As to this dictum, the Cuban negro may eventually do his fair share toward the industrial development of the Island, but it can only be as a result of a considerable change in his habits and a greatly increased degree of efficiency. At present, extensive employers of labor pronounce him inefficient, unreliable, and difficult of control. It is not to his credit that they should import labor at great trouble and expense in preference to employing him. If capitalists have ceased to be apprehensive regarding the negro of Cuba, which is by no means certain,—it is not because he has suddenly ceased to have a desire for disturbance, with its attendant opportunities for loot, but because they have greater confidence in the ability and inclination of the authorities to suppress outbreaks with promptness, born of the ever-present fear of American intervention, or a demand on the part of foreign property interests for some share in the administration of affairs.
Though individuality is not one of the negro characteristics, the perpetuation of racial traits and temperament are pronouncedly characteristic wherever they may be found and under whatever conditions. The negro may be three centuries removed from his transplanted ancestor, he may have more than one strain of white blood in his composition, he may have adopted the most approved customs of the country in which he lives, and may be to all outward appearances the most highly civilized of beings, but for all that African nature is strong in him. Moreover its promptings are not repressed from principle, but from motives of self-interest. Given the opportunity to indulge them without fear of consequences, and he will follow his inclinations unrestrainedly. For that reason one-third of Cuba’s population must be as great a source of anxiety as is the colored element of our southern States. This is not to say that there are any good grounds for the sometimes expressed fear that Cuba may become a second Haiti, controlled by the blacks, but is intended to convey the belief, that in the negroes of the Island there is a constantly present source of possible trouble.
The majority of Cuban negroes are descendants of slaves imported during the past century, but a large number, like the maroons of Jamaica, come from a stock which accompanied the earliest Spanish adventurers and shared their hardships and dangers in a companionship that often approached a condition of friendship and equality. Such a one was Estavan, the negro who, with Cabeza de Vaca, crossed the continent of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to California, in the years between 1528 and 1536. From this stock sprang the free mulattoes of the Antonio Maceo type, a class superior to any that our colored population contains.
Although emancipated at a later date, the Cuban negroes are in general more manly and independent than those of the United States. This is due to the social and the political recognition accorded them, but also to the previous conditions of their servitude. Before the abolition of slavery they were granted freedom of marriage, the right of acquiring property, the privilege of purchasing their release by labor, and license to seek a new master at their option.
The negro of Cuba is much more happy and content than his brother in America. The burdens of life do not press so heavily on him. He has greater opportunity of enjoyment of the three conditions most desirable to the man of African descent, warmth, indolence, and a full stomach. The climate and the physical nature of the country are entirely to his liking. He thrives in Cuba and is more robust than the white native, as well as more prolific, which is saying a great deal. He and his women and children withstood the stress and strain of the reconcentration better than did the guajiro class.
I am fully aware that these statements seem to be contradicted by the census returns, which show a marked diminution of the colored population during the past half century. In the last United States report this is accounted for by “the inability of the colored race to hold its own in competition with the whites.” This does not seem to be sufficient explanation, especially as there has been no competition to speak of between the whites and the blacks in Cuba. Without pretending to any precise knowledge on the subject, I will hazard the suggestion that the apparent discrepancy may be due to the defects in the censuses under Spain, which were notoriously inaccurate, to the latter day tendency of mulattoes to return themselves as “whites,” and to the fact that the colored portion of the population has borne more than its proportional share of the brunt of the later revolutions. Be that as it may, it will be difficult for any one who is familiar with the lives and conditions of the natives of Cuba to believe that “the man of color” is in any but a favorable and congenial environment.
The dance is the favorite amusement of the rural population. As the whites practise it, it is a monotonous movement to monotonous music, entirely lacking the grace and variety of the Spanish dances. The negroes merely writhe and wriggle to the slow beat of a drum. There is always a suggestion of obscenity present, and sometimes religious frenzy transforms the performance from the ludicrous to the weird. On such occasions the dancers and the onlookers chant invocations to the saints in an African dialect.
Certain religio-social societies, called cabildos, appear to have no other purpose than the conduct of these ceremonies. The cabildos are supposed to be the only survival of the nañigo clans, which the authorities claim to have suppressed, although it is very doubtful whether the organizations have been broken up. The nañigos practised all manner of sinister mysteries, witchcraft, voodooism, and the rest, besides active participation in underground politics. No longer ago than the time of the Provisional Administration some of their members were convicted of killing and cutting up two white children in the performance of their secret rites. Roman Catholicism and African demon-worship have become grotesquely mixed in the ceremonies of the negro secret societies. Goats and fowls are sacrificed to the saints of the Church; the Holy Mother is invoked in barbaric terms, accompanied by a symbolism that originated in the wilds of Africa.
Until comparatively recently the sixth of January was observed as “All King’s Day,” when the negroes held high carnival all over the Island. They took possession of Habana