Like the Cubans, Filipinos had been fighting for independence from Spain and for social change. It was precisely this legally ambiguous quality of being controlled by the United States but not being part of it that, 100 years later, made Guantánamo attractive as the war on terrorism’s most notorious prison and black site.īutler’s next destination was the Philippines. That amendment granted the United States the right to intervene for the purpose of “the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty.” And it further required the lease of land that could serve as a coaling or naval station: Guantánamo Bay. Instead, the United States essentially made Cuba a protectorate, insisting on the inclusion of the “Platt Amendment” in Cuba’s constitution. Nevertheless, the authorization for war from Congress prohibited the United States from acquiring the territory outright (as the country would do to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands). The country’s poet-martyr José Martí, who was killed in combat in 1895, had foreseen such impositions, asking, “Once the United States is in Cuba, who will drive it out?” President McKinley, who had tried to purchase Cuba from Spain in 1897, interpreted “stability” in Cuba to mean that property relations would stay largely intact. intervention was soon directed at curtailing the social changes for which Cubans had been fighting along with their independence. For propaganda purposes, the United States attributed victory to its own troops, and ignored the much longer struggle of Cubans for their own independence. Army’s short campaign of ground combat was already essentially over, and Spain was forced to relinquish its claims to Cuba. When Butler landed in Cuba, he arrived at Guantánamo Bay. Together, they show the force of Butler’s critique, and some of its limitations. Sometimes they reveal how dramatically the world has changed. Sometimes Katz’s visits to Butler’s grounds reveal the ways in which empire has hardly relaxed its grasp. In Gangsters of Capitalism, Katz follows Butler through the archives and on foot, retracing Butler’s path across the globe: from Cuba to the Philippines, to Nicaragua, to Haiti. Katz’s engaging new book is an opportunity to correct for the omission. If you missed your youthful window for Butleriana-either by not being a member of the Marine Corps or by not devoting a shelf in your dorm room to the collected works of Chomsky-Jonathan M. Famous in his day, the subject of fiction and film, he retired with two Medals of Honor and a greater number of nicknames-Old Gimlet Eye, the Leatherneck’s Friend, the Fighting Quaker-that testified to his place in the culture. His military career would take him from Cuba to China to Central America, where he became a legend in the Marine Corps, representing martial valor and virtue. When he read of the explosion of the USS Maine in the Havana harbor in 1898-which the “yellow journalism” of the era painted as a Spanish attack-he decided to enlist in the Marines. “I clenched my fists when I thought of those poor Cuban devils being starved and murdered by the beastly Spanish tyrants,” he wrote later. In spite of the Quaker tradition of pacifism, Butler believed in the mission. The United States promised it was entering the fight to free the remaining Spanish overseas colonies from tyranny. He was 16 years old when the Spanish-American War broke out. Both were prominent families, but the young Butler would not pursue a career in politics. The name reflects Butler’s Pennsylvania Quaker heritage-his father, Thomas Butler, was a congressman in the seat once held by his wife’s father, Smedley Darlington.
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