United States career diplomat with wide Latin American experience, appointed assistant secretary of state by the Franklin Roosevelt administration in early 1933. Roosevelt and his Secretary of state Cordell Hull decided to send Sumner Wells to Cuba as US ambassador to mediate between President Gerardo Machado and the opposition. Appointed April 24, 1933, Welles arrived …
Novelist and journalist from Pinar del Rio province, he was a teacher when he developed an interest in literature, publishing in 1837 his short stories “La Peña blanca,” “El Ave muerta,” “La Cueva de Taganana.” These brief narrations show great power of description and the capacity to transmit the cultural atmosphere of the period. In …
Gerardo Machado y Morales (1871-1939). President of Cuba, 1925-1933, was born in Santa Clara and spent his childhood in the family cattle estate, attended private schools and in his early 20s engaged in growing and selling tobacco. His father fought for the rebels in the Ten Years’ War, becoming a major, and Gerardo joined them …
Machadato. The Presidential term of Gerardo Machado y Morales Read More »
The Spanish term guerrilla (“little war”) for the employment of small bands of irregular fighters in hit-and-run tactics against a regular army entered the international vocabulary during the popular Spanish uprising against the French-imposed rule of King Joseph Bonaparte (1808-14). It is appropriate for much of the fighting in the Ten Years’ War and Independence War, 1895-1898. …
A December 1955 offshoot of the Federación Estudiantil Universitaria (FEU) at the University of Havana, the Revolutionary Directorate promoted an insurrectionary response to Batista’s repression, and established contact with other opponents of the regime, including Fidel Castro. Its March 1957 attack on the Presidential Palace failed to kill the president, but cost the life of its leader …
By Jaime Suchlicki * If the Democrats retain control of the Senate in the midterm elections, the administration may offer new concessions to the Cuban government. But the United States should expect very little in return from the regime in Havana. Cuba remains an enemy of the United States and an ally of Iran, Russia, …
Organized by José Martí (who was killed almost immediately), the war began with the Grito de Baire, February 24, 1895, accompanied by risings in various places in Matanzas and Oriente provinces. A prompt response by the governor, accompanied by an amnesty offer, virtually ended the revolt in Matanzas, but the eastern rebels were soon reinforced …
Independence War,1895-1898. (Guerra de Independencia) Read More »
In 1962, the Soviet Union surreptitiously introduced nuclear missiles into Cuba. A surprised, embarrassed and angry President John F. Kennedy blockaded the island and after eleven tense days the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles. The crisis, which brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust helped, among other things, to shape the perceptions …
In the late 1960s and early 1970s these “we shall win” brigades consisted of some thousand youths, mainly American, who visited Cuba to help with the sugar harvest, motivated by Cuban hostility to United States and support for North Vietnam. They received liberal doses of indoctrination against the war and in the Cuban government’s revolutionary …
* Por Néstor Carbonell Cortina Los tiranos a través de la historia se han valido de todo tipo de argucias para usurpar el poder, y han recurrido a todo género de coacciones para eliminar o neutralizar la resistencia. Pero los que perfeccionaron la técnica de yugulación han sido los regímenes totalitarios, maestros en el arte de …
