The prosperity of a new country and the happiness of the people depend largely upon a just apportionment of the land of that country and the opportunity to exploit the resources of the soil and sell the products thereof at the greatest possible profit to the producer. Had this simple truth been recognized as the cornerstone of Cuban colonization the island would have been spared centuries of hard up-hill struggle for healthy economic conditions.
From the standpoint of the agrarian reformer, the land problem was at the bottom of all the evils that retarded the development of the colony, so richly endowed by nature that it should have been a paradise for those who came there to settle. The noble Spanish adventurers of Castilian blood, who had accompanied the early explorers and in a spirit of romance followed in their wake, were the first to obtain grants of land. They returned to Spain, brought with them their families and servants and settled upon the land, which became their new home. But they were hardly of a type willing to rough it after the first glamor of romance and novelty had faded, or able by hard labor to transform the wilderness into richly yielding fields and gardens. Stockbreeding was very much easier and according to their ideas required no particular exertion on their part. They let nature take care of the increase of their herds and flocks. A few of them retained the land, made their haciendas the home of generations to come, and attained to some rank and standing by virtue of these great holdings. Essentially domestic by nature, they lived there sometimes two or threegenerations under one roof, frugally and contentedly all the year round.
Among the earliest Cuban landholders were nobles, Castilian, Andalusian and others, who received great grants of land in recognition of some services to the crown. These people, who had not known the spell of adventure in strange tropical climes, did not settle permanently on the island, but became absentee landlords. They owned perhaps a residence in Havana, which they visited briefly during the winter. They had a hacienda, which saw them even less frequently and more briefly. The traditions and conventions of their caste did not allow them to work, even if they had been able and willing; so they left the management of their land to an agent, whose paramount concern was to hold his position long enough to fill his pockets and who beyond that was no more interested in the colony than was his master. Whatever profits the latter made on the products of his Cuban estate, did not accrue to the benefit of the island; they were spent in the old country. Madrid was the place where these absentee landlords of Cuba wasted their wealth in extravagance and dissipation, instead of investing it in improvements of their estates and works of civic importance and advantage to the island. These property-holders looked out only for the revenues they could get out of their Cuban estates; but they were not concerned with the problem of revenues for the island. They have their counterpart today and not only in Cuba, but in other countries where vast tracts were acquired by foreigners, some for the hunting they afforded, some for speculative purposes, while native citizens had to go without the little plot of land that could insure them a home and sometimes even a living.
Thus were the best tracts of land apportioned among orpre-empted by people having no vital interest in the development of the island's resources. When the real workers came, peasants from the Basque provinces, from Catalonia and other parts of the Peninsula, they again had no capital to invest in the necessary improvements, and being obliged to content themselves with a small plot of land and to work it with their own hands, soon drifted into a deadly indifference towards anything beyond the satisfaction of their most urgent daily needs. Even if their land had produced more than they needed for their own consumption, they would have been at a loss how to dispose of their products, since there were no transportation facilities and since every movement of the producer was subject to local customs and other restrictions, limiting the possibilities of creating a market and from the profits realized to set aside a fund to spend on current improvements or to insure their future.
There is little doubt that much of the indolence attributed to the climate was gradually developed in the people by the lack of opportunities to market their products and to get into touch with the outside world. The Cuban settler of that class had in course of time to acquire a habitual indifference toward the morrow, which developed into shiftlessness. His initiative being paralyzed at the beginning, he never could rouse himself to conceive of another life. His children growing up about him under these same circumstances, true to the clannishness of Spanish family life, remained with the parents and followed in their footsteps. This may explain the lack of backbone with which the Cuban has been reproached. Official repression, even if founded upon a sort of paternal solicitude, is bound to stunt the growth of individuals as of nations; and of this repression the people of Cuba were for centuries the victims.
The French traveler and writer quoted before, E. M. Masse, describes the life of Cuban rustics at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. He calls themmonteros, which means huntsmen, and they were probably the more shiftless descendants of this first class of settlers. For he speaks of their simple, frugal and indolent ways; tells how satisfied they are just to own a little plot of ground, with a bananery beside the hut, or a rice or corn-field, and perhaps a few cows. They were happiest when they could afford a slave, who would go fishing and hunting for them; for that would allow the master to lie in the hammock and smoke cigarettes. It seems natural that the home of such a montero was usually a wretched little "cabane," a shack of one room in which he dwelt with his family, which was sometimes numerous, and in close companionship with a pig, and other domestic animals. Yet this same man, preferring to lie in the hammock rather than to exert himself in some much needed work, was very fond of lively sports, as horseback-riding. Even the women of the monteros were splendid horse-women.
The dress of these people was extremely simple. The men wore trousers of oiled linen extending to the ankles; shoes of raw leather, a short shirt of the same material as the trousers, a kerchief wound tightly about the head and a big straw hat with a black ribbon or one of felt with gold braid. An indispensable article of accoutrement was the machete, cutlass, in his belt. The women wore a calico skirt, a white shirt with a bracelet at the elbow to hold the sleeves and a fichu on the head. When they went to mass, they dressed their hair, wore a mantilla on their head and put on shoes with big silver buckles. At dances they donned a round hat woven out of the tissue of plantain leaves, trimmed with gay ribbons, or a blackhat with gold braid. Modest as was the montero in his demands upon life, there was one entertainment he could not forego: theferia de gallo, cock-fight. Many a one saved up his money for months to spend it on that day.
This description by M. Masse, of the montero of Cuba at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, tallies well with the description of the guajiro of today by Forbes Lindsay in "Cuba and Her People Today." Lindsay sees in that Cuban rustic a descendant of Catalonian and Andalusian settlers:
"Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land, but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of that no man's land which seems to be so extensive in the central and eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has title to a few acres, lives in a passably comfortable cabana, possesses a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry. Much more often he lives in a ramshacklebohio, the one apartment of which affords indifferent shelter to a large family and is fairly shared by a lean hog and a few scrawny chickens. There is nothing deserving the name of furniture in the house and the clothing of the family is of the scantiest. A nag of some sort, usually a sorry specimen of its kind, is almost always owned by the guajiro, who loves a horse and rides like the gaucho of the Argentine pampas."
That montero of a hundred and more years ago and the guajiro of today have so much in common that it seems safe to consider the latter a descendant of the former.
The lack of proper facilities for the exchange of commodities between city and country caused the fact that Havana up to the beginning of the nineteenth century raised almost all her necessities on her own soil. Theeconomical cassava was still generally used. The ground in the environs of the capital, though not the best soil on the island, within a short time attained considerable value. The administration of the navy yard opposed the cultivation of ground rich in trees that it could use for shipbuilding. By this monopoly alone many people were barred from owning and cultivating land. The preference of the earlier Spanish settlers for stockbreeding also limited the agricultural area. Besides, real estate conventions and regulations were as rigid as other customs of the country, and were never changed, be the need for a change ever so pressing.
From the first days of the colony the circular form of plot had been adopted, the extent of ahatosbeing fixed at two miles and that of thecorralesat one mile in circumference. This curious system of measurement gave rise not only to difficulties in computing the area of contiguous properties, but to misunderstandings and disputes which caused much litigation. It was difficult to buy a plot of ground that was not in some way subject to legal controversy. The great number of lawyers on the island had probably a certain reason for existence owing to the innumerable boundary and other land disputes. It is evident, too, that complicated boundaries and questionable titles were a rich source of dubious activity for unscrupulous members of the profession. Land cases were wont to drag on from one generation to the other, and while the lawyers representing the interests of the clients waxed rich, the clients themselves had often to sacrifice the land itself in order to settle their claims.
The changes brought on by gradual cultivation of unimproved lands on the other hand enriched the owners of such lands quite out of proportion to their original value. When pastures were converted into farm plots,the price was augmented. A hato contained more than sixteen hundred caballerias at thirty-three acres per caballeria. The corral contained more than four hundred. The caballeria pasture land cost from ten to twenty-five pesos; as soon as it was cultivated, its lowest price was three hundred pesos. Thus a hato, worth at most forty thousand pesos, was in its new state worth more than four hundred and eighty-four thousand. Likewise a corral, originally valued at most at ten thousand pesos, rose in price to one hundred and twenty thousand. The same was true of building lots. A caballeria in the suburbs, divided intosolares, house plots, could sometimes bring eighty-five thousand pesos. A caballeria to the southwest of Havana was worth three thousand pesos, one in the neighborhood of Matanzas only five hundred. The extraordinary wealth of certain convents, frequently commented upon by economists and historians, was due to the gradual and enormous increase in the price of the land which had originally been given to them. From these early grants and concessions were derived the privileges which some private properties and some convents enjoyed; they had for instance the right to forbid the building in their neighborhood of houses beyond a certain height, a precious privilege in a city where the circulation of air had not been overencouraged.
M. Masse comments at length upon these conditions in his book on Havana. He says:
"The immense fortunes of certain Havana families are thus explained. The sobriety of the Spaniards, the very limited taste and luxury found in their residences and their furnishings, a commercial management which favored agricultural products, would have ended in concentrating in a few hands fortunes rivalling those of kings, had not libertinism, the rage of lawsuits and the passionfor gambling produced that instability, which some moralists would have liked to secure by other means, though these were not easily found."
The prospect of becoming hopelessly entangled in interminable lawsuits, and of having large tracts of land on one's hands without the certainty that the products of this land would find a market and bring a price commensurate with the amount of money and labor spent upon it, prevented many residents of the island from becoming landholders. Only when the conflict between the landholders and the monopoly that robbed them of their profits became acute, did certain patriots concerned with the welfare of Cuba unite to secure a radical reform in the legislation of the Indies. The demand for an extension of maritime commerce was the first to be urged upon the authorities, and the first to be granted. As has been related in a previous chapter, the British occupation of Havana opened the eyes of the Spaniards to the benefits of free commerce with and among the colonies, and led to a gradual relaxation of the law which gave to one or two Spanish ports the monopoly of transatlantic trade. When greater freedom of maritime commerce had been secured, and agriculture began to be carried on on a larger scale, not only for home consumption, but for export, the questions of repartition of land, of introducing different standards of measurement, of diminution of taxes on the fruits of the country and of duties on articles of importation, and lastly of securing the labor needed for these larger enterprises, began to occupy the minds of the leaders.
The chief branches of Cuban agriculture were the raising of live stock and the cultivation of tobacco and sugar. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century the breeding of cattle was the principal occupation of the Cubanfarmer. It suited the taste of the Castilian and Andalusian immigrant, for it required comparatively little work and lent itself to the acquirement of habits of idleness which the climate of the country tended to confirm. Guiteras is right, when he says:
"Had our ganaderos (ranch owners) cultivated the plains for the alimentation of the animals and established a regular order in the care of breeds and in the management of their haciendas, this branch would have made greater progress and served as a powerful stimulus and been of great benefit for our agriculture. It would have supplied fertilizer for the fields, furnished the markets with meat for consumption by employers and laborers, and moreover, would have supplied oxen for our ploughs."
But it seems that the Cuban farmer, as are many in other countries, was too short-sighted to perceive the advantages of a well-organized system of production, and indulged in a laissez-faire policy which did not much advance his interests or those of the community.
The product next in importance was tobacco. The sections of the island best adapted for the cultivation of tobacco are the sandy fields west of Havana in the district of la Vuelta Baja, a country bathed by the waters of the San Sebastian, Richondo and the Consolacion of the south, and the Cuyaguateje or Mantua; also those in the palm belt running between Sierra Madre and the southern coast which forms a rectangle of twenty-eight leagues in length and seven in breadth. Other tobacco belts of great value are las Virtudes, between San Cristobal and Guanajas in the same Vuelta Baja, and in the east that nearest to Holguin and Cuba. The tobacco harvest of the year 1720 was six hundred thousand arrobas. But, as the historians say, "a severe system of monopoly, odiousexaminations and vexatious regulations and restrictions limited the profits, and the excessive cost of indispensable tools and the distance of the tobacco fields from the capital, discouraged the production of tobacco and visibly diminished the cultivation of this most important product of the island." The frequent disputes between the vegueros and the factoria, as the royal agency which owned the tobacco monopoly was called, abundantly prove the existence of conditions which were not likely to benefit the colony.
The most valuable product of the island was sugar; and the cultivation of sugar cane was in such a backward state that it reflected upon the intelligence and enterprise of the native farmers. It revealed their ignorance, habitual indifference and lack of resources most lamentably. One of the oldest sugar planters of the island, Captain D. José Nicolas Perez Garvey, presented a series of memorials to the Sociedad Economica of Santiago de Cuba, which give a fair idea of the processes employed in the elaboration of this precious product. Sr. Garvey was a pioneer in demonstrating the imperfections of the existing methods and in advising the introduction of innovations. But his recommendation of modern inventions horrified the majority of the farmers and was violently objected to by the laborers.
At first in order to press the juice out of the cane the same means were employed as for the grinding of wheat. They were cylinders set in motion by mules or oxen, a process in which half of the juice was wasted. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a more efficacious process was employed in imitation of that which was in use in Hayti. Not until the government itself took the initiative and encouraged the use of implements and machines that had proved of advantage in other sugar-raisingcolonies, was a change gradually effected. The great planter and landowner of Havana, D. Nicolas Calvo de la Puerta, was the man through whose influence and insistence upon certain innovations the sugar production was slowly improved. Finally there was the problem of converting the guarapo or fermented cane juice into sugar, which was at first also very primitive and slowly yielded to more productive and profitable methods. Lastly the sugar production of the island developed another product, which was not only popular on the island, but became an article of exportation. From 1760 to 1767 Havana, which was the only port qualified to export sweetmeats, sent out annually thirteen thousand cases of sixteen arrobas each. In the period of five years from 1791 to 1795 inclusive, the export was 7,572,600 arrobas. White sugar was then worth thirty-two reals per arroba, brown sugar twenty-eight. The French immigrants from Santo Domingo were an element that contributed to the improvement and promotion of the sugar industry.
Though they furnished a far smaller proportion of the island's wealth, hides, cane, brandy, refined honey and wax also began to figure in the economic records of Cuba. Wax became a valuable product about the year 1764 when Bishop Morell brought a few swarms of bees from his Florida exile. It was exported to the ports of the Gulf of Mexico where it was highly esteemed for its superior quality. The indigo plant which was introduced during the administration of Governor Las Casas proved in time a new source of Cuban wealth. Coffee plantations and cocoa groves had also multiplied in number, and were slowly furnishing new products for home consumption as for exportation.
The following figures will give a limited but reliable survey of the growth of agriculture towards the end ofthe century. Before the year 1761 there were only between sixty and seventy sugar refineries on the island. By the end of the century there were four hundred and eighty. Before the year 1796 there were only eight or ten coffee plantations, so that the island barely produced enough coffee for its own consumption. By the end of the century there were three hundred and twenty-six "cafeyeres." At the same time the island had two thousand four hundred and thirty-nine vegas, or tobacco fields, and one thousand two hundred and twenty-threecolmenaresor apiaries. The revenues of the island from 1793, when they amounted to over one million pesos, rose steadily until at the beginning of the century they were about three million pesos annually. The sugar plantations yielded great profits, but they also required big investments of money and labor. One of the most prominent sugar planters on the island, D. José Ignacio Echegoyen, calculated that to produce ten thousand arrobas of sugar, an expenditure of twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven pesos was needed, besides a capital of sixty thousand. He was one of the foremost citizens that protested against the tax of one tenth on sugar. Work on the sugar plantations was the hardest imaginable; even the negro slaves could not stand it longer than ten years. Then their working capacity was completely exhausted and they were given their liberty.
Though the importation of negro slaves essentially helped the development of agriculture and the industries connected with it, there still existed restrictions and regulations which acted as a continual check upon the growth of the population, and had a paralyzing effect upon the intellectual development of the colonists. A favorable solution of these important questions offered great obstacles. Although the principles on which Spain foundedher restrictive system had been relaxed, there existed a great number of interests that had been created through this system and were unwilling to give up their privileges. Derogation of these restrictions would have meant loss and injury to some peninsular subjects that had grown rich and powerful through them.
The historian Guiteras elucidates this point when he says that higher state reasons, supported by the right that, according to the notions of the epoch gave them the international law and the famous bull of Alexander VI. and was sustained by a great and expensive war against the nations that attempted to colonize America, had influenced the conduct of the government for nearly three centuries. The government only agreed by force of invincible circumstances to have the British and the French establish themselves in and continue in possession of a part of North America and a few islands of the Antilles; but it always insisted on maintaining the vast possessions that recognized its authority closed to the commerce of the allies according to the agreement. With the existence of a new and independent nation near these states, whose political organization, religious principles and national character were diametrically opposed to those of the Spanish government, these possessions and dominions of the crown seemed to be in danger. The imprudent demonstration in the state of Georgia had already shown the spirit of hostility which when the republic of the United States was barely established began to manifest itself against the neighboring possessions of a country which in her diplomatic relations had from the beginning of the Revolution always showed herself friendly. Such considerations very likely increased the aversion of the monarch as of his court towards Britain and the British race, in whose favor they had yielded more than to any otherpower concessions demanded by the interests of their subjects in America.
These were some of the great impediments which the champions of progress encountered in their valiant endeavors to free the economic development of Cuba and to help its much hampered industries. But one of the most serious obstacles was the restriction of Spanish and especially foreign immigration.
It seems that these restrictions which dated from the accession of Philip II. had two definite objects; the first was to preserve the purity of the Spanish stock in the West Indies and other possessions of Spanish America; the second was to prevent foreigners from learning the extent and the resources of Spain's American colonies. Edward Gaylord Bourne says in "Spain in America":
"In regard to Spaniards, the policy adopted was one of restriction and rigid supervision. No one, either native or foreigner, was allowed to go to the Indies without a permit from the crown (or in some cases from the Casa de Contracion) under penalty of forfeiting his property. Officers of the fleets or vessels were held strictly responsible for infractions of this rule. In the code the details of these restrictions are amplified in seventy-three laws. The reasons for such strict regulations covering emigration was to protect the Indies from being overrun with idle and turbulent adventurers anxious only 'to get rich quickly and not content with food and clothing, which every moderately industrious man was assured of.'"
Another reason for this strict supervision is given in a law enacted in the year 1602, which directs the deportation of foreigners from the ports of the Indies, because "the ports are not safe in the things of our holy Catholic faith, and great care should be taken that no error creepin among the Indians." An exception to the rule was made twenty years later, when expert mechanics were allowed, but traders in the cities remained excluded. So rigidly was this policy upheld that Humboldt during five years of travel in Spanish America met only one German resident.
It is more difficult to understand the object of this policy than to realize its effect upon the country's growth and progress. M. Masse says in his book "L'Isle de Cuba et la Havane":
"No Spaniard was allowed to sail for America without permission of the king, a permission granted only for well-defined business reasons, and for a period limited to two years. The agreement to settle there was even more difficult to obtain. A special permission was needed even to pass from the province first chosen to another. Priests and nuns were subject to the same rule."
These restrictions were enforced even at the beginning of the nineteenth century. M. Masse continues to say that travelers were detained on board several days before they were allowed to land in Havana. They had to present a passport, a certificate of birth and baptism and a certificate of respectable life and good conduct, all signed by a consul of Spain.
In individual cases these severe requirements may have been evaded—M. Masse mentions the fact that minor functionaries were ready to do the foreigners any favor—for a consideration. But upon the whole it must be admitted that their observance tended to keep up a certain moral standard in the colonies, which may not have been without some good influence in moulding the character of the people. While other powers of Europe allowed—and even encouraged—their colonies tobecome dumping-grounds for human refuse, to populate them with their derelicts and those of other nations, until America was spoken of by the Germans as the big reformatory, Spain made an attempt at what some centuries later, in our scientific age, might have been called "race culture."
The conditions which we have described did not, however, prevent the colony, when prosperity came to her, from succumbing to the evils which invariably follow in the wake of new wealth. The historian Blanchet reports that there existed in Cuba towards the end of the century a strange mixture of immorality and piety. Religious enthusiasm rose to an unusual degree of fervor in Villa Clara in the year 1790. Two Capuchin missionaries had been there a month, and the church was crowded from early morning until late at night with men and women spellbound by their words. After the orisons there was a sermon, and at times, immediately after the sermon, the women left, the building was closed and darkened and the men remained inside. Prayers alternated with flagellations, until some individuals were exhausted with pain and the loss of blood. In the penitential procession, which took place on some evenings, the two missionaries and the priests of the town were followed by a multitude in which both sexes were represented. The members of the Ayuntamiento took part, bare-legged and bare-foot; some marched with the head and face concealed by a white cowl, the body uncovered to the waist, and from the waist down wrapped in sack-cloth. Some staggered under the weight of a heavy cross; others walked straight and attempted to inflict wounds upon themselves with the point of a sword. It seems, however, that this religious exaltation was at times carried too far, for flagellation assumed such proportions at burials that it had to be forbidden.
In contrast to this religious revival was the wave of frivolity and immorality that seemed simultaneously to sweep over the island. The streets of the towns resounded with ribald speech and lascivious songs. The Bishop was scandalized to see Cuban women discard their veils when they went on the street. When they wore décolleté gowns, they did not even close the blinds, but openly showed themselves at the windows. There is little doubt that increase of overseas traffic in the ports of the island contributed to the growing laxity of morals. M. Masse considered the navy yard a special source of the corruption which wealth had brought. "For the money needed by that enterprise circulated in the city at the same time as the vices and the passions of its employees and sailors." With a remarkable psychological insight he gives a most plausible explanation how the change in the life of the island affected the women of Cuba, and especially of Havana.
For these women had so far been brought up in strict conformity to the conventions of their female ancestors in Spain. They had been sent to a girls' school, always escorted, and had never until they were married even talked alone with a man. In the narrow confines of their home, either before or after marriage, their beauty was taken for granted and passed uncommented. For the Cuban women were always unusually handsome, having the same regular features and rich coloring as the Spanish, the same large black eyes and bluish black hair, perhaps even accentuated by their placid immobility of expression. A strange type, bound to attract attention anywhere, they struck the strangers landing in this tropical city like rare exotic flowers, and they suddenly found themselves the objects of an admiration which manifested itself in ways that were new and irresistible.The Cuban husband was known not to be as loyal as his wife was expected to be; why should they not accept the homage offered them? To this host of admirers, ever changing, ever ready to shower them with favors, M. Masse, the keen psychologist, attributes the change in the attitude of the women and the gradual change in the tone of Cuban, especially Havanese, society. As more and more of these industrious foreigners, who might have been as good Spaniards as their own ancestors, settled on the island, the difference between them and the native Cubans manifested itself, not always to the latter's advantage. Women began to prefer them as husbands, and there was one more cause for antagonism between these scions of a common stock, whom different environment and conditions of existence had caused to drift apart, and become irreconcilably estranged.
Of Havana that subtle student of life has this to say:
"The need of forgetting the many privations of a prolonged sea voyage, with gold always in abundance for those who do not know how to manage their affairs and to whom each voyage seems a new adventure, the influence of a climate which makes for voluptuousness, all this combines to make Havana a new Cythera placed at the port of long journeys even as the ancient cradle of pleasure was at that end of the long voyage of that time."
Thus Havana, like other capitals of the world, became gradually not only the cradle of Cuban culture, but also of that corruption of the simpler and purer instincts of human nature which seems to be inseparable from a certain degree of material comfort. The man of Havana had in centuries of repression and restriction lost the power of initiative; the end of the century which gave the colonists of North America their independence madethem free to think and act, and work for themselves, and above everything else, to govern themselves, found him still under a rigorous paternal supervision by representatives of a king whom he perhaps never saw. Centuries of such guardianship had robbed him of all incentive and made him drift along the line of least resistance.
Physically and morally a product of the country which was politically and economically a victim of that type of government, the Cuban of that period had no interests save the quest of comfort and such pleasurable excitement as certain entertainments offered. The women divided their attention between their church and their home, indulged in deadly idleness and senseless extravagance, dressed luxuriantly, but with bad taste, and sought distraction in gossip or gambling. The men, who had caught faint echoes of Voltaire and ideas of the Revolution and were estranged from the church, divided their interests between their business and their friends of both sexes, and also sought distraction in gambling. There was gambling in the home circle, in the houses of friends, in the clubs, even in the convents. It was estimated that ten thousand games of cards were annually imported into Havana.
Of places of amusement there was no lack at that time. M. Villiet d'Arignon, who visited Havana fifty years before and was bored by the provincial monotony of Cuban life, could not have complained of lack of entertainment, had he seen Havana at the threshold of the nineteenth century, though his fastidious Gallic taste would perhaps not have been satisfied with the quality of the attractions the Cuban metropolis offered her guests. The native Cuban, and the Spaniard who had settled there, did not wish for anything more fascinating andmore exciting than the national fiesta of the bull-fight, the corrida de toros. No true Cuban could resist the trumpet call summoning the population to that most sumptuous spectacle.
"These costumes of the age of chivalry, those richly harnessed palfreys, those banderillos (small darts with a bandorol) or stilets trimmed with the colors, with which the neck of the poor beast is seen magnificently larded; this martial music, these cheers of the mousquetaires rendering homage unto the victors, this most eminent magistrate presiding at the feast, this vast arena, this wealth of beautiful women, who have the opportunity of hearing the most drastic, disgusting and obscene exclamations, into which the vulgarity of spectators and toreadors lapses in the heat of the combat. And yet I would not advise the Spanish government to attempt to abolish at least in Havana this sort of spectacle. A revolt might cause the authorities to repent of their temerity."
Thus does the French author quoted before paint the picture of the greatest entertainment the Cuban of that time knew. But there were others, for instance the caroussel, the circus, the magicians, and there was always the cock-pit, offering almost as much excitement as the bull-ring. Here, too, the gambling craze of the people asserted itself. For not only the prosperous man about town spent his money in betting at the cock-fight, as he did at the bull-fight. Every little town had its cock-pit and every montero or guajiro sacrificed his wages to taste the excitement of that spectacle. Surely Cuba at that century's end had already learned what the hosts of strangers needed, when after a long and tedious voyage they landed on the island.
One cannot help being reminded of the impressionsM. Villiet d'Arignon carried with him from his visit to Cuba as recorded in Jean Baptiste Nougaret's "Voyages interessans," when after a month's sojourn he sailed for Vera Cruz on the same vessel that took D. Juan Guemez y Horcasitas from the governorship of Cuba to the vice-regency of Mexico. Then already was gambling the favorite, and, as the island lacked such places of amusement as were established later, probably the only pastime. The Frenchman noticed also the total absence of any interest in literature, art and music, and the impossibility of finding a circle of people where he could enjoy an animated conversation on subjects outside of the commonplace and of current local gossip, made him reflect rather unfavorably upon West Indian society of that time.
Such reflections must, however, be accepted with some reservation. For if the West Indian and especially the Cuban of the eighteenth century lacked interest in those things that make for culture, it must be remembered that the country in which he was living was still young, and that the people's paramount interest had of necessity to be for the things material. There has perhaps never been a colony of settlers in a foreign and primitive land that has not been so thoroughly absorbed in the task of founding a home and making a living, that all other things, for the time being, did not seem to matter. All pioneer settlers are bound for at least one or two generations to be so engrossed in rude manual labor or in plans to establish a trade, that they lose touch with the current intellectual life of their mother country and fall behind. When those most urgent duties are performed and allow them brief spells of leisure, in which they look about and try to pick up the threads they had dropped, they find that the mother country has in themeantime advanced so far beyond them that they are unable to catch up with it.
Spanish America was no exception to this rule. While the sons of Spain that had settled in the New World were engaged in cultivating the soil, making roads in the rough country and laying the foundations of commerce and trade in the cities founded by their fathers or grandfathers, Spain had entered upon the heritage of many centuries of European culture, which on her soil had a rich admixture of Arabian elements. The literature of Spain had given to the world an immortal epic, the story of Cervantes, "Don Quixote," the deep significance of which was not perhaps grasped at that time, but the human essence and the humor of which were not lost upon his generation. It had given to the world a drama, which was far in advance of anything the continent had so far produced, and was comparable only to the works of that unparalleled British genius, Shakespeare. The plays of Lopé de Vega were performed all over Europe and found their way even into the seraglio of Constantinople; and those of Calderon de la Barca have survived the changes of time and taste and are even today occasionally performed.
Of all this the Spaniard of Cuba was hardly aware. Even if he had not been so engrossed in his rude task, he could barely have known anything about it, because the limited communication with the mother country and the restrictions upon travel kept Spanish America in a state of isolation, that made for stagnation rather than progress. When the period of material prosperity came to Cuba with the relaxation of Spain's commercial restrictions, the Cuban awoke to the realization that he had lost contact with Spain's intellectual life, and had been left at least two centuries behind. Out of this knowledge,depressing and discouraging as it must have been, grew the attempt to centralize and organize a gradual revival of literary and scientific activity on the island.
Whether the Sociedad Economica Patriotica which was later called Junta di Fomento is identical with the Sociedad de Amigos del Real Pais, is not made clear by the historians. The Spaniards' fondness for long and sonorous names and titles may have added the second name. However, both this organization and a society founded about the same time in Santiago for the purpose of organizing the literary activities of that place, and similar societies in Sancti Spiritus and Puerto Principe were an expression of the earnest desire of at least a part of the people to turn their attention towards other things than those material. To Governor La Torre, Havana owed the foundation of its first theatre. That this establishment was encouraged and effectively patronized by Governor Las Casas and other men closely identified with the cultural work of the Sociedad, goes without saying.
But it is perfectly natural in view of the long period of indifference towards anything like the drama that the classical Spanish dramas, the masterpieces of Lopé de Vega and of the inimitable Calderon, did not immediately find their way upon the stage of Havana. The audiences had gradually to grow up to their standard and the directors of the enterprise wisely refrained from forcing them upon a people that had so long been ignorant of the strides Spain had made in the interval since their ancestors settled in the New World. Hence the repertoire of the theatre of Havana towards the end of the century catered to the Spaniard's love of music and favored the best comic operas then produced in the theatres of Europe. The ballet was very popular, as itwas everywhere at that period. But that subtle observer, M. Masse, was not favorably impressed with it.
"The ballet is of that kind which carries far the art of varying the most voluptuous attitudes and the expression of the least equivocal sentiment."
He suspected the fandango, supposed to be typically Havanese, of being originally a negro dance, saying "The difference is in the embroidery, which civilization, or if one wishes, corruption, has introduced."
Very popular were at the time little comedies of domestic life, called Saynetes, and offering pretty truthful pictures of social customs and habits on the island, and especially glimpses of the society of Havana. A Cuban writer of the period, D. José Rodriguez, is credited with the authorship of a comedy, "El Principe Jardinero," The Prince Gardener, which by its complicated plot held the attention of the audience and was performed with great success in 1791. A comedian of considerable ability and fame, then very popular with the Havanese, D. Francisco Covarrubas, was the author of farces, which were very warmly received and drew large audiences. The theatre of New Orleans, much older and better equipped than that of Havana, sometimes sent its company of actors for a short season of more serious drama. Among other plays which this company produced was the tragedy "Les Templiers." Although undoubtedly still in its beginnings, the theatre of Havana was upon the whole doing good work. Anglo-Americans who visited Havana about the century's end are said to have admitted that it was superior in building, stage setting, acting and music to the American theatres of that period.
The regular company which played in Havana at the time of Governor Las Casas was under the directionof Sr. Luis Saez. The performances were given twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, and mostly offered a program in which drama and music alternated. If a play of several acts was given, these musical numbers came between the acts. The program would usually begin with a dramatic composition; in the first intermission a short play was acted, in the second a tonadilla (musical composition) was played or a few Seguidillas (merry Spanish song or dance tunes). At times the pieces between the acts were suppressed and the performance ended with a tonadilla or a farce. In the bill of January twenty-ninth, 1792, it is announced that "this performance will conclude with a new duly censored piece entitled 'Elijir con discrecion i amante privilegiado' (The privileged lover chosen with discretion), by an inhabitant of this city, D. Miguel Gonzales."
A VOLANTE: AN OLD TIME PLEASURE CARRIAGEA VOLANTE: AN OLD TIME PLEASURE CARRIAGE
They did not know then, in Havana, the lyric theatre,although the Havanese were fond of music and the members of Havana society in their gatherings usually provided some musical entertainment by having an instrumentalist perform on the piano, guitar or harp. However, there seems to have existed an Academy of Music, where concerts were given. There is an article in an issue of the Havana paper of that time, thePapel Periodico, which refers to a concert given by Senora Maria Josefa Castellanos, whose performance on the harpsichord called forth not only a tribute in verse, but a glowing description of her "rare skill and mastery of which she has given proof in the Academy, with the sweetest harmonies of the best composers." This eulogy is contained in the Sunday issue of January twenty-second, 1792. Besides Senora Castellanos and other skilled amateurs, there was a Senora Doña Maria O'Farrell, who distinguished herself by her musical accomplishments, for another issue of thePapel Periodicocontains a sapphic ode dedicated to her by an admirer, who signed the pseudonym Filesimolpos.
It appears that balls as an amusement were not approved of, which seems a contradiction in a society which was by no means puritanical. Although social evenings in private houses frequently ended in a dance, there were few indications that large affairs consisting mainly of dancing took place in the public assembly halls. ThePapel Periodicoof December sixteenth, 1792, contains an announcement which for its brevity gives room to manifold interpretation. "The gentlemen are informed that there will be a dance today" is so laconic, that one is almost induced to believe that these dances were given at places known only to the initiated. In this particular instance it was subsequently learned that this dance of the sixteenth of December, 1792, tookplace at the house of a man who was considered "a dangerous reformer of the customs of Havana." Did this dangerous reformer perhaps admit to his dance the ravishingly beautiful and cultured women that had come from Santo Domingo, where they freely moved in society, but were barred in Havana, because they had a white father or grandfather and a colored mother or grandmother? Foreign visitors to Havana at that period were so warm in their praise of these refined unfortunate victims of miscegenation, that they may have converted some of the gilded youth of the smart set or the Bohemia of Havana to their point of view.
The fine arts were not at first considered in the planning and building of the city of Havana. Though much money was spent upon public buildings, no artistic effect whatever was aimed at and the impression of a crude utilitarianism prevailed. The churches, too, did not possess the noble dignity of the great cathedrals of France, Italy and Spain. The most ambitious ecclesiastical edifice in Havana, the church of San Francisco, was architecturally mediocre in style and barbarously overornamented.
In all the churches the sculpture and the wood-carving on the altars were over-elaborate and bewildered by their decorative details. Besides all these buildings were too low and narrow, and by their endless decoration diminished the sense of space and produced one of oppression. On special saints' days the decorations were pathetically crude and primitive. Angels of paper tissue, artificial flowers, birds, lambs, etc., were displayed with a profusion which was distracting, instead of adding to the fervor of religious sentiment.
MONTSERRAT GATE IN CITY WALL OF HAVANA, BUILT 1780MONTSERRAT GATE IN CITY WALL OF HAVANA, BUILT 1780
The Church de la Concepcion, built about 1795, was the only church edifice which by a certain classic simplicityapproached the solemn beauty of a Greek temple. The Carmelite Church was interesting for the tomb of Bishop Compostele with the epitaph, which expressed his wish to be laid to rest "between the lilies of Carmel and the choirs of the virgins." None of these churches had pews or chairs, the seating capacity being limited to two rows of stalls or benches along the nave. This made for an admirable democracy in a society which otherwise rigorously segregated the castes for it happened not infrequently that men of rank and ladies of position found themselves beside a poor negro. Occasionally, however, one could see a lady going to mass with her family of children, accompanied by a negro, carrying a rug and a small chair; and when such a handsome senora seated herself in the center of the rug with her offspring grouped about her, the effect was so picturesque as to call for the brush of a Velasquez. But this privilege was limited to white ladies of rank only. The music in the churches, on the other hand, was exclusively furnished by the musically gifted negroes.Though it sometimes occurred in Cuba, as in other colonies of America, that owing to the lack of printed church music sacred words were adopted to secular tunes, and frequently to those of popular comic opera, the master works of the old church composers were sometimes heard at special occasions.
Among the streets of Havana the most metropolitan was the Calle de la Muralla, so called from the muralla or rampart built by Governor Ricla. This was the Rue de la Paix for the women of Havana. It was lined with "tiendas de ropas," shops displaying all the latest importations of dress goods and wearing apparel. At that time, as at the present, the fashionable ladies of the Cuban capital insisted upon keeping pace with the styles of dress and adornment which prevailed in the great cities of Europe, as their pecuniary means, their taste and their natural gifts abundantly enabled them to do. Every morning the street was crowded with the carriages of ladies engaged in shopping. For no white woman, unless she belonged to what in the southern states of North America would have been called "poor white trash" was allowed to go on foot during the day, unless she was going to mass. Up to the twenties of the new century and beyond, this convention was rigidly observed. Those who had to go on foot were not seen on the Calle de la Muralla until the evening hours. Then it was crowded with as gay and handsome a multitude of women, white, black and of all the intervening shades, as ever trod the pavement of a southern capital.
At such times the relation between the white and the colored women of the city could be observed in little incidents that were an unending source of amusement to the student of life. The lithe and willowy form of the young girl of Spain, which Montaigne has called "uncorps bien espagnole," was frequently to be found among the Cuban women. The almost regal dignity and grace of carriage, for which the Spanish women were noted, had also been transmitted to their descendants in the colonies. Now it was nothing unusual for any one to follow with his eyes the perfect form and the graceful movements of some woman in the crowd of such nights, and on coming up and catching a glimpse of the face to find a negress. For the imitative faculty of the colored race is extraordinary, and the negro maids of the white ladies of Havana copied faithfully every detail of the gait and gestures of their mistresses. The dress worn by the Havanese on the streets was the national basquina, a black skirt, with a waist according to the prevailing fashion, and under that basquina was often worn a white petticoat trimmed with lace, which most unconcernedly was being dragged through the dust. But the most important article of a Cuban woman's dress was the mantilla, also often trimmed with the rarest lace, that indispensable covering for head and shoulders, which made an effective frame for a face in which shone a pair of luminous black eyes. That mantilla, like the fan, was a medium of expression and spoke an eloquent language to those that understood.
The cafés, which were sadly missed by M. Villiet d'Arignon in the middle of the century, had begun to appear in the streets of Havana, but never became as popular as in European capitals. The Cuban did not particularly care for coffee as a beverage; he preferred chocolate, which he took at home. He did not care to go out, unless it was for a game of cards, a feria di gallo, or cock-fight, or the bull-ring. He was essentially a domestic creature, though Havana had a smart set the masculine members of which furnished amplematerial for gossip of a more or less scandalous nature. He spent his time at home smoking; in fact, everybody in Cuba smoked, men, women, children, priests, masters and slaves. It was not an infrequent sight to see a negro maid about her work with a cigar in her mouth or behind her ear. Small favors and services were paid in cigars.
Outside of the cultural endeavors of the Sociedad little was done in Cuba for the cause of education. As the Countess de Merlin reported in her book on Havana, there was only one school in that city in the year 1791, that taught grammar and orthography, the instructor being the mulatto Melendez. The children of the monteros and guajiros in the country grew up in almost complete illiteracy. As was mentioned in a previous chapter Governor Las Casas devoted from eleven to twelve thousand pesos of his private fortune for primary instruction, but it is not clear whether this was to be extended throughout the island or limited to Havana. At any rate there were at the beginning of his administration thirty-nine schools in the city, seven of which were for males only, the others for children of both sexes. In many of these schools, which were in charge of mulattos or free negroes, only reading was taught; in the better schools arithmetic as far as fractions; thus prepared young men were expected to enter upon a university course. The smallest fee for primary instruction was four reales a month; for higher instruction two pesos. To two hundred white and colored children the P. P. de Belen (Fathers of Bethlehem) gave lessons free of cost; it is reported that their class surpassed in writing. Towards the end of the administration of Las Casas there were seventy schools, with about two thousand pupils. But they seemed to have a hard fight for their existenceand the number is reported to have been later reduced to seven hundred and thirty-one pupils.
The low intellectual standard of the average Havanese woman of that period is easily understood by a glance at these data. The education of girls even in the cities was considered of such minor importance, that as late as 1793 it was not deemed necessary for them to learn to read. The daughters of the Havanese patricians were taught accomplishments regarded as inseparable from an ideal of refined womanhood, such as embroidery and a little music. But as work of any kind was not on the program of their lives, serious occupation, even with household duties, was unheard of. The matronly senoras, who were frequently held up as models of womanhood and especially of motherhood, were woefully ignorant of the simplest cooking and other branches of what is today called home economics. The orphans and poor children admitted to the Casa de Beneficiencia were better prepared for life. They were all taught the alphabet, the girls sewing, embroidery and the making of artificial flowers, and the boys learned the cigar-makers' trade.
From these premises it can be easily inferred that the standard of literary activity in Cuba could not have been very high. That great democratic medium for the diffusion of information, the printing press, was an institution which in Cuba was also limited by royal decrees. According to Sr. La Torre the first printing press was established in Havana in 1747; there were printed the decrees and reports and other official documents of the government, and sometimes matters of general interest were published on loose sheets. Some authorities claim for Santiago de Cuba the honor of priority, stating that it had a printing press before the year 1700. But Sr.Hernandez in his Ensayos literarios declares that he could find no foundation for this statement. Nor do Valdes, Arrate or Pezuela contain any definite data on that subject.
It is safe to presume that the work of the press established in 1747 produced some good results in spreading information otherwise withheld from the public; for in the year 1776 a royal decree forbade the establishment of any other printing press besides that devoted to governmental work. It is possible, too, that some speculator had attempted to found another printing establishment. For Sr. Saco tells us that in the year 1766 there was in Havana a printing concern under the name of Computo Ecclesiastico and in 1773 another under the direction of D. Blas de los Olivos. But there are no data to show that these concerns existed at the time of the royal decree of 1776.
The establishment of a periodical has usually been deferred to the administration of Governor Las Casas. But there is reason to believe that the note contained in the fourth book of the history of Cuba by Valles rests upon fact; it speaks of a "Gaceta de la Habana" as being in existence in the year 1782. An issue of thatGaceta, dated May 16, 1783, was said to contain a report of the festivals with which the Duke of Lancaster was honored in Havana. In that issue the publisher said:
"Since in the precedingGacetathe arrival in this town of the Infante William Duke of Lancaster, third son of King George of England, could hardly be indicated, we suppressed for one week the circulation of other news, in order to offer to our readers the details of his entry into Havana."
Besides those printing concerns no other is known to have existed in Havana until the opening of that ofBolona, in the year 1792, which is referred to in an advertisement in thePapel Periodicoof Sunday, August 26th of that year. This advertisement read:
"Another negress about 20 or 21 years old, good cook and laundress, healthy and without defects, for three hundred pesos. He who wants her will apply to the printing office of D. Estaven Joseph Bolona, where her master will be found."
That this press was not identical with the government printing establishment is inferred from the fact that in this number of thePapel Periodicoas well as other issues are contained many advertisements referring to the printing office, where information will be given.
TheGaceta de la Habanawas a weekly, which probably contained the government announcements and news of the most important events of the time. The space of theGacetawas too limited to admit of the publication of communications from readers on matters concerning the community, hence such effusions, as also the lyrics coming from the pens of poetically inclined dilettanti, were published on separate sheets to be circulated among their admiring friends. But at the time of Governor Las Casas the desire of improving this publication of the government made itself felt; the space was enlarged and the old timeGacetaseems to have been merged in thePapel Periodico, which began to circulate from the twenty-fourth of October, 1790. It appeared once a week and was edited by D. Diego de la Barrera.
This publication was the only medium through which those desirous of knowing something of the current life of the island at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century could obtain a fair picture of the customs and occupations of that time, described by the individual contributors with the warmthand the florid exuberance then in style and occasionally, when coming from a more critical mind, with a touch of satire. The following extract from the periodical will give an idea of its contents and character. In an issue of the year 1792, the writer speaks of the lamentable ignorance reigning in the country districts of Cuba and hampering the development of agriculture. He attacks the current opinion that the climate is the source of the Cuban's indifference and indolence, saying that this assumption would give ground to deny even the possibility of progress. He says:
"Many opine that the laziness of the inhabitants of this country is the effect of the climate. They take it for granted that the lassitude of the muscles and tendons is due to the heat and makes the bodies lose their tenseness and hence their capacity for exertion. They also give as cause the excessive evaporation of elements needed for the growth and the strength of the organism, asserting that this loss owing to weak constitution of the stomach cannot be repaired by fatty and abundant food.
"These reasons founded upon the organic mechanism of our bodies seem quite conclusive. There is no doubt that the intense heat which we suffer during the greatest part of the year in the countries near the equator promotes evaporation too much. But I dare to assert that the excess is being insensibly recovered by the bodies through the particles produced by perspiration. This does not seem chimerical, when we reflect that by our constant respiration the air in which we are living enters and is being constantly renewed in our liquids, and that this air is impregnated with innumerable corpuscles extracted from the solids. The same is true of a fountain, the surplus flows off to fertilize the near forest, while at the same time is restored to its bosom through differentmeans an equal quantity, which incessant infiltration also supplies from other water sources."
After comparing the physical and intellectual aptitude of the children of the tropics with those of Greenland and the progress made by the French of Hayti in science, agriculture and art, which is in diametrical contrast to that of the Spanish West Indians, he continues:
"Therefore, as indolence or laziness do not proceed from external causes, we must admit that they proceed from ourselves. I find no other source. It is a voluntary habit, or speaking more plainly, a vice propagated like the pestilence and causing incalculable harm to the social structure. But as I propose to combat this enemy, I shall show the most visible injuries it produces in those who yield to its insidious charm.
"Every living body without movement goes into corruption. This is a well established principle and in the hot countries which are usually humid, the effect is quickly seen. We have a sad experience in this city, where the inhabitants are frequently afflicted with dropsy, internal and external tumors, hypochondria, nervous diseases and many other ailments, the origin of which is inaction or want of movement and circulation. While in this respect indolence conspires against our very existence, the injury is no less when it manifests itself in the vices to which professional idlers are subject. Incessant gambling, excessive sensuality, late hours, unreasonable food and drink and other correlative features are the means by which health is ruined, life is shortened; and he who succeeds in prolonging it, does so at the cost of a variety of aches and pains.
"Prisons and other dismal places are the final abode of idleness. Those liable to get there for theft, debt and other offences curse their unhappy lot; but they will notadmit that their laziness is the chief source of their misfortunes. Celibacy, depopulation, the languishing of commerce, the backwardness of science, art, agriculture, etc., are all the results of idleness.
"When I see on this island a city of so large a population, the greater part of which is living in ill-concealed poverty, while her fertile and beautiful fields around are uncultivated and deserted, painful reflections suggest themselves to me. If this oldest and most wholesome occupation, agriculture, is an inexhaustible source of wealth even in countries less favored for it, how much wealth might not be produced in this country. It is evident that the difference in its favor would be as great as the superiority of our fields which in fertility are unrivalled by those of any other country.
"I therefore conclude by saying that even those living in opulence have no excuse for giving themselves up to shameful inaction. When their riches exempt them from ordinary occupations, they should devote themselves to the cultivation of the mind."
This somewhat predicatory article, published in Nos. 11, 13 and 14 of thePapel Periodico, proves how seriously the men at the head of the great intellectual revival of the century's end took their task of rousing the people from their torpor. Nevertheless there is little documentary proof that much was produced by the pens of that generation.
The question of promoting agriculture seems to have preoccupied the minds of the readers at that time. In another article the author says:
"I must state that no country can progress unless it produces in abundance fruits for exportation; if it confines itself to the amount used for home consumption, it will never come out of her poverty. The beautiful climate,the fertile soil, and the location of our island offer much richer resources than any other country; but unfortunately we are hampered by various conditions, mainly in the attitude of the people themselves. There are those whose notions do not permit them to take a great part in the community of laborers; these, again, living in poverty, are afraid to change their work, thinking that what they are doing is the best for them. What is needed is to remove some of the prejudices that prevent people from seeing the advantages that would result from their devoting themselves to the cultivation of fruits for exportation.
"There is no doubt that there are in this island physical and moral causes that hamper the progress of agriculture. The physical are: the distribution of the grounds in large portions to individual owners, the condition of the roads, almost impassable during the rainy season; the lack of bridges, the lack of labor, and lastly the lack of concerted action among the inhabitants. The moral reasons are: insufficient instruction and education of the laboring people, the contempt for farming peculiar to the young, and especially the unmarried landholder; the great number of idlers and the small population."
The measures adopted by the supreme government in 1784 had checked the progress of Cuba and even diminished the population. In that epoch the allowances from Mexico decreased and the authorities of the island found themselves without means to perform the every day business of the island. The evils produced by these new decrees were set forth in a petition to the king and were amply discussed in the paper.
The excitement of the authorities and the population is reflected in various articles of thePapel Periodicowhich have not only the merit of showing the state of the public mind, but also of proving that the authorities in Cuba itself favored reforms. They certainly would not have been published had they not been approved of by Governor Las Casas. There are interesting communications in the paper from foreigners then visiting in Havana. One of them signing himself "El Europeo imparcial" gives a very appreciative account of the character and customs of the Havanese. He praises their religion, their piety, their zeal for divine worship and devotion to the saints; their courteous and affable conduct, the refinement of their leaders, the magnificence of their festivities and assemblies, both sacred and secular, their streets and promenades, where multitudes of brilliant carriages are to be seen, and other features of public life which in all countries are the first to strike the foreign visitor.
A most ambitious and for the time extraordinary work appeared in the year 1787. It was a book by D. Antonio Parra on the fish and crustacea of the island, illustrated by the Cuban Baez. It was the first scientific work written and published in Cuba, and seems for some time to have remained the only one. For until the end of the century the literature produced had a distinctly dilettante character. The fable, epigram and satire occasionally relieved the flood of lyric verse. Most of this appeared anonymously; or the writers used pseudonyms or signed their names in anagrams. P. José Rodriguez, the author of "The Prince Gardener," the comedy popular in Havana at that time, wrote under the pen-name "Capucho" a number of gay decimas, poems in the Spanish form of ten lines of eight syllables each. But none of these works were of a quality to call for serious criticismand had no merits that insured for them a permanent place in what was ultimately to be known as Cuban literature; for this literature dates only from the nineteenth century.
"Cuba; America: America; Cuba. The two names are inseparable." So we said at the beginning of our history of the "Pearl of the Antilles." So we must say at the beginning of a new era, the third, in these annals. At the beginning the connection was between Cuba and America as a whole—the continents of the western hemisphere. In this second case it is between Cuba and America in the more restricted meaning of the United States. There was a significant and to some degree influential forecast of this relationship in the preceding era, in which Cuba was in contact with England and with the rising British power in the New World. For what was afterward to become the United States was then a group of British colonies, and it was inevitable that relations begun in Colonial times should be inherited by the independent nation which succeeded. Moreover, Cuba was in those days brought to the attention of the future United States in a peculiarly forcible manner by the very important participation of Colonial troops, particularly from Connecticut and New Jersey, in that British conquest of Havana which we have recorded in preceding chapters.
It was nearly half a century, however, after the establishment of American independence that any practical interest began to be taken in Cuba by the great continental republic at the north. The purchase of the Louisiana territory and the opening to unrestrained American commerce of that Mississippi River which a former Governor of Cuba had discovered and partiallyexplored, had greatly increased American interest in the Gulf of Mexico and had created some commercial interest in the great Island which forms its southern boundary. Later the acquisition of Florida called attention acutely to the passing away of Spain's American Empire and to the concern which the United States might well feel in the disposition of its remaining fragments. Already, in the case of Florida in 1811 the United States Government had enunciated the principle that it could not permit the transfer of an adjacent colony from one European power to another. It will be pertinent to this narrative to recall that action in fuller detail. The time was in the later Napoleonic wars, when Spain was almost at the mercy of any despoiler. There was imminent danger that Spain would transfer Florida to some other power, as she had done a few years before with the Louisiana territory, or that it would be taken from her. In these circumstances the Congress of the United States on January 15, 1811, adopted a joint resolution in these terms:
"Taking into view the peculiar situation of Spain, and of her American provinces; and considering the influence which the destiny of the territory adjoining the southern border of the United States may have upon their security, tranquility and commerce,
"Be it Resolved: That the United States, under the peculiar circumstances of the existing crisis, cannot without serious inquietude see any part of the said territory pass into the hands of any foreign power; and that a due regard for their own safety compels them to provide under certain contingencies for the temporary occupation of the said territory; they at the same time declaring that the said territory shall, in their hands, remain subject to future negotiations."
Then the same Congress enacted a law authorizing the President to take possession of Florida or of any part of it, in case of any attempt of a European power other than Spain herself to occupy it, and to use to that end the Army and Navy of the United States. Nothing of the sort needed to be done at that time, though a little later, during the War of 1812, Florida was invaded by a British force and immediately thereafter was occupied by an American army.
The enunciation of this principle by Congress marked an epoch in American foreign policy, leading directly to the Monroe Doctrine a dozen years later. It also marked an epoch in the history of Cuba, especially so far as the relations of the Island with the United States were concerned. For while this declaration by Congress applied only to Florida, because Florida abutted directly upon the United States, the logic of events presently compelled it to be extended to Cuba. This was done a little more than a dozen years after the declaration concerning Florida. By this time Florida had been annexed to the United States and Mexico, Central America and South America had revolted against Spain and declared their independence. Only the "Ever Faithful Isle," as Cuba then began to be called, and Porto Rico remained to Spain of an empire which once nominally comprised the entire western hemisphere. Cuba was not like Florida geographically, abutting upon the United States. But it lay almost within sight from the coast of Florida and commanded the southern side of the Florida channel through which all American commerce from the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean must pass, and thus it was invested with peculiar importance to the United States. Nor was it lacking in importance to Great Britain and France. Those powerspossessed extensive and valuable holdings in the West Indies and they were rivals for the reversionary title to these remaining Spanish Islands, Cuba and Porto Rico. Each of them realized that whichever of them should secure those two great Islands would, by virtue of that circumstance, become the dominant power in the West Indies. Moreover they both felt sure that Spain would soon have to relinquish her hold upon them. This latter belief prevailed widely also in the United States, and was by no means absent from Cuba itself. Indeed a party was organized in Cuba in the spring of 1822, for the express purpose of seeking annexation to the United States, and in September of that year did make direct overtures to that end to the American Government. The President of the United States, James Monroe, received these overtures in a cautious and non-committal manner. He sent a confidential agent to Cuba to examine into conditions there and to report upon them, but gave no direct encouragement to the annexation movement.
At about this time the direction of the foreign affairs of Great Britain came into the hands of George Canning, a statesman of exceptional vision and aggressive patriotism, and one specially concerned with the welfare of British interests in the New World. He was well aware of the condition and trend of affairs in Cuba, and felt that the transfer of that Island from Spain to any other power would be unfortunate for British interests in the West Indies. When he learned of the Cuban overtures for annexation to the United States, therefore, in December, 1822, he brought the matter to the careful consideration of the British Cabinet and suggested to his colleagues that such annexation of Cuba by the United States would be a very serious detrimentto the British Empire in the western hemisphere. He made no diplomatic representation upon the subject either to Spain or to the United States, but he did send a considerable naval force to the coastal waters of Cuba and Porto Rico, apparently with the purpose of preventing, if necessary, any such change in the sovereignty and occupancy of those Islands.