The KAZAKH KHANATE. The DIAMOND SWORD (Maj 2024)
Kubansk självständighetsrörelse, nationalistisk uppror på Kuba mot spanska styre. Det började med det misslyckade tioårs kriget (Guerra de los Diez Años; 1868–78) och kulminerade med USA: s ingripande som avslutade den spanska koloniala närvaron i Amerika (se spanska-amerikanska kriget).
Kuba: Filibustering och kampen för självständighet
Kraven från socker - arbetare, kapital, maskiner, teknisk kompetens och marknader - ansträngda etniska relationer, förvärrade politiska och ekonomiska
Missnöjd med den korrupta och ineffektiva spanska administrationen, brist på politisk representation och höga skatter, förenades kubaner i de östra provinserna under den rika planteraren Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, vars självständighetsförklaring i oktober 1868, Grito de Yara ("Cry of Yara" ”), Signalerade början av tioårskriget, där 200 000 liv förlorades. Céspedes fick stöd av några markägare, vars huvudintresse var ekonomiskt och politiskt oberoende från Spanien, medan bönderna och arbetarna var mer upptagna av omedelbart avskaffande av slaveri och större politisk makt för den vanliga mannen.
1876 skickade Spanien general Arsenio Martínez Campos för att krossa revolutionen. Avsaknad av organisation och betydande stöd utanför, samtyckte rebellerna till ett vapenvapen i februari 1878 (Pact of Zanjón), vars villkor lovade amnesti och politisk reform. Ett andra uppror, La Guerra Chiquita ("Det lilla kriget"), konstruerat av Calixto García, inleddes i augusti 1879 men dödades av överlägsna spanska styrkor hösten 1880. Spanien gav Kuba representation i Cortes (parlamentet) och avskaffade slaveri 1886 Andra lovade reformer realiserades dock aldrig.
In 1894 Spain canceled a trade pact between Cuba and the United States. The imposition of more taxes and trade restrictions prodded the economically distressed Cubans in 1895 to launch the Cuban War of Independence, a resumption of the earlier struggle. Poet and journalist José Julián Martí, the ideological spokesman of the revolution, drew up plans for an invasion of Cuba while living in exile in New York City. Máximo Gómez y Báez, who had commanded the rebel troops during the Ten Years’ War, was among those who joined Martí’s invasion force. Although Martí was killed (and martyred) in battle about one month after initiation of the invasion on April 11, 1895, Gómez and Antonio Maceo employed sophisticated guerrilla tactics in leading the revolutionary army to take control of the eastern region. In September 1895 they declared the Republic of Cuba and sent Maceo’s forces to invade the western provinces.
By January 1896 rebel forces controlled most of the island, and the Spanish government replaced Martínez Campos with Gen. Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, who soon became known as El Carnicero (“The Butcher”). In order to deprive the revolutionaries of the rural support on which they depended, Weyler instituted a brutal program of “reconcentration,” forcing hundreds of thousands of Cubans into camps in the towns and cities, where they died of starvation and disease by the tens of thousands.
In 1897 Spain recalled Weyler and offered home rule to Cuba, and the next year it ordered the end of reconcentration. In the meantime, the rebels continued to control most of the countryside. Perhaps more important, they had won the sympathy of the vast majority of the Cuban people to their cause. Moreover, news of Spanish atrocities and tales of rebel bravery were splashed in the yellow journalism headlines of William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, which beat the drums of war.
When the USS Maine sank in Havana’s harbour in February 1898 after a mysterious explosion, the United States had pretext for going to war, and the Spanish-American War ensued. By the time of the American intervention in Cuba in April 1898, Maceo had been killed, but the war proved to be brief and one-sided. It was over by August 12, when the United States and Spain signed a preliminary peace treaty. By the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898, Spain withdrew from Cuba. A U.S. occupation force remained for more than three years, leaving only after the constitution of the new Republic of Cuba had incorporated the provisions of the Platt Amendment (1901), a rider to a U.S. appropriations bill, which specified the conditions for American withdrawal. Among those conditions were (1) the guarantee that Cuba would not transfer any of its land to any foreign power but the United States, (2) limitations on Cuba’s negotiations with other countries, (3) the establishment of a U.S. naval base in Cuba, and (4) the U.S. right to intervene in Cuba to preserve Cuban independence. Thus, the creation of the Republic of Cuba was effected on May 20, 1902.
