Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

by Gjelten, Tom

  One reason the mayor and the general got along well, of course, was that they focused on street cleaning, school reform, and municipal policing rather than on such divisive issues as voting rights and the limits of Cuban sovereignty. General Wood knew Emilio felt strongly that Cuba deserved its political independence, and as long as Emilio was the mayor, Wood chose his words carefully on the subject, at least in public. In an article he wrote for the magazine North American Review, published in May 1899, Wood said some form of civil government should be established in Cuba “as soon as possible,” and he cited the local authorities in the Santiago area as exemplary. “The claim that the Cubans are not capable of governing themselves,” he wrote, “has thus far not been substantiated in this Province.” He suggested that Santiago could be a model for the establishment of good government in the rest of the country. But then he added, “When I say that the civil government should be established as soon as possible, I do not wish to be understood as recommending its immediate establishment in all its branches, but rather its gradual establishment, commencing at the bottom and ending at the top.”

  That caveat hinted at the major disagreements that lay between Wood and proindependence Cubans. In Wood’s view, the establishment of democracy in Cuba not only had to be a gradual process, it had to be controlled by the Americans. In a July 1899 letter to President McKinley, Wood characterized his own attitude toward the people of Santiago as one “almost of paternalism”:I tell them frankly that this is a military occupation, that all appointments have to be approved by the military commander, but that they must look upon the military commander, not as an arbitrary individual, but as a friend, who will use his authority, not for the purpose of oppression, but to get the best men into office.

  Though Wood did not say so publicly at the time, he thought Cuba should be annexed to the United States, and he was convinced it eventually would be. The man in the U.S. government who probably knew him best, Theodore Roosevelt (by then the governor of New York), summarized Wood’s private views in a July 1899 letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, a mutual friend:Wood believes that we should not promise or give the Cubans independence: that we should govern them justly and equitably, giving them all possible opportunity for civil and military advancement and that in two or three years they will insist upon being part of us. [emphasis added]

  In supporting Emilio Bacardi and other santiagueros with whom he had a good relationship, Wood believed they might be drawn closer to the United States, and his commitment to improving Santiago schools reflected his interest in promoting a pro-U.S. outlook in Cuban youth. “Without exception, all [Cubans] desire—I might say demand—American teachers,” he wrote in the spring of 1899, generalizing wildly. “They are anxious to learn English; they are anxious to become Americanized.”

  Given his principled idealism—which sometimes came out as stubbornness—it was probably inevitable that Emilio Bacardi would become frustrated as mayor. After just eight months in office, he resigned abruptly in July 1899. A turf battle had erupted between Emilio and General Demetrio Castillo, a former Cuban army commander whom Wood had appointed as the civil governor of Oriente province, to which Santiago belonged. Both men had strong opinions, and neither fully trusted the other. Emilio wrote Wood a letter detailing each of his disagreements with Castillo, “so that you can judge for yourself the justice of my reasons.” Their dispute concerned which government—Bacardi’s municipal or Castillo’s provincial—had the authority to supervise school examinations and regulate store hours and public dancing.

  Wood was occupied with another dangerous yellow fever epidemic in Santiago at the time and probably found Emilio’s complaints to be relatively petty. The problems that led to his resignation, however, raised substantive questions about the U.S. occupation. With so few governing positions open to Cubans, so little authority invested in them, and no clear delineations of responsibility, conflicts like the one between Emilio and General Castillo were inevitable. Emilio Bacardi was a proud and ambitious man and had good reason not to want to continue working, in his words, “as no more than a simple administrative agent of a civil governor [i.e., Castillo] who has the power to overturn everything the mayor decrees.” Leonard Wood, as the U.S. military governor for eastern Cuba, had not devolved much responsibility to the Cubans whom he appointed nor put much effort into building new political institutions.

  Wood in fact was dead set against full Cuban independence, as were most senior American officials who dealt with Cuba. The U.S. government could hardly ignore its commitment under the Teller Amendment to surrender jurisdiction over the island, but Wood and others argued the amendment would be irrelevant if Cubans chose voluntarily to join the United States. To be sure, a clear majority of Cubans favored independence, but if voting were restricted so as to exclude a sufficient number of proindependence Cubans, that fact should not matter. “The property-holding Cubans favor annexation to the United States,” Wood told a New York Times reporter in June 1899, “because they realize we can give them a stable government.”

  In December 1899, Leonard Wood was appointed the U.S. military governor for all of Cuba, replacing General John Brooke. He went to work immediately on ways to limit voting in Cuba to those most likely to favor annexation. His partner was Elihu Root, the new secretary of war. Within weeks, the two men had prepared a limited suffrage plan they believed would accomplish their objectives. By binding U.S. decree, the right to vote would be extended only to those males who were literate, had at least $250 in property, or had served in the Cuban rebel army. Disenfranchising the poorest and least educated voters, in Root’s words, would exclude only the “ignorant and incompetent,” and Wood agreed. “Giving the vote to this element,” Wood wrote, “means a second edition of Haiti and Santo Domingo [the Dominican Republic] in the near future.” The element Cuba had in common with those two countries was its largely illiterate black population. Wood was far too sophisticated to resort to overt racial slurs in making his arguments, but Herman Hagedorn, Wood’s biographer, made clear the general’s view: “The possibility of negro dominance lay like a thunderhead on the horizon.”

  The restricted suffrage plan was a masterpiece of hypocrisy. In his North American Review article, Wood had written that Cuba needed “a liberal and just government of the people, for the people, and by the people,” but the immediate consequence of his new plan was to bar about half the voting-age males from participating in an upcoming municipal election or in a subsequent election to choose delegates to write a Cuban constitution. Telegrams poured in to Wood’s office from outraged citizens and their local governments. The local administration in Santiago accused Wood and Root of trying “to block the will or desire of each and every Cuban, precisely at this historic moment when the constitution of municipal governments will be the cornerstone for building the country.” In a letter to Root, Wood acknowledged there was still “some talk of universal suffrage”6 but insisted that the “best people” agreed with the limitations he had decreed.

  Wood had overestimated the Cubans’ desire to join the United States, however. Even with the “ignorant and incompetent” citizens barred from voting, the June 1900 municipal elections brought sweeping victories for the political parties that supported Cuba’s independence and opposed annexation. The pro-U. S. Democratic Union Party found so little support among the electorate that it barely bothered to compete. In an official report to Washington, Wood lamented that the results were a victory for “the extreme and revolutionary element” in Cuba. The political significance of the elections was nonetheless clear: Like it or not, the United States had to prepare for Cuba becoming independent, regardless of whether the island’s fledgling government institutions, political parties, and leadership class were ready for the challenge.

  Faced with the prospect of losing control over Cuba, War Secretary Root—a successful lawyer before joining the McKinley administration—proposed that the United States force Cubans to grant a formal U.S. r
ight to intervene on their territory at any time in order to maintain “stable government” there. At Root’s urging, Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut introduced legislation in early 1901 stipulating that the United States could not end its military occupation of Cuba until the drafters of the country’s new constitution inserted a provision explicitly guaranteeing the intervention right. When the U.S. Congress passed the Platt Amendment in March, Cubans erupted in protest over what they saw as nothing less than U.S. government blackmail. In Havana, demonstrators assembled outside Wood’s residence carrying torches. In Santiago, former rebels warned at public rallies that yet another revolution might be necessary, this one directed against the United States. But Wood held firm, reiterating that the U.S. Army would not withdraw from Cuba until the Platt provision was included in the Cuban constitution. Elihu Root warned that if the Cubans continued, in his words, “to exhibit ingratitude and entire lack of appreciation of the expenditure of blood and treasure of the United States to secure their freedom from Spain, the public sentiment of this country will be more unfavorable to them.”

  By a one-vote margin, fifteen to fourteen, delegates to the Cuban Constitutional Convention agreed in May 1901 to include the Platt Amendment language in the country’s new constitution, having narrowly concluded that limited independence was better than continued U.S. military occupation. The Santiago delegation, headed by a local politician named Antonio Bravo Correoso, nevertheless voted unanimously against the Platt provision, viewing it as a betrayal of the U.S. promise to recognize Cuba’s sovereignty. Emilio Bacardi was one of Bravo Correoso’s closest allies, and when a political rally was held in Santiago to congratulate him and the other local delegates for their principled stand against the Platt language, Emilio was among the featured speakers.

  Less than two years after resigning his appointment as Santiago’s mayor, he was now campaigning for a follow-up term, this time as the first Cuban to be freely elected to the mayoral post. In the intervening time, Emilio had gained a better sense of the seriousness of the political challenge facing his country. His opposition to including the U.S.-mandated Platt provision in his country’s constitution showed he was still a Cuban nationalist, but standing squarely for independence was no longer enough; more than anything, his country needed responsible governmental leadership. Spain had left Cuba with no political culture from which representative government could easily spring, and the U.S. military administration on the island seemed more determined to belittle the country’s nascent democratic institutions than to nurture them. Cuba consequently had a large share of scoundrels in public life.

  In the fall of 1900, Leonard Wood’s Cuban secretary and personal interpreter, Alejandro Gonzales, had written to Emilio to warn him against aligning automatically with any Cuban politician who parroted an independentista line, referring specifically to some of the constitutional convention delegates:They exploit your good faith and lead you to believe they are as patriotic as you are, when I know that they take nothing into account beyond their personal well-being. You who are honorable believe that everyone else is. I have served as an interpreter for many, and I know what I am talking about.... Don’t defend them.

  In fact, Emilio needed no such reminders. As mayor and then as a private citizen, he regularly confronted politicians who had been heroes during the independence wars. Demetrio Castillo and Tomás Padró, two of his biggest political enemies in Santiago, were both former rebel generals. Padró, whom Wood had chosen to replace Emilio as Santiago’s mayor, fired municipal employees who refused to join his political party and shut down a newspaper that criticized him.

  In the 1901 mayoral election, Emilio ran more as a reformer than as a fervent patriot, taking “Morality and Justice” as his campaign slogan. At the age of fifty-seven, he presented himself as the candidate who would restore order and transparency to city government after the shabby performance of the Padró administration. He won with a 61 percent majority, though only after enduring a nasty campaign. Padró, himself the subject of a misconduct investigation, had spread unsubstantiated allegations that some of the money Emilio had raised for the Liberation Army had gone into his own pocket.

  Emilio, a man easily offended, was outraged by such attacks. Before taking office, he wrote to Leonard Wood in Havana, asking “Have you confidence in me?” Having been undercut in his authority during his first term as mayor, Emilio was seeking assurances that the U.S. military administration would not appoint one of his political enemies as civil governor of his province (and thus his own superior), a situation Emilio warned would be “impossible” for him. His sensitivity to criticism was underscored a few months later when he prepared a draft of his will, with the charges and countercharges of the campaign still fresh. Emilio concluded his testament with a short declaration “for my children, so that they may never be ashamed of their father.”

  All the evil things said against me are the calumnies of wretched and miserable men. I have been honorable all my life, perhaps too honest, if that is possible, and I have never stolen one cent from anyone; ... moreover, the most exalted of all those who defamed me and [still] defame me, from the first to last, owe favors to Emilio Bacardi; if I am to be punished for anything I have done in this life, it will be for my one sin: having loved to a fault my nation and all those who have suffered for it.

  Though his self-righteousness may have been annoying at times, Emilio Bacardi was indeed an honorable man, and his personal integrity was above question. He was infuriated by those Cubans whose patriotism struck him as self-serving, precisely because he took his own so seriously. His proudest moment in his second term as mayor was his inauguration of the Fiesta de la Bandera (Festival of the Flag), a New Year’s Eve ceremony that became a Santiago tradition. At the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1901, as the cathedral bells rang twelve times over an assembled multitude in the main plaza, Emilio hoisted a huge Cuban flag, twenty-five feet long, over the town hall. Cuba was not yet independent, and Emilio had to get the U.S. military’s permission for the ceremony. Local citizens raised the funds to pay a local tailor to sew the giant banner, the biggest anyone had ever seen. It rippled gently in the night breeze, a red triangle on the hoist side containing a single white star with blue and white stripes adjacent, barely lit against the heavens. The town band played the national anthem. With the last note, whistles, cheers, and shouts of “¡Viva Cuba Libre! ¡Viva!” echoed across the square. The people of Santiago had never before seen a Cuban flag flying over their own city hall.

  The Cuban flag was not raised over the old fortress in Havana until May 20, 1902, when the United States surrendered jurisdiction over Cuba and recognized its conditional independence. Leonard Wood and the rest of the U.S. military government sailed back to the United States, finally leaving the Cubans to govern themselves, nearly four years after the end of the war with Spain. The new president was Tomás Estrada Palma, elected five months earlier after his only opponent, former general Bartolomé Masó, withdrew from the presidential race in protest over the appointment of an election commission stacked against him. Estrada Palma had spent more than twenty years in New York and favored continued ties with the United States. U.S. officials made no secret of their preference for him over Masó, an outspoken opponent of the Platt Amendment.

  In Santiago, Emilio Bacardi was on his way to an exemplary five-year term as mayor. During that period, he opened municipal employment opportunities to women for the first time, giving preference to those whose husbands had been killed in the war, and he improved health care for the poor. Recognizing that the opening of the Panama Canal would mean increased ship traffic, he allocated city funds to deepen the harbor and improve the port infrastructure. He cracked down on illegal cockfighting, moved aggressively against prostitution, and took action against town employees found guilty of malfeasance. He fought to get Havana to allocate more money to Santiago for sanitation services, shamelessly warning that a failure to do so might prompt another U.S. intervention, give
n that the Platt Amendment obliged the Cubans to keep their cities clean. Finally, a week did not pass when Emilio did not speak at some war anniversary gathering, attend a veteran’s funeral, visit a widow, or find some other way to pay tribute to the independence struggle that had consumed so much of his own life.

  At the same time, Emilio maintained his personal relationships with powerful Americans, beginning with Leonard Wood. He was friendly as well with Theodore Roosevelt, Wood’s ally and fellow adventurer. When Roosevelt was elected president in November 1904, Emilio sent him a succinct telegram:ROOSEVELT. PRESIDENT. WASHINGTON.

  SANTIAGO ONCE CONGRATULATED A VICTORIOUS “ROUGH RIDER.”

  TODAY, A PRESIDENT-ELECT.

  BACARDI. MAYOR.

  In the spring of 1906, when Roosevelt’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, Alice, went to Santiago for a visit, Roosevelt asked Emilio to attend to her. He and Elvira, who were described by a Santiago chronicler as “personal friends” of Roosevelt, feted Alice so warmly during her stay that she left Santiago “enchanted.”

  Emilio by then was the most popular public figure in Santiago, virtually without political opponents. Friends and allies suggested he run for provincial governor. Instead, ready at last to focus on national issues, he chose the Senate. Cuban politics had grown dirtier by the year, with electoral fraud practiced on all sides and widespread graft within the government itself. Emilio was affiliated with the Moderate Party, which supported the reelection of Tomás Estrada Palma as president. For Emilio, the most serious problem in Cuba was corruption, and although Estrada Palma was a weak president, he was widely viewed as an honest man. Other members of Estrada Palma’s government, however, were less principled. In the fall of 1905, Interior Secretary Fernando Freire de Andrade began dismissing government employees, even schoolmas ters, who favored the opposition Liberal Party and their presidential candidate José Miguel Gómez. The campaign turned violent, with repeated clashes between the opposing groups, and the candidates and their supporters took to carrying weapons wherever they went.