CHAPTER FIVE
THE POLITICS OF THE CUBAN OCCUPATION
T;
ESTABLISHMENT of an American army and
government in Cuba reopened the whole
problem of Cuban-American relations. Roosevelt insisted pub
licly that American intervention had occurred through the
acts of Cubans, especially the Estrada Palma administration;
the goal of the intervention was simply to restore representa
tive government in Cuba, for there had been no basic altera
tion of the Cuban-American relationship outlined in the Platt
Amendment. Roosevelt introduced this view of view in his
open letter to Gonzalo de Quesada, and it was repeated by
Taft in the proclamation which established the Provisional
Government on September 29:
The provisional government... will be maintained only long enough
to restore order and peace and public confidence, and then hold elec
tions as may be necessary to determine those persons upon whom the
permanent Government of the Republic should be devolved.^1
Roosevelt spelled out the purpose of the intervention and
the goal of the occupation in his sixth annual message to
Congress, December 3, 1906. He took this opportunity to
reassure Americans that the intervention was not an admin
istration-inspired act to annex Cuba, nor was it solely to
protect foreign investments. His discussion of the Cuban situ
ation ended with a warning to the Cubans that they could
not indefinitely count on the United States to referee their
political squabbles without risking permanent occupation. In
the first objective of his statement, to silence domestic criti
cism of the intervention, Roosevelt was successful. His good