Cuba was effectively an American protectorate from 1900 to 1933. It wasn't officially in that status but the treaty the US signed with Cuba after the Spanish were forced out was virtually the same thing. The Cuban government that abrogated the Platt Amendment lasted about a year before it was overthrown by rightist elements supported by the US. From 1934 to the present day only two people have really mattered in Cuban politics, Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro and both of them were elusive in terms of pinning down their allegiances until they had assumed power. Batista was a rightist dictator (freely elected at least twice) and a pro-Labor Socialist depending on who told you the story. Castro was a leftist anti-imperialist and a fervent Communist bent on establishing a ground level society depending on who told you the tale. In the absence of American politics none of this would have mattered much. We're the background for the last century of Cuban history. Spain was the background for the two centuries before that.
I don't think about it much. I just figure if they keep replacing parts of me with titanium then I will be able to live forever.
Not sure if you have ever seen this picture before But is of the SS Morro Castle, it was a cruise liner that was essentially a booze cruise that would go from NYC to Havana and then return. On it's return trip to NYC it caught fire not far from where we went fishing and killed hundreds of elitists returning from their weekend of indulgence in Cuba. The following day it somehow was able to limp to Asbury Park and settled just feet from the convention center also in the picture. My great aunt actually had some memorabilia from this ship as she had traveled on it before. Fortunately not on the night it burned.
