América

The history of Cuba was turbulent in the period that leads up to the time in which “América” is set. Relations between Cuba and the United States underwent a rupture that continued for more than fifty years.

Cuban president Fulgencio Batista had seized power in 1952 and established a corrupt dictatorship. He was supported by the U.S. government because of his anticommunist policies. In 1959, however, Fidel Castro, who had been trying for six years to overthrow Batista, led a guerilla army into Havana, Cuba’s capital city. Batista was forced to flee, and Castro became prime minister, quickly establishing a Communist government. In 1960, U.S. businesses in Cuba were nationalized, with no compensation. Taxes on U.S. imports were raised, and U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by freezing Cuban assets in the United States, imposing a trade embargo, and severing diplomatic relations with Cuba.

In April 1961, U.S. president John F. Kennedy authorized a group of 1,400 Cuban exiles, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. Known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, this was a dismal failure; the Cuban military put an end to it within three days. Meanwhile, thousands of Cubans had fled the country since Castro seized power. Many had flourished under the Batista regime, but under Castro their private businesses had been taken over by the government. In 1966, the U.S. State Department estimated that about 270,000 Cubans had arrived in the United States since Castro took power. Many of the exiles settled in Miami, Florida, because of its proximity to Cuba. (Havana is just 228 miles by air from Miami.) The exiles hoped that the United States would remove Castro from power, and they were angry with Kennedy following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Thus, in the poem, Cuban exiles stand around in Antonio’s Mercado “blaming Kennedy for everything” (Line 20).

The Cuban exiles established a flourishing community in what became known as “Cuban Miami.” They made a point—as the poem shows—of retaining their Cuban culture, customs, and language. In “América,” for example, the family continues to speak Spanish; it is only the young boy who learns English since he attends an American school. The family also manages to find supplies of Cuban coffee, which was not officially allowed in the country because of the trade embargo the United States maintained against Cuba.

The hostility between the United States and Cuba would continue into the 21st century. However, efforts to normalize relations with Cuba began during the Obama administration in the mid-2010s. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored in 2015, but as of 2022, the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba remained in force.