WI: Cuba integrated into the US

Let's say after the Spanish American War, the USA decides to annex Cuba.

How does that affect their relations with the rest of Latin America and beyond?
 

NothingNow

Banned
Let's say after the Spanish American War, the USA decides to annex Cuba.

How does that affect their relations with the rest of Latin America and beyond?
VERY BADLY.

And this is before we get to the popular insurgency that would spontaneously develop in Cuba, and the American sugar industry trying to impeach or assassinate everyone who sponsored the Annexation bill. (Remember, there was an actual bill passed to prevent the US from annexing cuba before the start of the Spanish American war to protect the very powerful Sugar Industry.)
 
Let's say after the Spanish American War, the USA decides to annex Cuba.

How does that affect their relations with the rest of Latin America and beyond?
Considering that one of the official reasons that the US went to war with Spain in the first place was to free the Cubans from the Spanish, REALLY badly. Cuba itself would turn on the US in a heartbeat and it would be like what the US experienced when it controlled the Philippines (or worse).

The US would be seen as just another imperialist power that was no better than the Spanish in the eyes of Latin America. And when Teddy becomes president? Forget about it.
 
If the Cubans asked for annexation, it might make some of the other states in the area pause and think. Would they too want to become States? Whether or not Congress accepts any of their applications is another matter.
 
Let's say after the Spanish American War, the USA decides to annex Cuba.

Depends on what that means. If by annex you mean take, horrible. If by annex you mean they hold a plebiscite and choose to petition for US annexation, much better.
 
Depends on what that means. If by annex you mean take, horrible. If by annex you mean they hold a plebiscite and choose to petition for US annexation, much better.

It means take, if a plebiscite is held independence will be chosen. There was very little support on the ground for integration into the US and so something tells me if it happens it won't be very well received by the Cuban nationalists who had been fighting for decades for independence.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Depends on what that means. If by annex you mean take, horrible. If by annex you mean they hold a plebiscite and choose to petition for US annexation, much better.

It means take, if a plebiscite is held independence will be chosen. There was very little support on the ground for integration into the US and so something tells me if it happens it won't be very well received by the Cuban nationalists who had been fighting for decades for independence.

Yeah, but this is Cuba. Who says the ballots are actually going into the ballot box, and not the burn box?
 
Just move annexation to the 1854-1856 timeframe and it's doable. Sure this would greatly exacerbate the sectional crisis between the North and South, but I doubt that even with Cuba as a slave territory the South could win. Cuba would be a running sore if handled incorrectly, but it is possible in the long term to make it work. Along with the ex-Mexican south west, Could could form a very powerful political bloc. Social Conservatism and Leftist Economics (the worst of both world's IMHO) could change the shape of one of the major parties.

This would also negate the Spanish-American War while increasing American interest in Latin America. Perhaps a replacement war concerning European debt collection by force that occurred during the late 19th century? The US Navy would probably be bigger to defeat Confederate blockade runners basing out of Cuba and later to defend the island. This too would affect American interventionism worldwide. Finally, a larger American navy could provoke a British reaction and lead to transatlantic tensions or conversely the British could realize that friendship with the US was more productive than confrontation and the Great Rapprochement may happen decades earlier.
 
Top