Cuba: An American History

Histories of Cuba often reflect Cold War divisions. Many US accounts focus on the destructiveness of Fidel Castro’s communist policies, and some left-leaning narratives emphasize the harm caused by US interventions in Cuban sovereignty and economic embargos. In Cuba: An American History, Ana Ferrer takes a different approach: She situates US-Cuban relations within the context of a much longer history of American imperialism and Cuban resistance. This perspective sheds light on Cuban foreign policy, particularly following Castro’s rise to power in 1959.

After World War II, the United States was dedicated to fighting communism and containing Soviet influence around the world, sometimes at the expense of Latin American democracy. For instance, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed a coup in Guatemala in 1954 to overthrow the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz and install a military junta—partly because Arbenz sought to appropriate and redistribute land owned by the United Fruit Company. Since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the US interests had dominated sugar production and other key industries in Cuba. The Cuban military dictator Fulgencio Batista supported this. In this context, revolutionaries in Cuba (like Castro) had two goals: overthrowing Batista’s dictatorship and challenging US economic and political control.