The United States government, in service of National City Bank, United Fruit and Standard Oil, circumscribes the sovereignty of other nations by legal, extra-legal, and patently illegal methods, as it sees fit, with Cuba targeted, decade after decade, by every imperialist method imaginable. The Platt Amendment wrote Cuba’s subservience into law.

‘Platt Amendment Is America’s Charter of Slavery for Cuban Masses’ by William Simons from The Daily Worker. Vol. 10 No. 221. September 14, 1933.

Forced on Cuban People by U.S. Bayonets, Amendment Has No Validity Except Might of Wall St. Government’s Armed Forces–Amendment Called “Protection Against Foreign Menace”; But America Is Main Foreign Menace to Independence of Cuban Masses

Intervention in Cuba is “justified” (of course “only as a last resort”) by President Roosevelt, on the basis of the duty imposed on the United States by the Platt Amendment. What is this Platt Amendment?

The eight clauses of the Platt Amendment make Cuba a semi-colony of American Imperialism. The United States receives the “consent” of Cuba in clause 3, “to exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty.” Clause 7 provides that to enable the United States to “maintain the independence of Cuba and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the Cuban Government will sell or lease to the United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations.”

And so the United States Government “acquired” the Guantanamo naval base, where there are now many American war vessels. To keep other imperialist powers away, Cuba was forbidden to make any treaty with any foreign power “which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba” (as much as was left after the United States got through with it). Foreign powers were also prevented from getting in Cuba any naval or army bases, or any land for colonization.

Forced on the Cuban People.

The Platt Amendment became a United States law on March 2, 1901, authorizing the President of the United States “to leave Cuba to her people when a government had been set up under a constitution which contained as a part of it, the eight definite provisions known as the Platt Amendment.” The American army of occupation was to remain in Cuba until the Cuban Constitutional Convention included these eight provisions in the Cuban Constitution. On June 12, 1901, they were appended to the Cuban constitution, and included two years later, on May 22, 1903, in a permanent treaty between the two “equal” countries. The Platt Amendment was thus forced on the Cuban people at the point of a bayonet; its only validity is the might of American armed force.

To a special commission sent to Washington by the Cuban Convention at the end of April, 1901, to have the American Government speak a little more plainly, the corporation lawyer Elihu Root. Secretary of State, explained that the intervention clause 3 “does not impair the sovereignty of Cuba; it leaves Cuba independent and sovereign under her own flag. It only will help the United States in extreme cases to assist Cuba in preserving her absolute independence. And pray God that case may never arise,” said the hypocrite.

He continued: “The spirit, the tendency, the substance of the Platt Amendment is to establish in Cuba an independent and sovereign nation. But the United States go beyond that in favor of Cuba; they seek to guarantee the subsistence of Cuba as a free and independent republic.” “Intervention,” added the slippery secretary, “is incompatible with the existence of a Cuban government, and will take place only in case that Cuba is left in a state of anarchy which will signify the absence of all government, and in case of a foreign menace.”

United States is the “Foreign Menace.”

Well, what is the present intervention? So-called visiting parties of sailors have landed on Cuban soil. American warships lie in Cuban harbors, backing up Ambassador Welles’ Intervention in Cuban affairs. Is there a foreign menace? Yes, but that foreign menace is the United States Government, whose warships menace Cuba. American warships inducted De Cespedes into office as president. American warships are now menacing Cuba, because the Cespedes Government was overthrown by a popular uprising. American warships compelled the Revolutionary Junta (although it offered to protect American property) to draw in many more conservative elements, because the Junta was considered by Roosevelt to be too weak to suppress the rising anti-imperialist workers’ and peasants’ movement. American warships will try to insure a Cuban government safe for American imperialist interests. American warships will impose on the Cuban people a “government of their own choosing,” “their own” meaning of the choosing of Wall Street, and not of the Cuban people’s.

Fourth Intervention Under the Platt Amendment.

The present intervention is not the first in the history of Cuba. Since the first occupation following the Spanish-American War, “to make Cuba safe for the American sugar corporations” and to be the United States military key to the Caribbean, three military interventions have taken place. The first, in 1906, lasted three years, during which American companies received many rich concessions from General Magoon.

The second was in 1912, “to protect American property,” until the Cuban Government was able to crush the revolt of the Negro Party trying to secure political rights for the Negroes.

The third Intervention took place in 1917, when American marines drove Liberal Party revolutionaries out of the town of Santiago, and backed up President Menocal, reelected by fraud; the same Menocal incidentally, who now is spoken of as the leader of a new coup d’etat more in line with the wishes of Roosevelt and Welles. And these troops did not all get out of Cuba until 1922. All of these interventions were undertaken under the provisions of the Platt Amendment. And now the Platt Amendment is being again invoked.

Communist Party Raises Demands.

The Communist Party and the Anti-Imperialist League of the United States are demanding of the Roosevelt Administration the abrogation of the Platt Amendment. But this is accompanied with demands for cancellation of Wall Street loans, tor the evacuation of the Guantanamo naval base, for withdrawal of American warships from Cuban waters; and with a campaign for support of the revolutionary workers and peasants of Cuba who have already seized several American sugar mills, who are extending their struggle to take over the property and lands of the imperialists and the lands of the large native landowners, and who are succeeding in rallying mass support for resistance to the Yankee invaders.

It is not enough to call for the abrogation of the Platt Amendment, as is done by liberals and the leaders of the Socialist Party (who, however, do not carry on any mass campaign for even this demand). As pointed out by D.H.D. in “A ‘Model’ Colony of American Imperialism” (Communist. July, 1931), “It is not excluded that, in particular instances, under certain conditions, American imperialism may give up a part of its political privileges in the Caribbean, relying on its tremendous economic power, bribes, underhand machinations, etc., for the exploitation of the Caribbean peoples.” In order to establish a government in Cuba that will protect American investments and suppress the growing revolutionary mass movement, it is not excluded that American imperialism may make the concession of abrogation of the Platt Amendment, relying on the Monroe Doctrine; but this would not “undermine the hold of American imperialism on Cuba.” It is therefore all the more necessary to link up the demand for the abrogation of the Platt Amendment with the other basic demands already mentioned.

Atmosphere Prepared for Landing of Marines.

American imperialism is warring on the masses of Cuba. The reactionary ex-generals of the Cuban army justify their refusal to recognize the present government, by “the growing unrest and Communist agitation,” and by the fact that “the sugar mills are being seized by the workers in the interior.”

American imperialism wishes to keep the sugar workers in Cuba in serfdom. A war hysteria is being worked up In the United States. The “patient, neighborly” attitude of Roosevelt is combined with glaring headlines of “American women being driven from their homes, of being spattered with mud by ‘hoodlum Communists.’” The “sinking of the Maine in 1898” will be duplicated by atrocity stories as the 1933 pretext for intervention. The sending of Secretary of Navy Swanson to Cuba was no mere accident. It recalls President Theodore Roosevelt’s sending of Secretary of War William H. Taft to Havana in 1906, who instituted the military occupation that lasted until 1909. Only the loud public protest caused Swanson to continue on to other American “possessions” in Central America.

Make This a National Campaign.

American workers! In whose interests are American warships sent to Cuba? Surely not in yours. Police and troops take the part of the bosses when we go out on strike. American warships take the pert of the American sugar owners sad bankers in Cuba against the long suffering, bitterly exploited Cuban toiling masses.

Together with the Cuban workers, let us fight against police, troops and warships, against the “state power” of the capitalist class.

American workers! Let us in our factories and shops, in our organisations, at every meeting, raise the question of Cuba. Send telegrams to President Roosevelt, demanding immediate withdrawal of warships from Cuban waters. Arrange open air and mass meetings, and demonstrations.

Send telegrams of greeting to the revolutionary masses in Cuba. The addresses are Partido Communists de Cuba. Hotel Saratoga, Havana; Confederaclon Nacional Obrera de Cuba, Prado 123, Havana; Llga Anti-Imperialista de Cuba, San Rafael 113, Altos, Havana.

American workers! Our Cuban brothers and sisters are looking to us for effective support. Already In New York City, a picket line paraded before the Federal Building. Many mass meetings took place. A delegation from New York City protested at the White House. But what of the rest of the country? Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and California?

Solidarity with the workers in the colonies is an elementary duty on the part of the working class in the oppressing country. The fight against U.S. intervention must be a central task of the U.S. Congress Against War, which opens in New York Sept. 29th.

The entire working class of the United States, from coast to coast must take its place in this urgent campaign against American intervention in Cuba.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n221-sep-14-1933-DW-LOC.pdf