The Short, Strange Saga of American Colonies in Cuba
Or: what happens when a bunch of Minnesota Swedes move to the tropics?
When Americans think about Cuban immigration, they generally imagine people coming from Cuba to settle in the United States. But there have been several periods where the flow of people has gone in a different direction. In one now-forgotten episode, thousands of Americans bought up land and moved to Cuba, often recreating small midwestern towns in the Caribbean.
The United States has, of course, had a long history of meddling in Cuban affairs. At various points, Americans flirted with annexing the island as a slave state, invaded it in 1898, retained the Guantanamo military base as American soil, manipulated Cuban politics, launched an invasion at the Bay of Pigs, almost started World War III over Soviet missiles, repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, and imposed a crippling economic embargo on the island that has outlasted the actual Cold War by three decades.
In the middle of all this, just after the Spanish-American War, thousands of Americans settled in Cuba. They formed over 80 colonies on the island, turning parts of the tropical Caribbean into little outposts of Nebraska or New Hampshire.
