Cuba: An American History

The history of Cuba has long been interconnected with the United States. In this new work, historian Ferrer (Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution: 1868–1898) examines how these parallel pasts have affected one another. Ferrer, the daughter of parents who left Cuba during its revolution, delves deeply into the country’s history, particularly the Spanish colonial era. In the 1800s, with the advent of industrialized sugar refineries that used the labor of enslaved people brought from Africa, Cuba became an even more enticing target for outside powers, Ferrer argues, such as wealthy northerners who owned the vast majority of agricultural land. She writes that the United States’ intervention helped revolutionaries oust the Spanish government in 1898 and make Cuba a sovereign nation, but it also subjected the country to U.S. manipulation that continues to this day. Ferrer also tells the post-revolution history of Communist Cuba, which survived the fall of Soviet Russia and remained resolutely independent, even after losing the USSR’s diplomatic and economic aid. Ferrer posits that the costs of this independence were dire economic hardship and the separation of families; when the 1959 revolution toppled the U.S.-backed dictatorship, many Cubans chose to or were forced to emigrate.