Cuba’s crossroads
Who said living next door to a superpower was easy? Not the Cubans, that’s for sure.
After the US intervened to help drive out the Spanish in 1898, the relationship between the two countries has been chequered. Cuba has been hectored and bullied by its northern neighbour ever since. The island is the biggest in the Caribbean, with Havana just 370 kilometres from the glitter of Miami.
With the Spanish vacated, the Yankees moved in – investing massively in the sugar industry and stage-managing the government. The Platt Amendment, passed by Congress after the Spanish-American conflict, put US interests front and centre, as well as securing the infamous naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Rum and Coke (the highball cocktail known as Cuba libre) became the national drink and baseball a Cuban obsession.
A series of corrupt dictators followed, linking their fortunes to US corporate interests in sugar and rum. In the 1920s and 1930s Havana became an exotic destination for wealthy northerners. It was a convenient spot for the mafia to launder money
