All the country people in the four western provinces, about 400,000 in number, remaining outside the fortified towns when Weyler’s order was made, were driven into these towns, and these are the reconcentrados. They were the peasantry, many of them farmers, some land-owners, others renting lands and owning more or less stock, others working on estates and cultivating small patches, and even a small patch in that fruitful clime will support a family.
It is but fair to say that the normal condition of these people was very different from that which prevails in this country. Their standard of comfort and prosperity was not high, measured by our own, but according to their standards and requirements, their conditions of life were satisfactory.
They lived mostly in cabins made of palm or in wooden houses. Some of them had houses of stone, the blackened walls of which are all that remains to show that the country was ever inhabited.
The first clause of Weyler’s order reads as follows:
“I order and command:
“First—All the inhabitants of the country now outside of the line of fortifications of the towns shall within the period of eight days concentrate themselves in the town so occupied by the troops. Any individual who after the expiration of this period is found in the uninhabited parts will be considered a rebel and tried as such.”
The other three sections forbid the transportation of provisions from one town to another without permission of the military authority, direct the owners of cattle to bring them into the towns, prescribe that the eight days shall be counted from the publication of the proclamation to the head town of the municipal districts, and state that if news is furnished of the enemy which can be made use of it will serve as a “recommendation.”
Many doubtless did not learn of this order. Others failed to grasp its terrible meaning. Its execution was left largely to the guerillas to drive in all that had not obeyed, and I was informed that in many cases a torch was applied to their homes with no notice, and the inmates fled with such clothing as they might have on, their stock and their belongings being appropriated by the guerillas.
When they reached the town they were allowed to build huts of palm leaves in the suburbs and vacant places within the trochas, and were left to live if they could. Their huts are about ten by fifteen feet in size, and for want of space are usually crowded together very closely. They have no floor but the ground, and no furniture, and after a year’s wear but little clothing, except such stray substitutes as they can extemporize.
With large families or with more than one in this little space, the commonest sanitary provisions are impossible. Conditions are unmentionable in this respect.