XXII
Cuba—Her Fertile Sugar Lands—Matanzas by the Sea
Havana, Cuba,
December 27th.
A cup of chocolate, a roll, a pat of guava paste, such was my desayuno, my breakfast. Señor G——, Superintendent of Civic Training in the Schools of Cuba, had also had his morning coffee, and was awaiting me at the broad portal of the hotel. We call a cocha, bade the cochero drive us to the ferry on the bay, and were soon rattling through Havana’s narrow, rough-paved streets. It was early, not yet six o’clock. But the people of the tropics rise betimes and the busy life of the day was well begun. We could look right into the courtyards, and even into the living rooms of the houses, so close did our cocha wheel to the open doorways and to the wide-lifted curtains of the glassless windows. A young mother looked curiously through the iron bars of a window front at the Americanos. She held her laughing baby daughter in her arms. A pair of slippered feet, a coral necklace, a friendly smile, and it was clothed for the day. A family sat at a long table, each sipping the clear black coffee. The mother was smoking a huge black cigar, the father a cigar of more moderate size, the children were all smoking cigarettes. Scantily clad peddlers were crying their goods, one his back piled high with tinware. Women were carrying on their heads big baskets of fruit. An ancient jet-black African woman trudged along with a squealing shoat, tied by the four legs and slung to her shoulder. A drove of she-donkeys were standing before an open doorway; their owner was milking one of them, the buyer was standing near so as to be sure that the morning’s milk should be the real thing. The shops, however, were not yet open. It was too early for buyers. But the awnings were being spread over the streets, so as to be ready for the sun when it should wax hot.
As we approached the neighborhood of the bay, the press of footfarers in the streets increased. The narrow sidewalks and even the street itself were filled with men and women moving toward the ferry. Our cochero cracked his whip and hallooed at the crowd, and they fled out of the way, quite good-naturedly. I was trying to light my cigar, but the motion of the vehicle blew out the match. I had just struck a third. A woman on the sidewalk saw my fix. She called to the cochero and pointed to me. He stopped his horse upon its haunches. He waited until my cigar was alight, then he drove on. Such is the custom in a city where every man and woman smokes and El Segaro is the King.
At the long, low-roofed ferry house there was a great crowd, an uncommon press. We paid our cochero a peseta (twenty cents), dismissed him and strode among the thick of the throng.
In its midst were a group of gentlemen in white panama hats and white linen clothes. One of them was short and stout with gray mustachios, pointed goatee and flowing gray hair. It was General Masso, the candidate of the Massoista Party for President. I had met him the night when he made his great speech to his cheering followers in front of the Hotel Pasaje, and told them all to refrain from voting when the day for elections should arrive, “for were not all the Palmaistas scoundrels and thieves and would-be usurpers of power, backed, too, by Yankee bayonets! What use was it to vote or try to vote against such combinations for wrong and ill? No! let the Massoistas remain at home, and by the smallness of the vote cast let the world see that the real strength of the Cuban people was not with Palma, the puppet of American power, but with the real people of Cuba, whose day would in the future surely come!” And had not the assembled multitude filled the air with shouts of “Bravo! Viva Masso!” With him was Señor Hernandez, candidate for the Vice-presidency of the Massoista Party, who had also stood on a pile of boxes and stirred the excited multitude with eloquence even more intemperate. And there was also Señor Gualberto Gomez, the greatest orator of Cuba, short, stout, gray-haired, with gold spectacles—a Spanish mulatto, the real leader of the great, turbulent, Afro-Spanish race; the powerful backer of the Massoistas, who it is said, had welded the third of Cuba’s Negro-Spanish population into a solid political machine, bounden together with the secret ties of occult brotherhood. His impetuous eloquence it was which swept the Constitutional Convention, and carried the plank for universal suffrage triumphantly to victory against predetermined plans of the Conservative leaders. He would now have his following hold the balance of power in Cuba, and so rule the Island as does his race in Hayti and San Domingo! For the present, he would use the Massoistas and their pro-Spanish propaganda, later he would throw aside the Spanish following and himself rule Cuba through the power of his organized blacks. Young Garcia was there, too, the son of the great leader, discontented with the minor rôle Palma and the Americans have permitted him to play, and anxious for a Cuba wholly free from the interference of the American as well as the Spaniard. Yes, these leaders were all there, and the great square before the ferry house was packed with a cheering multitude to bid them good-bye, and Masso “God speed” on his journey to his plantation home. When I met these gentlemen before, I enjoyed free and frank talk with them, and they had made no scruple in voicing to me their policies and demands:—their determination to rule or ruin; their policy to refrain from voting and then later rise in armed revolt. This morning they were all gathered here to take a last farewell of their really loved chief, Masso, a fine old patriot with a famous war record, whom many now think that men more cunning than himself are using for their own selfish ends.
