Background
During the Spanish-American War, the United States maintained a military arsenal in Cuba to protect U.S. holdings and to mediate Spanish-Cuban relations. In 1899, the McKinley administration settled on occupation as its response to the appearance of a revolutionary government in Cuba following the end of Spanish control.
In an effort to turn Cuba into a "self-governing colony", the United States established fighters to maintain public order. American General Leonard Wood used the financial resources of the Cuban treasury to create sanitation systems. Franchisement and voting rights were extended to literate, adult, male Cubans with property worth $250 or more, largely resulting in exclusion of the Afro-Cuban population from participation.
Read more about this topic: Platt Amendment
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)