1901 Constitution of Cuba

The 1901 Constitution of Cuba took effect in Cuba on 20 May 1902, and governments operated under it until it was replaced by the 1940 Constitution of Cuba. It was adopted by delegates to a Constitutional Convention in February 1901, but the United States, then exercising military authority over Cuba following the end of Cuba's war for independence from Spain, withheld its approval until the Convention amended the Constitution in June to incorporate language from a U.S. statute, the Platt Amendment, that placed limitations on Cuban sovereignty and provided a legal basis for future U.S. military interventions in Cuba.

General Leonard Wood, the U.S. military governor of Cuba, called for a constitutional convention to meet in September 1900. It met for the first time on 5 November 1900, in Havana. Wood opened the meeting by charging its thirty-one delegates with writing a constitution and formulating the future relationship between the U.S. and Cuba.Domingo Méndez Capote () presided and Enrique Villuendas and Alfredo Zayas served as secretaries.

The convention's central committee produced a first draft of the constitution in January, and it failed to mention the United States. In early February the U.S. government expressed its displeasure at the Convention's failure to address the question of Cuban-American relations and its presumption that elections would occur 90 days after the constitution is adopted without giving any consideration, in the words of the New York Times, "as to whether the United States will be satisfied" with the document. A spokesman for the McKinley administration said:

...that if Cuba manifests any unwillingness to accept the advice of the Administration, and demands a stronger expression of the will of the United States, still its military ruler, the President will ask the [U.S.] Congress to assemble for the purpose of sharing with him the task of impressing Cuba with the conviction in the United States that the right of free government is to be exercised there [in Cuba] only after this country has been assured that Cuba will be restrained by pledges that it is our duty to exact and should be the pleasure of Cuba to extend, without hesitation and in her own best interest.

The convention approved the text of the constitution on 21 February 1901, without adopting the language the U.S. government was insisting on. Modeled on the U.S. Constitution (1789), it divided the government into three branches:

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