Security· Banana Wars
First Occupation of Cuba
The Marine share in the American occupation that followed the war with Spain.
After the Treaty of Paris transferred Cuba from Spanish rule, the United States held the island under a military government, and from 1899 to 1902 Marines garrisoned Havana, Santiago, and other strategic points, helping keep order through the transition to a Cuban republic. The duty was occupation and garrison rather than combat, and it produced no Marine combat casualties. During this period the United States also secured the lease that established the naval station at Guantánamo Bay, the beginning of the long Marine connection with that base. The occupation ended in 1902 with the inauguration of Cuba's first elected president. It was a quiet but significant chapter, the Corps helping administer a former enemy possession through to its independence, and the start of an American military presence in Cuba that would recur for decades.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 12