Question

What would have changed in America if the federal government chose to annex Cuba as it did Puerto Rico?

Answer 1

• It tried to do so- on multiple occasions both formally and informally. Both Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams expressed interest in acquiring Cuba from Spain during their presidencies. Before the Civil War, U.S. Southerners saw Cuba as the next slave state, and James Buchanan procured $100 million dollars to purchase the island from Spain. His successor, Franklin Pierce, overtly pledged annexation if Spain did not acquiesce, but his saber rattling riled up anti-slavery Northerners, so formal U.S. foreign policy held off for the next few decades.
• For all intents and purposes, the U.S. did annex Cuba in 1898. It did not formally declare it as an annexation because that would contradict its humanitarian excuse for intervening against Spain.
  
• If the United States had formally annexed Cuba as a territory, it would have probably followed a similar trajectory as Puerto Rico. That is, the colony would languished, left underdeveloped and miserable with the federal government doing little beyond raiding its coffers until WWII.
• With a demand for wartime labor, the U.S military would have drafted Cubans who, largely black, would have endured racial vitriol in segregated units in Europe. Most of them would serve as mechanics, sending remittances back home to their families. When they returned home, they would campaign for rights as formal citizens, and the U.S. would be forced to concede political privileges as a territory since formal colonies went out of fashion on the world stage.