Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

by Gjelten, Tom

  Spanish authorities, determined to combat the insurgency, resorted to desperate measures. In May, police raided the house of Emilio’s brother-in-law Enrique Schueg, who was still functioning as the rebels’ underground agent in Santiago. They found no incriminating papers but imprisoned him anyway. He was released only after the French foreign minister, a friend of Schueg’s, interceded on his behalf with the government in Madrid.

  A key turning point in the war came in August 1897, when Spanish prime minister Antonio Cánovas was assassinated by an Italian anarchist. His replacement, Práxedes Sagasta, was an advocate of home rule for Cuba, and within months Spanish authorities on the island began pursuing negotiations. Valeriano Weyler resigned his command and returned to Spain. (“The monster fell!” Federico Pérez Carbó rejoiced in a note to Elvira.) The new Spanish government prepared another constitution for Cuba, granting it political autonomy, and almost all Cuban political prisoners were freed, including Emilio Bacardi.

  Rather than bringing peace to Cuba, however, the reforms had the opposite effect. Cuban rebel leaders, sensing victory was near, vowed to fight to the end. Conservative elements in Cuba were equally stubborn in their rejection of any reform that did not leave the island as Spanish territory, and in January 1898 they staged violent demonstrations in downtown Havana. The fiery U.S. consul general, General Fitzhugh Lee (a Confederate Army veteran and nephew of General Robert E. Lee) reported that the Spanish authorities were in danger of losing control in the capital, and he suggested that a warship be sent to Havana to demonstrate America’s determination to defend its interests there. President William McKinley promptly dispatched the USS Maine, a heavily armored cruiser.

  From then, events unfolded quickly. A mysterious explosion aboard the Maine three weeks later caused the ship to sink in the harbor with the loss of more than 260 American sailors. U.S. newspapers accused Spain of blowing the ship up deliberately, a judgment tacitly supported by a U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry. (Investigations years later indicated the explosion was an accident.) With all public information pointing to Spanish culpability, a prowar fever swept the United States, and though Spanish diplomats worked feverishly to avoid a confrontation, the McKinley administration prepared for military action. The intervention in Cuba would not be justified on the basis of human rights concerns nor by the justice of the Cubans’ yearning for independence. With American lives having been lost, U.S. honor was now at stake. The new war cry was “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!”

  In December, Emilio Bacardi Moreau was reunited with his exiled family in Kingston, Jamaica. Exile had taken a toll. Four months before he was released from prison, his seventy-four-year-old mother had died in Kingston, attended by her daughter Amalia and her daughter-in-law Elvira. Amalia Moreau had known achievement and disappointment in her life. She had seen her husband’s rum enterprise attain promising commercial success, but the war that separated her from her son and grandson was far from settled. Born into wealth and once a slave owner herself, Doña Amalia had embraced the idea of a new Cuba, and she took pride in her family’s idealism, patriotism, and sophistication.

  Emilio’s own faith in the nobility of the Cuban cause had sustained him during his imprisonments and the separations from his family. Not being religiously devout, he held sacred the idea of Cuba Libre—a free and sovereign nation ruled by the Cuban people, white, black, and mulatto, and representing the dreams of the generations that preceded them. In an essay he wrote for a little hand-produced prison newspaper on the two-year anniversary of the 1895 independence war, Emilio used frankly spiritual language in honoring the thousands of Cubans who had died in the national struggle:We are not going to disturb the calm of those who have fallen, either by noisily praising them or by loudly lamenting their loss. The disciples of Jesus considered themselves at home wherever they met as brothers.... We are imitating them today, as we gather on these African rocks under a splendid sun like the one shining on our own beloved land. We are celebrating fraternal love, and in the sanctuary of our hearts we recall the memories of so many heroes: Peace in heaven for the black Aponte5 and peace in heaven for the white Martí.

  By the third anniversary of the war in February 1898, Emilio was in Jamaica. By then his nation’s fate lay in the hands of foreign powers. The epic battle that had inspired him through long, dark times seemed a little smaller, swallowed up in a confrontation between Washington and Madrid. On his return from imprisonment in the Chafarines, Emilio had followed Elvira’s example and written to Federico Pérez Carbó in New York for an assessment of the McKinley administration’s thinking on Cuba. In his response, Federico sounded as discouraged by the American attitude as he had been in his letters to Elvira. “[They say], ‘The time has not yet arrived to do something,’” he wrote. “And when will that time come? It’s obvious: when the two powers agree on it. Then the Yankees will take the chestnut [i.e., Cuba] from the fire and eat it for themselves.”

  Cuban concerns about Yankee designs were well founded. The closer the United States moved to war with Spain over Cuba, the less Cuba’s own interests were taken into consideration. The prointervention arguments put forward by the McKinley administration and its political allies revolved almost entirely around U.S. strategic concerns. With a canal about to be built across the Central American isthmus, it would be important to control the maritime approaches and project sea power in the Caribbean. Given Cuba’s key location, U.S. naval bases would be needed on the island. Theodore Roosevelt, though serving only as an assistant secretary of the navy, had already emerged as a forceful advocate of U.S. territorial expansion, and he was eager to go to war.

  Despite the broad public support for Cuban independence, the McKinley administration paid little heed to that aim. One familiar objection, echoing Madrid’s long-standing prejudice, was that an independent Cuba would be ungovernable because of its large black population. There were also tactical reasons for opposing Cuban independence. One top U.S. diplomat argued that if the United States went to war in Cuba as an ally of a provisional Cuban government, it would be far more restricted in the way it could subsequently operate there than if it were to go there alone and claim the island “transiently ours by conquest.” When President McKinley asked Congress in April for authorization to go to war, there was no mention of Cuba’s independence or of the “Cuban Republic” set up by Cuban leaders as their provisional government.

  Not surprisingly, McKinley’s request drew an immediate protest from Cuban rebel leaders and their allies. “We will oppose any intervention which does not have for its expressed and declared object the independence of Cuba,” the rebels’ representative in Washington, Gonzalo de Quesada, warned. Such arguments swayed Cuba’s friends in the U.S. Congress, and ultimately a compromise was reached—or so it seemed. The Joint Resolution that empowered the president to use military force in Cuba included what came to be known as the Teller Amendment, affirming that the United States had no intention to occupy Cuba “except for the pacification thereof” and vowing “to leave the government and control of the island to its people” once that goal was met. Fatefully, however, the Teller Amendment left the occupation timeline and the definition of “pacification” all too vague.

  The resolution was followed by an ultimatum to Spain and then a declaration of war against Spain in the Philippines as well as Cuba. In the opening engagement, U.S. naval forces destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay, and in June American troops went ashore on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Among them were the “Rough Riders,” the diverse, all-volunteer unit of frontiersmen, farmers, college professors, and Ivy League adventurers, commanded by Army colonel Leonard Wood and by Theodore Roosevelt himself.

  Despite the Cuban rebels’ impressive three-year record of fighting a much better-armed and better-equipped Spanish foe to a standstill, U.S. military commanders treated them with utter contempt and issued strict instructions not to work with them unless absolutely necessary. The campaign was limited to east
ern Cuba, with no attention paid to Cuban forces in central or western Cuba (where Emilito Bacardi was fighting). The only Cuban commander with whom U.S. officers met was General Calixto García, who directed rebel forces in the area around Santiago. García, a veteran of the first revolutionary war, was given the assignment of securing the area around Daiquirí where U.S. troops were to come ashore and then blocking Spanish reinforcements from engaging the Americans. García’s soldiers carried out the operation perfectly, and the U.S. Army was able to land fifteen thousand troops in a twenty-four-hour period without a hostile shot being fired. “Landing at Daiquirí unopposed,” Major General William R. Shafter, the commanding U.S. general, announced triumphantly in a cable. He made no mention of the Cubans’ role.

  The Cuban campaign was immortalized by Secretary of State John Hay’s characterization of it as a “splendid little war,” a phrase resounding with the U.S. imperialist aspirations of the era. The highlight was a bloody battle on July 1, when the Rough Riders and other units led a charge against entrenched Spanish positions on San Juan Hill on the outskirts of Santiago. The battle earned Roosevelt and Wood lasting fame, but it was costly: 214 U.S. soldiers were killed and more than 1,300 injured, meaning a loss of about 10 percent of the total U.S. force engaged that day. Roosevelt reported that his forces took the hill only “at a heavy cost” and acknowledged that “the Spaniards fight very hard.” After the San Juan Hill battle, however, the remaining Spanish defenses proved weak. U.S. army and naval forces soon had Santiago surrounded and under siege, by land and by sea.

  Among those stranded in the city were Emilio Bacardi’s brother Facundo and his brother-in-law Enrique Schueg, both of whom were determined to keep their rum business operating. The sound of cannon fire echoed over the city constantly, and wayward shells from U.S. ships occasionally landed within the city itself. Deafening explosions shook nearby buildings and sent shrapnel flying in all directions. All shops were closed, and the market was empty, with all available supplies taken for the Spanish troops. The townspeople were terrified, hungry, and falling sick from contaminated water. With the local police and military mobilized to defend the city perimeter, downtown Santiago descended into lawlessness. Facundo knew he had enemies among the pro-Spain element in town, because of his well-known sympathy for the rebel cause. Enrique, too, was suspect, having been arrested once already and escaping a long imprisonment, or worse, only because of high level intervention.

  The two men soberly reviewed their options. If the distillery, bottling factory, and barrels of aging rum were left unguarded, the facilities would no doubt be looted or burned. But if they both died in the siege, there would be no one to attend to their families and manage the enterprise after the war. They decided that one should stay and one should leave. As a French citizen, Enrique had freedom of movement, and on July 2, he departed Santiago with other French residents in a convoy arranged by the French consul. Facundo, whose family was with Elvira in Jamaica, heroically stayed behind.

  Early the next morning, the six Spanish ships remaining in the bay made a dash for the open sea, hoping to break the naval blockade. The American ships waiting outside closed on them immediately and within four hours destroyed every ship, with a great loss of Spanish life. The destruction of the Spanish fleet sealed the fate of the Spanish forces in Cuba. The Spanish commanding officer in Santiago, General José Toral, nevertheless refused to capitulate. On July 4, Schueg returned to Santiago at the request of the French consul to meet with Toral and arrange the evacuation of the rest of the French colony in the city, including all those who were sick or injured or who had been unable to leave the city previously. He managed to find a number of mule wagons, loaded them with as many people as he could fit, and led them out of the city to the village of Caney, by then under American control. The refugee settlement soon swelled to more than fifteen thousand people. A Cuban resident described the stream of people arriving in “liberated” Caney each day from Spanish-ruled Santiago:Men and women loaded down with trunks and bundles; children wailing hysterically; old people, weakened by the march, dragging their tired legs; the sick and handicapped carried on stretchers or on someone’s shoulders.

  The crowd, squeezed tightly together, crossed the front line silently, filing past the Spanish trenches. And when they were finally behind the Cuban and American lines, that great multitude erupted in unison with one loud roar: ¡Viva Cuba Libre!

  They camped in the open under makeshift tents made from bed sheets and branches. A drenching rain fell every afternoon, turning the scene into a mud-died, mosquito-infested mess. Clean water was nowhere to be found, and mangoes were all there was to eat.

  The population remaining in Santiago by then consisted of Spaniards and their local allies, people defending their property, men of combat age who were forced to stay, residents who were too ill to be moved, and the fearless and foolish. Not surprisingly, Facundo Bacardi Moreau found that his rum was in great demand. Had he wanted to barter, he could have traded a bottle for fresh bread or a box or two of cookies stamped “USA” and smuggled in from behind the American line. A bit of Bacardi rum mixed in a glass of contaminated local water was thought to kill the germs and improve the taste. Facundo and his most loyal employees took turns guarding the distillery and aging warehouse, with extra vigilance during the nighttime hours. For two more weeks, they hung on in Santiago with the rest of the residents, until General Toral finally capitulated to General Shafter and the siege was lifted.

  The surrender ceremony was held near San Juan Hill just outside Santiago on Sunday morning, July 17, under a ceiba tree known thereafter as the Tree of Peace. General Toral, who was waiting with his officers under the tree, raised his hat as General Shafter approached, and the rotund American saluted in return. Toral handed over the Spanish flag, Shafter reciprocated with a sword, and a Spanish bugler sounded a call. No Cuban representative was allowed to be present.

  A large share of the hostility U.S. officers showed toward the Cuban rebels amounted to simple racism. The American units were mostly white, while the Cuban forces were mostly black. “To be brief and emphatic,” a U.S. Army surgeon from New York told a reporter, “they are nothing more or less than a lot of half-breed Cuban niggers.” It was inconceivable to many American officers, coming from a society that was still racially segregated, that black Cubans could be militarily competent or prepared to share political responsibility for their nation. General S. B. M. Young, a division commander, dismissed the Cuban rebels as “degenerates” and scoffed at the notion that Cuba could be independent. “They are no more capable of self-government,” he said, “than the savages of Africa.”

  The crude American racism on display in Cuba contrasted sharply with the efforts of the Cuban rebel leadership to lay the foundation for a free society based on tolerance. Cuba in 1898 was decades ahead of the United States in ending racial discrimination, and the military and civilian leaders of the independence struggle were outraged by the sneering attitude of senior U.S. commanders. General Calixto García wrote to General Shafter personally to say how offended he was by Shafter’s order to bar Cuban troops from Santiago on the grounds that they were likely to engage in looting there or carry out revenge attacks against the remaining Spaniards there. “Allow me, sir, to protest against even the shadow of such an idea,” García fumed. “We are not savages, ignoring the rules of civilized warfare. We are a poor, ragged army as ragged and poor as was the army of your forefathers in their noble war for independence, but like the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown, we respect our cause too deeply to disgrace it with barbarism and cowardice.”

  Civilian leaders were similarly upset by the Americans’ disdain for Cuban capabilities. The head of the San Carlos Club, the center of elite society in Santiago, called a public meeting to draw up a petition to President McKinley in Washington, declaring that “all [the undersigned] desire a government of our own, as compensation for the sufferings and heroism of our army, and the definite establishment of the Cuban
Republic, with Cuban authorities.” The petition, however, was ignored. Months after the defeat of the Spanish forces, General Shafter said he considered all Cuban territory occupied by the U.S. Army to be “part of the Union” until declared otherwise. His navy counterpart, Admiral William Sampson, was even more dismissive of the Cuban complaints. “It does not make any difference whether Cubans prove amenable to the sovereignty of the [occupation] government or not,” he said. “We are there. We intend to rule, and that is all there is to it.”

  A peace protocol with Spain was signed on August 12 in Washington, and the terms were confirmed in December 1898 with the Treaty of Paris, an accord from which the Cuban party was once again excluded. Though it had started in 1895, the conflict would be recorded in history as The War of 1898, and though the Cubans had done far more of the fighting and dying, it was called the Spanish-American War.

  In Jamaica, a hundred miles across the water, Emilio Bacardi got his news about the situation in Santiago from the local newspapers. They were all published in English, but he did not miss the comments by U.S. commanders belittling the contributions of the Cuban people. After spending seventeen months in Spanish prisons for the Cuban cause (not counting his earlier detention) and with a son wounded three times in combat against Spanish forces, Emilio was infuriated. He was just as angered by the Americans’ arbitrary imposition of authority in Cuba and the dismissal of any governing role for Cubans. When he read of a U.S. edict warning Santiago residents that they would be arrested and forced to do hard labor for thirty days if they did not immediately report the death of someone in their household, Emilio fired off a stinging response: “The obligation of those in authority is to be at the service of those who suffer. It is not for those who suffer to be at the disposition of those who command.”