The Masters of the Caribbean

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1823, “I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of states.” Jefferson wrote a few years prior, “If we seized Cuba, we will be the masters of the Caribbean.”

In 1898, the US turned Cuba into a “virtual colony.” Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad wrote, Cuba’s “entire infrastructure was controlled by U.S. multinationals, which charged enormous fees for the provision of electricity and water and paid basement prices for the old plantation crop, sugar.”

The US intervened militarily in Cuba from 1906 to 1909. Then again in 1912. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth.”

Chomsky and Prashad wrote, “In March 1960, the Eisenhower administration authorized the CIA to overthrow the government in Cuba.” That escalated under President Kennedy.

In 1961, the CIA started a regime change campaign titled Operation Mongoose. The National Archive wrote that Operation Mongoose was “specific CIA and Pentagon plans for infiltrations, sabotage, espionage, and regime change [in Cuba].” The CIA admitted, “Our covert activities would now be directed toward the destruction of targets important to the [Cuban] economy.” There was “no concern for international law or the unspoken nature of these operations as terrorist attacks.”

The Director of the CIA, Marshall S. Carter, proposed “Mine with moored oil drum mines the approaches to one or more of the following [Cuban] harbors,” and “Incendiary sabotage by a raider team of the wooden cooling tower, wooden docks.” Attorney General Robert Kennedy said, “The Cuba covert operation had become the highest priority of the United States.”

President Kennedy initiated a blockade against Cuba. The State Department’s Lester D. Mallory said the purpose of the blockade was, “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Since 1992, the UN General Assembly has voted for an annual resolution on the “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” For over three decades, most of the world has voted to end the blockade. In 2024, 187 countries voted to end the blockade. Two countries vetoed it (the United States, Israel). During the 63-year blockade, Cuba lost $1.5 trillion.

Remarkably, the Cuban people remained resilient in the face of US brutality. For 2024, the CIA’s World Factbook reported that Cuba had a lower infant mortality rate than the US. Cuba had a slightly higher life expectancy than the US. Cubans received free healthcare, free education (including at universities), and homelessness was nearly non-existent. Students received free meals.

Meanwhile, in the US, homelessness increased to record levels under the Biden administration. For most of the US population, a college education means lifelong debt. The US has the highest health care costs of any industrial nation.

Anton Porcari

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