreed to limit production and increase sugar exports only as prices rose. The plan produced only marginal results.

Ultimately, the prosperity that was supposed to insure political stability in Cuba never materialized. Thus, political stability never materialized. At no time in the decades that followed, from the end of the Spanish-American War until Castro's rise to power, did any Cuban government ever sit easily in Havana. Stability was only achieved so long as the threat of American intervention prevailed, and the island's government remained committed to maintaining the status quo for American businessmen on the island.

“AMERICANS GENERALLY are not liked in Cuba,” wrote the American minister in 1910, “because most of those who come here wish to make money and develop the country on American lines...” Thus, the second intervention brought American interference in economic affairs as well as political ones. This involvement would linger decisively until Fidel Castro rose to power.

Although Leonard Wood, as military governor of the island until 1902, had worked assiduously to prepare the Cubans for self-rule, the island's economy was in tatters when he departed. The sugar industry was virtually bankrupt. The problem was that Spain had been the only market for Cuba's produce. With the colonial ties broken following the Spanish-American War, America had to step in. It was the only logical market.

Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State, Elihu Root, warned that orderly self-rule in Cuba depended on the island's prosperity. Without it, perpetual revolution would reign.

American entrepreneurs were only too happy to help. They had beaten their heads against the walls that had been erected against free trade between Cuba and the United States. With the Spaniards gone, all saw a rich potential that could only be realized by American capital. “No better field for the expenditure of capital,” declared James Bryce, “could be wished for. Under a wise and firm government, and in the hands of our energetic race, it might attain to a very high measure of prosperity.” Bryce was an American inventor who rose to become chief engineer at IBM in its early years.

Elihu Root directed their attention to the sugar industry as he reported, “More than half of the people of the island are depending directly or indirectly upon the success of that industry. If it succeeds we may expect peace, plenty, domestic order, and the happiness of a free and contented people to reward the sacrifice of American lives and treasure through which Cuba was set free. If it fails, we may expect that the fields will again be wasted, the mills will again be dismantled, the great body of laborers will be thrown out of employment, and that poverty and starvation, disorder and anarchy will ensue...”

Despite these grim warnings, the American sugar beet industry delayed ratification of a commercial treaty for a year. The treaty stipulated that Cuban products then entering on the free list would remain on the schedule and that other products would enter at a special discount of twenty percent less than similar items for other nations. American exports to Cuba received equal privileges.

American capital began pouring into Cuba as soon as the treaty was ratified. Ownership of the bankrupt plantations quickly passed into American hands. Cuba's prosperity may not have been insured, but prospects looked bright for Americans investing in the island.

AMERICA WAS DISAPPOINTED with Cuba's failure in their first attempt at self-rule. Most Cubans, for their part, expected a large-scale deployment of American troops. Some might say that they were looking forward to it. American soldiers based in Cuba would infuse much needed cash into the economy and represent the return of a benevolent dictator. People, both in Cuba and America, began speaking hopefully of annexation.

John W. Foster, then former Secretary of State and grandfather of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, argued against annexation. He wrote that it not only violated the Teller Amendment, but also would result in a lengthy military occupation. Foster also argued that it would aggravate America's social divide. Certainly he was concerned with an increase in the numbers of blacks but, more importantly, annexing Cuba would vastly increase the number of Catholics in American society inasmuch as the island's residents predominately adhered to that religion. Economically, annexation would prove harmful to domestic beet sugar and tobacco industries.

The American military governor during the 1906-1909 intervention, Charles Magoon, was another disappointment. As an administrator in Cuba, Magoon was a dispenser of patronage rather than an effective administrator. Cubans and Americans alike lined up for jobs and Magoon handed them out. He even created jobs for political cronies.

Construction projects were ordered from Washington. They included public works projects: sewage, paving, and an aqueduct. All were poorly financed and the contractors delivered shoddy products.

To his credit, Magoon ordered a study of Cuban legal systems and instituted changes. He transferred selected powers to the Cuban Congress and established a civil service system mirroring the one employed in America.

Charles Magoon and Leonard Wood, a former military governor in Cuba, have often been compared. The Cubans revere Wood and regard Magoon with scorn. Interestingly, Wood was more of an authoritarian. Magoon only requested compliance. Wood was a military hero. Magoon was a military administrator, his previous experience having been in overseeing the operation of the Canal Zone in Panama. However, neither accomplished their goals in Cuba, of teaching to people how to rule themselves.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT BLAMED Cuba's failure to succeed at self-rule on their inability to compromise. He sent a detachment of Marines to guard the island's national treasury while the government sorted itself out. Thus, began another thirty years of American paternalism in the Caribbean.

Cuba's first President, Tomas Estrada Palma, attempted to lead the island through the transition from a Spanish colony to independence. However, he would begin a pattern that repeated itself through the decades up to and including the presidency of Fidel Castro. Once in power, they all wanted to remain in power. The people, more comfortable following a strong man than governing themselves, were inclined to allow them. However, others wanted the power and refused to accept the will of the people, threatening revolution if they didn't get their way.

As Palma's first term in office drew to an end, two other parties advanced candidates: The National and the Republican. When Palma announced that he was going to seek a second term, these two coalesced into a Liberal alliance and announced that they would not accept Palma's reelection. They proclaimed that they would not accept the results of an election that favored Palma and would resort to revolution to overthrow his government.

The Liberals made good on their threat when Palma was reelected and the President employed the military to break the revolt. The Liberals responded with accusations that Palma had pilfered public funds to finance his campaign and, since reelection, hiring guerrilla assassins.

Theodore Roosevelt saw this as a failure of the Cubans to compromise which he held as essential to the effective functioning of government. Is it, really? He urged the Cuban Congress to intervene, but this only caused Palma to resign. As he left office, every member of his cabinet, the ones that were part of the succession of power in Cuba, resigned with him. Moderate supporters of Palma in the Congress refused to attend sessions and, thus, a quorum was prevented. The island was left without a government.

Thus, all of America's efforts to prepare the islanders for self-rule failed. Roosevelt blamed the failure on their inability to compromise. Is that why America's efforts to build new nations in Iraq and Afghanistan failed? Is it possible that compromise just isn't possible in some places or situations?

CUBA SITS ASTRIDE the shipping lanes to and from the Panama Canal. Hostile forces, or pirates, based at Guantanamo Bay could easily disrupt these strategic routes. Although the canal was not completed until 1914, twelve years following Cuban independence, the United States Navy wanted a coaling station and a base there to insure that they could properly defend the region.

Coal fueled ships in the early Twentieth Century, even warships. Bunkers had to be replenished much more frequently than oil-fueled ships that dominated the American Navy during World War II and beyond. (Nuclear fueled engines are used only on submarines and aircraft carriers, even today.) Thus, coaling stations were needed at key locations, especially strategic ones like the Caribbean sea lanes to the Panama Canal. Guantanamo was perfectly situated to support this purpose.

Guantanamo Bay also is well protected against the ravages of tropical storms. The smaller classes of warships and patrol boats needed to guard littoral waters, close to shore in and around Cuba, can snuggle easily within its confines. These vessels converted to oil-fired boilers, but the station at Guantanamo was still needed by larger, capital warships that continued burning coal well into the Twentieth Century.

Today's littoral warships are busy protecting the approaches to the Suez Canal where Sudanese pirates are active these days.

The United States continues to occupy Guantanamo over the objections of Fidel Castro. He has argued that the lease resulted from a treaty that was imposed on the Cubans under coercion, and that such treaties are null and void under Article 52 of the Vienna Treaty on the Law of Treaties, negotiated in 1969. However, his claim fails on two counts. First, there was no coercion. The United States made no threats to gain Cuba's agreement. Secondly, the Vienna Treaty explicitly precludes its application retroactively. 

Thus, the United States makes its lease payment to Cuba every year by check and Castro refuses to cash them.

THE PLATT AMENDMENT is an amendment to the Cuban Constitution that was crafted in Washington. The Cubans were obligated to accept it before the Americans turned over control of the island. At first they rejected it until faced with the reality that complete independence would make them the target of every ambitious despot in the region.

The Amendment was introduced into Congress by Senator Orville H. Platt. It altered the relationship between Cuba and the United States that had been codified by the Teller Amendment to America's declaration of war on Spain. The original intent of the Teller Amendment, to preclude American annexation of the island, remained intact. It did, however, provide for continued American protection of Cuba. It authorized the Americans to prevent any other nation from annexing the island. The Cubans themselves promised not to invite such annexation by any other country. It even provided for the Americans to resume the occupation if things got out of hand and the lawful Cuban government requested their assistance. Furthermore, the Cubans agreed to make no treaty that provided a foothold in the Caribbean to any other nation.

Of course, the Cubans could have disclaimed the Platt Amendment and discarded it from their constitution after the Americans withdrew. However, its provisions were also codified in a Cuban-American Treaty signed in 1903, and thus they were barred from altering their relationship to the United States in perpetuity.

Although most of the provisions of the Platt Amendment were negotiated out of existence in 1934, as part of Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, one remained in effect and has been an unrelenting irritant to Fidel Castro: the perpetual lease of Guantanamo Bay.

Whereas the Teller Amendment was an explicit policy eschewing imperialism, the Platt Amendment has been excoriated as imperialistic. That's a bit of a stretch. Although the United States retained a measure of control over Cuba's foreign affairs, at least until Roosevelt rescinded those provisions, the American base at Guantanamo was fairly bought and paid for. The mere fact that subsequent iterations of the island's government may be unhappy with the deal does not make it inequitable.

Often times, those who protest governmental policies and actions are more concerned with contemporary and changing senses of what is fair, but have little knowledge of law, especially international law. However, governments, as well as individuals and businesses, depend upon the sanctity of contracts.