Security· Banana Wars
Second Occupation of Cuba
The American return to Cuba when its young republic faltered.
When political turmoil and the resignation of Cuba's first elected president threw the island into crisis in 1906, the United States intervened again, and Marines were landed to stabilize Havana, Santiago, and the country at large under a provisional government. The deployment, part of what became the Army of Cuban Pacification, was a peacekeeping occupation rather than a fighting campaign, the Marines maintaining order while the political situation was sorted out, and it produced no combat casualties. The occupation lasted into 1909 and ended with the inauguration of a new Cuban president. It was the second of the recurring American interventions in Cuba authorized under the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States a right to step in to preserve order, and it set the pattern for the further deployments to the island that would follow in the years ahead.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 13