Isle of Pines: recognized as Cuban 97 years ago

NUEVA GERONA, Cuba, Mar 13 (ACN) Ninety-seven years have passed since a young man surnamed Blanco broke the news that "The Isle of Pines belongs to Cuba", which led to the immediate mobilization of the Cubans on March 13, 1925 to celebrate such a significant political and diplomatic victory over the United States.

The event had been brewing since December 10, 1898 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which gave Washington a justification to seize the Isle of Pines from Cuba, an episode legitimized in the Platt Amendment, an appendix to the Cuban Constitution.

It was General Leonard Wood, military governor during the U.S. occupation of Cuba, who made it clear in a confidential letter he sent in October that year to then President Theodore Delano Roosevelt that, “(...) The island will be gradually Americanized and, in due time, we will have one of the richest and most desirable possessions in the world (...)”.

Spurred on by the same interests, hundreds of Americans arrived in this island to purchase land and open socioeconomic institutions in speculative companies and settlements.

The mortal remains of more than 300 of those settlers, from all social classes, lie there in a cemetery that bears testimony to the political and diplomatic battle that Cuba won on March 13, 1925 to gain possession of a territory long on the sights of U.S. naval and military circles, obviously to establish one or more military bases.

Juan Gualberto Gómez stated then: "There is no reason to ask that the Isle of Pines should not continue to be within the boundaries of Cuba, where it belongs geographically, historically, politically, legally and administratively (...).

As a result, the Hay-Quesada Treaty was signed on March 2, 1904 to recognize the disputed island as part of Cuba.

History has it that the U.S. government, from 1889 to 1925, dodged more than once the question of recognizing the isle as part of the Cuban archipelago.

Two decades later, Julio Antonio Mella mobilized the whole nation against the Yankee goals and forced the U.S. Senate on March 13, 1925 to definitively recognize that this territory belonged to Cuba. Since then, the anniversary, marked by anti-imperialist, rebellious and patriotic feelings, went down in local and national history as a date for celebration, including the contest for "Miss March 13".

In 1957, after the assaults on the Presidential Palace and the Radio Reloj radio station, in which José Antonio Echeverría and other young men fell in combat, the festivities were suspended on the Isle of Pines in honor of those martyrs, but they were resumed in the late 20th century as a popular party in honor of the Cuban identity.