This is the fourth in a series of CubaBriefs fact checking the claims made by Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel during his appearance on Meet the Press broadcast on April 12, 2026.
Fact Checking Miguel Diaz-Canel’s Meet the Press appearance
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.” – Jonathan Swift The Art of Political Lying (1710).
Cuban presidents between 1902 and 1959.
During the Cuban Republic, the island’s leaders negotiated the return of the Isle of Pines and reduced the U.S. military presence from four bases to two and then to one. The Platt Amendment was the price for ending the four-year American occupation following the Spanish-American War, and ending Platt in 1934 ended formal U.S. interference in Cuban affairs. Over 50 years, Cuba developed a multiparty system, competitive elections, a free press, a modern public health system and a strong labor movement. This translated to social achievements placing pre-1959 Cuba at the top of Latin American indexes, outperforming Castro’s Cuba.
Díaz-Canel’s claim in the Meet the Press interview (1:05 in the NBC video) is consistent with longstanding historiography by the Castro dictatorship: he described the Republic of Cuba (established in1902) as a “neo-colony” of the United States.
PRESIDENT MIGUEL DÍAZ-CANEL [TRANSLATED]:
“For 150 years, Cuba has fought first to free itself from the colony and the neo-colony. And with the Cuban Revolution and its triumph in 1959, we got rid of a number of dependence, the servitude and the subordination to a foreign power.”
Let us now test Diaz-Canel’s core claim, with a fact-check of Cuban history .
The statement does not hold up under scrutiny because it selectively omits key milestones and equivalences in Cuban history. Here is the breakdown:
- 1902–1934: “Neo-colony” label is well-supported
Cuba gained formal independence from Spain on May 20, 1902, after the U.S.-backed war of 1898. However, the U.S. Congress’s Platt Amendment (1901, incorporated into Cuba’s 1901 constitution and the 1903 Treaty of Relations) explicitly limited Cuban sovereignty:- The U.S. reserved the right to intervene in Cuban affairs “for the preservation of Cuban independence” and to protect life/property.
- Cuba could not make treaties impairing its independence or incur excessive debt.
- The U.S. received a perpetual lease for Guantánamo Bay.
This made Cuba a U.S. protectorate in practice. The U.S. intervened militarily three times (1906, 1912, 1917) under these terms. Cuban and international historians (including U.S. State Department records) routinely describe this period as a “neo-colony” or limited protectorate.
- 1933 Revolution and 1934 abrogation of the Platt Amendment: This is the key omission
The 1933 Revolution (a broad anti-Machado uprising involving students, workers, and the military) forced Gerardo Machado from power. It directly led to the 1934 Treaty of Relations (signed May 29, 1934, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy). This treaty explicitly abrogated the 1903 Platt-based treaty, removing the U.S. intervention clause, treaty restrictions, and most controls—except the Guantánamo lease.
Cuba achieved formal sovereignty from U.S. intervention rights in 1934. The period 1934–1959 saw continued U.S. economic influence (sugar quotas, investments), which the Cuban government still labels “neo-colonial.” However, the Platt Amendment—the legal instrument of formal interference—was ended 25 years before 1959. Díaz-Canel’s narrative skips this entirely. - Post-1959 Soviet/Russian interference: Not mentioned, but well-documented
After 1959, Cuba rapidly shifted from preferred access to U.S. markets, with an emergent national bourgeoisie, to near-total dependence on the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Cuban business sector:- By 1960–1961, the USSR became Cuba’s primary oil supplier, trade partner, and military patron (replacing the U.S. market that had bought ~80% of Cuban sugar).
- Annual Soviet subsidies reached $4–6 billion (in today’s terms) through 1991, covering oil, machinery, and food. Cuba joined the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).
- The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequent defense treaties embedded Cuba in the Soviet sphere. Havana complained when they were not included in the conversations between Moscow and Washington that resolved the crisis without their input.
This was not “interference” in the interventionist Platt sense but a client-state relationship with ideological, economic, and military subordination until the USSR’s collapse.
- 1976 Constitution and the Soviet Union reference/removal
The 1976 Constitution (Cuba’s first socialist constitution, approved by referendum) was explicitly modeled on the 1936 Soviet Constitution. It defined Cuba as a “socialist state” led by the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party and aligned the economy and institutions with the “socialist camp” (Soviet bloc). While the text did not literally name “Soviet Union” in every clause, it enshrined the ideological and structural dependence that peaked under Soviet patronage.
After the USSR’s 1991 collapse (and the ensuing “Special Period” economic crisis), the 1992 constitutional amendments removed key Soviet-era central-planning restrictions, allowed limited foreign investment/joint ventures, and changed Cuba from an “atheist” to a “secular” state. These changes were direct responses to the loss of Soviet support.
Bottom line: How the “full independence in 1959” claim fails to hold up
- Under broader historical scrutiny: The claim is selective and incomplete. It erases the 1933–1934 achievement of formal independence from the Platt Amendment (a major nationalist victory at the time) and ignores the immediate post-1959 substitution of Soviet dependence for U.S. influence—complete with constitutional alignment that was only partially unwound in 1992. Cuba traded one superpower patron for another until the present.
- Havana embraced Beijing in 1989, and the relationship intensified post 1991 with Communist China establishing bases to spy on the United States, and a strong economic presence in Cuba.
- With the rise of Putin, relations with Moscow were fully restored, and today thousands of Cubans are fighting in Russia’s imperial war in Ukraine.
- Finally, despite all the noise made by the Castro dictatorship, the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo in Cuba continued to operate from 1959 to the present day.
Diaz Canel’s statements reflect the regime’s official historiography and talking points, which prioritize the 1959 Revolution as the singular moment of liberation while downplaying inconvenient precedents or equivalences. The historical record shows Cuba achieved formal independence in stages (1902, 1934, 1940) and experienced external influence both before and after the 1959 Revolution.
The maximum expression of Cuban independence was achieved through civil and political struggle by Cuban statesmen and citizens to advance national sovereignty, based on popular support between 1902 and 1952 that achieved full sovereign independence between 1934 and 1952, but was compromised by an authoritarian dictatorship on March 10, 1952, and was completely subverted on January 1, 1959 with the arrival of totalitarian regime under the tutelage of the Soviet KGB.
Miami Herald, July 27, 2023
In the 1950s, Cubans soon learned the Moncada attack was nothing to celebrate | Opinion
By John Suarez
On July 26, at 5:00 a.m., Raúl Castro, age 92, Ramiro Valdés, 91, and Guillermo García Frías, 95, presided over the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. It was a violent act that led to the formation of the July 26th Movement and helped establish a dictatorship with Fidel Castro as its leader.
By contrast, 75 years ago, a delegation representing the Cuban Republic helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations. That republic provided an eight-hour work day; the right to strike; and university autonomy. The island enjoyed a large number of newspapers and radio stations with diverse political and ideological viewpoints. This year, Cuba is observing the Declaration’s 75th anniversary with a new draconian penal code and more beatings and arrests of dissidents.
After Fulgencio Batista’s coup ended Cuban democracy on March 10, 1952, Cubans fell for Fidel Castro, a charismatic young lawyer who promised to return constitutional order. Following the July 26 Moncada attack in 1953, the July 26th Movement’s urban terrorism killed Cubans throughout the rest of the decade. Raúl Castro plotted numerous aircraft hijackings. On Nov. 1, 1958, one such skyjacking killed 17 civilians when the plane crashed.
The United States slapped an arms embargo on the Batista dictatorship in March 1958, thanks to Castro’s July 26th Movement’s lobbying, and in December 1958, the U.S. ambassador in Havana pressed Batista to leave.
On Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro rose to power and was quickly recognized by the United States. Raúl Castro remains there today.
What happened to the Cubans who, in good faith, used violence to effect democratic change?
Mario Chanes de Armas, for example, who survived the Moncada attack, served prison time with Fidel and, like Castro, received amnesty, went to Mexico to train and returned to Cuba on the Granma yacht to unseat Batista. Chanes could have taken any position in the new regime, but he chose to return to his brewery work. After watching Castro betray their movement, Chanes spoke out against communist influence. In 1961, Chanes was prosecuted as a counterrevolutionary and imprisoned for 30 years. He died of Alzheimer’s in 2007 in Miami, after being released in 1991 and going into exile in 1993.
He was not the only one to follow this trajectory; others took up arms again.
The men and women who battled Batista’s dictatorship, many of them in Castro’s July 26th Movement, hoped for the restoration of Cuba’s 1940 Constitution and its republic. This is what Fidel promised in his “History will Absolve Me” speech at his trial for the Moncada assault. They got a totalitarian dictatorship, instead. They then fought Castro for six years in a civil war with substantially higher casualties on both sides than during the struggle against Batista. About 400 Soviet advisers assisted Castro in crushing the resistance. The opposition ended up in exile, imprisoned or executed.
It was within the prison cells that Cuba’s human-rights movement was forged.
This movement understood the potential of nonviolent resistance, demonstrated by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The resistance practiced it in Castro’s prisons and saw it as a means of mobilizing Cubans. It became a national civic movement to challenge Castro’s monopoly, educate citizens, rebuild democratic culture, reclaim human rights, refuse to accept injustice and oppose repression. Members reveal the dictatorship’s own contradictions by insisting that it adhere to the democratic provisions in its own constitution.
The communist dictatorship refused to follow Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, believing that glasnost and perestroika would bring an end to its rule. They understood that nonviolent leaders would provide an alternative to their regime and had them murdered.
One high-profile case was the July 22, 2012 assassination of pro-democracy leaders Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero. Payá and his Christian Liberation Movement amassed over 30,000 signatures for the Varela Project petition calling for human rights reforms, organizing tens of thousands of Cubans and attracting international attention. Payá was a Sakharov Laureate, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Fidel Castro became sick in 2006 and handed down power to his younger brother. The elder Castro died on Nov. 25, 2016. Raúl Castro and his son Alejandro continue to rule Cuba today through their hand-picked president Miguel Diaz-Canel.
Cuba’s prisons remain full of political prisoners — and the freedom struggle continues.
John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba
https://www.yahoo.com/news/1950s-cubans-soon-learned-moncada-221614597.html
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article277714198.html
The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2021
Cuba’s Old Republic Outshines Colonialism and Castroism
The island’s democratic period (1902-1952) saw impressive achievements.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s review of “Cuba: An American History” by Ada Ferrer (Bookshelf, Sept. 4) offers insights into Cuba’s history under colonialism and Castroism, but it does a disservice to Cuba’s democratic period (1902-1952). During the Cuban Republic, the island’s leaders negotiated the return of the Isle of Pines and reduced the U.S. military presence from four bases to two and then to one. The Platt Amendment was the price for ending the four-year American occupation following the Spanish-American War, and ending Platt in 1934 ended formal U.S. interference in Cuban affairs.
Over 50 years, Cuba developed a multiparty system, competitive elections, a free press, a modern public health system and a strong labor movement. This translated to social achievements placing pre-1959 Cuba at the top of Latin American indexes, outperforming Castro’s Cuba.
Cuba even led in proposing, drafting and lobbying for the passage of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Language in the declaration was selected from Cuba’s 1940 constitution. Cuban diplomats presented nine proposals, five of which are in the UDHR.
The Cuban Republic wasn’t perfect, but its achievements over a half-century delivered for all Cubans. It offers a powerful contrast to Cuba today.
John Suarez
Center for a Free Cuba
[ Original link ]
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/cuba-colonialism-us-cuban-republic-castro-11631547002