Cuba in the 20th Century

The sale of the island of Cuba by Spain to the United States in 1922 marked the end of more than four centuries of Spanish rule. Once, in the mid-19th century, the sugar cane plantations of Cuba had made the island the jewel of the Caribbean and a hotly-contested prize; a series of rebellions and their bloody suppression made the island a perennially depressed area and ultimately, an undesirable and costly possession to the liberal governments of Madrid.

Fortunately for Spain, the United States was quite interested in acquiring the island. Quite apart from the fact of Cuba's proximity to the agricultural state of Florida and the port of New Orleans, the United States at this time was rounding out its expansion, having annexed Hawai'i within living memory. For the United States, Cuba was its first formal foothold in the Caribbean. The purchase of the island at a cost of 900 million US dollars was criticized by some anti-expansionists, but it was welcomed by everyone else.

Almost from the moment of its acquisition, the Territory of Cuba enjoyed great prosperity. American investment in the Cuban sugar industry made Havana a prosperous city, while the lax laws on prostitution and liquor and the island's warm sunny beaches attracted tens of thousands of Anglo-Americans yearly throughout the 1920's. African-Americans fled their hostile homeland for the relatively tolerant racial climate of the territory. They were joined there by a trickling of Louisianais businessmen and musicians, and by migrants from all over the Caribbean. As a base for United States military expeditionary against the small republics of the Caribbean and Central America -- Haiti from 1924 to 1939, Santo Domingo from 1931 to 1946, Nicaragua and Honduras intermittently until the 1950's -- Cuba likewise profited from investments by the United States armed forces.

After the Second World War, Cuba entered a period of unparalleled economic prosperity. Even though Cuba, like the United States and Canada, did not take full part in the League's quarante glorieuses, it was close enough to the prosperous South American Community to take part in the boom. As in neighbouring Yucatán, tourism exploded. Havana joined Mérida, Cozumel, Point-à-pitre and Aruba as one of the major vacation destinations for Europeans, while Cuba had the added benefit of a stranglehold on the United States' market of 130 million potential tourists. Light industry also grew quickly, concentrated mainly in the area of Havana but including some factories in the east of the island, around Santiago de Cuba and the Guantanamo naval base. The 1957 selection of the Isle of Pines, off of the southern coast of western Cuba, as the main United States space-launch site attracted a new wave of technically-skilled immigrants from the mainland United States. Beginning in the 1950's, the "Cuban Sound" emerged overnight as salsa and son musicians competed with their French and Brazilian counterparts as a major influence on global popular music. Celia Cruz became an international star, amazing audiences everywhere from Buenos Aires to Paris to Tokyô with her powerful voice, while a plethora of other Cuban musicians made their international fortunes in the recording studios of Brazil.

By the early 1970's, Cuba had clearly become a success story. Even though living standards in Cuba remained significantly below living standards in most of the rest of the United States, Cubans lived just as well as the average Mexican or Yucatecan and far better than anyone else in the Caribbean. The rapid growth of the United States space program following the Apollo 14 moon landing in 1973 and the decision to proceed with work on the Orbital Defense Network and Moonbase Washington spurred the development of a new high-tech sector of the Cuban economy. The casinos and tourist resorts of Cuba -- and, the Territory's notoriously liberal banking laws -- continued to attract huge numbers of tourists, increasingly from Europe and South America as well as the United States. Had Cuba's prosperity continued, by the early 21st century Cuba would likely have completed its development into a First World state bilingual in Spanish and English. External factors, however, prevented this.

By the 1970's, many Cubans had become discontented with their political system. Over time, the Territorial government had acquired most of the autonomy enjoyed by any of the states of the United States; indeed, in some respects Cuba was far more autonomous than any state of the Union, as evidenced by its observer membership in la Hispanidad and the Cuban sports teams at the Olympics. This only whetted a desire by Cubans to gain something closer to full equality with the established states of the Union. At the same time, Cubans shared in the general ethnic revival of the 1960's. Many Cubans were concerned with the fate of the Spanish language in a Cuba that was part of the English-speaking United States. Puerto Rico, independent from Spain since 1973 and now a full member of the South American Community, inspired many Cubans to agitate for change.

At the same time, the gradual winding-down of the established United States political system left the field dangerously open to all kinds of forces. Although Cuba was spared the worst of the domestic terrorism, stagflation, and senseless militarization that afflicted much of the rest of the United States, Cubans were understandably quite concerned by the deterioration of situation in the mainland United States. The emergence of FBI-run death squads under the Nixon Administration (1976-1980) upset Cubans. The strengthening of the Territorial National Guard under the Nixon Administration, and even more so under the Chang Administration, was made with the implicit intent of resisting any Presidentialist invasion.

Cuba was hardly touched by the nuclear exchange of the 3rd of September, 1982, save for the bombing of the Isle of Pines spaceport. Much to the surprise of Cuba, the Territory was in remarkably good shape: The fact that the nuclear war happened in autumn left the harvest intact, so Cuba was able to feed its population and prevent mass starvation on the scale elsewhere in the Caribbean. The Territory of Cuba was not really involved in the Presidentialist-Congressionalist controversy, but the Territorial government and the general population did realized that the chaotic civil war could spill over into Cuba if care wasn't taken. Carl Franken -- the pro-Presidentialist governor of Cuba -- attempted to place the island under martial law and institute conscription for the Presidentialist armies in October of 1982. Franken's subsequent impeachment by the Territorial legislature, and the realization that Hosperger would probably allow Cuba to choose its own course of government, pushed the island to adopt a mildly pro-Congressional attitude.

In the place of Franken, the Cuban people elected Lawton Chiles. A United States senator from 1970 until 1982, Chiles was an outspoken opponent of President Chang until the FBI threatened his family. Following those threats, Chiles decided not to seek reelection and relocated to Cuba, where he had friends in the ranching business. For the anti-Presidentialist factions in Cuba, Chiles was a logical choice, and indeed, his highly personal and efficient style of governing the last enclave of the pre-War United States

In 1984, the Presidentialist regime tried to send the Special Forces to overthrow the Cuban territorial government. However, the large number of Congressionalist sympathizers inside the Special Forces detachments sent to Cuba made the mission end disastrously. In the aftermath of the débâcle and the hundreds of dead inflicted by the attack, the Cuban Territorial Assembly Cuba announced the fact of Cuban independence to the world on the 17th of September, 1984.

Despite the Presidentialist condemnation of Cuba, Presidentialist forces didn't intervene against Cuba simply because they were far too dependent on Cuban food and Cuban trade to risk upsetting Cuba. The fact that Presidentialists no longer had any large-scale amphibious capability likewise limited the options for retaliation. In fact, a nuclear strike was the only way that the Presidentialists could respond, but such an attack would bring Cuba and its one hundred thousand National Guardsmen directly into the conflict, never mind the direct crushing intervention of the League of Nations. Quiet negotiations with Hosperger kept Cuba out of the Second Civil War. Gradually, both sides realized that Cuba would be of more use neutral. For the Presidentialists, Cuba was a valuable supplier of food, and likewise to the Congressionals. If all else failed, the Congressionals could retreat to Cuba and regroup there.

It was at this time that Cuba, under Chiles, became involved in the affairs of the mainland United States. The utter devastation of the mainland United States in the Third World War, and the subsequent civil war, had destroyed law and order and plunged the Southern states into chaos, while the post-war famines and civil wars on the island of Hispaniola had plunged Haïti into Hobbesian anarchy. With the concentration of the League and the South American Community on events in Middle America and Mexico, Cuba found itself a regional power of note.

The Caribbean League had been formed in 1965 as a loose association of the United States with Haïti and Santo Domingo, but even after Jamaica and the Bahamas joined in 1974 it had remained a symbolic organization. The catastrophe of the Third World War made regional cooperation essential. By 1985, the expulsion of Presidentialist forces from the region had eliminated almost all Presidentialist influences, while the Congressionals -- aside from the military presence in Key West and the Conch Republic's invaluable Naval Air Station -- were in no position to lead. Through a combination of idealism and bribes, President Chiles and his "Young Turk" advisors managed to gain the support of its neighbouring states in the Caribbean for the transformation of the Caribbean League into a sovereign entity. Naturally, Cuba -- with nine million of the League's 17 million citizens, and three-quarters of the the League's GNP -- led the League.

Occupied by the pressing tasks of reconstruction, for most of the 1980's Cuba and the Caribbean League concerned themselves with the matter of Florida. In 1983, the Conch Republic had asserted its authority over the southeastern tip of Florida. Beginning in 1986, the Caribbean League helped the Conch Republic assert its authority over that territory. For Cuba, Florida was almost a colonial territory. Southern Florida was never a heavy battle zone in the civil war; indeed, as a lightly-populated and mostly agricultural area, the region prospered from the sale of food to whoever could provide the money to buy it, selling most of the region's food exports to the Congressionals but also selling food to the Presidentialist garrison at Fort Pierce, which however remained uninvolved in the civil war. In 1987, Chang tried to intimidate the Florida food growers into providing Presidentialist forces with food free of change. In response, Havana dispatched "Market Guards" to the area under the authority of the Conch Republic. Soon enough, stable government was reestablished across the tip of Florida as far north as southern Palm Beach County, with claims stretching up to the northern border of that county.

In 1988, the Fort Pierce Garrison rejected the authority of the Presidentialists and declared itself to be the Central Florida Home Guards. From then on, there were two state governments in Florida, with a Presidentialist government hanging on to parts of the panhandle and a Confederate Governor that the Congressionals recognized as the de facto leaders of the state, even though Confederate authority didn't extend beyond south-central Florida. Further, there was a "Free Florida" Governor that other Congressionals recognized in central and south Florida; this state wound up merging with the Conch Republic in 1998. US Sugar and Amalgamated Industries -- a group of wealthy Cuban sugar and agrofarmers, and old industrial firms -- became the dominant force operating in Florida.

At the beginning of the 1990's, Cuba's international position was surprisingly good, all things considered. Although the Presidential regime continued to hold most of the state of Georgia and enclaves in north Florida and central Alabama, the Congressional-allied southern Confederacy controlled most of the Deep South and was a more reliable neighbour to the Caribbean League than the Presidentialist regime ever was. Cuba led the League in its cautious pro-Congressional policy, maintaining the Cuban troop deployments in Palm Beach and quietly funneling moneys provided by the League to Congressional accounts.

At the same time, the continuing worldwide economic recovery took hold in Cuba, as it did Mexico, Yucatán, and even Louisiana. In the old United States, Cuba was a relatively poor American territory; in the new North America, Cuba was the single most prosperous successor state in the whole of the United States. Like Louisiana, Cuba could one day become a major gateway into a recovered United States; unlike that former country, though, Cuba had a large domestic market, with a total population of 12 million by 1995 and income per capita not far removed from that of pre-War Egypt. Cuba's excellent geographical position and well-educated population made it one of the first major recipients of foreign investment in the 1990's, while its ethnic diversity -- a Hispanic majority of eight million, a large Anglo-American minority, and more than a million immigrants from across the Caribbean League -- made it an excellent base for foreign countries seeking to establish a base in the newly-unified Caribbean market. Throughout the 1990's, Cuba's prosperity was ensured thanks to its lucrative exports of foodstuffs, and increasingly to its growing service and financial sectors. The retirement of President Chiles for health reasons brought an end to one era, but Chiles' reemergence as the scrupulously honest and humanitarian conscience of Cuban public life lent Cuba a measure of continuity. Cuba's immense popularity among European tourists lended Cuba an invaluable extra source of foreign exchange.

First contact with the ITA in 1998 surprised Cubans. Although Cuba was fortunate enough to avoid the Holy Alliance invasions of Eurasia, the Cuban government and people were left in shock by the quick defeat of the Presidentialists and the reunification of the United States under Marketplace protection. The vast majority of Cubans did not take part in the subsequent mass migration to Rattus Prime, with only a million and a half Cubans choosing to settle on that new world. The Cuban economy was hit hard, though, by the flood of cheaper agricultural exports from offworld.

For all of its travails, Cuba in 2001 is a reasonably happy country. Cuba -- both by itself and as the dominant member of the Caribbean League -- is one of the most influential members of the young Confederation of North America, while a recent boom in foreign investment from across the ITA has helped the Cuban economy begin to recover from its post-contact slump. Cuba's democratic system of government, in the meantime, seems almost certain to endure despite the perennial instability of the Haitis and Santo Domingo. The question of mass immigration from elsewhere in the Caribbean League has become a political hot potato, but given the political adeptness of Cuba's government it hopefully will avoid becoming an issue that can threaten the Caribbean League.

The Havana city council is debating whether to give housing allowances to the city police because it costs too much for them to live downtown. My sister Gloria has to commute 30 minutes to work...on the I-295...proudly the only intact highway in the American interstate system...which runs from Santiago to Havana. A ferry used to connect it to I-95 in Key West before the troubles.

Cuban government sold food to Chang and used the money to sell weapons to Hosperger in exchange for "Debt notes" which were exchanged after the war for "land" in the US. Cuban bankers probably own close to 20% of the former continental US...and almost 70% of the arable farmland in Florida.