AfroCuban History: a Time Line II
1900 - the present

September 29. U.S. Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, heads a provisional government of Cuba.

October 13. American citizen Charles Magoon replaces Secretary of War Taft as head of the provisional government of Cuba. The U.S. military openly rules "independent" Cuba for more than two years. On two additional occasions, in 1912 and 1917, U.S. military forces take control of the Cuban government in order to "protect American interests."

José Miguel Gómez is elected President.

Death of AfroCuban Martin Morúa Delgado days after being named minister of agriculture. In the midst of the repression of the Partido Independiente de Color, he is given a state funeral to show blacks that those who are integrationists are acceptable.

Widespread repression of blacks, even those not in the Independientes de Color, but for example in the Sociedades de Color. Purge of blacks from security forces.

This government lasts 100 days, but engineers profound changes in Cuban society. It nullifies the Platt Amendment (except for the Guantanamo naval base lease) and sets up an 8-hour working day, establishes a Department of Labor, opens the university to the poor, grants peasants the right to the land they are farming, gives women the right to vote, and reduces the electric rates by 40 percent. Roosevelt's adviser, Sumner Welles, calls these changes "communistic" and "irresponsible."  The U.S. government does not recognize the Grau-Guiteras government.  US President Franklin Roosevelt, who thought of Grau as a "communist", orders Summer Welles to have Grau removed from power.

Meyer Lansky, from Byelorussia and New York, meets with a sergeant named Fulgencio Batista, and they forge a friendship and business relationship that lasts three decades. Batista also forms a relationship with Sumner Welles who encourages his political ambition.

September 4.  Grau, a liberal, ruling Cuba for only 120 days, falls victim to an army plot (the Revolt of the Sergeants) hatched by Seargeant Batista. Batista personally rules Cuba, intermittently or under stooges, on behalf of US interests until January 1, 1959.

January 15. Batista, with the blessing of the US, forces the resignation of the Grau-Guiteras government.

January 20. The U.S. government recognizes the Batista-installed government.

May 29. Cuba and the U.S. sign the "Treaty on Relations," which eliminates the Platt Amendment but allows the U.S. to continue leasing Guantanamo Bay.

General Batista is elected as Cuba's fourteenth president.

The West Indian Welfare Society formally founded, after decades of informal activity.  This self help organization has its roots in the Caribbean immigration into Cuba early this century and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1996. Their headquarters in Guantanamo still has a poster featuring Marcus Garvey on its wall.

October 16. At his defense trial Castro delivers a historic statement that ends with the phrase "la historia me absolverá" (history will absolve me). He is sentenced to 15 years in prison.

June 24. Castro leaves for Mexico.

March 13. Student leader José Echeverría and a small group take over a radio station in Havana. He is machine-gunned to death while retreating to the university.

May 28. The first major battle of the war is a rebel attack on the El Uvero garrison, in a small town south of the Sierra Maestra range. "For us," writes Guevara, "it was a victory that meant that our guerrillas had reached full maturity. From this moment on, our morale increased enourmously, our determination and hope for victory also increased, and though the months that followed were a hard test, we now had the key to the secet of how to beat the enemy."

July 30. Chief of police, Colonel José Salas Cañizares guns down Frank País, a 23-year-old leader of the July-26-Movement and a Castro ally. Almost the entire city of Santiago comes out for the funeral, and the crowds are too large for the police to control. The city closes down for three days.

September. Members of the July-26-Movement in Cienfuegos attack the naval police headquarters and the garrison of the Rural Guards.

October. Ex-president of the Cuban Medical Association, Dr. Augusto Fernandez Conde, denouces the atrocities of the Batista regime at the World Medical Association meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

A weekly news magazine, Revista Carteles, reports that twenty members of the Batista government own numbered Swiss bank accounts, each with deposits of more than $1 million.

American firms make profits of $77 million from their Cuban investments, while employing little more than 1 percent of the country's population.

By the late 1950’s, American capital control:

90% of Cuba’s mines
80% of its public utilities
50% of its railways
40% of its sugar production
25% of its bank deposits

February 24. On the 63rd anniversary of the beginning of Martí's War of Independence, Radio Rebelde begins transmission from "the free territory of Cuba."

March 1. Raúl Castro leaves the Sierra Maestra with a column of sixty-seven men to open a second front in the mountains north of Santiago-the Sierra Cristal.

In March, forty-five civic institutions sign an open letter supporting the July-26-Movement, including the national organizations of lawyers, architects, public accountants, dentists, electrical engineers, social workers, professors, and veterinarians.

Mid July. The Battle of Jigüe begins. It lasts about ten days.

Among the first moves by the Revolutionaries upon coming down from the Sierra Maestra is to shut down all the sociedades de color, which had actually experienced some slight advances under mixed race Batista. This is due to the Republican ideals Cuba inherited from the French, where only citizenship matters and ethnic identities are repressed, saved for the dominant one.

October 31. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his wife dine with the Cuban Ambassador at the Cuban Embassy in Washington to commemorate Teddy Roosevelt, who had prevented the largely black Cuban Liberation Army from entering Santiago in 1898.

December 10. Hotel Riviera opens. It costs $14 million, most of it supplied by the Cuban government for Meyer Lansky. The floor show in the Copa Room is headlined by Ginger Rogers. Lansky complains that Rogers "can wiggle her ass, but she can't sing a goddam note."

An estimated 11,500 Cuban women earn their living as prostitutes by the end of 1958.

Robert F. Williams, later the first president of the Republic of New Afrika, takes refuge in Cuba after fleeing trumped up charges in North Carolina.  He founds Radio Free Dixie, which broadcasts across the South, and returns to the US in 1969, after Mao makes this a precondition for resuming China US relations.

April 17 - Bay of Pigs, Playa Giron

November. Assistant Secretary of State William Rogers and Assistant to the Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger conduct secret normalization talks with Cuban officials in Washington and New York. The talks end over Cuban involvement in Angola.

Exile leader José Elias de la Torriente murdered in his Coral Gables home after failing to carry out a planned invasion of Cuba.

Bomb blast guts the Miami office of Spanish-language magazine Replica. Several small Cuban businesses, citing threats, stop selling Replica.

Luciano Nieves murdered in Miami after advocating peaceful coexistence with Cuba. Another bomb damages Replica's office.

October 6. Cuban airliner crashes after an explosion near Barbados, killing 78 people, most of them teenagers. Luis Posada Carrilles, an anti-Castro activist trained by the CIA, and Orlando Bosch are charged with the bombing. In 1998, Carrilles admits to (and later denies) over a decade of anti-Castro terrorist activities funded by the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), a Miami-based non-profit organization and the most powerful lobby in Washington, headed by Jorge Mas Canosa until he died in 1997.

Car bomb in Miami blows off legs of WQBA-AM news director Emilio Milian after he publicly condemns exile violence.

September 11. An attache of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations is assassinated by anti-Castro terrorists.

Another bomb explodes at Padron Cigars. Powerful anti-personnel bomb discovered in Miami at American Airways Charter, which arranges flights to Cuba.

Jorge Mas Canosa founds the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), which quickly becomes the most influential proponent of a hard-line policy against Cuba and is heavily funded by the Reagan administration.

Bomb explodes at Miami's Mexican Consulate on Brickell Avenue in protest of relations with Cuba. Replica's Miami office again damaged by a bomb.

December. The Soviet Union disbands, ending economic subsidies worth about $6 billion annually.

February 5. U.S. Congressman Robert Torricelli introduces the Cuban Democracy Act, and says the bill is designed to "wreak havoc on the island."

Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) mounts campaign against the Miami Herald, whose executives then receive death threats and whose newsracks are defaced and smeared with feces. Americas Watch releases report stating that hard-line Miami exiles have created an environment in which "moderation can be a dangerous position." 

August 14. Cuba ends criminal penalties for the use of dollars.

Miami: inflamed by Radio Mambí commentator Armando Perez-Roura, Cuban exiles physically assault demonstrators lawfully protesting against U.S. embargo. Two police officers injured, sixteen arrests made. Miami City Commissioner Miriam Alonso then seeks to silence anti-embargo demonstrators: "We have to look at the legalities of whether the City of Miami can prevent them from expressing themselves."

August. Following Castro’s declaration of an open migration policy, a new boatlift begins when 30,000 refugees set sail from Cuba as economic conditions continue to deteriorate. A "picketline" established by the U.S. Coast Guard prevents additional seaborne migrations.

September 9. Migration agreement reached between U.S. and Cuba, allowing for a minimum of 20,000 immigrants per year.

Human Rights Watch/Americas Group issues report stating that Miami exiles do not tolerate dissident opinions, that Spanish-language radio promotes aggression, and that local government leaders refuse to denounce acts of intimidation.

May 2. Immigration agreement reaffirmed by Cuba and the U.S., providing for the direct return of rafters to the island.

October. The United Nations general assembly recommends an end to the embargo by a vote of 117 to 3 (38 abstentions). Only Israel and Uzbekistan join the U.S. in saying no. Since then, each time the vote comes up at the UN, the number of nations voting against the embargo increases.

January 9 and 13. Planes belonging to "Brothers To The Rescue" fly over downtown Havana at low altitude dropping leafletts calling on the Cuban people to opose their government.

January 15. "Brothers To The Rescue" pilot (Jose Basulto) is interviewed on Radio Martí (a station owned and operated by the U.S. government) and acknowledges that he had flown that mission over Havana and would do it again.

January 15. The Cuban government decides to crack down on exile groups such as "Consilio Cubano" and "Brothers To The Rescue." The Cuban government tries to persuade the U.S. government to curb the action by the exiles, and issues loud warnings (including an official diplomatic note to the U.S. government) that exile planes violating Cuban air space will be shot down.

January 16. Jose Casin, a commentator on Radio Martí, dares the Cuban military to shoot down the planes, adding they are unable to respond in time to the fly-overs.

February 24. Cuban MiGs shoots down two airplanes belonging to the anti-Castro organization "Brothers To The Rescue," resulting in the death of four exiles.

March 12. President Clinton signs the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act (also known as the Helms-Burton Act) which imposes penalties on foreign companies doing business in Cuba, permits U.S. citizens to sue foreign investors who make use of American-owned property seized by the Cuban government, and denies entry into the U.S. to such foreign investors.

March 21-24.  West Indian Welfare Society celebrates its 50th anniversary.

November 12. By a vote of 137 to 3, the United Nations General Assembly recommends, for the fifth consecutive year, that the U.S. end the embargo against Cuba.

Miami Music promoter receives threatening calls, cancels local appearance of Cuba's La Orquesta Aragon. Patrons attending Miami concert by Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba physically assaulted by 200 exile protesters. Transportation for exiles arranged by Dade County Commissioner Javier Souto.

August 13. A paid advertisement in the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald by the CANF supports the bombings, and states that "Cuban people, like all peoples fighting for their freedom, have the right to choose whatever instruments are within reach to obtain freedom." CANF president Francisco Hernandez explains that "we don't consider these actions terrorism because people fighting for liberty cannot be limited by a system that is itself terrrorist."

September. Cuban authorities arrest a 25-year-old Salvadoran, Raúl Ernesto Cruz León, for carrying out a half-dozen of the hotel attacks.

November. Jorge Mas Canosa, the most influential anti-Castro activist and founder of the CANF, dies in Miami.

October 27. U.S. Coast Guard gets a call for help from the 46-foot yacht La Esperanza, which is in international waters off Puerto Rico. A search of the boat uncovers to .50-caliber rifles, 70 rounds of ammunition and an array of military-type equipment. One of the men, Angel Manuel Alfonso, 58, says that he alone smuggled the weapons because he "planned to kill Castro." The FBI begins an investigation. [Seven exiles are indicted on August 24, 1998.]

December. The New Jersey State Police, in a delusional moment, write the Pope to ask him to help them get Assata Shakur back from Cuba, in the style of the slave catchers of old.

Bomb threats, death threats received by Miami radio station WRTO-FM following its short-lived decision to include in its playlist songs by Cuban musicians.

March. The Pentagon concludes that Cuba poses no significant threat to U.S. national security, and senior defense officials urge increased contact with their counterparts on the island.

May – June. European countries call for an end to the embargo. Some warn that Title III of the Helms-Burton Act contradicts international law and may cause problems if not revoked.

July 12. The New York Times runs an article in which Luis Posada Carriles admits to over a decade of terrorist activities and assassination attempts on Castro wilfully funded by leaders of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF). Posada admits that Raúl Ernesto Cruz León, arrested in September of ’97, was one of his operatives. He boasts that there are additional anti-Castro operatives still on the island, and warns of a major surprise soon.

July 29 – Aug. 3. Castro visits the Caribbean: Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada.

August 24. Seven Cuban exiles are indicted in Puerto Rico on charges of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro. Among the defendants is Jose Antoio Llama, 67, who serves as director at the Cuban American National Foundation.

Firebomb explodes at Amnesia nightclub preceding performance by Cuban singer Manolín. Bomb threat empties concert hall at MIDEM music conference during performance by 91-year-old Cuban musician Compay Segundo. Bomb threat received by Amnesia nightclub in Miami Beach preceding performance by Cuban musician Orlando "Maraca" Valle. All three musicians "just happen to be" black Cubans, though observers would say that white cuban musicians from the island would get equal treatment...

January 2.   A 20 member TransAfrica delegation visits Cuba and meets with Fidel Castro

January 6. U.S. Representative Jose E. Serrano introduces H.R.256, a bill to repeal the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996. The bill is referred to the House Committee on International Relations.

February 18. The leadership of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus visit Cuba to evaluate the U.S.-imposed embargo.

February 22. Cuba's State Prosecutor asks for the death penalty for Raúl Ernesto Cruz León, the Salvadoran terrorist charged with bomb attacks on the island in 1997.

February 23. The coalition of Americans for Humanitarian Trade With Cuba join the United States Association of Former Members of Congress to call on the Clinton administration to end the embargo on food and medicines to Cuba. "The U.S. embargo on Cuba is the single most restrictive policy of its kind. Even Iraq is able to buy food and medicine from U.S. sources," says George Fernandez, Executive Director at AHTC." As a Cuban American, I speak for the vast majority of us who do not think the U.S. should be in the business of denying basic sustenance to families and children in Cuba."

August. Black August holds fundraiser for Cuban rap in NY. Fifth International Cuban Hip Hop Festival held in Havana.

September 16,17. Wayne Smith, head of the US Interest Section in Havana under Carter, organizes a conference out of the Center for International Policy, "Conference on Afro-Cubans in Cuban Society: Past, Present and Future."

Bomb threat received by Seville Hotel in Miami Beach preceding performance by Cuban singer Rosita Fornes. Hotel cancels concert.  Violent protest at Miami Arena performance of Cuban band Los Van Van leaves one person injured, eleven arrested.

March:  Latin American Studies Conference in Miami. Despite a few bomb threats, over 100 scholars attend from Cuba, protected by private security and Miami police, many of whom are Cuban Americans.

April 11: Outside home of Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives, radio talk show host Scot Piasant of Portland, Oregon, displays T-shirt reading, "Send the boy home" and "A father's rights," then is physically assaulted by nearby exile crowd before police come to rescue.