The Machadato and Cuban Nationalism, 1928-1932
T HE LEGAL AND ECONOMIC SUBORDINATION of Cuba to the United States in the twentieth century caused the expression of nationalism in the island to be characterized by extremes of timidity and explosiveness. In most circumstances, United States power led Cuban dissidents to express themselves in very moderate terms. This accommodationist wing of Cuban nationalism placed appeals to North American liberal opinion foremost in their programs and usually sought to avoid antagonizing United States business interests. Arising from the middle and upper classes, this form of nationalism perceived the interests of the Cuban nation as being ineluctably bound up with those of enlightened international forces within the United States. This moderate nationalism was doubly flawed: 1) because the necessity of accommodating certain North American interests precluded an emotional commitment to Cuban nationhood sufficient to inspire mass allegiance, and 2) because it undercut attempts at significant political or economic reform. To the more militant nationalists, the very necessity of acknowledging North American influence in the island confirmed such influence as the principal enemy of Cuban nationalism. Thus the nationalist sentiments of the romantic, status-deprived, or economically superfluous members of the middle class-and of the populist and Marxist movements among the proletariat-focused directly on anti-Yankeeism and tended to move in the direction of radical reform or even socialist revolution. Each of the three major expressions of Cuban nationalism in the twentieth century has illustrated the struggle between accommodationist and revolutionary solutions. The first of these-the resistance to the Platt Amendment-was accommodationist in character, while the third-the movement against the Batista dictatorship-was of a radical and eventually revolutionary character. The second nationalist up-