Conversations among Gentlemen: Elites Frame the US-Cuban Agenda, 1920s-1940s, in Foreign Affairs

Abstract

During the second quarter of the twentieth century, Cuba was independent enough to undertake international initiatives, yet dependent enough to need US approval. Founded in 1921 as the journal of the Council of Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs became the venue for polite exchanges among elites regarding the US-Cuban relations agenda. This article examines how “influentials” from both countries addressed that agenda. The authors include Franklin Delano Roosevelt (before his election to the presidency), Walter Lippman (leading journalist of his times), and ambassadors to Cuba Harry Guggenheim and Sumner Welles. Cuba’s foreign minister and ambassador to Washington Cosme de la Torriente, Ramiro Guerra y Sánchez, Secretary to the President and a leading historian, and Jorge Mañach, prominent intellectual and activist are the Cuban authors. They discuss the Platt Amendment to Cuba’s Constitution, the repatriation of the Isle of Pines, the 1933 revolution, the US base near Guantánamo, Cuba’s role during the World Wars, and its vigorous multilateralism. Cuban authors deployed arguments drawn from US political and strategic discourse, as well as large doses of flattery, to persuade their US readers to go along with a string of successes for Cuban foreign policy, despite entrenched ongoing constraints, in some instances as explicit quid pro quo bargains.

Keywords

• Cuba
• revolution
• US-Cuban relations
• Platt Amendment
• base near Guantánamo
• Isle of Pines