The Day the Republic Was Imposed on Us

On May 20th, 1902, the flag with the lone star flew for the first time from the flagpole at El Morro Castle. That day, with U.S. troops still stationed on the island and under the legal shadow of the Platt Amendment. That constitutional appendix that curtailed sovereignty and ceded national territory in perpetuity. A republic of appearances was established.

The official history of the time spoke of “freedom” and “sovereignty”. Time and national consciousness revealed the painful truth. That was not the day of independence, but the date on which a mediated republic. Designed in Washington to manage the interests of the new hegemonic power, was imposed upon us.

More than a century later, historical analysis from a revolutionary perspective. It allows us to draw a direct line between that neocolonial imposition and the current aggressions of U.S. imperialism. The economic, commercial, and financial blockade. Described with absolute legal and moral precision by President Miguel Díaz-Canel as a genocidal blockad. It is nothing more than the continuation of that same policy of domination by other means.

If in 1902 our sovereignty was taken from us through a legal appendage and a military occupation. Today there is an attempt to suffocate the Cuban nation through total economic warfare.

The recent executive orders issued by the Trump administration. Which seek to block fuel supplies to the island through sanctions against third countries. Represent the most brutal escalation of this policy since the signing of the Executive Order by John F. Kennedy in 1962.

The data presented by Cuba at the Second International Conference on Unilateral Coercive Measures of the United Nations are staggering. More than 96,000 Cubans, including 11,000 children, are awaiting surgeries affected by the lack of electricity. 16,000 patients require radiotherapy, and 3,000 depend on hemodialysis. In a context of energy paralysis deliberately induced from abroad.

History, as Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz so aptly taught. It does not repeat itself by the whims of the calendar. Rather due to the persistence of the contradictions of the imperialist system.

In 1902, the nascent American empire settled for a protectorate that guaranteed the penetration of its sugar monopolies and control of our customs.

Today, the same empire, in its phase of hegemonic decline, resorts to total economic warfare to try to subdue a people who have decided to be masters of their own destiny.

Also the sanctions announced in May 2026 against high-ranking Cuban officials and the Directorate of Intelligence are nothing more than the death throes of impotence. As Díaz-Canel stated, in the leadership of our Communist Party and Government, “no one has any assets or property to protect under U.S. jurisdiction. And the U.S. government knows this perfectly well.”

May 20th, 1902, was not a day of national celebration, but a day of mourning disguised as festivity. They imposed upon us a republic without a people. An independence without sovereignty, a flag under tutelage.

True independence would arrive half a century later, with the revolutionary triumph of January 1st, 1959. So it has been defended with exemplary stoicism against a blockade that has now accumulated more than six decades of moral failure. Every vote at the United Nations—165 nations demanding an end to the blockade in the last vote—confirms that Cuba is not alone.

They imposed a Republic on us more than a century ago; today they impose a genocidal blockade. But the same people who withstood the frustration of 1902 and forged the epic of Moncada, Playa Girón, and the resistance of the 1990s. They are the ones who today unite and fight for a better Cuba.

By: Daimy Peña Guillén