Captaincy General of Cuba

The Captaincy General of Cuba was Spain's Caribbean keystone from 1607 to 1898, the island that guarded an empire's treasure. Velazquez had planted the first towns in 1511; a century later, to shield the treasure fleets from pirates and rivals, Madrid erected Cuba into a captaincy general under its own captain, with Havana's Morro fortress watching the strait's throat. Twice a year the flota gathered in Havana's harbour before running home, and the island lived on servicing, victualling and skimming the silver flow. Sugar changed everything in the nineteenth century: steam mills and African slaves made Cuba the world's sugar bowl, Havana's palaces rose, and the captain general, Tacon the builder among them, ruled the richest colony in America with censorship and the garrotte. The Ten Years' War of 1868 bled into the Little War and into Marti's war of 1895, the poet landing to die at Dos Rios. American battleships closed the circle: the Maine blew up in Havana harbour in February 1898, the fleet died at Santiago, and that December Paris signed Cuba away with Puerto Rico and the Philippines, ending four centuries of Spanish rule and beginning the republic that America would supervise.