Revisiting the Sugar Bowl

AS THIS IS written, the U.S. and Cuba are in the final stages of the haggling that will likely lead to the opening of embassies in Havana and Washington, and peace, love, and understanding seem to be breaking out all over. Pope Francis, who helped broker the U.S.-Cuba thaw, will visit the island in September on his way to the U.S. After a recent meeting with the pope, Cuban President Raul Castro said, “if the pope continues to talk as he does, sooner or later I will start praying again and return to the Catholic Church.” And Major League Baseball is already working on bringing at least spring training games back to baseball-crazy Cuba.

In the U.S. media, discussion of the new détente with Cuba has focused almost entirely on the past 55 years of Cold War-inspired confrontation. However, the U.S. and Cuba had a close and troubled relationship for a full 60 years before Fidel Castro took power, and as hostilities wane and the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba is eventually dropped, the patterns of this U.S.-Cuban “prehistory” may become important again.

That story begins in 1898, when the U.S. empire first extended beyond our North American shores as the U.S. took control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines at the end of the Spanish-American War. Puerto Rico we still hold. In the Philippines we spent the first decades of the 20th century slaughtering thousands in a war to suppress local insurgents and only granted the islands official independence in 1946. In Cuba, we granted independence in 1902, but with crucial caveats granting the U.S. perpetual rights to a naval base at Guantánamo and authority to intervene in Cuba’s internal affairs whenever our perceived interests were threatened. U.S. troops occupied the entire island from 1906 to 1909 and returned in 1912 to suppress anti-discrimination protests by black Cubans.

During those early decades of the “American century,” Cuban plantations became America’s sugar bowl and Havana became a sort of adult theme park for wealthy U.S. tourists. Francis Ford Coppola captured some of the flavor of this period in the Havana sequences of The Godfather: Part II. A bleached-out version of Afro-Cuban popular music infiltrated the U.S. market via such bandleaders as Xavier Cugat and his former guitar player Desi Arnaz. Arnaz, of course, became most famous playing opposite his wife, Lucille Ball, on the groundbreaking sitcom I Love Lucy. As the Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo, Arnaz’s broken and accented English was the butt of a running joke in practically every episode.

The one U.S. export that Cubans took to heart during those years was baseball. The sport became incredibly popular on the island, and white-looking Cubans began playing in the U.S. major leagues in 1911. Cubans with noticeable African features played in the U.S. Negro leagues, and from 1900 on African-American players were welcomed in Cuba’s professional league, which played during the U.S offseason. Eventually, Cuba played a part in the integration of the major leagues when Dodger general manager Branch Rickey took his team to Havana in 1947 for spring training so Jackie Robinson could be incorporated into the team away from the media circus and Jim Crow laws of the Florida training camps.

As U.S.-Cuba relations begin again, Cuba now has control over its own land. Castro’s nationalization of U.S. sugar holdings was, after all, what started the old conflict. Cuba’s music culture, which has continued to thrive and evolve, will undoubtedly find a new audience in the U.S. And the U.S. major leagues are chomping at the bit to get at Cuban baseball players. The challenge for Raul Castro and his successors will be finding a way to share Cuba’s cultural wealth without selling the nation’s soul to the U.S. entertainment-industrial complex.