“HER WORLD IS CONTAINED IN THE TOWN OF WHICH SHE IS RESIDENT.”
black and mulatto to call themselves “cubanos” could hardly be disputed in a country which owes its freedom in so great a degree to their efforts.
The lowest Cuban of the country will welcome you with dignified self-possession to the hut in which his naked children are tumbling about among the pigs and the chickens. You will have no difficulty in realizing that you may not pity nor patronize him, however miserable his condition may appear to be. He will be glad to do you a service for pay, and will overcharge you if you permit, but you can not offer him a gratuity without risk of offence. His air of independence is not without a basis of fact for its justification. His simple needs are supplied with little labor. He works when he wants to, and loafs when he pleases.
The guajiro, or white peasant of Cuba, is first cousin to the gibaro of Puerto Rico, whom I have described in a former volume.[2] They are much alike in character and in manner of living, but the former is the better man. He has not had to contend against the hookworm, which has played havoc with the Puerto Rican campesino, and he has gained something in fibre and backbone from his hard experience as combatant or reconcentrado in the rebellions of late years.
The ancestors of the guajiro came mainly from Catalonia and Andalusia, and were a good, hardy stock. 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 ramshackle bohio, 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.
The guajiros are handsome, manly fellows. While they have frequently become tinged with African blood, a majority probably have maintained the purity of their origin, and this is conspicuously the case with the peasantry about Cienfuegos. They speak a patois which is a mixture of Spanish and negro dialect, picked up from the blacks, with whom their intercourse has always been more or less close, and with whom they live on the best of terms.
The guajiro is totally lacking ambition and his chief desire is to be left alone to live his life in his own way. If he is frugal, it is from necessity. Of thrift he has no understanding. What he earns to-day he carelessly spends to-morrow. Indeed he knows no reason for earning except to spend. It would be strange if his characteristics were otherwise. He has never had any opportunity to improve his condition, nor any incentive to accumulate property. He has become accustomed to living from hand to mouth with indifferent regard to the future. He works when he must and ceases as soon as he may. In that respect he is merely giving full play to an inclination that is strong in all of us.
The guajiro lives chiefly on bananas and other fruit. Aside from an occasional iguana, or jutea, pork is the only meat he eats. This, contrary to our idea of the fitness of things in the tropics, is a frequent and favorite dish with all classes of Cubans. He sometimes varies his bill of fare with a fish or a bull-frog.
The one trait of his Spanish forefathers which the guajiro retains in undiminished strength, is love of gambling. He is supported through a week of loathsome labor by the prospect of wagering his wages at the cock-pit or bull-ring on Sunday. He enjoys music and dancing with the whole-hearted delight of a child. As most of the observances of the Church have something of a gala character they attract him, and he finds a pious excuse for attending them. Weddings, christenings, funerals, are so many holidays in which it is a religious duty to take part. Of course all the fiestas are holy days and if he worked on all the days which are in no manner signalized by the Church, he would hardly labor half the time.