The History of Cuba, vol. 1

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

After completing the house and living there for some time, however, De Avila deemed it politic to return to Santiago. His absence from the latter place had given rise to great dissatisfaction there and throughout all the eastern part of the island, where of course the majority of the population, of wealth and of political and other influence were still to be found. Indeed, protests had been lodged with the crown against what was described as the governor's abandonment of the lawful seat of government of the island. Suspicions of his unworthiness had already strongly arisen at court, and orders were sent for the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, which still had jurisdiction in Cuba, to investigate his conduct. The report was unfavorable, and in consequence the crown summarily appointed Antonio Chaves to succeed him as governor; directing Chaves to conduct a searching inquest into De Avila's administration without regard to the report already made by the agent of the supreme court of Hispaniola.

The sequel was the greatest public scandal that had thus far marred the history of Cuba. It was at the beginning of October, 1545, that Antonio Chaves was commissioned to be governor of Cuba, and it was at the beginning of June in the following year that he arrived at Santiago and entered upon the duties of his office. The first task was to investigate his predecessor, and this he performed with a thoroughness which seemed ferocious and which certainly suggests either some personal hatred of De Avila or a natural desire to be cruel and ruthless. He charged De Avila with having committed malfeasance of office for the furtherance of his wife's interests; with having engaged in commercial and industrial enterprises himself, to the detriment of public interests; with having established monopolies for enriching himself or his wife; with having both given and accepted bribes; with having intimidated local officials and the people; and with having, largely at the instance of his wife, neglected to enforce the order of the King for the emancipation of the natives.

It is quite probable that De Avila was guilty of most of these charges, particularly of those in which his wife was concerned. Certain it is that Antonio Chaves set about trying to prove them with a strenuous zeal which had never before been displayed. One of his first acts was to seize and search the governor's house; not merely in its public or semi-public offices but in its most private parts. The wardrobe of the governor's wife was ransacked, the furniture examined, the walls and floors sounded and even broken in quest of concealed treasure. To some of these proceedings the governor, or ex-governor, and his wife, too, attempted to offer physical resistance, but they were overpowered and bound while the search went on. Their servants, or slaves, were questioned and even, it is said, threatened with torture if they did not tell all they knew. Under such compulsion they told of bars of gold hidden underneath the floor of a country house; which were found.

Chaves went so far as to order De Avila to be chained fast to a post in the market place, where fugitive slaves had formerly been chained, and the former governor was actually subjected to this indignity, though he had not yet been convicted and sentenced by a court of justice. But this was carrying prosecution too far. It was regarded as not prosecution but persecution. There was a reaction of popular sentiment in favor of De Avila, and he was assisted to escape from his bonds and to find sanctuary in the Franciscan monastery. After a time he undertook to get away, to Spain, but was quickly detected and recaptured by Chaves. After some further controversy, Chaves discreetly agreed that De Avila might go to Spain, to defend himself if he could before the Council for the Indies; doubtless expecting that such defence would be in vain because of De Avila's offences against that Council's decrees.

So De Avila departed for Spain, with his advocates and his accusers on the same ship. Most fortunately for him, his wife also went, carrying with her an ample store of gold and gems which had escaped the search and confiscation of Chaves. Her conduct in this emergency indicates that she had a sincere devotion to her young husband, in addition, of course, to a desire to protect her own material fortune. Certain it is that she constituted herself his chief and most effective champion, freely expending in his behalf the gold which she had taken to Spain. She testified that all the property which he was accused of having unlawfully acquired was in fact hers and not his, possessed by her before she was married to him, and that if he had in any sense acquired it, it was solely through having married her; and there was no law against a governor's marrying a rich wife.

Her argument prevailed. The litigation in Spain lasted for several years, during part of which time De Avila was in prison. But in the end he was released; the heavy fines which had been levied against him were remitted; and the sentence of perpetual banishment from Cuba was revoked. Thereupon the devoted couple returned in triumph to Cuba, with a great retinue of servants, and reestablished themselves at Santiago. They held aloof from political affairs, and gave their attention to an exceedingly profitable commerce between Cuba and other West India Islands and Spain; which happy state of affairs lasted until De Avila's death, a dozen years later. He left behind him the reputation of being one of the worst of Cuban governors, not so much because of any inherent viciousness as because of his weakness of character and his complete subservience to the often sordid and sometimes unscrupulous doings of his wife.

That there was any gain for Cuba in the substitution of Antonio Chaves for Juan de Avila is scarcely, however, to be maintained. On the contrary, there was probably some loss. It was a substitution of King Stork for King Log. De Avila had been weak and passive. Chaves was strong and aggressive; as his campaign against his predecessor demonstrated. In point of morals there was probably little to choose between them. So far as enforcement of the laws concerning the natives was concerned, Chaves was worse than De Avila. For De Avila personally wished to enforce them, but was dissuaded from so doing by the influence of his wife and the almost unanimous demands of the officials and people. Chaves, on the other hand, appears to have been personally opposed to all emancipation laws, and inclined to subject the natives to ruthless slavery. Although he had savagely attacked De Avila for acquiescing in the suspension or postponement of the royal decrees, Chaves himself went even further in the same direction. He declined to enforce the laws, protested against them, and petitioned for their repeal on the ground that they would be ruinous to the material welfare of the island. The rule against employment of natives in the mines was especially obnoxious to him, and he advised the crown that unless it were repealed, together with all other such measures, the island would soon be "possessed of the devil."

Seeing that Chaves was now doing the very thing that he had condemned his predecessor for doing, the King was disgusted with him, and sent him the sharpest kind of a reprimand, reminding him of his gross inconsistency and bidding him to enforce the law without further ado. Chaves pretended to obey. In fact, he promptly replied that he was obeying. But he obeyed only in pretence. He did not scruple to declare—in Cuba—that he was opposed to giving the natives their freedom. He did not consider them fit for it. Why? Because they were not Christians, and if set free they would not become Christians, and therefore would infallibly be damned eternally. Therefore to save their souls from hell fire, their bodies must be enslaved, so that they could find salvation through being physically compelled to conform with the external practices of Christianity. Particularly necessary was it, he argued, for this system of spiritual salvation through corporeal bondage to prevail in the provinces of Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus and Puerto del Principe, because they had no agricultural interests but were dependent upon mining, and if they could not compel the Indians to work in the mines, they would be ruined.

This logic, more ingenious than ingenuous, did not favorably impress the King, nor was he better pleased with Chaves's proposal that the Indians should be made free in name only, and that while traffic in them as chattels should be forbidden, they should in fact remain in involuntary domestic servitude. Another sharp reprimand was accordingly sent to Chaves, with an intimation that something worse might follow; to which warning the governor was blind and deaf. Accordingly, the blow soon fell.

We have hitherto heard much of Lopez Hurtado, the crabbed, surly and cantankerous old royal treasurer, with his impregnable honesty. It was quite impossible that he should countenance even passively such conduct as that of Chaves. So at the end of 1548 he sent to the King an appalling indictment of the governor, charging him with all manner of public crimes and private vices. He declared that Chaves was enriching himself at the expense of the people, and that he was neglecting public business for private enterprises, that he was permitting his subordinates to practice extortion and oppression, that he was ill-treating and persecuting honest men, and that he was corrupting the women of the island; all of which was probably true.