Forget about that girl who never cared for you: memories of annexationism in Cuba

Cuban official historiography repeats a scene with catechism-like faith: the United States, lurking since its foundation, waiting to bite into the ripe fruit of Cuba; Spain, in its death throes; and, in the middle, a Cuban people who alone resisted the appetites of an empire.

The phrase comes from a real diplomatic instruction. On April 28, 1823, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote that Cuba, separated from Spain, "must necessarily gravitate towards the North American Union, just as a fruit separated from its tree... it cannot, even if it wants to, avoid falling to the ground."

The quote is authentic, but it was written at a time when slavery shaped U.S. foreign policy. Thirty years later, with abolition following the Civil War (1861-1865), that calculation collapsed. Using Quincy Adams to explain the policies of 1898 is like citing the testament of a man to explain the decisions of his great-grandson.

The documentation tells a different story: it was Cuba that, for much of the 19th century, requested its annexation to the United States through letters, records, and presidential telegrams. Washington, driven more by calculation than by principle, almost always chose another approach: independence under supervision.

Cuban annexationism

Annexationism was not a foreign imposition. It was a Cuban project, its origins dating back to the late 18th century, in the Creole slaveholding bourgeoisie, decades before a republic took arms. That generation feared three things at once: the decline of Spain, the abolitionist pressure from England, and the contagion of slave uprisings following the Haitian revolution. Seeing the United States as a guarantor of stability for the slave economy was not an unpatriotic or fanciful idea; it was likely the most pragmatic projection for a Spanish province aspiring to become a state.

Narciso López gave that movement its first armed expression: between 1849 and 1851, he organized three expeditions to separate Cuba from Spain and incorporate it into the United States. He was a Venezuelan general, married to the sister of the Count of Pozos Dulces, and represented the sugarocracy of the Havana Club, heir to the 18th-century fear of abolition. For that class, annexation to a slave-holding South was a guarantee to preserve slavery.

Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, "Father of the Fatherland" also did not reach independence as a convinced abolitionist. In 1852, he participated in the Las Pozas rebellion, coordinated with the last expedition of López. Seventeen years later, already the president of the Republic in Arms, that history still weighed heavily: in April 1869, backed by the strong annexationist current of the Guáimaro Assembly, he ratified a petition that opened the way for integrating Cuba into the United States. Eduardo Machado advocated for absolute independence, but the Assembly considering this petition for study, just four days after drafting the Constitution, dispels the myth of independentist consensus.

When Washington offered to mediate, not to annex

In August 1869, during the height of the Ten Years' War, General Daniel Sickles arrived in Madrid with instructions from Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. His mission was to offer Washington's "good offices" to persuade Spain to recognize the independence of Cuba, in exchange for the island's agreement to pay, in installments, compensation for Spain's relinquishment of its rights over it, including the abolition of slavery and a general amnesty.

It was not a purchase offer for personal gain, but rather a plan for Cuba to finance its own independence, with Washington as a mediator. It failed due to the resistance of the peninsular interests on the island and the insurgents' reluctance to lay down their arms, but it dismantles the myth of a White House solely obsessed with territorial annexation. The actual policy of Washington in that war was one of cordiality with Madrid and a refusal to recognize Cuban belligerence — even selling gunboats to the Spanish government — rather than that of an impatient predator.

1898: the trial by fire

If there was a time when the United States had everything it needed to annex Cuba—military capability, de facto control, and a Cuban sector requesting it—it was between 1898 and 1902.

On April 20, 1898, Congress approved the Joint Resolution with a last-minute addition: the Teller Amendment, which was passed by a vote of 311 to 6. It stated that the United States "rejects any provision or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control" over the island and committed to "leave the government of the island to its people." Cuban historiography recognizes it as "the most brilliant success of Cuban lobbying" in Washington, the result of the efforts of the Cuban Delegation, with attorney Horatio S. Rubens playing a key role.

The comparison that is rarely made dismantles any doubts. That very Treaty of Paris handed Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States, without any promise of independence. The Filipino insurgents, who fought against Spain just like the mambises, ended up confronting their new occupier in a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Puerto Rico remains, a century later, under U.S. sovereignty. If the rejection of incorporating "a Hispanic and Catholic state" were the obstacle, that argument collapses in the face of two territories that are equally Hispanic and Catholic, annexed without hesitation.

The difference did not lie in Washington's disposition, but in the calculations. Cuba arrived with a publicly committed stance and its own lobbying presence in the Capitol, and with the certainty —later confirmed by the Platt Amendment of 1901— that indirect control yielded the same benefits as formal annexation, without its costs.

Cuba reached 1898 with everything that a whole century of annexationist requests had built: a public commitment made by Congress itself, a lobby established in the Capitol, and an unbroken tradition of Cuban figures ready to advocate for that incorporation. It lacked none of the elements that are typically missing for a political desire to come to fruition.

What was lacking was alignment with Washington's calculations. The certainty, later confirmed by the Platt Amendment of 1901, that indirect control yielded the same benefits as formal annexation, without its costs, proved stronger than any Cuban request, no matter how frequently made. The Cuban annexationist movement did not fail due to a lack of insistence. It failed because, when it came down to it, Washington found it inconvenient to agree.

That woman never loved Cuba with the possessive devotion that propaganda attributes to her. We must understand that, in both love and politics, perseverance does not always lead to success.