Uncle Sam's Sugar War
US intervention in Cuba was driven by sugar + was a key factor in the later popularization of Psilocybe cubensis
The following is an excerpt from p. 99-101 of Chapter 2, “Sugar is the Knife: The World’s Favorite Drug” from my book, Drugism (2022):
[Note: this excerpt picks up where “King Sugar + the Big Five” left off.]
Sugar was first introduced to Cuba by the Spanish. After two centuries of violent domination by the Spanish, starting with Bartolemé de las Casas, Cuba was then invaded by the British, at Havana in 1762. Like the Spanish, the British established sugar plantations in Cuba. To do so, they violently displaced and then absorbed the labor of local peasants who had been growing fruit, tobacco, etc. Sugar production in Cuba led to the destruction of magnificent, native mahogany, cedar, ebony, and palm trees with the scorch-and-burn technique permanently altering Cuba’s ecology.[i]
As seen nearly everywhere else sugar is produced, Cuba’s sugar industry was initially powered by forced labor. Although forced labor was officially abolished in Cuba in 1886, the island remained under Spanish control. In 1895, rebels in Cuba began an insurrection against Spain.[ii]This greatly excited people in the US. Some hoped Cuba would achieve independence from Spain and from colonial control more broadly. Others saw Cuba’s lucrative agriculture industry and potential consumer base as a boon for US business.
US business interests who had been eyeing the island for its agricultural production and consumer base saw the Cuban insurrection not as an opportunity for Cuban independence, but rather for US domination.[iii] Many in the US sought to control Cuba as a colony rather than let the island develop into a fully functioning independent state.
“I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.” -Theodore Roosevelt, 1897
In 1896, just a year after the insurrection began, President Grover Cleveland claimed that between $30-50 million worth of US capital was invested in Cuba.[iv] Labor groups at the time were generally in favor of Cuban independence, but against US colonization or annexation of Cuba. When the US battleship Maine mysteriously sank on Cuba’s coast, the US used the event as a reason to go to war. The resulting Spanish-American War, fought among the US and Spain for economic control of Cuba and the Philippines (another global sugar center), held drastic implications for Cuba’s future.
The war would be launched by President McKinley, beneath whom sat Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. McKinley and Roosevelt were notorious warmongers. In 1897, a year after McKinley claimed economic losses in Cuba, Roosevelt wrote to a colleague “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.”[v]
In the spring of 1898 Cleveland started the Spanish-American War. If the Anglo-Chinese Wars are known as the Opium Wars, the Spanish-American War could rightfully be dubbed the Sugar War. And, like a sugar buzz, it ended quickly. Before the end of the summer, the war was over. The US claimed victory. US business interests began obtaining sugar, mining, and railroad properties throughout Cuba as the war ended. Companies such as United Fruit and the American Tobacco Company also entered the island’s economy.[vi]
In 1901, McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt thereby became president. Roosevelt’s administration carried immense consequences for the sugar industry, both within the US and globally. Interestingly, it was in Cuba in this post-war period of US occupation that Psilocybe cubensis, the most widely known and loved species of magic mushroom, was identified and given its scientific name.
Franklin Sumner Earle is credited with the discovery of Psilocybe cubensis in 1904, though I suspect that indigenous Cubans knew of the mushroom much earlier.[vii] Earle worked for the USDA as an investigator of the sugar cane industry. He was an expert on sugar cane cultivation and disease.[viii]
Earle started his work in Cuba in 1904, and it was there that he worked as an inspector of the sugar cane industry for the USDA. He had not been in Cuba long when he found Psilocybe cubensis, presumably in a cane sugar field or processing plant. He named the species after Cuba, dubbing it cubensis. It is unclear to what extent Earle was aware of the mushroom’s therapeutic and psychoactive properties. He died in Cuba in 1929.[ix]
Decades later, in the 1970s, Psilocybe cubensis was selected by Terence and Dennis McKenna as a favorable species for home cultivation. Their work and their book, Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide made Psilocybe cubensis the premier species of psilocybin mushroom on the US drug scene.[x] Now, most strains of psilocybin mushrooms available for distribution are varieties of cubensis.
But back to Cuba, and to sugar.
Just as many Cubans were resistant to domination by the Spanish, many were similarly resistant to US occupation. In the 1950s, Cuba’s government was presided over by Fulgencio Batista, himself heavily backed by the US.[xi] His term ended with revolution. Where did the revolution come from? Largely, the sugar fields.
When Batista fell in 1959 Cuba was selling almost all its sugar to the United States. In the 1950s, about half of the land used to grow sugar in Cuba was owned by US sugar producers, who made millions upon millions of dollars each harvest.[xii] Among the US sugar producers active in Cuba in this period was the Francisco Sugar Company, which was directed by Allen Dulles who, at the same time, also directed the CIA.[xiii]
“Sugar was the knife, imperialism was the assassin.” -Eduardo Galeano, 1973
The Francisco Sugar Company’s business on the island was a notable factor in the US response to the Cuban revolution. After Cuba’s revolutionary party took power in 1959, the company claimed a loss of more than $58 million from the shift in power during the Cuban revolution. They expected the Cuban government to compensate them for the sum.[xiv]
Indeed, the Cuban revolution dealt a considerable blow to US sugar interests. According to historian Eduardo Galenao, Fidel Castro recruited “three-quarters of his guerrilleros from among the campesinos, the sugar workers.”[xv] “In Cuba,” wrote Galeano, “sugar was the knife, imperialism was the assassin.”[xvi] This is now true not only of Cuba but effectively the whole world. Sugar is the metaphorical knife wielded by global imperialists, a knife which cuts deep into the bellies, bodies, and economies of disparate populations.
The Cuban Revolution ended in January 1959. Having achieved independence, Cuba then transformed its sugar industry from a weapon of imperialism into a tool of national development.[xvii] The US responded to Cuban independence by tightening its grip on its other sugar sources.
Undoubtedly anxious about the source of their sugar going forward, the US granted Hawaii statehood just two months later, in March 1959 with the Hawaii Admission Act. Though there were many factors in the granting of statehood to Hawaii, anxiety about sugar and relations with Cuba were, without doubt, quite influential in the ultimate decision. In subsequent years, the US used not legislation but violence to further secure its supply of sugar from other nations such as Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.[xviii]