Connections: the Inextricable Link Between the US and Cuba

By Nicholas Wang, Public Health in Cuba, Summer 2013

This post marks the first full week that we’ve spent here in Cuba, and I know that I speak for the group when I say that we are learning a ton. Cuba is an incredible place, and there are just so many fascinating things to talk about. I’ll mention one in particular for this blog post: the incredible relationship between the United States and Cuba.

We spent most of our time during this first week slowly settling into our residence here in Havana, getting used to the heat, living without continual access to our cell phones, and practicing our Spanish language skills. Adrian, the program director, along with another professor from Casa de las Americas, Gerardo, have been taking us around to different parts of the city to visit key historical sites and help us get used to traveling around within Havana. Coinciding with these excursions has been a sort of period-by-period lesson on the history of Cuba; our required reading for this week has helped us learn about key aspects of Cuban history, and our outings into the city directly compliment what we read for homework.

While there are many fascinating aspects of Cuban history, I think one of the most interesting and perhaps the most surprising aspect is the long and storied history of interaction between Cuba and the US. The two countries are geographically very close, shared similar experiences of colonialism and slavery, and, like most other New World nations, have a history of immigrants and racial mixing. But the connections go far beyond those similarities: during the 1800s, the US quickly became a key player in the Cuban economy, buying a large amount of the sugar that was grown on the island; over time, the US came to own and dominate much of the means of production in Cuba. During the Spanish American War in 1898, American troops invaded Cuba and stayed until 1902. The Platt Amendment, drawn up in 1901, allowed the US to re-invade Cuba whenever the economic and security interests of the US were at risk (it wasn’t repealed until 1934). The influence of Cuban Americans in the relationship between the two countries cannot be understated; the very first Cuban flag in history was manufactured in New York in 1850 by a Cuban living abroad. The constant and blatant influence of the US in the Cuban economy, political environment, and even society was one of the major contributors to the radicalization of the Cuban revolution, which, among other things, sought to distance and separate Cuba as much as possible from the neo-imperialism of Western powers and corporations that had come to dominate Latin America.

But even with the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the bonds between the two countries were impossible to sever completely. In fact, it could be argued that when the two governments pushed each other so far away politically and economically, it served indirectly to highlighting the similarities and links between the two nations that could not be ignored. Cuban Americans bringing money back to their relatives in Havana and elsewhere has played a key role in the “informal economy”, which has exploded in the past twenty years. The influence of American music and culture in Cuban music and culture is undeniable; the Buena Vista Social Club, the most famous example of Cuban son music, is the result of a collaborative project involving American ethnomusicologist Ry Cooder and Cuban musicians.

During one of the nights this past week, a group of us went down to the Malecón (the large boulevard that hugs the ocean and a popular place for Cubans to hang out) to take a walk. There we ran into a group of young Cuban men who became our first “Cuban friends”. We discussed a lot of things, and while the language barrier was sometimes evident, it was clear that both sides were fascinated by each other’s culture. But after some thought and reflection, I came to the conclusion that these guys are already pretty tuned into American culture. They know pretty much all of the current music that we listen to in the States, have seen all of the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and even knew to say “hella” to Anna Radoff, a classmate from San Francisco, where the slang term hella originated. Rather than coming to Cuba bringing American culture to the people, it was the Cubans who one-upped us by seemingly knowing more about American culture than we did. It was us that were ignorant of Cuban culture, and specifically the key role of the US in this country.

As Cuba continues to slowly open up and reform its society, these similarities will once again make themselves blatantly known. But while some Americans might be surprised to discover these similarities, the eleven of us on this program will know better, having experienced them firsthand.