A ‘friendly’ takeover? Why Cubans distrust US power.

As Cuba’s government struggles with energy shortages, an economic crisis and U.S. pressure, the question of what comes after Cuban communism is no longer theoretical. Some imagine that regime change might finally be within reach.

But for many Cubans who care deeply about their country’s independence, American interest inspires less hope than unease. That reaction draws on history long preceding the Cold War.

Cuba’s strained relations with the U.S. did not begin with Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution. They go back to the 19th century, when the U.S. was rapidly expanding its territory and Cuba was one of America’s main annexation targets. Again and again, Cuban vulnerability produced American plans for intervention, acquisition or control. That pattern continues to influence how Cubans interpret Washington’s intentions today.

Just after the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers speculated about acquiring Cuba. They saw it as a natural extension of U.S. power into the Caribbean. By the 1840s, American politicians frequently described Cuba as a piece of fruit hanging from a tree, ready to fall into America’s hands once it ripened. The metaphor assumes that geography, power and destiny would eventually override Cuban self-determination.

America’s first serious attempt to annex Cuba came under President James Polk, who tried to purchase the island from Spain. Southern politicians were especially enthusiastic, viewing annexation as a way to add another slave state and preserve their influence in Congress. Spain refused to sell, but American interest did not fade.

In the 1850s, private expeditions attempted to seize Cuba by force. Narciso López, a pro-slavery Cuban exile, organized several invasions including hundreds of American volunteers. Two of his attempts reached Cuban soil before being defeated. López’s plan to rally Cubans to his cause collapsed when they supported their government instead.

After López’s capture and execution, former Mississippi governor John Quitman organized a larger invasion force, also seeking to annex the island as a slavery state. Quitman thought he had support from Washington, but northern opposition to the spread of slavery halted the plan.

Shortly afterward, senior U.S. diplomats drafted the Ostend Manifesto. It argued that America should purchase Cuba from Spain, and implied that if Spain refused the U.S. might conquer the island. When the manifesto became public, it caused international outrage and Washington disavowed it. But by this time, the idea of acquiring Cuba had become normalized among American policymakers.

To Cubans, the lesson was clear: American plans for their island were often driven by U.S. domestic politics. Americans were not talking about Cuba as a society with its own future.

The Civil War ended American slavery but not interest in Cuba. In the years leading up to the Spanish-American War, a faction in Congress supported annexing the island. That effort failed, blocked by anti-imperialists and by American beet farmers worried about competition from Cuban sugar. Instead, the U.S. pursued indirect control.

By the early 20th century, Americans were beginning to see annexation — of Cuba and elsewhere — as more trouble than it was worth. But the U.S. did not abandon power beyond its borders. It learned to exercise it through influence rather than ownership. In the early 20th century, the U.S. pressured Cuba’s government, intervened militarily multiple times and imposed a constitution that limited Cuban sovereignty.

Cuba only made a clean break from its neighbor to the north after Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed government in 1959. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 confirmed Cuban fears that Washington still had designs for their island’s future. In an echo of López’s mistaken assumption more than a century before, Cubans supported their government, not the invaders.

After the invasion failed, a U.S.-Soviet deal included a promise that America would not invade again. But by then, decades of Cuban suspicion had turned into anti-American ideology.

Today, Cuba is again facing escalating U.S. pressure. In January, the U.S. captured Venezuela’s president, removing a key Cuban ally. Since then, the U.S. has ramped up economic pressure on Cuba, including blocking fuel imports. This has created economic havoc on the island, leading Donald Trump to call Cuba a “failed nation,” and later, float the idea of a “friendly takeover.” A deadly confrontation with a boat filled with armed Cuban exiles last month further set Havana on edge.

If the U.S. hopes to play a constructive role in Cuba’s future, it needs to appreciate its history with the island — a history dominated by American attempts to annex or control its neighbor. Resistance to American intervention has been central to the development of Cuban nationalism. Anything that looks like another American conquest attempt would confirm the suspicions that have shaped Cuban politics for two centuries.

Mark Kawar is the author of the forthcoming book “America, but Bigger: Near-Annexations, from Greenland to the Galápagos.”

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