He who comes to Cuba with the rigid American conception of the gulf separating the African and the Aryan races will find our ward little inclined to follow our lead in that particular matter. In the Havana custom-house his belongings will be examined by a black man. The finest statue in Cuba is that of the negro general, Macéo; had he lived he would in all probability have been the island’s first president. One soon becomes accustomed to seeing negroes slap white men on the back with a familiar “Hello, Jim,” and be received by an effusive handshake. Sextets gathered for a little banquet at café tables frequently show as many gradations of color, from a native Spaniard to a full African, repulsive perhaps for his diamond rings and over-imitation of Parisian manners, and are served by obsequious white waiters. The majority of Cuban negroes, however, seem less objectionable than those in the lands where the color-line is closely drawn. Accustomed to being treated as equals, many of them have developed a self-respect and a gentlemanliness rare among our own blacks, or even among our working class of Caucasian blood. They have, too, a pride in personal appearance scarcely inferior to that of the sometimes over-dressed white Cubans. Mark Twain once stated that there is much to be said for black or brown as the best tint for human complexions; one is often reminded of the remark in noting how handsome some of these black Cuban dandies look under their stiff straw hats.
Negroes, of course, are by no means in the majority in the largest of the Antilles, though most Cubans probably have African blood in their veins. In the Oriente may still be found traces of the Siboney Indians. Immigrants from all the varied provinces of Spain, African slaves, Chinese coolies, creoles from Haiti, Louisiana, and Florida, and a scattering of many other races have mingled together for generations; and from this blending of east and west, north and south, tempered by the tropical climate, emerges the Cuban. To a certain extent all these types have kept their racial characteristics, but they are only lost under the overwhelming influence of what may be called the national Cuban character, which varies little from that of all Latin-Americans. Like all nations, the islanders have their good and their bad points. The simple amenities of life are more thoroughly cultivated than in our own quick-spoken land. Rudeness is rare; courtesy is wide-spread among all classes. One would scarcely expect to see duplicated in our large cities the action of a mulatto traffic policeman stationed on the busiest corner of Havana’s plaza, who waited for a lull in the task assigned him to cross the street and, raising his cap, corrected a direction he had given me a moment before. I have heard a woman tourist who failed to understand one of these immaculate guardians remark petulantly to her companions, “You’d think they’d make them learn English, wouldn’t you?” Our native tongue is often useless in Cuba, to be sure; but how would it be if they, whoever they are, required travelers to learn Spanish before entering a Spanish-speaking country? The general courtesy is sometimes tempered by unintentional lapses from what we understand by that word; Cubans call one another, for instance, and try to call Americans, by a hissing “P-s-t,” which is not customary in our own good society. They are emotional and excitable; their necessity for gesticulation frequently requires them to put down a telephone receiver in order to use both hands; they have little concentration of attention, and are much given to generalizing from superficial appearances to save themselves the labor of going to the bottom of things. Of quick intelligence, they learn with facility when there is anything to be gained by learning, but memory rather than thought is their dominant faculty. This last is probably due to the antiquated methods of the schools, that make the child a mere parrot and never develop his powers of judgment and comparison, which often remain inactive and dormant throughout life.
His politeness has its natural counterpart of insincerity until, in the perhaps too harsh words of one of his own people, “we cultivate falsehood with a facility which becomes prodigious.” This insincerity is perhaps natural in a society that lived for centuries under constant suspicion of infidelity and surrounded by an atmosphere of distrust on the part of the Spanish rulers. Pride, which often reaches the height of a virtue among the Spaniards, is apt to degenerate in the Cuban to mere vanity, making him more susceptible to flattery than to reason. “Our dominating nervous temperament,” says the native critic quoted above, “has contributed to make us irritable, sometimes insufferable. On account of this sensitiveness we have more sensations than ideas, more imagination than understanding, with the result that when we turn our attention to anything the pretty is apt to have more importance than the true or useful. We are better path-followers than originators; we prefer to triumph by astuteness rather than by reason; we are prodigal, and for that reason the thirst for riches is our dominant characteristic. The rascality of our priests, largely from Spain, has made the average Cuban, if not an atheist, at least a skeptic and indifferent in religious matters.”
Americans who have lived in Mexico, of whom there are many now in Cuba, all make comparisons unfavorable to the Cubans. We did not meet one of them who was not longing for the day when they, men and women alike, could return to the land of weekly revolutions. “I hear,” said a visitor from the North, “that the Cubans are rather slippery in business.” “Say rather,” replied an old American resident, “that they are good business men, with the accent on the business.” This verdict seems to be almost unanimous. The Cuban has a habit of beating himself on the chest and shouting about his honor at the very moment when both he and his hearers know he is lying. It is natural, perhaps, that the heat of the tropics should breed hatred for work and cause men to become tricky instead. But this trickery is less conspicuous in business than in politics. The war gave Cuba an enormous commercial impulse, yet there are comparatively few Cubans in commerce. Parents prefer that their sons adopt professions or enter government service. A Cuban congressman ended his appeal for a bill authorizing the government to send a hundred youths abroad each year to study commerce with, “Those who do not succeed in business can become government agents and consuls.” The notion of foisting the failures upon the state awakened not a titter of surprise among his hearers; they had long been used to that custom under Spanish rule.
The Cubans are always discussing politics, though the great majority of them have no voice whatever in the government. To an even greater extent than with us the best men shun political office. The few of this class who enter politics soon abandon it in disgust and to an ignorant and avaricious clique are left the spoils. More than one representative has learned to sign his name after being elected. One admitted in public debate that he thought the Amazon was in Europe; another scoffed at the idea that Cuba was entirely surrounded by water. Congressmen go to their sessions armed, and revolvers are frequently drawn during some heated controversy. Some of them have been known to take advantage of the immunity from arrest to refuse to pay their rent and to make attacks upon women. A recent president was elected on a platform of cock-fighting, a national lottery, and jai alai, this last being the Basque game of pelota, at which gambling flourishes at its best. The president now in power was apparently all that a president should be during the first few months of his term; to-day only those on whom he has showered favors have a good word for him. “The Liberal who ruled before him was a grafter,” say natives and foreign residents alike, “but at least he let other people get theirs, while this man grabs everything for himself. In other words he is as Conservative as the other was Liberal.” If one is to believe local opinion, Cuba has had but two honest and efficient rulers since her independence, some say in her history,—her first elected president and her first American military governor. Love for the latter is almost universal; one frequently hears the assertion that, if he could run and honest elections could be held, he would be elected president of Cuba by an overwhelming majority, notwithstanding that the average Cuban does not like the average American.
Graft, known in Cuba as “chivo,” is hereditary in the chief of the West Indies. In olden days Spain looked upon Cuba as a legitimate source of quick and easy gain. Royal grants were bestowed upon favorites; titles and positions were created as a means of securing all the profit possible. The few years of American rule did little to eradicate this point of view, and the old idea still persists. Political positions are treated quite frankly as opportunities for amassing private fortunes, and the man in public life who does not take complete advantage of his position is openly rated a fool. The reign of “chivo” is supreme through all the grades of officialdom; it is not necessary to seek examples, they are constantly thrusting themselves upon the attention.
Investigation has shown that half the owners of private automobiles and many liquor dealers have paid no licenses, but have “fixed it up” with the inspectors. During a recent hurricane the new sea-wall along the Malecón in Havana was totally wrecked, though the portion built during American rule suffered scarcely any damage. The millionaire Spanish contractor had saved on cement by giving part of the sum which should have been spent for it to those whose business it was to pass upon his work. The director of the national lottery made enough in four years to buy one of the largest sugar centrals on the island, and his position, you may be sure, did not come to him gratis. A real estate company offered to furnish the oil and tarvia if the government of Havana would pave the streets of a new suburb; one fourth of the material was actually used for that purpose and the rest was sold by the public officials. The church is not behindhand in the pursuit of “chivo.” Priests demand fabulous sums for marrying, and advise the guajiros and laboring classes who cannot pay for the ceremony to go without, as thousands of families have done, many of them having accepted it years later as Christmas presents to themselves and their children from American employers. During the recent census conservative enumerators failed to enroll liberal citizens, thereby depriving them of the right to vote; and if the tables had been turned, the only difference would have been that the other party would have lost their ballots. During the war a chain was lowered each evening across the mouth of Havana harbor as a protection against submarines; an English captain who knew nothing of the new rule against entering the port at night was arrested by a Cuban naval officer and then told that the matter could be “fixed up” for a twenty-dollar bill.
“Concessions” and “permits” are the chief aids of the “chivo”-seeker. Each morning six men who have a “concession” netting them a neat little sum for gathering the rubbish floating on the water row across the harbor and back without touching the acres of flotsam, and hurry away to their private jobs early in the day. Havana has several new concrete piers, but they are not used because of “concessions” to the owners of tumbledown wharves. The same is true of a new garbage incinerator; lighterage “concessions” cost fortunes in time and money to ships entering the harbor. Nothing can be built in Cuba without a permit. The man who wishes to erect a house in Havana draws up his plans and submits them to the city architects. As often as he comes to get them, he is informed that “the man who works on these matters is not here now, but”—and if he takes the statement at par, the plans are placed at the bottom of the pile again as he leaves; but if he inadvertently slips a greenback of large denomination among them, the permit is forthcoming within twenty-four hours. One must have a permit to make the slightest alterations in house or office. An American who had secured a permission to paint his house was threatened with arrest for adding a second coat without another permit, and forced to “fix it up.” When he tried to erect a fence he found that it could not be constructed of wood, but ten dollars made the inspector so blind that one erected of that material is represented on the city maps as made of cement and iron. The man who examines your baggage upon arrival in Havana will not pass it for hours or even days unless you accept his offer to have it transported to your hotel by draymen of his choosing and at his price, and so on, through all the vicissitudes of life and every branch of daily intercourse. Like the lianas and parasites which cling to the trees of Cuban forests, the productive class of the nation is everywhere supporting these useless hangers-on; and like those giants of the vegetable world the fertility of the island makes it strong enough to bear the burden without any serious impairment of its health and prosperity.
CHAPTER V
UNDER THE PALM-TREE OF HAITI
We sailed away from Cuba on the Haitian Navy. It happened that the fleet in question put into Guantánamo Bay to have something done to her alleged engine at a time which happily coincided with our own arrival at the eastern end of the island. Otherwise there is no telling when or how we should have made our second jump down the stepping-stones of the West Indies, for Cuba and Haiti do not seem to be particularly neighborly.