What are the "U.S. crimes against Cuba" that everyone is talking about?

What are the "U.S. crimes against Cuba" that everyone is talking about?
Following is a partial list of U.S. actions aimed at preventing the Cuban people from taking direct control of their island, their government and their lives. Many U.S. historical documents refer to Cuba as a "slave country" or a "black" country, which the U.S. must not allow to gain its independence. This is neither a complete or comprehensive list.

The crimes:

Prevented Simon Bolívar from helping liberate Cuba
Reacting to the prospect of a united Mexican-Colombian military expedition to liberate Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1824, Washington (with the backing of England) issued a series of threatening notes to Mexico and Colombia, declaring that the U.S. would not "remain indifferent" to the freeing of Cuba.

The U.S. diplomat who delivered the threats wrote a revealing letter to his boss, Secretary of State Henry Clay, stating, "What I most dread is that that blacks may be armed and used as auxiliaries… This country prefers that Cuba and Porto Rico should remain dependent on Spain. This Government desires no political change of that condition."

The threats worked. The expedition was stopped before it began. Bolívar told a delegation of Cuban revolutionaries, "We cannot set at defiance the American Government, in conjunction with that of England, determined on maintaining the authority of Spain over the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico…"



Tried to stop José Martí from starting Cuba’s War of Independence
On the very day that Martí's revolutionary expedition was to set sail from Florida in January 14, 1895, the U.S. government confiscated three boats loaded with weapons and supplies that had been difficult and costly to obtain, and alerted the Spanish government. During Cuba's 2nd War of Independence, the U.S. government refused to sell weapons to the Cubans, and foiled various other attempts at arming the rebels, informing Spain each time.

(Read about José Martí | Read about the Spanish/Cuban/American War)



Repeatedly offered to buy Cuba from Spain
Even while Cuba's 2nd War of Independence was in full swing, and it seemed probable that Cuba would win, the U.S. initiated secret negotiations with Spanish officials for the purchase of Cuba. It wasn't until after Spain flatly denied the offer that the U.S.S. Maine was sent to Havana harbor and war declared.

Fifty years earlier, in 1848, President Polk had offered Spain $100 million for Cuba, but Spain refused. By the time President Franklin Pierce was in office, in 1854, the offer went up to $130 million. Spain refused again.

Guantánamo
The U.S. military took possession of Guantánamo Bay in early 1898, just after the U.S. government declared war on Spain. The contract drawn up by the U.S.-controlled Cuban government in 1902 gives the U.S. military an indefinite stay at Guantánamo, and requires that both countries be in agreement about termination.

For a century this has been a thorn on the side of Cuban nationalists, and many Cuban governments have demanded the return of this land to Cuba. The Castro government has continually insisted that this land be returned, and even though it offers the U.S. no real advantage in the area, other than in the case of an invasion of Cuba, the U.S. refuses to let go of this Cuban land.



The Platt Amendment
This Amendment was forced on the Cuban people in 1901. Not adopting it into the Cuban Constitution would have kept U.S. Armed Forces in control of Cuba. The Platt Amendment gave the U.S. virtual control of the Cuban government and society, and gave the U.S. the "right" to militarily intervene in Cuban internal affairs at will.

The "spirit" of the Platt Amendment is best described by the letter written by U.S. Undersecretary of War, J.C. Breckenridge, in 1897. Known as "The Breckenridge Memorandum," the letter went to the Commander of the U.S. Army, Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles. It explains what is to be U.S. policy towards the Hawaiian islands, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.

"We must clean up the country," writes J.C. Breckenridge in 1897, "even if this means using the methods Divine Providence used on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah… we must impose a harsh blockade, so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population…"

Over a century later, not much has changed.

(Read The Platt Amendment | Read The Breckenridge Memorandum)



Batista (1933 & 1952)
Fulgencio Batista was the U.S.-backed strong man that controlled Cuban politics for over twenty years. Each time he took over the Cuban government, overthrowing more liberal governments with massive popular support, the U.S. was quick to recognize his rule and support his actions.

(Read an article about Batista)

Bay of Pigs (April, 1961)
This invasion of Cuba was backed, financed, planned, controlled and operated by CIA personnel with the blessings of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and the support of the right-wing exile community. It involved a trained army of Cuban exiles, along with selected CIA mercenaries, and included a horrendous assortment of staged lies, such as the assertion that the bombs being dropped on Cuban soil were dropped by defecting Cuban pilots.

(Read about the invasion at Bay of Pigs)



Operation Mongoose and other continuous acts of terrorism
A) After the failure at Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy Brothers initiated, approved and operated the largest assassination campaign (aimed at Fidel Castro) in modern history. The numerous plots (many of which have been exposed with the release of thousands of formerly classified government documents) included hundreds of acts of terrorism, sabotage and psychological warfare. Throughout the Sixties, Cuba was subjected to countless sea and air commando raids by exiles, inflicting damage on oil refineries, chemical plants, railroad bridges, cane fields, sugar mills and sugar warehouses; infiltrating spies, saboteurs and assassins, and pirate attacks on Cuban fishing boats and merchant ships. Anything that would damage the Cuban economy or morale was targeted.

B) According to documents declassified in July of 1997, the CIA offered John Rosselli and Sam Giancana $150,000 to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1962. (There are still thousands of documents kept by the Kennedy estate-at public expense-which have not been released to the public supposedly because they show the Kennedys involvement in this and other attempts on Castro's life.)

C) In 1976, a CIA operative and Cuban exile, Orlando Bosch, was arrested in Venezuela for the bombing of a Cuban airline that killed 73 people. Despite a Justice Department ruling that he be deported for 30 additional acts of terrorism, he remains free in Miami, the result of a State Department pardon at the bequest of Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Senator Connie Mack and governor Jeb Bush.

D) A series of bacteriological warfare acts, including agricultural blights and animal diseases, sugarcane defoliants, bacteria affecting sugar, and human viruses, can be attributed to the Cold War against Cuba, according to a study by U.S. investigator John Lindsay.

E) Between 1979 and 1981, four destructive epidemics seriously affected humans and crops vital to the Cuban economy: hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, dengue fever, sugarcane rust and tobacco blue mold… In 1984, Eduardo Arocena, leader of the Omega 7 terrorist group, in court on a homicide charge, admitted to having participated in a 1980 operation to introduce viruses as part of the war against Cuba.

F) The war continues to this very day. On September 4, 1997, Salvadoran Raúl Ernesto Cruz León was arrested in Havana after having placed explosive devices in various hotels and in the famous Bodeguita del Medio restaurant that killed one Italian youth. Cruz León has been linked repeatedly to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).

G) The U.S. government has never taken any steps to stop Cuban exile terrorists from freely carrying out acts of aggression against Cuba. These acts continue to be carried out from U.S. territory, and include the repeated invasion of Cuban air space, waters and land.

H) On several occasions Cuban planes and boats were hijacked to the U.S. but they were not returned, nor were the hijackers punished.



Economic Embargo/Blockade
The embargo was first announced by Richard Nixon in 1960, but a great deal of the legislation that tries to force U.S. allies and trading partners to adopt these hostilities is less than a decade old. This is the harshest and longest economic blockade ever imposed by one country on another in times of "peace." Aside from the suffering it causes eleven million innocent Cubans, the blockade does not work.

You can also call it a crime that we continue this policy in light of the fact that a communist Cuba is no threat to American interests, and that we have peaceful relations with other communist countries and with countries that have much worse records of human rights abuses.