In 1898 it seemed as if Spain would lose its colonies in Latin America, effectively weakening its empire. Spain’s dominion over Cuba was quickly coming to an end by the end of the 1800s, and the failure of the autocratic Spanish government was seen even throughout all of Spain. Various editorials and newspapers in Spain were printing the exhaustion of its empire, coming to conclusions such as “Cuba is lost to Spain” and “[Spain] must withdraw her troops and recognize Cuban independence before it is too late.” The United States under President McKinley also reinforced its standpoint that Spain should withdraw its sovereignty from Cuba, though were America’s intentions purely a democratic want to see a new independent nation follow in the footsteps much like the American Revolution?
America had little intentions of letting Cuba become completely independent. Since America acquired Florida from Spain, the United States had been looking southward at the incredibly productive sugar plantations that were reaping large profits in the European markets. Unlike the Haitian Revolution, which resulted in the first black democratic nation, the American people were quick to support Cuban independence. It is surprising that the American public would support Cuban independence because throughout American history there is a trend of racism linked to American political policy (aside from the obvious racial institutions revolving around slavery.) The American media was portraying Cuba as a figurative “damsel in distress” with Spain’s autocratic government being the evil barbaric state that kept Cuba down.
Due to the Industrial Revolution, many women began to move outside of their spheres of influence doing domestic work and began to work in factories. Combined with the thought that men who worked in factories (as opposed to agrarian work) were subject to the factory owner’s demands and were therefore not as masculine, historian Kristin Hoganson believes that American men saw the domesticated Cuban women as “models of femininity” in contrast to the industrialized “new woman” of the United States. Such femininity only gave credibility to the American portrayal of Cuba as a damsel waiting to be rescued from the evil Spaniards by the “American knights.” Such a condescending attitude towards Cuba as helpless was followed up by the words of President William McKinley’s Spanish minister Steward Woodford.
Woodford reinforced old American political racism. Woodford mentioned in 1898 that he believed the Cuban government was not “fit for self-government” at the particular point of time because there were only “few whites in the [Cuban] rebel forces.” The rebel forces were comprised of “almost entirely negroes”, and a similar official political view point of the United States’ government led President McKinley, influenced in a large part by the American people, to declare war in Cuba as a “neutral” party to drive out Spain in an attempt to annex Cuba. If Cuba was allowed to become independent, by the law that was the Monroe Doctrine, the United States could not exert any imperialistic dominance over it.
Sources:
Essays by Kristin Hoganson and Louis A. Perez Jr. as found in “Major Problems in American Foreign Relations: Concise Edition”
