“Free Cuba” means different things to different people. For some, it’s about fighting western imperialism. For others, its about being anti-communist or anti-Castro. And for many thirsty adults, a “Cuba Libre” simply means a “Rum and Coke.”

But at the end of the 1800s, Cuban freedom was about overthrowing the Spanish Empire. Local revolutionaries campaigned to end Madrid’s despotic rule over the island. And they succeeded!

But nothing is ever that simple when you’re less than 90 miles from the United States…
Cuba would grow to become one of the most influential, and contested, islands in the world. How did we get here? Caribbean History Professor Louis Perez Jr. explains the roots of the Cuban revolution. What were Cubans soldiers fighting for? And why did the North Americans decide to get involved?

Louis A. Pérez, Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and the Director of ISA. His most recent books include Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba (2019) and Intimations of Modernity: Civil Culture in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (2017) Pérez's principal teaching fields include twentieth-century Latin America, the Caribbean, and Cuba. Research interests center on the nineteenth and twentieth-century Caribbean, with an emphasis on Cuba.

If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe and review! It really helps us get discovered. 

Editing and production by Jordan Hawthorne

"Dill Pickles Rag" by Charles Johnson

"The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin