The
Confederacy of Cuba (officially the
Confederate States of America) is a partially recognized island country comprising the island of
Cuba, Isla de Juventud and several nearby islands and archipelagos and maintains an unrecognized military occupation of the
Florida Keys. The Confederacy is located where the
Caribbean Sea, the
Gulf of Mexico and the
Atlantic Ocean meet. The Confederacy originally was based on the North American continent, having declared independence from the
United States in 1861 following the election of
Abraham Lincoln. The subsequent
Confederate War of Independence (known as the War of Secession in the United States) lasted for 3 years ending in the
Treaty of Ottawa which saw the Confederacy gain formal recognition from the U.S. Territorial disputes were not fully resolved by the treaty, however, with the late 1860’s and 1870’s seeing the
Western Wars between pro-US and pro-Confederate guerillas in the
New Mexico territory, which ended with the former securing de facto control of the region by the 1880’s.
In the aftermath of this loss,
Confederate President Wade Hampton turned his attention to the south. Initial consideration of purchasing territory from
Mexico was rejected by the nation’s ruler
King Maximilian, leaving the Caribbean colonies of
Spain as the next best option. When Spain refused to sell Cuba, the Confederacy launched a war, accusing Spain of blocking Confederate access to markets in South America. The Confederacy aspired
to claim all Spanish territory in the Caribbean, but despite victories in setting up a beachhead in Cuba, they struggled to secure the rest of the island. An attempted invasion of
Puerto Rico also was a dismal failure. The
Cuban War as it was dubbed thus dragged on into the term of
Fitzhugh Lee. President Lee was able to seize
Havana after months of besieging the city and Spain ultimately agreed to cede the territory. This victory proved costly and the occupation of Cuba was complicated by
uprisings by pro-independence insurgents. Lee chose to grant the new territory special
‘affiliation status’ to avoid the political peril of reintroducing
slavery as the
Confederate Constitution would require for full statehood. Some dubbed the whole affair ‘
Dixie’s folly’, especially in the north.
By the early 1900’s, the Confederacy was faring rather poorly.
Slave revolts supported by many private citizens in the US as well as
unofficially by the U.S. government were common. Trade with much of Europe was limited as well owing to
hostility over the CSA’s continued practice of chattel slavery. The agrarian economic model and stratified class system made the Confederacy fertile ground for
left-wing dissent. The CSA cracked down harshly on attempts to form
organized labor among lower-class whites, attempting to use
white supremacy to keep the masses in line. In the end, it could only work for so long. As economic conditions worsened, more and more white working class Confederates were radicalized and began to oppose the Confederate government. In 1923, the
Southron Popular Front was formed as a coalition of
socialists, reform-minded
populists, union organizers,
free blacks,
tenant farmers and
abolitionists. In 1927, the Popular Front ran former
Texas Representative Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr. for President of the Confederacy. While he lost to
Democratic nominee
J. Thomas Heflin, much of elite Confederate society was scared by the fact Johnson placed ahead of the previous main opposition,
Theodore Bilbo’s moderately reformist–albeit still firmly white surpemacist–
Whigs. Heflin thus attempted
a massive anti-socialist crackdown, which backfired as the nation burst into open revolt under Popular Front leadership.
What followed from 1928 to 1936 was the
Southron Revolution, which saw the Popular Front (bolstered by incorporating
various slave rebellions’ participants into their ranks) gradually claim control of the Confederacy. Heflin and his core supporters fled
Richmond before it fell to rebels, first setting up shop in
Charleston, then
Atlanta and finally
Miami. At that point it became clear holding out was a lost cause on the mainland-
Army deserters were too numerous to counter. Heflin and his allies thus elected to flee to Cuba, where it was hoped the
Confederate Navy would keep the rebels at bay. The revolutionaries secured the remainder of the nation by Christmas 1936 while Heflin continued to maintain was a ‘
miscegenationist and Communist insurrection stoked by
Yankee Jewish agitators’ that would ultimately be crushed. Heflin maintained a role as President
in violation of the Constitution until his 1950 death, when he was succeeded by his
Vice President Nathan Bedford Forrest III. Forrest ran a de facto
military junta until 1961, when
an election was held that was won by
Robert C. Byrd. Byrd made some reforms to appease the local Cuban population,
formally abolishing slavery (a concession to existing reality as Cuba’s pre-Revolution special status meant slavery was already blocked on the island) except as a form of criminal penalty, declaring
Spanish as an official language alongside English and defining the bulk of the island’s population as legally white. Byrd also relaxed a lot of the repressive elements of Heflin and Forrest’s rule ushering in an era dubbed the
Byrd Thaw. The Thaw has in retrospect been recognized as overstated–
eugenics policies targeting
mixed-race and
Afro-Cuban populations were carried out,
colorism heavily influenced who ended up subject to
penal servitude, local religious institutions (especially local
Catholic churches, who were viewed warily by the mostly-
Protestant expats from the mainland) were often targeted by the
Confederate Bureau of Intelligence and implementing
harsh crackdowns on the
Cuban independence movement and socialist and labor organizing.
The survival of the Confederacy of Cuba largely is due to the outcome of the Southron Revolution. While the Popular Front initially maintained its unity as the Southron Popular Republic, ideological and racial divisions caused the SPR
to collapse by 1955 into multiple successor states. The SPR collapse saw a brief attempt to reclaim mainland territory by the Confederacy but the effort failed and the Forrest regime had to satisfy itself with occupying the
Florida Keys. The successor states of the SPR remain hostile to Cuba, but even the closest potential powers who could retake the island have avoided attempting to do so to avoid provoking each other. The Confederacy today is ranked as one of the worst-off nations in North America. Many attempts to escape the island by penal servants, Afro-Confederates, Cuban independence advocates and other
political dissidents have been documented with some gaining asylum in the
Republic of Louisiana, the
Miami Free State or the
Southron Socialist Commonwealth. The Confederacy’s current leader,
Ernest Duke, rules the country with an iron fist, having rolled back the Byrd Thaw in almost totality since coming to power in the
1991 elections. The
Department of Racial Management maintains white supremacy and Duke has additionally sought to organize an ‘
Office of Religious Affairs’ that ostensibly seeks to prevent subterfuge from religious organizations, but in practice seems dedicated to crushing the influence of the Catholic Church as well as persecuting
Jews and
practitioners of African diaspora religions. It has also been alleged the Confederacy supports piracy targeting United States, Louisianan,
Texan and Commonwealth shipping. The Confederacy largely is propped up via financial support from
Britain, which regards the Confederacy as a valuable asset in the
Second Great Game against the United States, France and the
Democratic Republic of Germany.
