Americans and Cubans Approaches to the Platt Amendment

The U.S.’s relationship with Cuba has been arduous and stained with mutual suspicion and obstinateness, and the repeated U.S. interventions. The Platt agreement and Castro’s rise to power, served to introduce the years of difficulty to come, while, the embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba, enforced the harsh feelings. The two major events that caused the most problems were the Bays of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1903, the U.S. published the Platt Amendment, which was a set of guidelines for Cuba to follow (Blight 165). The Platt amendment was named after Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut. The U.S. had been occupying Cuba since the Spanish American war in 1898, and Cuba wanted them out, so the U.S. set up eight rules for Cuba to agree to before the U.S. would leave them alone to establish and run their government (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/). The first three articles of the Platt Amendment can be seen after this paper. Americans and Cubans seemed to have a different approach to the Platt Amendment:

Americans think they used the Platt Amendment to mediate and resolve internal disputes in Cuba, whereas Cubans tend to think that the amendment was designed to permit the U.S. to intervene in Cuban affairs for its own selfish purposes; finally, Americans tend to think that their investments in Cuba contributed to the nations development, whereas the Cuban Government has tended to look at the economic relationship as exploitative (Blight 43).

The U.S. had to have some sort of control and a permanent existence after withdrawing their military from Cuba. The Cubans feel that this amendment has made it possible for the U.S. to cause trouble or intervene anytime they want.

The majority of the problems in U.S. relations with ...

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...to destroy sugar mills, sugar and tobacco plantations, farm machinery, mines, oil refineries, lumber yards, water systems, ware houses, and chemical plants. Communications facilities were attacked; railroad bridges were destroyed and trains derailed (Perez 252).

Along with the above mention things, the U.S. disrupted trade with Europe and outright requested that Europe not trade with Cuba. Also during this period, the CIA began to plan assassination operations against Cuban Leaders, and have eight separate plots to assassination Castro (Perez 252).

The Platt Amendment, Castro’s rise, The Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile Crisis and the trade embargo that the U.S. imposed on Cuba have all served intensify the suspicions between the two countries. Because of the rocky past between the U.S. and Cuba, it is doubtful that there is peace for the two countries in the future.