Cuba Today: An Update on Our Friends and Neighbors

Cuba has always been under watchful eye of the United States. In the earliest days of Spanish and

English colonialism, the southern part of the States, which would become the Confederacy desired Cuba

to increase the power of the slaveocracy; when the American Revolution succeeded in independence

from the 13 British colonies, the new republic began an imperial climb to control all of Latin America and

the Caribbean. After the Cuban War of Independence and the Spanish American War was won by the

United States, Cuba was restricted in its independence by the Platt Amendment and by the occupation of