Who dominated the U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba: The State Department or American businessmen?

Cuba

HOW DARE THE SPANISH exclude the Yankee traders from trade with Cuba. By the time Van Buren became President in the mid-nineteenth century, the debate over the strategic value of the island was forgotten. Business had become the business of America. Even the State Department seemed only dimly aware that Cuba was a Spanish possession. All that concerned them was that American ships calling at ports in both Cuba and Puerto Rico were paying duties of $1.50 per ton of cargo while Spanish ships were paying only $.625. If it was a tariff war they wanted, that is what they would get.

President Martin Van Buren (click to enlarge)

John Forsyth, Van Buren's Secretary of State and a southern slave-owner, expressed America's position when he wrote that the United States could not tolerate the exclusion of its capital and industry from Spain's insular possessions. Cuba's potential was for the enjoyment of all nations. This is another of those attitudes that took root and persisted until Castro nationalized all U.S. Holdings in Cuba.

Secretary of State John Forsyth (click to enlarge)

Forsyth went on to explain America's motives as for the benefit of the Cubans themselves. Spanish colonialism with its rigid policy of commercial exclusion served only to damage the future prosperity of Cuba and Puerto Rico. An enlightened nation would not pursue such harmful economic policy.

Forsyth's condemnation was a warning to Spain. While continued Spanish possession of the island served the strategic interests of the United States – that is, it maintained the status quo of political power in the Caribbean – it did not serve America's commercial interests. In other words, Spain was on notice. The United States would tolerate their rule in Cuba only until it was prepared to take the island and defend it from more powerful European nations such as England and France.

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A student of history as well as an accomplished spy, Nick Andrews, the fictional protagonist in Rebels on the Mountain, is not surprised to find American commercial interests dominating Cuba when he's sent there to sort out the mess created by moribund U.S. Diplomacy and a rebellion led by Fidel Castro. He discovers that U.S. Foreign policy on the island has been supplanted by the commercial interests of American businessmen and mafioso.