On May 20th, 1902, at noon, the change of powers took place on Cuba.

North American General Leonard Wood handed over to President-elect Tomás Estrada Palma the destinies of the nation. After he swore in before the Superior Court, and to the beat of 45 cannon shots, the Cuban flag was raised in El Morro and in the Palace of the General Captains.

But the last fight waged by the Cuban national liberation movement against the military occupation of the United States of America, ended with the victory of the powerful neighbor to the north. For this, the US administration in Cuba imposed a process of interference in the main selected strategic items of the Cuban economy for which it created legal and institutional structures for their consolidation; and propped up in power the old oligarchy interested in the dependent development of the country.

Among contradictions, a movement

The independence movement in general could not escape the effort of the occupation government to distort the national conscience, relying on the contradictions existing in the revolutionary field itself.

Thus, the republic would begin, immersed in the deep contradictions raised between neocolonial domination and the interests of the Cuban nation.

Along with these contradictions, the country had to coexist with the Platt Amendment imposed on the 1901 Constitution, which would translate into the legal sphere the neocolonial dependence of the Cuban state.

Its approval on February 5th was imposed due to fear of the prolongation of the intervention, the lack of revolutionary institutions, which had been dissolved, and the lack of confidence in the real effectiveness of their own government on the part of some Creole politicians, among other factors.

The Platt Amendment would be transformed after the establishment of the republic into a Permanent Treaty, while the Commercial Reciprocity Treaty signed in 1903, would be the instrument of economic domination imposed by the North American government.

The fight for the repeal of the Platt Amendment became a component in the battle fought by the Cuban people in the first decade of republican life.

Four years later in 1906, Estrada Palma was reelected for a new term of government. The elections framed in a climate of fraud and violence unleashed by the estradistas led to the abstention of the presidential candidate of the General Liberal Party, José Miguel Gómez, in the 1905 elections.

Faced with the refusal to call new elections, the Liberals took up arms in August 1906. The country felt the effects of the political upheaval, commercial activities were paralyzed, the circulation of trains and the agricultural wealth in danger of being destroyed, in particularly the sugarcane industry.

On September 1st, 1906, Tomás Estrada Palma officially requested the United States of America to intervene under Article 3 of the Platt Amendment. When the President, the Vice President, the Council of Secretaries resigned and the majority of the moderate congressmen left the seat of Parliament, on September 28th, a power vacuum was created.

The republic remained headless, leaving the door open to a new intervention, and due to the incapacity of the national institutions, the Second Occupation began, giving way to the landing of the northern troops.

This occupation, during the period that lasted between 1906 – 1909, generated a broad anti-occupation strike movement. Defenders of the protectorate or annexation to the United States were condemned. They critically prosecuted anti-national positions because of the serious consequences they had to Cuban nationality. Marti’s postulates of creating a Moral Republic “with everyone and for the benefit of everyone” once again called into question the national sovereignty established in the shadow of the Platt Amendment.

Views

Among the main figures of the independence movement who maintained a fight for the repeal of the Platt Amendment and the interference of the United States, in Cuban life; There was Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, a pro-independence fighter in 1968, a delegate to the Assembly of Guáimaro, President of the House of Representative and of the Republic in Arms, a detractor of the Pact of Zanjón.

In the Necessary War he was a delegate to the Assembly of Jimaguayú, and La Yaya, a representative to the Assembly of Santa Cruz del Sur and Cerro. He tenaciously opposed the discharge of the Liberation Army.

As a delegate to the 1900-1901 Constituent Assembly, he voted against the imposition of the Platt Amendment with his “Particular Vote,” signed on February 26th, 1901.

Since the beginning of the republic, Salvador Cisneros continued his struggle against the Platt Amendment, in his position as senator; between 1902 and 1914, the year in which he died.

About his work

The patrician from Camaguey founded in his hometown on April 23rd, 1907 in the session room of the City Council; the Patriotic Assembly of Camagüey.

Approximately 60 men attended the initiative, including: Dr Emilio L. Luaces Warring, Enrique Recio Agüero, Mario Boza Masvidal, Nicolás Guillén Urra, General Carlos Agüero García and Fernando Fernández Medrano.

The objectives

Among the purposes of the meeting was to restore moral peace to Cuban society, to unify the aspirations of all Cubans in the desire to reestablish the republic on the basis of cordiality among all Cubans.

In the first session, Cisneros proposed to manage to bring to Camagüey the flag that Céspedes had raised on October 10th, 1868, which was in the dissolved House of Representative to preside over the sessions of the Assembly.

After its foundation and in a second session on April 30th, there is no information regarding the work of the Patriotic Assembly.

In the historiographical work of the Camagüey historians, Elda Cento Gómez and Ricardo Muñoz Gutiérrez; scholars of the figure of Salvador Cisneros Betancourt in two of his works “Salvador Cisneros Betancourt: Between the controversy and faith” and “Salvador Cisneros Betancourt,” Words against the Platt Amendment “, there are no references to the actions of the Assembly and the time in which Cisneros was involved in it.

But his connection with it served to found the Patriotic Junta of Havana on October 10th, 1907, which was supported by the Montecristi Manifesto and the Cuban Revolutionary Party base.

Its members undertook the task of rescuing Marti’s ideology of national and anti-imperialist liberation.

In its regulations and bases its main objective was about unifying Cuban sentiment in the fight for absolute independence. Their members and all Cubans expressed their duty not only to fight to repeal the Platt Amendment, but also to nationalize companies and properties.

For this, they proposed to elaborate an economic plan that would put a stop to the penetration of capital to the Island, as well as the fight against the anti-national elements that played along with the United States, and the intervention in the internal affairs of Cuba as a rejection to the degrading and enslaving American occupation.

Salvador Cisneros Betancourt counted on this fight with the union and independence of all Cubans in the Patriotic Board of Havana with people from Camaguey such as: Francisco Arredondo Miranda colonel of the Ten Years’ War, Bernabes Boza and the women Concha Agramonte, Aurelia Castillo, Ana de Quesada, Amalia Simoni and Caridad Agüero.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García