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The Cuban Revolution

EducationThe Cuban Revolution
(The following is from the book “The Cuban Revolution,” written by Robert Goldston.)
 
In August 1851, at the head of an “army” of about five hundred mercenaries – mostly American, German and Polish soldiers of fortune, with four dozen Cubans mixed in for appearances – General Lopez set sail on his crusade. The expedition landed at Playtas, about sixty miles west of Havana, on August 11. Unfortunately, the Cuban people failed to rally around this international brigade, and within ten days the adventurers had been rounded up by the Spanish army. A few of the survivors were executed at Havana – General Lopez himself being garroted for high treason – while the rest were packed off to the Spanish penal colonies in Africa. The Americans, who a century later planned the Bay of Pigs disaster, were evidently unfamiliar with the melancholy story of General Lopez.
 
But Lopez’ failure did not dampen American, especially Southern, interest in Cuba. In 1854 the American ministers to France, England and Spain (all pro-slavery men), while gathered to take the waters at the fashionable spa at Ostend, Belgium, issued a highly original manifesto in which they urged the State Department to offer Spain $120,000,000 for Cuba, and in the event that Spain refused to sell, to seize the island by force. While the Ostend Manifesto may have astonished the foreign ministries of the world, it only alerted the North to what was now becoming very clear: Southern interest in Cuba threatened an extension of the slave power.
 
In the face of adamant abolitionist opposition, further attempts against the Ever-Faithful Isle came to nothing. Then the storm of Civil War (1861-1865) absorbed American passions, and when it was over, the abolition of slavery had ended the original economic basis of our interest in Cuba until 1873, when the celebrated Virginius affair pricked the national temper.
 
The Virginius, flying the American flag, was a vessel which, under the command of various freebooters, had for years been running guns to various revolutionary groups in Central America and the Caribbean. When the Ten Years’ War broke out in Cuba in 1868, the Virginius added the Cuban insurrectionaries to her list of customers. But in October 1873 her luck ran out. She was caught on the high seas by a Spainsh gunboat and brought into the port of Santiago de Cuba. Her cargo was discovered to consist of rifles and ammunition while her “passengers” were evidently Cuban revolutionaries.
 
Under international law, a ship of neutral registry cannot be apprehended on the high seas outside territorial waters, no matter what her cargo or mission, especially when no state of war exists. Furthermore, as American citizens, some of the crew of the Virginius enjoyed special protection from overzealous local authorities under a Spanish-American treaty dating back to 1795. But to the colon mentality, Madrid was as distant as Washington, and gunrunners like Virginius were seldom caught. The local Spanish authorities, urged on by the colons, decided to make of the ship and her crew an example. Accordingly both the crew and the passengers of the Virginius were tried before a drumhead military court-martial aboard a Spanish gunboat in Santiago Bay. On November 1, 1873, the court sentenced all of them to death. With great dispatch local officials proceeded immediately to execute their prisoners in batches – Cubans, Americans and some British found aboard. They had succeeded in killing fifty-three of them before consular protests, frantic cables from Madrid and, most effective of all, the arrival of a British man-of-war cleared for action in Santiago harbor put an end to the slaughter.
 
Up and forward with the “Citizens Organized for Liberty thru Action.”
 
Arriba y adelante con la “Organización de Ciudadanos para la Libertad a través de la Acción.” Siglas en Ingles- “COLA.”
   
Any comments, feel free to write, at my email address [email protected].
 
21st October 2008
Finca Solana
Corozal Town

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