During the 1950s, William Buckley Sr also set up the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company, which was alleged to have ties to the American-Jewish mafia, dominated then by Meyer Lansky, who served as an official American government representative to Cuba during the Batista dictatorship. It is said that his son, William Buckley Jr, became involved at this time with the CIA attempts to overthrow Castro, working as a CIA contact and informer during the period 1950 – 1954. Some have speculated Buckley, Jr, worked with the Cuban-Jewish exile community (5/6ths of the island’s Jewish population had been expelled by Castro in his wars against religion, drugs, gambling and prostitution), the American-Jewish mob, and Howard Hunt to arm and equip the anti-Castro resistance – an operation which culminated in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Barletta was a director of Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust (CVOVT), the company started by George de Mohrenschildt and former Pantipec Oil president, Warren Smith (Canfield and Webberman, Coup de Etat in America). Barletta was also the Cuban representative of General Motors and a close associate of Batista and Trujillo. Pantipec Oil was owned by William F. Buckley, Jr.'s parents. De Mohrenschildt, in what had to have been one of his first jobs upon graduating from UT, worked at Pantipec under Warren W. Smith in 1945. The question of a possible family relationship between C.B. Smith and Warren Smith should also be a focus of future research.
If C.B. Smith knew Barletta it would not only be a link to de Mohrenschildt but to another director of his company, Jose M. Bosch Lamarque. Bosch Lamarque supported Castro then turned against him in 1959. He was Castro's chief contact with Jules Dubois, a journalist and Army intelligence vet who helped engineer the Guatemala coup in 1954. Dubois' old underground contract, David Salvador, founded the anti-communist 30th of November Movement. A Cuban, identified by the Secret Service as belonging to 30th of November, said during an arms deal on November 21, 1963 that the financial backers of his group would soon "take care of Kennedy."
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Cuba, the largest of the Caribbean islands, was first inhabited by Indigenous peoples known as the Taíno and Ciboney. On 27 October 1492, Christopher Columbus sighted the island during his first voyage of discovery and claimed it for Spain. Cuba subsequently became a Spanish colony to be ruled by the Spanish governor in Havana, though in 1762 the colony was briefly annexed by Britain before being returned in exchange for Florida. A series of rebellions during the 19th century failed to end Spanish rule, but increased tensions between Spain and the United States, resulting in the Spanish-American War, led finally to Spanish withdrawal, and in 1902 Cuba gained formal independence.
American trade dominated Cuba during the first half of the 20th century, aided by US government policy measures assuring influence over the island. In 1959, de facto leader Fulgencio Batista was ousted by revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. Deteriorating trade relations with the US led to Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union and Castro's transformation of Cuba into a declared socialist republic. Castro has remained in power since 1959, first as Prime Minister then from 1976 as President of Cuba.
Cuba in the early 20th century
In 1902, the United States handed over control to a Cuban government that as a condition of the transfer had included in its constitution provisions implementing the requirements of the Platt Amendment, which among other things gave the United States the right to intervene militarily in Cuba. Land that was in ruins was acquired by U.S. investors, enabling the United States to control roughly three-quarters of the Cuban sugar, the foundation of the Cuban economy. Havana and Varadero became tourist resorts, adorned with casinos and strip-clubs. The Cuban population gradually recovered economic power from both Spanish and U.S. interests, and enacted civil rights anti-discrimination legislation that ordered minimum employment quotas for Cubans.
President Tomás Estrada Palma was elected in 1902, and Cuba was declared independent, though Guantanamo Bay was leased to the United States as part of the Platt Amendment. The status of the Isle of Pines as Cuban territory was left undefined until 1925 when the United States finally recognized Cuban sovereignty over the island. Estrada Palma, a frugal man, governed successfully for his four year term; yet when he tried to extend his time in office, a revolt ensued. In 1906, the United States representative William Howard Taft, notably with the personal diplomacy of Frederick Funston, negotiated an end of the successful revolt led by able young general Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, who had served under Antonio Maceo in the final war of independence. Estrada Palma resigned. The United States Governor Charles Magoon assumed temporary control until 1909. In this period in the area of Manzanillo, Agustín Martín Veloz, Blas Roca, and Francisco (Paquito) Rosales founded the embryonic Cuban Communist Party.
For three decades, the country was led by former War of Independence leaders, who after being elected did not serve more than two constitutional terms. The Cuban presidential succession was as follows: José Miguel Gómez (1908-1912); Mario Garcia Menocal (1913-1920); Alfredo Zayas (1921-25).
In World War I, Cuba declared war on Imperial Germany on April 7th, 1917, the day after the US entered the war. Despite being unable to send troops to fight in Europe, Cuba played a significant role as a base to protect the West Indies from U-Boat attacks. A draft law was instituted, and 25,000 Cuban troops raised, but the war ended before they could be sent into action.
President Gerardo Machado was elected by popular vote in 1925, but he was constitutionally barred from reelection. Machado, who determined to modernize Cuba, set in motion several massive civil works projects such as the Central Highway, but at the end of his constitutional term held on to power. The United States, despite the Platt Amendment, decided not to interfere militarily. The communists of the PCC did very little to resist Machado in his dictator phase; however, practically everybody else did. In the late 1920s and early 1930s a number of Cuban action groups, including some Mambí, staged a series of uprisings that either failed or did not affect the capital. After much complex rebellion, Machado was asked to leave by the Cuban Army and senior Cuban civil leaders in 1933. After Machado was deposed there was a confused short interregnum.
Relations between the United States and Cuba deteriorated rapidly as the Cuban government, in reaction to the U.S refusal to refine Soviet oil in refineries located in Cuba, expropriated U.S. properties, notably those belonging to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) and the United Fruit Company. In the Castro government's first agrarian reform law on May 17, 1959 it sought to limit the size of land holdings, and to distribute that land to small farmers in "Vital Minimum" tracts. In compensation, the Cuban government offered to pay the landholders based on the tax assessment values for the land, in reality little or no compensation was paid. Reasons for this include that actual payment would be with twenty-year bonds paying 4.5% interest (instead of the then U.S. investment grade corporate bond rate of 3.8%). Landholders from most other countries settled on this basis. The problem was with the tax assessed values. Most of the large landholdings had been acquired in the 1920 period when world sugar prices were depressed, and the land could be bought at bargain-basement prices. In the intervening period, former Cuban governments friendly to these interests had kept these bargain prices as the basis for calculating property taxes, thus insuring that those taxes would be kept low. However, as Castro's control of the island's assets tightened and more nationalization campaigns took place, promises such as these were not honored.
In response to the seizure of American properties, the continued executions and violations of human rights, the U.S. broke diplomatic relations on January 3, 1961 and imposed the U.S. embargo against Cuba on February 3, 1962. The embargo is still in effect as of 2007, although some humanitarian trade in food and medicines is now allowed. At first, the embargo didn't extend to other countries and Cuba trades with most European, Asian and Latin American countries and especially Canada. But now the United States pressures other nations and U.S. companies with foreign subsidiaries to restrict trade with Cuba. This hinders Castro's historical argument of blaming the United States for Cuba's grave economic situation. Then again, due to Cuba's location, such trade is hindered by high transportation costs. Also, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 makes it very difficult for companies that do business with Cuba to also do business in the United States, effectively forcing internationals to choose between the two.
The establishment of a Socialist system in Cuba led to the fleeing of many hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles to the United States and other countries since Castro's rise to power. One major exception to the embargo was made on November 6, 1965 when Cuba and the United States formally agreed to start an airlift for Cubans who wanted to go to the United States. The first of these so-called Freedom Flights left Cuba on December 1, 1965 and by 1971 over 250,000 Cubans had flown to the United States. In 1980, another 125,000 came to US during six-months period via Mariel boatlift, many of them criminals and people with psychiatric diagnoses. It was discovered that the Cuban government was using the event to rid of the unwanted segments of the society. Currently, there is an immigration lottery allowing 20,000 Cubans seeking political asylum to go to the United States legally every year. Perhaps a thousand or more take the risk of traveling by sea on small crafts.
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Havana, officially Ciudad de La Habana,) is the capital city, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city is one of the 14 Cuban provinces. The city/province has 2.1 million inhabitants, the largest city in Cuba and the second largest in the Caribbean region, after Santo Domingo. The city extends mostly westward and southward from the bay, which is entered through a narrow inlet and which divides into three main harbours: Marimelena, Guanabacoa, and Atarés. The sluggish Almendares River traverses the city from south to north, entering the Straits of Florida a few miles west of the bay.
King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City in 1592 and a royal decree in 1634 recognized its importance by officially designating it the "Key to the New World and Rampart of the West Indies". Havana's coat of arms carries this inscription. The Spaniards began building fortifications, and in 1553 they transferred the governor's residence to Havana from Santiago de Cuba on the eastern end of the island, thus making Havana the de facto capital. The importance of harbour fortifications was early recognized as English, French, and Dutch sea marauders attacked the city in the 16th century. The sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana's harbor in 1898 was the immediate cause of the Spanish-American War.
Present day Havana is the center of the Cuban government, and various ministries and headquarters of businesses are based there.
The current Havana area and its natural bay were first visited by Europeans during Sebastián de Ocampo's circumnavigation of the island in 1509. Shortly thereafter, in 1510, the first Spanish colonists arrived from Hispaniola and began the conquest of Cuba.
Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founded Havana on August 25, 1515, on the southern coast of the island, near the present town of Surgidero de Batabanó. Between 1514 and 1519, the city had at least two different establishments. All attempts to found a city on Cuba's south coast failed. The city's location was adjacent to a superb harbor at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, and with easy access to the Gulf Stream, the main ocean current that navigators followed when traveling from the Americas to Europe. This location led to Havana's early development as the principal port of Spain's New World colonies. An early map of Cuba drawn in 1514 places the town at the mouth of the River Onicaxinal, also on the south coast of Cuba. Another establishment was La Chorrera, today in the neighborhood of Puentes Grandes, next to the Almendares River.
The final establishment, commemorated by El Templete, was the sixth town founded by the Spanish on the island, called San Cristóbal de la Habana by Pánfilo de Narváez: the name combines San Cristóbal, patron saint of Havana, and Habana, of obscure origin, possibly derived from Habaguanex, a native American chief who controlled that area, as mentioned by Diego Velasquez in his report to the king of Spain. A legend relates that Habana was the name of Habaguanex's beautiful daughter, but no known historical source corroborates this version. Others, such as the Century Dictionary, have connected it with the Middle Latin term havana, a derivation from the same Germanic word appearing in English as "haven". The English spelling of Havana was formerly Havannah, while ironically, the Spanish spelling of Habana was formerly Havana.
Havana was originally a trading port, and suffered regular attacks by buccaneers, pirates, and French corsairs. The first attack and resultant burning of the city was by the French corsair Jacques de Sores in 1555. The pirate took Havana easily, plundering the city and burning much of it to the ground. De Sores left without obtaining the enormous wealth he was hoping to find in Havana. Such attacks convinced the Spanish Crown to fund the construction of the first fortresses in the main cities — not only to counteract the pirates and corsairs, but also to exert more control over commerce with the West Indies, and to limit the extensive contrabando (black market) that had arisen due to the trade restrictions imposed by the Casa de Contratación of Seville (the crown-controlled trading house that held a monopoly on New World trade).
To counteract pirate attacks on galleon convoys headed for Spain while loaded with New World treasures, the Spanish crown decided to protect its ships by concentrating them in one large fleet, which would traverse the Atlantic Ocean as a group. A single merchant fleet could more easily be protected by the Spanish Armada. Following a royal decree in 1561, all ships headed for Spain were required to assemble this fleet in the Havana Bay. Ships arrived from May through August, waiting for the best weather conditions, and together, the fleet departed Havana for Spain by September.
This naturally boosted commerce and development of the adjacent city of Havana (a humble villa at the time). Goods traded in Havana included gold, silver, alpaca wool from the Andes, emeralds from Colombia, mahoganies from Cuba and Guatemala, leather from the Guajira, spices, sticks of dye from Campeche, corn, manioc, and cocoa. Ships from all over the New World carried products first to Havana, in order to be taken by the fleet to Spain. The thousands of ships gathered in the city's bay also fueled Havana's agriculture and manufacture, since they had to be supplied with food, water, and other products needed to traverse the ocean. In 1563, the Capitán General (the Spanish Governor of the island) moved his residence from Santiago de Cuba to Havana, by reason of that city's newly gained wealth and importance, thus unofficially sanctioning its status as capital of the island.
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