Anyone Cypriot of a certain age watching the Cuba Libre Story on Netflix last week could not fail to see the striking similarities between aspects of Cuba’s history and relationship with the US and aspects of Cyprus’ predicament and her relationship with Turkey.
It is a relationship between a small island state and a powerful neighbour and the geopolitical dynamic between them, although it is also the story of the larger than life personalities involved.
The Cyprus story is well known and requires no repetition. The Cuba story goes back many years when Christopher Columbus first sailed there at the behest of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. It was not long afterwards that the Spanish conquistadors followed and colonised not just Cuba but the rest of Central and South America.
Cuban independence from Spain in 1898 was achieved with US help. Theodore Roosevelt who became president of the US in 1902, actually fought in the war in Cuba. The US occupied the country afterwards and only withdrew on a number of conditions including, interestingly, the right to intervene to preserve Cuban independence; the right to keep military bases including a base at Guantanamo bay in eastern Cuba; and the right to veto any treaty with a third country – all of which also featured in Cyprus’ independence arrangements in one form or another.
The US exercised its right to intervene basically to protect American geopolitical interests in the region as well as American business and proprietary interests in Cuba – primarily in the production and export of sugar to the US.
The right to intervene was abolished in 1934 by Cuba’s new strongman one Fulgencio Batista later to become Cuba’s pro American dictator until he was overthrown in 1958 by Fidel and Raul Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara and other comrades in arms sporting beards and wearing fatigues and berets and smoking Havana cigars with looks to match.
Until the overthrow of Batista, the US was able to control Cuba – and other countries in the Caribbean and Central America – by “maintaining a submissive local regime”, which is par for the course.
For me the Cuba Libre Story took off with the arrival from Spain of Angel Castro, father of Fidel and Raul, first as an invading soldier from Spain and then as a migrant worker after Cuban independence. He worked hard and benefited from America’s involvement on the island and became a wealthy landowner and employed local workers whom he treated virtually like slaves.
Angel Castro had two families. Fidel and Raul were the illegitimate boys from his second family. They were legitimated in due course, but they grew up close to his workforce and experienced the same privations and ill treatment as his workers. They became natural rebels serving time in prison under Batista after a failed attack on some military barracks in which a number of soldiers were killed. At his trial Fidel Castro made a speech in which he famously told the court: “history will absolve me.”
They were released pursuant to an amnesty and went into voluntary exile in Mexico. Apparently, Fidel was not a communist at this stage though his brother Raul was a fervent Marxist. In Mexico they were joined by Ernesto Che Guevara, another committed Marxist from Argentina, and together with a band of eighty revolutionaries returned to Cuba and overthrew the Batista regime. Batista had turned Havana into a casino gangster state and his overthrow was a walkover as he had no support in the army or in the country.
Russia’s involvement with Cuba began when Soviet agents befriended Raul and Che Guevara before they left Mexico for Cuba and continued in earnest after the Bay of Pigs debacle when Cuban exiles were sent to Cuba by the US to overthrow Castro in 1961. The attack drew Cuba closer to the Soviet Union and resulted in arming Cuba with nuclear weapons that nearly caused a nuclear war in 1962.
Thereafter Cuba remained a thorn in America’s side – despite the collapse of communism – until President Barack Obama with the assistance of Pope Francis re-established diplomatic relations in 2014. President Obama visited Cuba in 2016 at the invitation of President Raul Castro who succeeded his brother Fidel as president in 2011.
I enjoyed watching The Cuba Libre Story enormously. Not only was it a refreshing change from all the films and documentaries about the Royal Family and Princess Diana, it also helped concentrate the mind about small island states and how they negotiate powerful neighbours.
It was I believe US Secretary of State in the 1970s, Dr Henry Kissinger, who said that President Makarios of Cyprus was “the Fidel Castro of the Mediterranean” by which he did not mean they wore a beard and shared the same birthday – August 13. Both classic Leos for those into Zodiac signs!
What he meant was that Makarios could go rogue from America’s point of view in the same way Castro had done. I have no idea whether Dr Kissinger had a hand in the attempt to overthrow President Makarios in 1974, although I am aware of the allegations against him.
The US does not deny attempting to kill President Castro – a girlfriend admitted on camera that she was sent by the CIA to poison him but recanted and made love with him instead. But it does not follow that the CIA did the same in Cyprus just because Kissinger likened Makarios to Castro.
The more interesting question is how small island states could negotiate powerful neighbours. In particular how does puny Cyprus persuade Turkey to abandon her treaty right to take action in Cyprus unilaterally? The answer has been obvious from the outset – entice the Turkish Cypriots back to the fold. Perhaps it is too late but still worth a go. Take a leaf out of what President Obama told the Cubans in 2016 in Havana. In a speech in which he explained the US paradigm shift in policy towards Cuba, Obama observed that “what the US was doing was not working. We have to have the courage to acknowledge that truth. The embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them.”
Alper Ali Riza is a queen’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge
