A Family of Islands

by Alec Waugh

  Eventually, in 1868, Isabella left the country and signed an act of abdication, in favour of her son. There followed a confused period of massacres and mutinies, with generals issuing pronunciamentos; there were regencies; there was a republican interlude; an Italian prince, the second son of Victor Emmanuel, sat briefly on the throne but soon resigned. It was not till the accession of Alfonso XII in 1874 that the country saw any order. By then, as far as Cuba was concerned, it was too late.

  Sixty years of domestic chaos had had their inevitable repercussions on the only important colony that was left to Spain. In the uncertain period that followed Waterloo, several European nations had their eyes on Cuba. When Spain ceded Florida to the USA, Britain, who had once owned Florida and had yielded Cuba in 1763 in exchange for it, felt that she should now be given Cuba as a recompense. Russia and France, when in the name of the Holy Alliance they restored Ferdinand to his throne, had an idea of suppressing some of the new Central and South American republics and themselves administering Spain’s colonial possessions, but the USA’s concern over Cuba’s welfare was more insistent. Cuba was her special problem. Jefferson had often asserted that Cuba lay too close to the mainland of the United States to be left with safety to a European nation. John Quincy Adams had termed its annexation ‘indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself, and when Russian and French interference in the Caribbean appeared imminent, Adams, as Secretary of State, drafted for his President the policy that became known as the Monroe Doctrine, namely, that ‘any attempt by a European power to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere would be regarded as dangerous to our peace and comfort’. That was in 1823, and six years later the US ambassador in Madrid asserted that Cuba must belong to nobody but Spain. Eventually Europe accepted this doctrine; Spain, after all, could no longer damage them. The only interests that she was now in a position to damage were her own peace and comfort, and that she did in very ample measure where Cuba was concerned.

  A great deal has been written about the tyranny to which Cuba was subjected during the nineteenth century. Much of this writing was of a biased propaganda nature, conducted partly by expatriate Cubans anxious to overthrow the régime and partly by Americans anxious to justify their own intervention; and it can be scarcely questioned that Spanish colonial maladministration reached its zenith in Cuba during the nineteenth century. Each victorious revolution sent out its supporters to govern the island, and each new governor undid his predecessor’s work. Between 1837 and 1874 as many as twenty-six different captain generals were sent out to Puerto Rico.

  Spain did her best according to her lights, and it can be argued that from the days of Isabella onward she had been the best intentioned of the colonizing powers. Her regulations for the management of slaves were, for instance, so humane that when Britain captured Trinidad, her planters wished to adopt the British regulations, as giving them greater powers, but were prevented from doing so by the anti-slavery committee. Spain always meant well, but a colonial system that was barely effective under a master bureaucrat like Philip II could only lead to chaos in the hands of narrow-minded, arrogant administrators who had been trained to believe that political office existed for the benefit of the office holder. Spain had now become a third-rate power, with her empire diminished to an area of a few square miles. Yet her pride was as inflated as it had been in the days of Charles V. She behaved toward Cuba as though she were the recipient of a sacred mission.

  Under Ferdinand VII a stringently reactionary policy was enforced. The Cubans had no democratic institutions. Absolute power was placed in the hands of the captain general, who, so the royal warrant affirmed, was ‘fully vested with the whole extent of power which by the Royal addresses is granted to the governors of besieged towns’. Cuba was, in fact, treated as though it were in a state of war. The government was run from Spain. The Cuban had no vote, and no redress. No public career was open to him. He could not be a magistrate or hold a commission in the army or police force, nor could he enlist in the army as a private, as a black man could. He had to maintain through taxation the full cost of the Spanish administration, its army, its navy, its civil service and its priesthood. Judges could be deposed by the military chief. Spain encouraged its retired officers and officials to marry and settle in the island, to strengthen the occupying power. As conditions grew more straitened in Spain, the number of immigrants increased, many of them Catalan mechanics and small traders.

  The fortunes of the Cubans depended on the whim of the captain general, one of whom informed his subjects that he was not here to promote the interests of the Cuban people, but to serve his master, the King. Much depended on the kinds of orders that were dispatched by that King and master, but more depended on the spirit with which they were interpreted by the man upon the spot. In point of fact, that particular governor, General Miguel Jacon, was not unpopular with the Cubans. He embellished Havana and laid out the Prado. He also had a sense of humour that appealed to the Spanish temperament; a sense of humour that was exemplified by his treatment of a wealthy count who had abducted a local girl, to the indignation both of the girl and of the man she had hoped to marry. Jacon summoned the pair to his presence and made the count marry the girl right away. He then ordered the count to return to his estates alone, having arranged that on his way back there he should be murdered; his wife therefore became a rich widow and was able to marry the man of her choice.

  So omnipotent were the captain generals that as late as 1843 the captain general of Puerto Rico was able to issue as reactionary an edict as this.

  ‘I, John Prim, Count of Reus, on account of the critical circumstances of the times and the afflictive condition of the countries in the neighbourhood of this island, some of which are torn by civil war and others engaged in a war of extermination between the white and black races, find it incumbent on me to dictate efficacious measures to prevent the spread of these calamities to our pacific soil. I have decreed as follows: All offences to be judged by court martial. Any individual of African race, whether free or slave, who shall offer armed resistance to a white, shall be shot if a slave and have his right hand cut off by the public executioner if a free man. The owners of slaves are authorised to correct and chastise them for slight misdemeanours without any civil or military functionary having the right to interfere. If any slave shall rebel against his master the latter is authorised to kill him on the spot.’

  There are those always who benefit from a rigid totalitarian regimé, whether of the left or right, and the planters were far from dissatisfied with this subservience to Madrid, since it secured their own survival, which was imperilled by the liberal and nationalistic ideas that were in the air. They did not want an independent Cuba, which would involve a freeing of the slaves. There was the example of Haiti across the water. Many of them had come originally from Santo Domingo. They might grumble about the excessive level of taxation, but they felt safe.

  And indeed, for those who had property and position, the anachronistic existence of the plantocracy was extremely pleasant. Many visitors to the island testify to the beauty of Havana and the elegance of the life that was enjoyed there. Richard Henry Dana wrote of the palaces in which the merchants conducted their affairs. The staircases were as stately as that of Stafford House, the rooms were high and floored with marble, the walls panelled with porcelain tiles. Froude, too, was immensely impressed. Kingston had not one fine building in it, but Havana was a city of palaces, of wide streets and plazas, of colonnades and towers, of churches and monasteries. ‘Whereas the English,’ he said, ‘had built as though they were passing visitors, wanting only tenements to be occupied for a time, the Spaniards built as they built in Castile, built with the same material, the white limestone, which they found in the old world as in the new. The palaces of the nobles in Havana, the residence of the governor, the convents, the Cathedral are a reproduction of Burgos or Valladolid as if by some Aladdin’s lamp a Castilian city had been taken up and set down unalte
red on the shore of the Caribbean Sea; and they carried with them their laws, their habits, their institutions and their creed, their religious orders, their bishops and their inquisition. . . . Whatever the eventual fate of Cuba, the Spaniards have taken root here.’

  There were, Froude said, ten times as many Spaniards in Cuba as there were British in the whole West Indies, and Havana itself was ten times larger than any city in the Caribbean. Most of the Spaniards lived in Havana itself; they called the rest of the island ‘the interior’. The original coffee planters, many of whom were French refugees, had laid out their plantations as gardens, since coffee requires shade, and lived on their estates, but two hurricanes, in 1843 and 1845, and the competition of Brazilian coffee, coupled with the English free-trade policy, decided the planters to sow sugar instead; it is a crop that does not require shade, so the groves of fruit trees were cut down and the planters went to Havana.

  The life that was lived there was completely Spanish, or at least Castilian, and most of the residents spoke Castilian. The visitor and resident of substance was called early for a light breakfast consisting of oranges and coffee. The coffee was taken without milk, since it was believed that milk was injurious when taken with oranges and bananas. Mass, which was attended by many, was at eight; breakfast was taken at ten; it was a heavy meat meal, preceded by sherry and accompanied by red Catalonian wine. An omelette was invariably served; the rice was excellent. Dinner was at three in the afternoon. Very similar to breakfast, it was followed by a siesta. The cool of the evening was devoted to pleasure-driving. At eight o’clock a band would play for an hour, and the streets round the main square were lined with carriages, in which ladies reclined to receive the compliments of their masculine admirers. It was not considered proper for a lady of quality to walk in the streets. The late evening, when the music ceased, was devoted to shopping and paying calls. Windows were deep and large, with wide gratings and no glass. In the chief room of the house, rows of chairs were placed, facing each other, three to five in each row, at right angles to the street. Women sat opposite the men. There was no supper, though occasionally coffee and cakes would be served last thing at night.

  Cockfighting was one of the town’s main diversions. Meals in restaurants and hotels were interrupted by the importunities of lottery-ticket vendors. The rewarding of beggars was made awkward by the absence of small coins. There were no streetwalkers.

  It was a leisured and gracious way of living, and the richer planters accepted the strict regulations that were imposed on them as the price they had to pay for this leisured graciousness. They would regard as a salutary warning to the masses the chain gang which passed regularly along the streets, each man with an iron band round his ankles, another round his waist, a chain fastened to each wrist, so that every movement clanked. The prisons might be foul, the standard of education low, but the conditions of the proletariat were no concern of theirs. There was a law insisting that no stranger could be the guest at a friend’s house without permission of the magistrate; they considered this precaution prudent. On the sugar estates the male slaves outnumbered the women by four to one, and during the sugar season the slaves were worked harder than they had even been on the British and French plantations. They were allowed only four hours of sleep, with an hour off for dinner and half an hour for breakfast. The night was divided into two equal watches. Work never ceased. But there was little flogging. Solitary confinement on bread and water was the most serious punishment.

  It was a way of life that might have been maintained had not Spain herself been in such a disordered state, had not the proximity of the United States and the concern that the United States very naturally felt over Cuba’s fortunes been a constant source of complication. The United States had indeed ample occasion to be concerned.

  In 1836, when the Carlist wars were raging, the Queen Regent, Christina, in her desperate need for funds, nearly sold Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to France. The agreement had been indeed drawn up and was ready for signature when Louis Philippe tried to haggle for a better bargain. The Spanish ambassador, in a fit of wounded pride, tore up the document. Had it been signed, its implementation would have been a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and would have placed the USA in an extremely awkward position. The fact that it had been prepared made the State Department acutely aware of how very inflammable a situation existed ninety miles from its own boundaries.

  For the next sixty years it was a problem that Washington was never permitted to forget. Though the rich planters of Cuba, apart from certain amply justified reservations, might be well enough content, there was a large and growing dissident majority. The many Cubans who did not own profitable estates resented the illiberal regimé. A Masonic lodge, Soles y Ravos de Bolivar, fanned their discontent. A secret society called The Black Eagle had its headquarters in Mexico. The example of the Central and South American republics inspired them to action. The slaves were well aware that their fellows in the neighbouring islands had been freed. The one section of the Spanish administration that was efficient was the security branch of the police. It acted swiftly and ruthlessly. In 1844, on the merest suspicion that a revolt was being planned, a number of slaves were tortured and, on the strength of the confessions wrung from them, there was an intimidating series of executions.

  A number of Cubans fled to America, many of them to become citizens, and from this base a war of propaganda was directed against the Spanish authorities. The most prominent of these exiles was Narcisso Lopez, a Venezuelan, who had risen to high rank in the Spanish army, had married a Cuban and planned to settle there, but was so irked by the autocracy of the régime that he emigrated to the United States. He was a vivid, dramatic personality; dashing, handsome, electric. Women found him irresistible. He claimed that he could press a horse to death between his knees. He was not content to fulminate on paper. His aim was the launching of a rebellion, and he toured the country, appealing for arms and money. Finally he sailed from New Orleans with eight hundred American adventurers. He made a landing and captured a railway station and a small town, but the Cubans did not rise to welcome him as he had expected, and he was forced to re-embark.

  His exploit created a diplomatic issue between Spain and the USA, and on his return to Florida he was arrested. He had become, however, a national hero, and was soon released to continue his private war against the country of his first allegiance. He toured the United States appealing for arms and volunteers, and soon had another mission ready. This time he was prevented from sailing by federal officers. But he was not deterred, and in 1859 he was again ready to sail, this time with a young American, W. E. Crittenden, a graduate of West Point who had been decorated during the Mexican war. The security of this expedition was lamentable. Lopez was outwitted by the Spaniards at every point. They misled him as to the amount of support he could expect; they sent him forged letters, purporting to come from dissatisfied Cubans, advising him to land in the west instead of the east. The Spaniards prepared the trap and baited it. They knew the hour of his sailing. He coaled at Key West and landed at Bahia Hondas. He left Crittenden on the shore, with half his force, and went inland with the remainder. He was accorded the welcome of Holofernes. He was hospitably received, well dined and wined, and while he slept messengers were sent to the nearest military authorities. His men were shot and he was garrotted. Crittenden, on the shore, receiving no news from Lopez, assumed that the landing was a failure and set out to sea in open boats. He was captured and he and his men were shot. Crittenden met his death bravely. He refused to kneel with his back to the firing party. ‘I kneel only to God,’ he said.

  His execution roused the American public to indignation. But there was nothing that Washington could do. Spain was within her rights. But Crittenden’s courage and the brutality of Lopez’ killing alienated public opinion in the USA to an extent that Spain could ill afford.

  Public opinion had already been strained a few months earlier, by the incident of the Black Warrior, a carg
o boat that plied between Mobile and New York. In Havana its master had failed to submit the right kind of manifest, and the Spaniards threatened to confiscate the cargo. Technically, Spain was within her rights, but she was, once again, quibbling over a technicality, and the master of the Black Warrior was following the general custom of the trade in not submitting a manifest in the manner stipulated by the regulations. After diplomatic representations, the Black Warrior was allowed to proceed upon its business. But the incident aggravated the state of tension.

  The US ambassador in Madrid who made these representations was a Louisianian, Pierre Soulé, and it was Soulé who a little later drew up, in company with the US ambassador to Britain and James Buchanan, the US ambassador to France, a document that was known as the Ostend Manifesto, recommending that the US should offer 120,000,000 dollars for Cuba, and that if this offer was refused, appropriate the island in terms of ‘the manifest destiny’ of the USA; France and Britain were engaged in the Crimean War and the opportunity seemed appropriate.