The proximity of Cuba to the United States has caused many tensions between the two countries. By the late nineteenth century, only two Spanish colonies remained in the Americas: Cuba and Puerto Rico. Many North Americans sympathized with the independence movement in Cuba, led by José Martí (1853-1895). The U.S. government, however, saw in the conflict a chance to annex the island from Spain; this eventually led to the Spanish-American War of 1898, after which both Cuba and Puerto Rico came under U.S. influence. Despite Cuba’s official independence in 1902, its economy and government remained in the grip of the U.S., which still controls a naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Puerto Rico became a U.S. commonwealth in 1917 and remains one today.

Fidel Castro (1926-2016) led a new revolutionary effort in the 1950s and wrested control from dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro had communist sympathies and soon allied himself with the former Soviet Union, nationalizing or evicting foreign companies, and threatening to spread leftist revolution throughout Latin America. This alarmed the U.S. government and led to attempts to assassinate him, to overthrow his government (the Bay of Pigs Invasion), to a crisis over the stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, and the imposition of an economic embargo. The embargo has increased the hardships of the Cuban people without weakening the revolutionary leadership.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Cuba became a playground for vacationing Americans, and especially in the 1950s a center for gambling and organized crime. Since 1959, relations between the countries have entered a deep freeze, with severe restrictions on travel and no formal diplomatic relations. Cuban expatriates who fled the Castro revolution have congregated in Miami and elsewhere, where they exert a strong influence on North American politics, especially as regards maintaining the embargo. Politics within the exile community have been changing, however, and hopefully improved relations with Cuba will be possible in the coming years.