Waldo Fernández Cuenca is a Cuban journalist who, in addition to risking his life covering daily news for the independent press in Cuba, loves to delve into history. From the time when the island was part of the Kingdom of Spain to the Republic that emerged between 1902 and 1958, Fernández Cuenca has unearthed stories that have been little told or frankly censored by socialism.

For example, in his book “The Imposition of Silence,” he explains how freedom of the press was shut down with the arrival of Fidel Castro to power in Cuba, when it was the Spanish-speaking population that had the largest number of newspapers and magazines per capita at its disposal.

Now, from exile in Madrid, and through the interesting independent platform Memoria Cívica, it is possible to read some of his findings. Among them are several that, like historical gems, stand out in the broad and turbulent history of relations between Cuba and the United States, the nation that is celebrating its 250th anniversary.

Here is my interview with Waldo.

You have researched what you have called the fascinating life of Juan de Miralles Traillón, one of the greatest testimonies of the aid provided by Spain and its territories to the independence of the United States. Who was this man?

Juan de Miralles Traillón was a great friend of the founding father of the United States, George Washington. And he is a figure largely forgotten by all Cuban historiography, especially after 1959, when it was not convenient to show the links between the island and North America. Even less so how much Cuba, then part of the Kingdom of Spain, had helped in the independence of the so-called Thirteen Colonies.

As I have recounted, based on my findings, Miralles Traillón was a successful merchant of Spanish origin who settled in Havana in 1740, at the age of 27. Dedicated to maritime smuggling, he would eventually acquire his own fleet of ships and had as his main markets the English ports of Florida, Charleston, New York, and Boston. His skills as a businessman earned him partnerships with major European trading houses and allowed him to establish new maritime routes between Cuba and the United States. We could say that he was the founder of trade between the two countries.

In Havana, he married María Josefa Eligio de la Puente in 1744, the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Havana society, and settled on the aristocratic Aguiar Street. According to the historian Vicente Ribes, Miralles Traillón was also a key figure in the Spanish slave trade during the 1760s and 70s. It is documented that he was on the island of Jamaica several times for these purposes, a lucrative business that was very difficult to avoid at the time.

His life began to change in 1762 when the Captain General of the island sent Miralles Traillón to Jamaica, due to his social standing and command of the English language, with the ostensible purpose of buying slaves, which concealed the true objective of the trip: to gather information about the imminent attack on Havana by the English. After many rumors among the Spanish royalty, who accused him of serving the British and betraying the Spanish Crown, Miralles Traillón was returned to Havana.

How did Miralles Traillón become involved in the American Revolution?

The Marquis de la Torre, Captain General of Cuba, entrusted him in 1776 with the risky diplomatic mission of presenting himself to the American rebels in the city of Philadelphia and establishing cordial relations with the Continental Congress. Learning about the future of Spain and its possessions once they were forced to declare war on the English was the main objective of the Havana native.

He arrived on American soil on January 9, 1778. After a perilous journey and through skill, gifts, and promises, Miralles Traillón managed to connect with the Continental Congress. The Americans soon realized the importance of Madrid’s help in their endeavors, as Spain possessed a large portion of the territories bordering the Thirteen Colonies.

In a position of diplomatic inferiority compared to France, the other European power that had publicly approved the belligerence of the British colonies, Miralles Traillón quickly became known and highly regarded by military men and businessmen in the capital of the new nation, who were willing to overlook the anomaly of Spain helping the Thirteen Colonies in their struggle but not recognizing their independence.

In Philadelphia, Miralles Traillón met the sculptor and painter Charles Willson Peale, with whom he formed a sincere friendship. This artist’s engravings of the great leaders of the American Revolution were highly valued in their time, and the wealthy Havana resident — who already deeply admired Washington — bought several dozen of these portraits, sending them to Cuba and Spain as gifts for his family, friends, and Spanish officials.

And there he met George Washington.

Meeting the general personally was one of Miralles Traillón’s greatest aspirations. His dream came true at the end of 1778, when the military leader visited the American capital during Christmas of that year. Apparently, the two men took a liking to each other, and Washington, a very busy man, accepted the Havana envoy’s invitation to a banquet in his honor, attended by the highest representatives of diplomacy, the army, and the city’s business community.

At the dinner, they enjoyed fine Spanish wines, liqueurs, and exquisite sweets, as well as rum and tobacco, items highly valued by his guests.

Everything indicates that Miralles Traillón, enthusiastic about the American Revolution, for which he spared no praise in his correspondence with Havana, promised General Washington substantial aid for his cause.

How much, in practice, did Miralles Traillón contribute to the American cause?

As I have written before, the list of donations and loans received by the American independence army from him and from Spain is extensive: clothing, uniforms, blankets, shirts, and thousands of shoes to withstand the harsh northern winter.

They were also supplied with weapons in considerable quantities: six thousand sabers, two thousand rifles, and entire shipments of gunpowder and quinine. Due to its strategic position, Cuba made the greatest contribution.

Miralles Traillón financed the repair and provisioning of Commodore Alexander Gillon’s squadron in the shipyards of the Havana port. Without the guarantees provided by Miralles Traillón and his brother-in-law Eligio de la Puente, the American’s squadron would not have been able to set sail, as he had no means to pay his creditors.

The Spanish contribution to the Americans amounted to 35,000 pesos to South Carolina, $140,000 to the American commander in Charleston, and 15,000 pesos to Gillon’s flotilla.

Spain’s collaboration with the independence of the United States — until October 1779, when it officially declared war on Great Britain — was carried out secretly, as the Spanish Crown sought to prevent its colonies from imitating the example of Washington’s rebels.

The Spanish Empire wished to expel Great Britain from Florida and take revenge for the English affront that the loss of that territory represented after the recovery of Havana.

Despite his importance in continental history, Miralles Traillón’s story was buried for decades.

The credit for rediscovering his figure in the archives of the United States Congress belongs to the Cuban historian Herminio Portell Vilá, when he was writing his monumental work, “History of Cuba in its Relations with the United States and Spain.”

With my modest article, I only wanted to rescue Miralles Traillón from complete oblivion.

Curiously, on Aguiar Street in Havana there is a plaque that mentions him and commemorates his legacy, but almost no Cuban stops to read it amidst their daily struggles. That plaque has been there since 1947.

During the Cuban Republic, the connection between both nations continued. During that period, the Cuban-American Cultural Institute (ICCN) was founded, which you have described as one of the most significant cultural endeavors that united both countries.

The ICCN was an educational and cultural institution that sought to further strengthen relations between the two countries. Discovering the existence of this institute was very revealing for me. I was unable to obtain testimonies from people who had known that institution, and I had to work with the bulletin called Dos Pueblos, which documented its intense teaching and civic education activities.

According to my research, the first course began in September 1943 with more than 200 students, and at the ICCN, in addition to the popular English language courses, courses in social law for businessmen and in American and Cuban history were also offered that year.

The institute’s funds came from several sources, primarily from its founding members, many of whom were wealthy Cuban or American businessmen who made generous donations for the institution’s financial development. Among them were sugar magnate Julio Lobo; Humberto Solís, owner of Cuba’s largest department store, El Encanto; and banker Juan Gelats, among other entrepreneurs from both countries.

The greatest impetus from the Cuban side came from university professor and historian Portell Vilá, who served as director of the ICCN, without receiving any salary for this position, from its creation until its closure. Without the determined efforts of Portell Vilá and a group of Americans such as Theodore Johnson and William P. Field, this educational center would not have been able to succeed.

An important part of the Institute was the Martí-Lincoln Public Library, wasn’t it?

The history of the ICCN’s Martí-Lincoln Public Library is extremely interesting, as it was one of the few circulating libraries in Havana in those years, when neither the National Library nor the Municipal Library, nor even the University of Havana Library, offered that service.

At the entrance to the library, one could see a large painting by one of the great exponents of Mexican muralism, David Alfaro Siqueiros, depicting the intertwined faces of José Martí and Abraham Lincoln, as a symbol of the common ideals of these two national heroes. I don’t know where this fresco by the Mexican painter, of incalculable value, might be today.

When it opened its doors to the public, the Martí-Lincoln Library only had one book in its collection, but the collection grew due to numerous donations, both from its members and from the United States government. By the end of the 1950s, its collection exceeded 25,000 books, along with more than 2,000 phonograph records. It was the only place in Cuba where the most important American publications could be found, such as The New York Times, Vogue, Life, Time, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, among many others.

Among the most significant donations was the one made by the United States War Department, when it decided to close the San Antonio de los Baños military base at the end of World War II and donate more than 4,000 books on science, arts, and literature to the institute. Another notable donation was from the president of the ICCN, Teodoro Johnson, who purchased for the exclusive use of the library all the holdings of Carlos Ardavín, a collector of rare and valuable Cuban books, who owned copies of several 19th and early 20th-century magazines such as Revista de Cuba, El Curioso Americano, Revista Bimestre Cubana, and Cuba Contemporánea, among others.

Johnson was an enthusiastic patron of this cultural center, making several donations worth several thousand pesos, including the expensive and modern card catalog for the library and funds for bookbinding.

This library also possessed the best collection of books and magazines on the Second World War existing on the island, because its director, Portell Vilá, taught a seminar on World Affairs at the University and received bibliography from various European nations about the last great world conflict that humanity has experienced.

After the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and its rapid confrontation with the United States, a country that had been a natural ally until then, it is not difficult to imagine how it disappeared from the Cuban landscape.

The ICCN scholarships were well-known at the time. The writer Humberto Arenal, when he was young, was one of its beneficiaries, and ended up living for a long time in New York City. What information do you have on the subject of scholarships?

One of the tasks of the ICCN was to process the awarding of scholarships to Cuban professionals to study at different American universities. By the end of the 1940s, of more than 800 applications submitted, more than 300 scholarships had been awarded to Cuban students, mostly in the fields of education, meteorology, and aviation.

Did the Institute grow? Yes. By the end of the 1940s, the premises at Prado 112 — which were leased — had become too small for the Institute, which was constantly increasing its enrollment. While it started with 243 students in 1943, by 1950 it had reached 900 students and only had four classrooms available. Similarly, the library was expanding its collection every year and desperately needed a larger space. Therefore, the Board of Directors decided to acquire its own building, and with the help of the Cuban government and several of its founding members, they purchased a mansion located at Calzada and H, in El Vedado, in 1950, at a cost of 70,000 pesos.

The expansion of the Cultural Institute did not stop there, because starting in 1953, two four-story pavilions were built on the adjacent grounds. The first was named after our national hero and was intended for the “Martí-Lincoln” Public Library and its various rooms; the other was designed for the Study Center, offices, and a large auditorium.

By the end of 1957, with the completion of these buildings, the Cuban-American Cultural Institute already had 23 classrooms and a capacity to accommodate 6,000 students, a four-story public library with air conditioning, a huge central courtyard, a large auditorium, a restaurant, elevators, numerous restrooms, and gardens. This magnificent project had been supported by everyone from government authorities and their most solvent partners to students, who held several fundraisers to help build these modern facilities, designed by the architectural firm Gelabert-Navia.

It is recorded that during his visit to Havana in February 1955, the then Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, wanted to see the institute, and after visiting it, he praised the work of all its associates. In a letter he sent from Mexico to the head of the ICCN, Nixon expressed: “I find it difficult to find the words to describe the importance of the work you are doing, and I can only say that the institute serves as a vital element in the development of the increasingly close Cuban-American relations.”

As you mentioned before, the arrival of the Cuban Revolution radically changed the tone of relations between Cuba and the United States, and many of these stories that unite our peoples were forgotten.

It began to be affected gradually, but in every way.

First came the attacks by the official press against the United States. In the midst of the Cold War, it was clear that the gradual rapprochement of the new regime with the Soviet Union would begin to cause tensions, which increased in 1960 with the expropriations of large American companies. With the suspension of diplomatic relations in January 1961 and the subsequent cancellation of flights a few months later, Cuba’s fate was sealed.

More recently, socialist political propaganda has blamed the United States for the ills plaguing the weakened Cuban economy, which is a convenient excuse. Note that Castro’s propaganda against the embargo began to intensify after the fall of the so-called socialist bloc in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s.

Before that, the official media rarely mentioned the U.S. sanctions. The so-called embargo has been the great excuse of the last 40 years of Castroism to cover up the proven failure of centralized and authoritarian communism, an impoverishing system wherever it has been implemented.

On the other hand, the role of the United States has been fundamental in demonstrating, through its cultural industry, its economic and technological power, how the Castro regime is a total failure that has inflicted damage (difficult to repair in the short term) on Cuban society.

Even today, there is an annexationist sentiment among many Cubans who only see a possible rebirth and freedom for Cuba if the island were to become part of the United States. The U.S. government has supported, with resources and diplomacy at the international level, all attempts by good Cubans to overthrow and undermine totalitarianism.

Unfortunately, the results have been meager, since internally, the repression by the regime’s political police has been very effective.

In a free Cuba, how do you foresee relations between the U.S. and Cuba?

Normal relations, an economic and cultural alliance — relations in which the United States sees Cuba as an ally in every sense. That would be the best thing that could happen to us as a country, so that Havana and many other Cuban cities can recover the progress and prosperity they enjoyed until the arrival of the Castro revolution in 1959.