The book “La representación de los Estados Unidos en la república plattista” by Cuban writer Francisca López Civeira or “Paquita“ constitutes a new contribution to her investigation on a topic and historical period that requires new epistemological approaches. Francisca, or Paquita, engages us in a new adventure of ideas that are useful to understand the presence of U.S. government policies in Cuba.

Based on documentary, periodical and bibliographic sources, Francisca immerses the reader in the complex actions of the American government and its acolytes in Cuba to maintain absolute sociopolitical, cultural and ideological leadership over the destiny of Cuba.

Paquita has skillfully used her disciplinary expertise to construct the polysemous universes of governmental relations in order to delve into the inner workings of a society dependent on American monopolistic interests. She is a professional who rejects bias and reductionism, and favors interdisciplinary approaches, as demanded by the new directions of the social sciences.

The complex world we live in today demands the application of scientific polysemy. The vast majority of studies on the processes related to Cuba's dependence on the United States address both economics and politics.

The republic born in 1902 has been referred to in many different ways by scholars and interpreters. For Paquita, it was essentially Plattist, in accordance with the imposition of the Platt Amendment. In this way, the author goes beyond legal boundaries to delve into the realities of a society governed by the powerful interests of the northern oligarchies and the country subjected to a new colonial domination. The author highlights the different ideological and political trends inherited from the recently concluded 19th century, and the struggles within the political power structure and its multiplicity of socioeconomic interests.

Her reasoning regarding the political, geographic, and economic causes—not pretexts—and the absence of any human or cultural factors is extremely illuminating to the essence of American interventionism. Cuba was to become the great market for the world, controlled from the United States. For its architects, the ideals and feelings of the Cuban people had no value whatsoever.

Paquita manages to build the cultural history of those early years of the implementation of the new neocolonial order. In doing so, she reveals the new symbols, imaginaries, and mentalities, customs, language, and ways of life that gradually shaped a Cuban freed from Spanish colonialism and progressively permeated by that imposed by the colossi of the North and the opportunists within Cuba. She also speaks of the resistance of those who refused to renounce their Mambí and Cuban heritage.

The description and analysis of the penetration of American customs into Cuba—such as vocabulary, advertisements, fashions, and foods—can be fascinating for the reader. Their presence was not merely indicative of interventionism but of cultural absorption. Alongside the market or the product to be sold, there was the country itself, with its culture, or the potential for its disappearance in order to assimilate that of the North. Creating a foreign taste at the expense of the national one is part of the strategy of mercantile domination, which also entails isolation, disunity, and contempt for the dominated nation. To this must be added the subordination of ethics to economics, stemming from the acceptance, by the ruling oligarchy, of American tutelage.

Readings like those in this book teach us to think about the importance of beeing faithful to our national culture that is an immense universe of dreams and achievements.