Straightening the History of Cuba: What We Were Not Told

Cuban historiography has been brutally altered for decades. This is not merely a matter of differences in historical interpretation; it is about a carefully crafted narrative designed to distort fundamental facts of our national history.

For over half a century, narratives were constructed where events were reorganized, exaggerated, or silenced with a very specific goal: to justify a political project and discredit entire periods of Cuba's republican history.

I will clarify something essential from the start: I am not a dreamer disconnected from reality. Nations act guided by their interests. This has always been the case throughout universal history. To pretend otherwise would be to ignore how the international system operates and how states behave.

Let's analyze the case of the United States within the history of Cuba.

When the American intervention occurs in 1898, the war against Spain had already been going on for three years, causing immense wear and tear. The country was devastated. Military campaigns, the reconcentration policy implemented by the Spanish general Valeriano Weyler, and the destruction of fields and towns had resulted in a human and economic catastrophe throughout the island.

The intervention of the United States accelerated the end of that war. This fact, which has been presented in a simplified or manipulated manner for decades, deserves to be analyzed with historical calm.

Many have repeated that the Americans entered when the war was practically won by the Cubans. This argument deserves discussion. The Liberation Army had demonstrated heroism and an extraordinary capacity for resistance, but the country was exhausted, and the conflict had become a prolonged, devastating war with uncertain short-term outcomes.

The entry of the United States into the war following the explosion of the battleship USS Maine triggered the conflict known as the Spanish–American War, which resulted in the definitive collapse of Spanish dominance in the Caribbean.

That outcome paved the way for Cuba's formal independence and the birth of the Republic.

In 1902, the Cuban Republic was born. It was not a perfect process. The presence of the Platt Amendment undoubtedly represented a limitation to the country's full sovereignty. However, reducing the entire republican period to that clause is a biased simplification that overlooks the political, economic, and social evolution that Cuba experienced during the first half of the 20th century.

For the first time in its history, the Cuban nation began to establish its own institutions, develop infrastructure, expand its economy, and build a national political system.

In 1934, the Platt Amendment was finally abolished through bilateral agreements, marking an important step in the consolidation of Cuban sovereignty.

There was corruption. There were abuses. There were political crises. No young republic is free from these problems. But there was a country that functioned, that produced, that grew, and that offered opportunities to millions of Cubans.

That chapter of our history was later rewritten to turn it into a caricature of dependency and decay.

Today, in one of the most dramatic moments in Cuba's contemporary history, the nation is once again confronted with a fundamental question: how to understand its relationship with the world and how to interpret its own past.

Peoples who are unaware of their history or accept it in a distorted form end up losing the ability to determine their future as well.

Therefore, it is essential to review the past with intellectual honesty.

Because when history is told truthfully, people regain something essential: the dignity of thinking for themselves. And that is truly worthwhile.