Franklin Roosevelt and the Cuban Left: Contradictions of the Colonised Mind?
Abstract
In any study of modern Cuban history, 1933 is seen as a turning point, either a “prelude to revolution” (for some) or because it divided the overtly neo-colonial First Republic (1902-33) from the Second (1934-58), changing the scope and nature of US involvement in Cuba, with the Platt Amendment replaced by a more complex economic and political dependency. However, it was also when, under Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), a different United States seemed to exist in the eyes of those Cubans who wanted greater Cuban independence within a good relationship with a United States, now seemingly driven by the new “Good Neighbour” policy. This chapter goes beyond that perspective to examine the reformist Cuban Left’s revealingly ambiguous reactions to the other strand of FDR’s new approach, namely his New Deal, reactions which brought out the complexities and contradictions of the reformist Left's attitudes to the United States and to their own group identities within the Cuban spectrum. Those responses and contradictions tell us much about the strength and depth of residual colonised attitudes in Cuban society and politics that even included the Left and the rhetorically nationalist forces, suggesting that an intellectual and cultural dependence on the United States might still go deeper than the discourse might imply.
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