Original subtitles

[in Spanish] Cuba has always been fighting for its freedom.

[in Spanish] 100,000 died, and even though we lost the war, the country had changed.

There is little question that Meyer Lansky had thoroughly corrupted Batista.

It's not a lie, they didn't promise anything.

They promised a revolution, they did a revolution.

[in Russian] These guys were bound to become either martyrs, or national heroes.

Una revolución!

-[man] Fidel Castro! -[crowd cheers]

He told Khrushchev, "You should unleash the entire Soviet nuclear arsenals."

Apocalypse.

[siren]

[in German] Cuba will never bend its knee.

Today's Cuba is a curious mix of tropical paradise and quaint nostalgia.

The island is renowned for its cigars, its rum and its colonial beauty.

But to understand Cuba today, you have to understand its tumultuous past.

Because for centuries, Cuba has been a hotbed for upheaval.

How did Cuba become the hub of the slave-trade?

Why, of all places, did the Spanish colonial empire collapse here?

And why does the United States possess a military base in Cuba, at Guantanamo?

Cuba bears the scars of 500 years of foreign occupation.

But that does not mean that its people have ever given up their dream of freedom.

[in Spanish] Cuba is a country, which has always been coveted by the world powers.

By the Spanish empire, by England, and by France.

It was conquered, of course, by Spain.

[in Spanish] Cuba played a decisive role in the discovery of the Americas.

But I'm very happy that this phrase is not used very often anymore,

because we were here before it was "discovered".

Cuba is the biggest island in the Caribbean.

It spans 760 miles from east to west.

That's roughly the distance from Washington, DC, to Miami.

Cuba's climate is hot and tropical.

The land is fertile and the ocean surrounding it is rich in fish.

For centuries, this has made Cuba a choice destination for immigrants and invaders.

The first traces of human life in Cuba are more than 4,000 years old,

predating the pyramids of Egypt.

Cuba's native inhabitants lived in palm tree huts, or caves.

They subsisted on sweet potatoes, yucca, peanuts, as well as fish and game.

They were also the first people to farm and smoke tobacco.

On October 28th, 1492, three caravels appeared on Cuba's horizon.

The men who disembarked were unfamiliar to the islanders.

They were white. They carried swords and helmets made of steel.

They were Spaniards, and their leader was called Christopher Columbus.

[in German] It was through Columbus, in 1492,

that the Spaniards discovered these islands.

Back then, they could not know

that it would one day be something as grand as today's America.

Columbus returned to Barcelona,

to his patrons, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.

They had financed his voyage,

but he brought back neither gold nor silver,

only some indigenous Cubans, whom he called Indians.

In his diary, he wrote that they would make good slaves.

But the Spanish regents declared that there was to be no slavery

in the New World, before sending Columbus back to conquer Cuba

and the surrounding islands. Their orders were promptly ignored.

[in German] What probably happened is that the men

were either enslaved, killed outright, or worked to death as porters.

Children were brought up more or less as Spanish.

Women "joined" the families of Spanish conquistadors.

At first, many natives welcomed the Spaniards with open arms.

Once hostilities began, they did not stand a chance against the conquistadors.

[in German] They met with little resistance,

because the natives were completely outmatched, militarily,

and were then basically eradicated by the diseases

the Spaniards brought with them, such as measles and smallpox.

Spanish swords and European diseases killed 90 percent of Cuba's inhabitants

within a few short years.

But the exchange of diseases went both ways.

For Columbus's conquistadores also brought something back.

Syphilis.

Nevertheless, Spain's triumph in the New World was unparalleled in history.

In the name of the cross,

the conquistadors spread death and slavery.

Due to its strategic position, Cuba played a decisive role.

[in Spanish] Havana was the key to the Caribbean.

Through its port came all the riches of the New World.

Gold, silver, wood, and spices.

[in German] Cuba was a cornerstone of the Spanish Empire,

when it comes to Latin America.

From the early colonial days,

Havana was the main commercial hub for colonial goods and treasures.

It was the place where, once or twice a year,

the ships of the Spanish treasure fleet gathered

for the so-called Carrera de Indias, and crossed the Atlantic.

It took Spain barely 50 years to conquer the New World.

They destroyed the mighty Inca and Aztec Empires.

The treasures of the New World were loaded onto Spanish galleons.

En route to Spain, they gathered in Havana,

and added one of the island's precious plants to their cargo. Tobacco.

Throughout the 16th century, tobacco was Cuba's principal export.

The natives of Cuba were the first to grow and smoke it.

Spanish sailors and merchants took it around the globe.

Because of them, Cuba became known as a tobacco island.

[in Spanish] Tobacco is a very demanding plant, which needs a lot of care.

The tobacco leaves must be watched carefully

because they can only be cut at the right moment.

There were always slaves in tobacco,

but also a lot of independent farmers and smallholders.

A hundred years after Columbus's landing,

the natives of the Caribbean had been all but exterminated.

To continue the exploitation of their new domains,

Spain had to import a new workforce.

Unscrupulous traders found the solution in Africa's slave markets.

12.5 million Africans were crammed into slave ships and taken to the New World.

1.5 million of them died during the journey.

[in Spanish] Slavery came to Cuba as it did to all of the Americas.

About two million of them were brought to Cuba.

They were like merchandise.

It was a big, sinister business.

Slavery came to Cuba very early when the Spanish took over,

but it didn't develop as a major institution

until after 1804, 1805,

when Haiti, the sugar mills in Haiti, were destroyed.

Haiti is part of Cuba's neighboring island, and a French colony since 1660.

While Cuba relied on tobacco farming, Haiti's staple crop was sugar cane.

With sufficient manpower, it was a lucrative business.

In 1789, 32,000 white settlers lived in Haiti,

as did 432,000 African slaves.

On August 17th, 1791, Haiti's slaves rose up in revolt.

They killed their masters and fought a bloody war to gain their freedom.

Haiti's sugar industry was wiped out.

[in Spanish] The consequence is that the world's main sugar producer

disappears for a few years.

The Cubans see an opportunity.

They want to take over the French colony's business.

[in German] It's important to note

that many people migrated from French Haiti to Cuba.

They brought both a lot of money,

but also considerable know-how with them.

The Cubans welcomed the refugee plantation owners from Haiti with open arms.

With their help, Cuba aimed to become the Caribbean's new sugar capital.

But this required more and more slaves from Africa.

The Haitian revolution, however, had undermined the entire practice of slavery.

There were increasing calls for the liberation of slaves.

On August first, 1834, the British declared that all slaves

throughout their Empire were now free.

But Spain and Cuba refused to follow suit.

Their sugar business depended on slave labor.

By the middle of the century, 1850, 1860,

Spain had developed the sugar industry in Cuba, was the major exporter of sugar.

[in Spanish] Sugar, for the Cubans at least,

meant the need to resort to slave labor.

Slaves were brought to Cuba without much interruption until the 1860s.

Slavery was a defining part of Cuban history for several centuries.

Several times historical censuses show that African slaves

outnumbered Spanish settlers,

but never by the margins that had made Haiti's revolution possible.

Even today, an estimated 60 percent of Cubans

are at least in part descendants of slaves.

[Barnet, in Spanish] Without the blacks, Cuba wouldn't be Cuba.

Without the Afro-Cubans, we wouldn't have the literature,

the music and the dances that we have today.

Cuba as we know it would never have existed.

Nevertheless, that is not their major legacy.

The major legacy of the African slaves brought to Cuba

is their sweat and their blood, which built the Cuban nation.

Cuba's sugar plantations were expanding,

despite ever-increasing taxes and customs duties imposed by Spain.

The white settlers in Havana grew rich. The countryside was racked by poverty.

Cuba's biggest sugar customer was its northern neighbor,

the United States of America.

[in Spanish] Spain upheld slavery on Cuba.

This is the only reason that it could maintain its colonial rule for so long.

The Cubans knew perfectly well that without Spain's protection,

the British would have put an end to the whole system.

For 300 years, Spain ruled over vast territories in the Americas.

It was only in the early 19th century

that colony after colony began to rebel against Spain.

It was the beginning of the end for the Spanish Empire.

Cuba remained faithful, because of slavery.

It alone guaranteed the huge sugar profits.

[in German] It was like a trump card in Madrid's hand.

The Spanish always emphasized that they were maintaining order,

and that thus Cuba's economy could flourish.

The Cubans paid a heavy price for this.

[in Spanish] Spain considered Cuba as a zone for exploitation.

They wanted to strengthen their own economy,

which was lagging behind the rest of Europe.

They massively exploited Cuba.

Much like Cuba, the Southern States of the US depended on slavery.

Many Cubans, and many Southerners, wanted Cuba to join the Union.

This would both protect slavery in Cuba,

and introduce another slave state to the US, and hand them a majority in Congress.

But in 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an opponent of slavery,

was elected president of the United States.

The Southern States promptly seceded from the Union.

President Lincoln mobilized the army.

Thus began a long and bloody struggle.

Early on in the war, Lincoln emancipated all slaves in the United States.

After four years, the North prevailed over the South, and slavery was abolished.

The Civil War in the United States created a nation that didn't have slavery,

or slavery was ended, so many Cubans saw the possibility of annexing

to the United States as not a good possibility,

and then they began to think about, well,

we have to either reform the relationship with Spain or break completely with Spain.

Already in the 19th century,

Cuba was divided into an eastern and a western half.

The capital, Havana, was in the western part of the island.

Here lived merchants of Spanish origin and the island's leading civil servants,

people who benefitted from the sugar trade.

[in German] We have two completely distinct histories on Cuba.

One of a global city, Havana, and one of the territory around it,

which I dare say was content to be a province.

[in Spanish] In the history of Cuba,

revolutions have always spread from the east to the west.

Cuba's slaves looked first to Haiti, then to the USA with hope,

while their owners did so in fear.

America's former slaves were now free, and entitled to payment for their labor.

But their condition barely improved.

Slave owners in Cuba, however, were in trouble.

[Stucki, in German] It's an historical twist of fate.

For decades, the plantation owners

and sugar industry aristocracy had feared a slave rebellion.

But, ironically, the first revolt did not arise from among the slaves.

It was a group of white, Creole plantation owners from eastern Cuba

that brought about the war of 1868.

Cuba's fight for freedom is forever linked with the name Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.

He owned a small sugar cane plantation in eastern Cuba,

but benefitted little from Cuba's sugar profits.

According to Céspedes, the reasons for this

were Spain's excessive taxes and customs duties.

On October 10th, 1868, he called on all Cubans to rebel against Spain,

and declared the island an independent country.

The next day, he freed all his slaves.

[in French] Carlos Manuel de Céspedes said to himself,

"If I free my slaves, I have my own army."

It's perhaps a bit cynical, but I think that's what happened.

In 1868, Spain's army in Cuba was 7,000 soldiers strong,

and augmented by 30,000 Cuban volunteers.

Against them stood Céspedes, his allies and their freed slaves.

12,000 men in all, most without any military experience.

[in German] It was a guerilla war. The Cubans had very mobile troops,

but they were often very badly armed.

Some may have had guns, but most only had a machete.

A century after Cuba's war of independence,

the Cuban's main weapon was given a cinematic monument.

The film "La Primera Carga Al Machete"

shows how the slaves' basic tool was transformed into a formidable weapon.

[in Spanish] The machete?

Well, I know that we have a weapon, and we know how to use it.

And the Spaniards fear it like the devil himself.

[in Spanish] We will soon be done with this ridiculous criminal revolt,

which some peasants have been forcibly dragged into.

Spain sent reinforcements. 33,000 additional soldiers.

Against all odds, the rebels managed to take most of eastern Cuba

within just a few months.

[man shouts]

The Spanish countered

by massively recruiting additional Cuban auxiliary troops.

And thus, Céspedes's rebellion becomes a civil war,

as Cubans fight Cubans for the future of their country.

[in Spanish] The Spaniards knew how war was waged in Europe,

and brought these strategies with them.

They saw Cuba's geography, its long, narrow shape,

and had the idea to divide the island.

The Spanish Army constructed a system of trenches and watchtowers across Cuba.

Their plan was to divide the island, and limit the war to Cuba's eastern part.

The wealthy west, and the capital Havana, were to be preserved.

This line of defense did little to stop the rebels.

Time and time again, they broke through,

burnt sugarcane fields and killed Spanish collaborators.

But terror did little but breed more terror.

Soon after, the Spaniards began executing captured rebels on the spot,

and without trial.

[gunshots]

On February 27th, 1874, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was killed by a Spanish bullet.

Deprived of their leader,

the rebel army disintegrated into a multitude of smaller guerilla groups.

The rebels could no longer win the war; but neither could the Spaniards.

[in German] From a military standpoint, such wars cannot be won.

It requires politicians and skillful negotiations,

and that's what happened after ten years of war,

leading to a peace agreement in 1878.

[in Spanish] 100,000 died, and even though we lost the war,

the country had changed.

Cuba remained a Spanish colony, but there were real reforms.

There was a kind of freedom of speech, and even political parties were allowed.

Even so, Cuba remained a colony.

But Spain's reforms were half-hearted at best.

Only slaves who could prove that they'd fought in the war were freed.

The outright abolition of slavery would have to wait another eight long years.

[in Spanish] During this period, no new slaves were brought to Cuba.

But none were freed either.

The abolition of slavery was a gradual process,

before it ended completely in 1886.

For many rebels, the Spanish reforms were insufficient.

Thousands went into exile, most to the United States.

Among them was a young journalist and poet.

During the war, he was arrested by the Spanish and condemned to hard labor.

His name was José Martí.

[in Spanish] José Martí decided to leave Cuba, due to the political situation.

He settled in the United States and realized that a majority of Cuban exiles

openly talked about waging a new war against Spain,

to free their homeland.

[in French] José Martí was a little bit like Fidel Castro, only 100 years earlier.

What I mean by that, he was a young man from an average family,

who was convinced that the Spaniards had no more business on Cuba.

[in Spanish] He was known as "El Maestro", the teacher.

He taught many Afro-Cuban exiles how to read and write.

At the same time, he was one of the most important Spanish writers

of the 19th century and a renewer of Spanish poetry.

To this day, José Martí's poetry is famous around the world,

even if many people don't realize it.

In 1929, Cuban radio singer José Fernandez Díaz

composed a song from part of José Martí's work. The song is called...

♪ Guantanamera ♪

♪ Guajira Guantanamera ♪

♪ Guantanamera... ♪

Long before "Guantanamera", José Martí was already famous for his poetry

while living in exile in the United States.

Many of his works focus on Cuba's hard fight for freedom,

which he had personally and brutally experienced.

During the war, Martí was arrested by the Spanish and sentenced to hard labor.

As a poet, he used his experiences to advance Cuba's dream of freedom.

And in the name of this dream, he sought to unify Cubans in exile.

He was the leader that brought together different factions

within the Cuban rebels.

Maceo, Máximo Gómez, and others, and brought them together to form an alliance.

While in exile, José Martí's generals

planned the war for their country's liberation.

Their goal was simple. To free Cuba from Spanish occupation once and for all.

To achieve this, they raised money among Cuban exiles in Miami, bought weapons,

and shipped them to the island in secret.

Then, on April 11th, 1895, Martí and the other commanders themselves

landed in eastern Cuba,

where they met up with veteran soldiers of Cuba's war against Spain.

But it soon became apparent that Martí,

a poet, was out of place among these military men.

[Zeuske, in German] He was a very emotional man.

More importantly, it is obvious that he was no soldier.

He was brilliant when it came to preparing the war, when it came to communicating

and convincing all the old war heroes, telling them, "You must be with us again!"

But when push came to shove and he had to prove himself a leader, he could not.

[in German] Historians unanimously consider Martí

to have been, in a way, longing for death.

When he galloped forward on his white horse at the battle of Dos Rios,

it was basically suicide.

On May 19th, 1895, during the war's very first battle,

José Martí charged between the Cuban and Spanish lines.

A Spanish bullet hit him in the chest.

José Martí died without seeing his dream for freedom come true.

[in Spanish] I think he died the way he wanted to die.

Martí wanted to live, to be sure, but he died the way he wanted;

on the battlefield. It was the best possible death for him.

[in Spanish] Martí only lived to be 42.

But he left an extraordinary heritage, as politician, as journalist, and as writer.

His biggest achievement was

that he decisively shaped Cuba's longing for independence.

The remaining Cuban generals make a martyr out of the fallen Martí.

They use his heroic example, as well as terror and intimidation,

to recruit new soldiers in Cuba. Their tactics were successful.

Many Cubans, especially from rural areas, began to sign up to fight.

[in German] We must not forget that neither the revolution,

nor the wars of independence were popular uprisings.

They did not originate from the people, but from an intellectual elite.

Remember that they were led by José Martí

and numerous other generals from the upper classes.

They then gathered their troops and were, of course, supported by the Cuban people.

The Spanish Army suffered one defeat after another. Once again,

the Cuban insurrectionists managed to conquer large swaths of eastern Cuba.

To counter these successes,

the Spanish government realized that new leadership was needed in Cuba.

They sent their most ruthless general to win the war by any means necessary.

His name was Valeriano Weyler.

[Pitaluga, in Spanish] Weyler was a man of extermination methods.

He created the so-called Policy of Reconcentration.

This meant a forced resettlement of the rural population into the towns.

Weyler's Reconcentration Policy was designed to deprive the revolutionaries

of their rural support base.

Large swaths of Cuba were depopulated.

The rural populace was forced to leave their homes

and to move to the already overcrowded towns and cities.

Those who resisted were immediately executed.

In the deserted rural areas, everything was razed to the ground,

down to the last banana tree.

And when Cuba's cities had no more room for refugees,

Weyler ordered the construction of concentration camps.

[in German] Waves of refugees became mixed up with those who were being resettled.

It was a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions.

Tens of thousands of civilians streamed into the remaining towns and villages

and had to be cared for.

It was a gigantic humanitarian disaster.

Imagine, 400,000 people were resettled.

Between 155,000 and 170,000 of them died.

I think today, the United Nations would vote in favor of an intervention.

An intervention could only come from Cuba's powerful neighbor,

the United States.

In view of the Spanish terror on Cuba, it was the rebels' last chance.

To bring about an intervention, they turned to a new ally;

the American yellow press.

Cubans smuggled photos and reports of atrocities to the United States,

and handed them to newspapers owned by press barons Joseph Pulitzer

and William Randolph Hearst.

[Stucki, in German] It can be said that this was

one of the first modern wars of information.

The Cuban revolutionary organizations in the United States

sought to raise awareness of the war,

and to feed information to the press.

They of course emphasized the atrocities committed by the Spanish

and the great victories of the revolutionaries.

In this propaganda battle,

the revolutionaries clearly had the upper hand.

Many newspapers in the United States were against Spanish control of Cuba

and began to accelerate the mood of the American people,

and preparing the mood of the American people for military intervention.

US president William McKinley was under pressure from the press.

Many Americans demanded an intervention in Cuba,

but McKinley did not want to drag his country into war.

Instead, he sent Spain an ultimatum. Free Cuba,

or the United States would begin selling modern weaponry to the rebels.

As a show of force, McKinley ordered

one of the US Navy's most modern ships to Havana in January of 1898.

The USS Maine was just three years old,

and its formidable ten-inch guns had a range of 18,000 meters.

The Maine's official mission was to protect American property in Cuba.

[Stucki, in German] The chief US diplomat on Cuba insisted already in 1896

that a fleet should be kept close,

to protect American interests, assets and citizens, in case of emergency.

The Spanish government was prepared to meet President McKinley's demands.

But the deployment of the USS Maine

was denounced by the Spanish yellow press as an act of aggression.

[in French] Just by its proximity, one could imagine a courtesy visit,

or in fact a reconnaissance mission.

Anyway, nothing hostile, officially.

It's 9:40pm on the evening of February 15th, 1898.

The USS Maine is anchoring in Havana Harbor.

Most of the 355 American sailors and officers aboard are asleep,

when the unthinkable happens.

Without warning, a terrible explosion tears the ship in half.

It takes hours before the full extent of the catastrophe is known.

The death toll is horrific.

261 of the 355 men on board are killed.

An investigation into the cause of the explosion begins immediately.

There are several points of view.

The Castro point of view is that the United States blew it itself

to justify an intervention.

Some people point out that the Cubans that were fighting against Spain

may have blown it up to bring about an intervention.

[in Spanish] In my personal opinion, it was a provocation.

The United States needed an excuse to intervene in Cuba,

and this excuse was the Maine.

[in German] It seems logical to me that the cause was a technical malfunction,

since during this time, there were similar cases involving other vessels,

which suffered similar explosions.

A US warship sunk. Hundreds of dead Americans.

The American public was outraged. They demanded justice.

After two years of relentless warmongering in America's newspapers,

it did not take long until a culprit was found.

The immediate reaction in the United States

was that this was something done by the Spaniards,

that they were trying to kick the United States out of the island

and that therefore they had to do something.

President McKinley finally caved to public pressure, and mobilized the army.

On April 21st, 1898, Congress declared war on Spain.

The official objective was to give Cuba its independence.

Additionally, Congress decrees that Cuba is not to be annexed to the United States.

For Spain, the declaration of war was a disaster.

[in Spanish] Cuba was regarded as part of Spain.

This made it an attack of a foreign power against the nation.

For many Spaniards, this was an unacceptable aggression.

The Spanish Army in Cuba could not last long without reinforcements from Europe.

To exploit this vulnerability,

the US Navy quickly established a naval blockade around Cuba.

Spain's own navy found itself in the same trap as its army.

Its ships were anchored in the port of Santiago,

the largest city in the east of the island.

Following the blockade, US troops landed in southeastern Cuba

without encountering any resistance.

[in German] Cynics claimed that the United States let Cuba bleed itself dry

in three years of war, before intervening at the last moment,

when everyone was exhausted.

In 1898, the regular American Army numbered only 28,000 men.

Far to few for an invasion of Cuba.

To bolster its numbers, volunteer units were drawn up.

The most famous of these was known as the Rough Riders,

and commanded by Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the Navy.

Now, he volunteered for the cause of Cuban liberation.

In June of 1898, the Rough Riders were the subject of one of the first films

of pioneer filmmaker Thomas Edison.

[in German] In the United States, if you wanted to be a real man,

it was seen as cool to volunteer.

And so Teddy, who didn't really have the physique for it,

but was a great hunter, signed up as well.

[in French] Roosevelt and his Rough Riders

were sent to Cuba as part of the war effort,

after the United States officially declared war against Spain in April 1898.

The Rough Riders landed in Cuba on June 23rd, 1898.

Their first mission was to take the Spanish stronghold of Santiago.

The Spanish Army had taken up strong positions outside the city.

With the battle in full swing, Theodore Roosevelt,

commanding the Rough Riders, ordered his men to storm the hills outside Santiago.

Casualties on both sides were tremendous, but in the end, the Americans prevailed.

♪ Now hear the call throughout the land... ♪

The battle brought fame and distinction to Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.

But their actual contribution to victory has been hotly contested.

[in Spanish] I laugh, because there's been a lot of propaganda in the United States

about the Rough Riders.

But when studying the battlefield,

even my North American colleagues had to admit that, in reality,

the Rough Riders didn't even take San Juan Hill,

it was a different hill which is a bit further away.

[in French] The battle of San Juan was the most important battle of the war,

even if it was no Austerlitz or Waterloo. It was a much smaller battle.

But even so, it was very important, for Americans and Spaniards alike,

because it decided the war.

Following the victory, American troops and Cuban rebels

laid siege to Santiago itself.

This threatened not just Spain's army, but also its last chance of victory.

The Spanish battle fleet still lay at anchor in Santiago harbor.

The fleet was outgunned by the US Navy blockading the harbor.

But Spain's vessels, a mix of cruisers and destroyers, were more modern.

Breaking out to the open sea was their only chance.

On July 3rd, 1898,

the Spanish fleet steamed out of the harbor to attempt the breakout.

[in German] In fact, the smaller and more mobile Spanish ships

were thought to be able to overcome the US Navy's might through superior speed,

and thus gain a tactical advantage.

But they had problems, beginning with a shortage of quality coal,

which meant that they could not even reach their maximum speed.

On top of that, the Spanish sailors were simply not trained well enough.

The Spanish fleet included the armored cruiser Vizcaya, seen here in 1898.

But the Spanish fleet soon found itself in dire straits, because it was so brand new.

Many gun turrets had simply not been finished.

[cannon fire]

The cannons that were able to fire sure enough hit their targets.

But most of the ammunition carried by the Spanish ships were filled with sawdust.

[cannon fire]

These dummy grenades rained down on the American ships with little effect.

The US fleet had no such problems.

The entire Spanish fleet perished in a battle lasting barely two hours.

323 Spanish sailors were killed.

1,729 were taken prisoner.

On the other side, a single US sailor was killed, and one other wounded.

Deprived of its fleet, the war was over for Spain.

[in German] It was a veritable turning point in Spanish history.

There was Spain before 1898, a global, colonial empire,

and Spain after 1898, a mediocre European country,

on the sidelines and unimportant.

Spain surrendered, and Cuba was jubilant.

The Spanish flag in Havana was lowered for the last time on August 13th, 1898.

But Cuba's dream of freedom did not come true.

Hoisted instead of the Spanish flag was not that of Cuba

but that of the United States.

Previously a Spanish colony, Cuba was now an American protectorate.

There was significant discussion among Cuban historians whether the Cubans

would have defeated anyway Spain had the war continued.

Others said that no, the United States played a key role,

but the nationalistic historians, and later on some of the Marxist historians,

said that while the Cubans would have won the war,

that the United States took advantage to conquer Cuba and take over Cuba,

so there are different interpretations to what happened there.

Victory over Spain helped open the White House doors to Theodore Roosevelt,

who became president in 1901.

As promised before the war, Cuba was to become independent under his presidency.

But by now, American companies

had taken control of a large part of the Cuban economy.

[in Spanish] In 1898, the Cuban people's opinion of the US government

and the US Army was largely positive.

[Clerc, in French] Until 1898, the Americans are seen as the anti-Spaniards.

The Americans' image is excellent.

But this changes from 1898 on.

During the military occupation,

the image of the United States suffers severely.

[in French] For Americans, Cuba has historically always been a land

that was basically an appendix to the United States.

So it's true that once the Spanish left,

they saw Cuba rather like an American province.

It was not a colony, but it sure looked like one.

The United States had gone from being Cuba's liberators to its occupiers.

But Cubans were not content to endure further foreign rule,

and after all, hadn't the Americans waged war against Spain to free Cuba?

In exchange for withdrawing their troops,

the United States government demanded serious guarantees.

Another thing they did was the creation of a constitutional convention.

So the Cubans got together and began to write a constitution for Cuba in 1901.

At that point a number of congressmen, led by a senator named Orville Platt,

decided that in order to give Cuba its independence

and the United States to withdraw,

they have to have certain guarantees that American property would be protected,

and if not, the US would have the right to intervene.

When the Cubans learned this, they immediately rejected the idea.

Under the Platt Amendment, Cuba would not be a free country.

And yet, as they well knew,

without concessions to Washington there would be no withdrawal of US troops.

The Cubans voted on it and accepted, many of them protested,

but they accept it as a way of ending the war

and ending the occupation of the US.

The Platt Amendment also authorized the United States

to establish military bases in Cuba. Among other locations,

the Americans chose Guantanamo Bay, in the extreme southeast of the island.

The bay features a natural, deep harbor, ideal for sheltering even large warships.

[in Spanish] Cuba had to hand over territory,

such as the base at Guantanamo that exists until today.

Thus, the United States solidified their control of Cuba.

Since the 18th century, all world powers had been interested in Guantanamo.

From here, it was possible to control the Caribbean,

and thus access to the Americas.

At Guantanamo, the US Navy built their biggest naval base outside the USA.

At the same time, they began construction of the Panama Canal,

linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

From Guantanamo, the American Navy could control all shipping in the Caribbean.

One of the interests of the United States was to protect the Panama Canal,

which was, at the time, beginning to be built.

So having naval stations in the Caribbean

would protect the entrance to the Panama Canal in the Caribbean,

so that was a strategic interest of the United States then.

The US has leased the Guantanamo Bay base from Cuba in perpetuity since 1903,

for an annual rent of $4,085.

The base itself is huge, and features many amenities for US sailors,

like the only McDonald's restaurant in Cuba.

But internationally, Guantanamo became infamously known for its prison camps

and the human rights abuses committed here.

Then, as well as now, the issue of Guantanamo is a flashpoint of tension

between the United States and Cuba.

[in French] Here are armed Americans on Cuban territory.

There are other Americans as well, in the sugar factories and businessmen.

But that isn't the same. It's business.

Guantanamo Bay impinges upon Cuban sovereignty.

In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt authorized elections in Cuba.

On December 31st, 1901,

Cubans were allowed to vote for their president for the first time.

But as a sign of protest against the USA, the most promising candidate,

a general of the wars of independence, withdrew his candidacy.

The only remaining candidate was Tomás Estrada Palma,

a Cuban living in exile in the United States.

Tomás Estrada Palma had lived most of his time in the United States,

he was a teacher in Philadelphia, didn't participate actively in the war.

Facing no opposition, Estrada Palma's victory was inevitable.

Almost three-quarters of Cubans voted for him,

the other votes were blank, or invalid.

Through his military commander in Cuba,

President Roosevelt sent his congratulations.

[in French] Tomás Estrada Palma was the first president of Cuba.

He was not made president by the United States.

He was, after all, democratically elected. But one thing is clear.

He was president, but under the Platt Amendment.

Under Estrada and his successors, Cuba remained largely under American influence.

In homage to the USS Maine victims,

a monument was erected in the center of Havana.

An American eagle to watch over Cuba.

[in German] Cuba was never truly independent,

apart from a brief period after the wars of independence.

But very quickly, the United States intervened, and took control of Cuba.

[in Spanish] We emerged from Spanish colonial rule,

only to fall directly into the semi-colonial rule of the United States.

In this way, Cuba has always been fighting

for its freedom, for its dignity, and for its sovereignty.

In 1901, Cuba was allowed to take its first steps towards freedom.

400 years of Spanish colonial rule had ended,

but Cuba's future was as uncertain then as it is today.

The concept of democracy that the United States brought to the island

was entirely new to Cubans, and harder to implement than we can imagine today.

And, should Cuba begin to waver,

US soldiers stood ready to take over the island again.

And so, since the times of Pulitzer and Hearst, since the USS Maine disaster,

the Spanish-American War, and the US occupation,

relations between the United States and Cuba have never been free of tension.