FREEDOM SHRINE

Theodore Roosevelt on Cuba

1907

• In this letter to the Secretary of State, then-President Theodore Roosevelt expresses his opposition to establishing Cuba as a US protectorate. Since the 1500s, Cuba was under Spanish control. However, in the 1880s, a nascent pro-independence movement developed among the populace. The Spanish government tasked General Valeriano “The Butcher” Weyler to crush the insurrection. He lived up to his name by setting up concentration camps in which he imprisoned a large portion of the population. The atrocities outraged the American public, particularly due to the exaggerations of the atrocities in newspapers by the then-yellow press. Further conflagrating US-Spanish relations was the incident of the USS Maine, which sank off the coast of Cuba in 1898. Although there was no evidence that it had been deliberately attacked (indeed, the sinking was likely the result of a coal bunker fire). Nonetheless, yellow journalism further galvanized an outraged public. The United States declared war on Spain, and, with a newly developed navy, quickly defeated the Spanish and annexed former Spanish colonial possessions, including the Philippines (which would only gain independence 1946), Puerto Rico, Guam, and Cuba (a de facto US “protectorate” until 1959). Although the war had been fought in the name of Cuban independence, the United States government forced the fledgling Cuban nation to accept de facto American control over Cuba’s foreign and domestic affairs. This is despite the fact that the earlier Teller Amendment to a joint resolution of Congress that declared that the US would let Cuba be a self-governing nation. The passing of the Platt Amendment in 1901 began an era of American imperialism in Cuba which ended when communists led by Fidel Castro overthrew the American-backed dictator Batista in 1959, beginning an era of tense relations between the two countries that lasts to this day. Theodore Roosevelt (who rode with the Rough Riders to victory at the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American) ostensibly opposed making Cuba an American “protectorate” in this letter. However, he oversaw a significant expansion of the American Empire in Latin America (as seen in the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine) particularly through his intervention in Panama.