On May 20, 1902, U.S. intervention authorities handed over power in Havana to the first Cuban president, Don Tomás Estrada Palma. In cities and towns across the country, people celebrated the proclamation of the Republic after 30 years of struggle for independence.

Thousands of people gathered along Havana Bay and in front of the Palace of the Captains General to watch the U.S. flag lowered and the lone star flag raised over that building and El Morro, while balloons with Cuban flags rose into the air and wooden triumphal arches were erected across the island, featuring patriotic motifs or messages of friendship with the purportedly selfless neighbor to the north that had made the country’s independence possible.

At the same time, the first photographic studios reproduced images of beautiful young women adorned with the Cuban flag alongside a gallant U.S. soldier guarding it, while the major press of the era covered the event without sparing words of gratitude for the U.S. intervention.

Such was the prevailing popular sentiment that concealed the true interests of the nascent imperialism—interests that only succeeded after the fall in combat of José Martí and Antonio Maceo, the principal leaders who, with a clear anti-imperialist consciousness, could have guaranteed Cuban unity to prevent annexationist designs.

Patriots who warned of the true objectives of the false allies were few. One of the main actors in this plot, U.S. Governor Leonard Wood, described those objectives with great candor:

"Of course, Cuba has been left little or no independence with the Platt Amendment, and the only thing indicated now is annexation… It is quite evident that it is absolutely in our hands… With the control, which will no doubt soon become possession, we will shortly practically control the sugar trade of the world… The island will gradually become Americanized, and in due time we will have one of the richest and most desirable possessions in the world."

Wood’s enthusiasm over the establishment of the world’s first neocolonial system was not without reason—a scenario already foreseen by the founders of the United States as the ripe fruit that would fall into their hands after breaking away from the Spanish colonial empire.

They waited patiently until 1898, when Cuba, in its third war of independence, was on the verge of defeating Spain in a matter of time. The timely and mysterious explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana Bay in early 1898 provided the final impetus for the intervention of U.S. troops, who required the support of the mambises (Cuban independence fighters) for the landing of Marines and operations along the eastern coasts.

To that end, U.S. officials approached local military commanders such as Calixto García directly. Besides facilitating their military operations, the invaders sowed potential discord among the independence ranks, as they refused—as a matter of principle—to recognize the supreme command of the Liberation Army or the governing bodies of the Republic in Arms.

After the brave and decisive aid of the Cubans in the campaign’s victory, U.S. forces prevented the Liberation Army and General Calixto García himself from entering Santiago de Cuba to participate in the Spanish surrender in 1898, under the pretext of possible Cuban reprisals against Spaniards. This provoked the dignified response of the Cuban leader in a letter to General William Shafter, in which he vigorously protested the insult. The distinguished mambí chief wrote to the U.S. officer:

"We are not a savage people ignorant of the principles of civilized warfare; we form a poor and ragged army, as poor and ragged as the army of your forefathers in their noble war for the independence of the United States of America; but, like the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown, we respect our cause too much to stain it with barbarism and cowardice."

In Tomás Estrada Palma, U.S. politicians found a servile collaborator. The future Cuban president had settled in the United States, where he dedicated himself to education. From his initial patriotic positions during the Ten Years’ War, he shifted to the conviction that his compatriots were incapable of self-governance without the tutelage of the great power, foreseeing that annexation might be a solution for their future.

Those tendencies were not widely known. He eventually replaced José Martí as head of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, which he dissolved after the war ended, closed Martí’s newspaper Patria, and became a key factor in the demobilization of the Liberation Army and the revolutionary leadership bodies, among other services rendered to imperialist aims.

The U.S. administration also forced the Constituent Assembly—tasked with drafting the Republic’s fundamental law—to include the (Orville) Platt Amendment, authored by a senator of the same name. That amendment established the U.S. right to intervene militarily in the island, prohibited Cuba from entering into international treaties, created conditions for ceding the Isle of Pines to the Union, and required the lease of bays for coaling stations, among other provisions damaging to national dignity.

Thus was born the new republic, considered internationally as a U.S. protectorate, with the appearance of an independent territory by virtue of having a flag, an anthem, and a purportedly independent government.

It was not until January 1, 1959, that the definitive dismantling of more than 50 years of imperialist domination—promoted on that distant May 20, 1902—truly began.