Cuba’s oppositional culture and its citizens’ belief in their country’s exceptionality were forged in three wars for independence from Spain in the 19th century. These wars unleashed the dream of a meritocratic nation founded on the promise to reverse four centuries of genocide and colonialism.

The United States stole this dream by occupying the island and denying Cuba a victory over Spain in 1898. The United States also began a century-long policy of near-constant political intervention and support for dictatorship that engulfed not only Cuba until 1959, but also most of Latin America until the 1990s.

By the 1950s, a radical political culture and belief in the rights of citizens to control their government and create a more equitable economy had not gone away in Cuba. What the country lacked was a sovereign and accountable state that would fulfill their visions. From 1902, when the first American military occupation ended, and 1959, Cubans launched no less than five armed revolutionary movements against a corrupt state more beholden for its existence to American businesses than to the people.

Remembering this history became tantamount to treason among exiles in Cuban Miami, but the anti-imperialist nationalism it produced on the island was a powerful weapon for Castro. For decades, the Cuban state has relied on this weapon to justify the silencing of critics and create a vast Soviet-trained security apparatus and culture of siege.

Through block organizations established in 1960 called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, for example, the Cuban state demanded and enforced loyalty to itself. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of its over $4 billion annual subsidy forced the Cuban government to pass reforms, one could not run a nail salon or organize a chess club unless it was owned or authorized by the Cuban state.

Since the early 1990s, the state, strapped for cash, has reversed its condemnation of neoliberal capitalism in favor of million-dollar joint ventures with foreign investors. Today, Cuban Army officers have become wealthy running Gaesa, a conglomerate that owns Cuba’s tourist facilities and operates free trade zones. Yet at least 80 percent of ordinary Cubans rely on government jobs that paybetween $17 and $44 a month and food rations that don’t meet basic needs. Why don’t Cubans rebel? They have a ready answer: “¿Cómo vas a manifestarte si hasta los hombres aquí se encuentran descalzos y embarazados?” (How can you protest when even the men here are barefoot and pregnant?)

After the 1959 Revolution, Cubans who arrived in the United States had to abandon in most respects the very principles that had defined what it meant to be Cuban in order to justify living in the United States. They had to reconcile the facts of Cuba’s fight against the United States’ control before 1959 with their abandonment of that fight and its outcome: the rise of a Communist state under the leadership of Fidel.