The History of Cuba, vol. 1

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

CHAPTER XX

The regularly appointed successor of Governor Carreño was another soldier, to wit, Captain Gabriel de Luzan. He was an army veteran who had performed distinguished service in the Netherlands and elsewhere and was personally known to and greatly favored by the King. He was selected for the governorship and was informed of the appointment in the early fall of 1579, a few weeks before the malodorous Torres was appointed by the Court of Hispaniola. It was intended, however, that he should not actually take office until the expiration of the full term for which Carreño had been appointed, and he accordingly had much time to attend to his affairs in Spain and elsewhere before removing to Havana. His duties were not to begin until 1581. But he removed to Cuba in the fall of 1580 while Torres was being investigated. There came to Cuba with him Juan Ceballos, who had been selected for Lieutenant-Governor. Both of these officials were to receive the same salaries that their predecessors had received, although Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, vigorously protested that their salaries should be reduced by one-half.

Governor Luzan was very soon involved in numerous controversies, largely over questions of dignity and precedents among insular officials. Something of the spirit of the formal Spanish Court appears to have permeated Cuba at this time, and the insular and municipal officials became as great sticklers for forms and ceremonies and for recognition of their comparative ranks as any of the Grandees at Seville or Madrid. Thus Jorge de Balza, Adjutant General of the Royal Forces in the Island, insisted upon the privilege of wearing his sword at meetings of the municipal council of Havana, of which he was ex officio a member, although it was a penal offense for anyone else, even the Governor himself, to wear a sword or dagger in that assembly. Another controversy arose, as might confidently be assumed, over La Fuerza. The office of captain or commander of that fortress paid a salary of 300 ducats, on which account several former governors had appointed themselves to the place and had drawn that salary for themselves. Governor Carreño regarded this practice as reprehensible. It was not right, he said, for the Governor to hold another office and to draw a second salary. Therefore, he appointed his own son, a lad just in his teens, to be Captain of La Fuerza and to draw the salary. Whether the boy had the spending of the money himself or dutifully handed it over to his father is not a matter of record.

Governor Luzan stopped this nonsense and put a real soldier at the head of the Fort and then quarreled with him. This commander was Captain Melchior Sarto de Arana, an expert soldier who had been Luzan's comrade in arms in the wars of Spain, in the Netherlands and in Italy. He and his family moved into that upper story of La Fuerza which Carreño had insisted upon building, regarding it as the most desirable place of residence in Havana. The unhappy garrison in the lower part of the building was subject to the dampness which there prevailed, to the great detriment of health. Indeed conditions were so bad that their weapons became almost ruined with rust and it was almost impossible to keep gunpowder in condition for use. The Governor appears to have envied Captain Arana his quarters in the Fort, but he was not able to displace him, and so he turned his own attention to completing the Custom House for his own use. Governor Torres had stopped all work upon this latter building because of some uncertainty concerning the site, and had appropriated to his own use some of the funds which had been provided for completing it. But Luzan secured the necessary funds, hurried the work of construction and soon moved in to the fine new quarters which that building provided.

This gave great umbrage to the royal accountant of the Island, one Pedro de Arana, who does not appear to have been related, unless very remotely, to the Commander of the Fort. He declared that the Governor had no right to live in the Custom House, that the King's money had not been appropriated for any such purpose. It was true, he admitted, that a part of the Custom House building had been designed for an official residence. But it was not for the Governor, but for one of the royal officials. Now as Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, had a fine house of his own, the meaning of this suggestion was obvious. The royal accountant wanted the place for himself. He indeed went so far as to order the Governor, in the King's name, to vacate the building. But he did not venture to move in and take possession himself, and so the Governor presently returned and remained. In retaliation Luzan personally charged Pedro de Arana with various illegal acts, particularly in violating the law which forbade royal officials to encourage any trade. He declared that Arana was the owner, or half owner, of a vessel trading between Cuba and Yucatan, a vessel which was built to be chiefly used for smuggling. He also said that Arana was organizing an expedition to seek and raise sunken treasure ships along the coast and was planning to establish cattle ranches in Bermuda. On the strength of these charges, which were probably true, he began a searching investigation into Arana's affairs, raided his house and ordered him to be arrested by his namesake and confined in a cell in La Fuerza. To this, however, Captain Melchior de Arana demurred. It was not that he did not regard the accountant as worthy of arrest. But he held that it was beneath his dignity to arrest a mere civilian and beneath the dignity of the Fort to serve as a prison for him. The arrest, he said, should be made by the sheriff, and the prisoner should be confined in the civil jail. At this the Governor was furious and he retaliated by sending the sheriff to arrest Captain Melchior de Arana and to confine him not in the military fortress but in the civil jail. A little later, however, he had the Captain transferred to a cell in La Fuerza. Then he made his brother-in-law, Juan de Ferrer, Captain of the Fort in Melchior's place.

In his strenuous dealings with the royal accountant the Governor appears merely to have anticipated the King himself. At any rate, a very little while after he had begun his investigation of Pedro de Arana the instructions came to him from Madrid that he should pursue precisely that course. This naturally encouraged him to renewed zeal in the prosecution. And the result was that in March, 1582, he removed Arana from the office of royal accountant and appointed Manuel Diaz temporarily to fill his place. At this Arana made his way to Hispaniola, there to appeal to the Supreme Court against the Governor. He did more than appeal. He made grave charges against Luzon and got the court to order an investigation. The court appointed as chief inquisitor into Luzan's affairs Garcia de Torquemada, who went to Cuba in April, 1583, taking Arana along with him. Diaz made no attempt to maintain his title to the office, but, regarding discretion as the better part of valor, left Havana and repaired to his plantation in the Far West. But the Governor and also Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, who sided with him against Arana, stood their ground.

In the meantime, early in 1582, the King became dissatisfied with the fast and loose game which was being played at Havana, and chiefly at La Fuerza, and determined to take matters into his own hand. He did so by appointing a Captain-General to be Commander of the Fortress, who should be independent of the Governor of Cuba. This involved some awkward complications. The Governor, Luzan, had been regularly commissioned as Captain-General as well as Governor. And the King naturally hesitated for a time over the question of appointing another man to the same place. He would have preferred that the Governor and Captain-General should have continued to be one and the same man. But that seemed no longer practicable, unless indeed he should dismiss Luzan altogether, which he was not yet prepared to do. He therefore consulted with the Council for the Indies, and in conjunction with that body finally decided to make a new appointment. Luzan was to continue to bear the nominal title of Captain-General, so as to give him rank comparable with that of the military and naval commanders who might visit Havana with the fleets of Spain. But the same title with real authority over the fortifications and defenses of Havana, and indeed a measure of authority over the fortifications and defenses of the entire Island, was to be given to another man.

The man selected for the new Captain-Generalship was a practical soldier of experience named Diego Hernandez de Quiñones. He took office in July, 1582, and found La Fuerza substantially complete, save for the construction of a moat, and containing a garrison of 120 men, the majority of whom were always more or less sick because of the dampness and unsanitary conditions of the place. The fortress had been completed, however, in some respects in a highly unsatisfactory way. Thus there was no stairway inside the building connecting the lower and upper stories. There was a stairway on the outside of the building, constructed of wood and it was obvious that in case of attack that stairway might easily be destroyed by cannon shot and thus communications between the two stories of the fortress be cut off. The moat had not yet been constructed, and numerous wooden and even some masonry houses had been constructed close to the fort, which might give sheltered approach to an attacking party.

The King and the Council obviously apprehended some friction between the Governor and the newly appointed Captain-General, and they therefore prepared an elaborate code of rules and regulations intended to avert such trouble and to conduce to harmonious co-operation between the two officials. Thus it was provided that in all matters of law relating exclusively to the soldiers, the Captain-General should have entire jurisdiction. In all matters relating entirely to civilians, the Governor should have jurisdiction. In cases in which both soldiers and civilians were concerned the two officials should act together with concurrent jurisdiction, and in case they could not agree the senior royal official at Havana should act as umpire between them.

This plan seemed fair enough and was expected to work well. But Luzan immediately protested against the whole scheme with much vigor and even violence of speech. In this he was heartily supported by the town council of Havana. When his protests were ignored by the Crown, or at least were not favorably heeded, he asked to be relieved from office as Governor and to be assigned to duty elsewhere. This request the King refused to grant, at the same time bidding Luzan to avoid any quarrel or disagreement with Quiñones. In spite of this admonition within a few weeks a bitter quarrel arose over the case of a soldier and a civilian who had had some strife over an alleged insult offered by the soldier to a young woman. From this there developed a bitter feud between the Governor and the Captain-General which soon became apparently irreconcilable. Each reviled the other, not only in his public capacity but in relation to his private life and morals. The partisans of each took up the strife and the entire city was soon involved in it.