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Browsing Institute Lectures by Subject "Guerra de Independencia cubana"
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Item 2019 NEH Summer Institute, The Center for José Martí Studies Affiliate at the University of Tampa: “José Martí and the Nature of Cuban Independence” with John Tone(The University of Tampa, 2019-07-02) Tone, JohnCubans and Spaniards fought a particularly brutal war from 1895 to 1898 that left 45,288 dead Spanish soldiers and as many as 170,000 Cuban dead, the vast majority of them civilians. Disease produced almost all of the deaths on the Spanish side, but the actions and policies of both the Cubans and the Spanish caused the vast majority of Cuban deaths. For this reason, some have characterized what happened in Cuba as genocide. This presentation will discuss the nature of the warfare in Cuba, paying particular attention to the role that José Martí played. Martí's skill as an organizer and propagandist were decisive in producing American intervention, which Cuban patriots both encouraged and feared. The tragic death of Martí in the early days of the conflict was also crucial, as it cleared the way for the unimpeded pursuit of total war by Máximo Gómez, whom Martí had opposed. The burnt earth policy of Gómez, in turn, paved the way for the even more destructive Spanish response known as Reconcentration. Cuba became independent, eventually, at the end of all of this destruction, but the island had been transformed into something Martí would scarcely have recognized.Item 2019 NEH Summer Institute, The Center for José Martí Studies Affiliate at the University of Tampa: “The Spanish-American War and Semi-Independence I and II” with Michael Conniff(The University of Tampa, 2019-07-01) Conniff, MichaelThree themes begin this presentation: U.S. desires to annex Cuba, Cubans’ efforts to win independence from Spain, and longstanding economic and cultural ties between Cuba and the United States. José Martí’s efforts to free the island from Spanish colonialism culminated in a military attack in which he died in 1895. Two military veterans of the independence struggle, Antonio Maceo and Máximo Gómez, continued to fight and after two years stood on the verge of victory. Spain’s vicious counterattacks drew adverse attention from the American public and U.S. investors in the island. Jingoistic voices in the United States, especially in the press and Theodore Roosevelt’s expansionist wing of the Republican Party, pushed for and got a declaration of war against Spain in spring 1898. The four-month conflict led to U.S. victory and army occupation of the island during the next four years. U.S. authorities kept Cuban independence leaders out of the new government and, after debating annexation, committed to granting independence, under strict limits imposed by the Platt Amendment.