Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

"The reconcentrados are about all dead, and the few living are too weak to soon recover, even if fed. The attempts to feed them are, necessarily, largely failures, and must continue to be until some provision can be made to organize and remove the helpless, broken families from congested places, where it is impossible to house them comfortably, and place them in homes in the country districts. These people are still dying under our eyes. The food we give them they are not strong enough to eat, save the rice. Some of my officers were recently shown at San Jose de las Lajas, this province, one coffin (kept for convenience on a hand-cart) that had recently done duty in the burial of about five thousand Cubans. But instances need not be given when it is known that above seven hundred thousand Cuban non-combatants have been killed or have died of starvation in the past two or three years, many of them not buried, but their bones picked by the buzzards. The island is a charnel-house of dead. Every graveyard has piles of exposed human bones, and the earth has been strewn with them outside of cities and towns. There were many killed who were not actual insurgents, but Cubans, women and children included. The deaths left broken families; many orphans, who do not know who their parents were. Many owners of land and their entire families and friends have been killed or died, and there is no one to claim the land. This in some of the richest districts is quite the rule.

"Outside of a little circle about Havana, the plantations in general have been destroyed, including houses and other buildings, fruit trees, banana plants, cane fields, farm implements, stock, etc., and the wells filled up, first being polluted by throwing dead bodies of Cubans and animals in them.

"The soil is marvellously rich. It shows no signs of exhaustion by cultivation, and I think it never will. Tobacco, sugar-cane, pineapples, oranges, bananas, plantain, etc., to say nothing of corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, onions, beans, grasses, etc., will grow, if given the slightest chance. Two, three, and as high as four crops can easily be grown in one year. You will say, Why do not the people grow them? They have no bread to eat while they labor, nor have they any oxen or mules,—horses are out of the question and not suitable to till land here,—or seed, or implements, or anything. They die in the midst of the most extraordinary riches.

"Owners of much of the land in the interior districts, who have survived, are as helpless as the poorest laborers.

"The exceptions are confined to remote little valleys, and mountain places where the insurgents held constant control, and there too they are poor, having in the past, and still, to maintain the Cuban soldiers, regular and irregular.

"Only provisions for food for a short time and means to get animals, farm implements, etc., will end the present conditions and put the people of the island on the road to prosperity. Spasmodic issues of army rations give only temporary relief and tend to encourage idleness.

"Another race of people might come, but they could not soon get titles to lands, if ever.

"There is no civil government here, not even in form. Gomez and his insurgent followers are still in their mountain fastnesses, and whatever of organizations they have are irregular, and military. They are biding their time for something, not yet fully developed.

"Our government here is military, disguise it as we may. If it were anything else, it would soon fail. All attempts at a hermaphroditical government here must also fail, as it has everywhere. It must be all American or all Cuban. The Spaniards here, though they predominate in the principal cities, do not yet count as a factor, although they are for annexation; this to save their estates and for personal safety. Any attempts to build up a Cuban government by the use of a few Cubans and Spaniards in Havana and other cities, no matter what their character for intelligence and peaceableness may be, must end in disaster, and a little later, in a wild repetition of war and bloodshed. Those who organized and maintained, through the dreadful years of the past, the insurrection against Spanish power and suffered so much in their estates and families, are going to have a say in the future control of this island, and if it is to be annexed to the United States, they will have to be consulted or a bloody guerilla war will ensue. They are now exhausted, and tired and sick of war, but they are used to it, and familiar with death, and already they are preparing and calculating on a war much easier for them to wage against the United States than against Spain, as the United States is not expected to be so barbarous in the treatment of their remaining women and children; and such people can reasonably calculate on help from sympathizers, adventurers, etc., of other countries, especially South American, and people of kindred races and instincts. The cry of freedom and liberty is always seductive and brings friends.

"The Cuban people now being recognized here, with rare exceptions, had nothing to do with maintaining the insurrection, but remained within the cities and lines of the Spanish army, pretending to be loyal to Spain, if they were not so in fact. They were too cowardly to fight, and too avaricious to render material aid to those in the field. All such are under the ban of suspicion in the eyes of the real Cuban insurgents, no matter what their pretensions may be. Any government organized with such persons at the head will, sooner or later, be overthrown in blood, if not otherwise. The Cubans, like other people, desire offices, and the war-patriots of Cuba are no exceptions, and will fight for power, and when the test comes the mass of Cubans in and out of the cities will be with the real insurgent leaders. Already the latter are resolving not to take office until they are recognized and given a full share of power.