The History of Cuba, vol. 2

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

These disquieting occurrences made the Spanish government fear for the safety of Cuba and decided the court to give the island a governor more capable of coping with the eventuality of invasion. The Field Marshal D. Salvador de Muro y Salazar, Marques de Someruelos was appointed on the second of March, 1799, and ordered secretly and immediately to repair to the place of his destination. Accordingly there appeared in Havana on the thirteenth of May a distinguished stranger who delivered to the governor important messages from the court and proved to be no less than the new governor. Santa Clara immediately retired in favor of his successor and Someruelos entered upon the functions of his office. The Intendente Valiente was promoted to the position of Counselor of the Indies and his place was taken by D. Luis Viyuri. Colonel D. Sebastian de Kindelan was appointed to the governorship of Santiago.

The administration of Someruelos beginning on the threshold of a new century, it seems meet to cast a backward look upon the condition of the island and the great changes which had taken place during the hundred years just closing. The great need for reform was urged upon the government immediately after the British occupation of Havana, which had opened the eyes of the authorities to mistakes made not only in the political and military, but especially in the economic management of the colony. Revenues had to be created in order to meet the increased expenses of the administration and defray the cost of much needed improvements. Hence upon the proposal of Count Ricla the king had ordered a thorough reorganization of the administration and especially of the treasury department. In the attempt of solving the problem of taxation, Spain had followed a suggestion of M. Choiseul, minister of foreign affairs in France, which was conceived with little knowledge of colonial conditions and legislation and hastily accepted by the supreme government. This change in the tax system then in force in the Indies produced great commotion in the island of Cuba and other Spanish possessions in America.

Guiteras reports that many real estate owners of Puerto Principe and the southern territory designated in the island by the name of la Vuelta de Abajo were especially bitter in complaining against the innovation, but neither the intendant nor the Brigadier Cisneros could modify dispositions decreed by the supreme government. Discontent increased and some men were so exasperated that they preferred to destroy their own products rather than pay the tax which was to go to the public treasury. By the influence of D. Pedro Calvo de la Puerta, D. Penalver and other land-owners, some of the people were pacified, before disorder ensued. But others rose in open revolt and had to be dispersed by the militia hastily mobilized for their repression. Although hardly any blood was shed, the opposition which the authorities had met gave them cause for anxiety, and upon their urgent appeal the supreme government renounced the enforcement of the new taxes.

After the establishment of the Intendencia and the creation of a weekly Junta, D. Juan de Alda drew up a budget of expenditure for the year 1768, which amounted to 1,681,452 pesos. Of this sum the army consumed only 665,655 pesos. Approved by the supreme government and taken as a basis for figuring the annual expenditure, 1,200,000 pesos were consigned to the treasury of Mexico with the assumption that the public revenues would cover the eventual difference. According to Ramon de la Sagra, the general revenues of the island from 1764 to 1794 amounted to 20,286,173 pesos, and the sums which besides came to the treasury under the name of situados (duties assigned upon certain goods or effects) and other classifications amounted from 1766 to 1788 to 101,735,350 pesos. The revenues of the island for the same period were, according to Alcazar, 50,000,000 pesos, but he adds that the decree of the seventeenth of August, 1790, by which farmers and merchants were allowed to pay with promissory notes, resulted in some loss to the import duties. On the other hand, the system of tax collection was open to dishonest practices, which were checked during the administration of Someruelos.

The objections which had been raised against the new taxation having chiefly come from people engaged in agriculture, the government found on investigation that the existing commercial laws were at fault. Inclined as was the court of Spain during the rule of Carlos III. to yield in favor of the people, the new measures only mitigated but did not remove the evils complained of, which were founded on institutions and ordinances so thoroughly antiquated as no longer to be of any benefit to the population. The commerce of Cuba had since the year 1740 been carried on by the Real Compania of Havana. Although its institution was based upon the old and faulty principle of monopoly and privilege, and discriminated against foreign goods that came to Cuba via Spanish ports, the exportations of the island which at the beginning of the eighteenth century were confined to timber, hides and a small amount of cattle, soon began to include other products, such as sugar, honey, brandy and wax.

After the founding of the Intendencia there was opened by way of experiment a small commerce with the principal ports of Spain; but the regulations required the collection in the Peninsula of two custom duties on manufactures embarked at Cuba and destined for Spain, one being called entry, the other exit duty, to which was later added a consumer's duty. These extraordinary charges destroyed the profits hoped for by the extension of commerce, and were the source of more discontent, until in the year 1767 the king authorized the abolition of the Compania of Havana "in case of urgent necessity for Cuba" and at the same time inaugurated some franchises which tended to relieve the much restricted commerce of the island. As has been recorded at the time, it was not until the twelfth of October, 1778, that the king issued an order calling for free commerce and abolishing the monopolies of the larger ports.

The effects of this measure made themselves felt in a sudden revival of commercial activities which led to such an expansion of Cuba's commerce, that the island was forced to ask concessions and obtained from the court more favors than any other of Spain's American possessions. When the War of Independence paralyzed the commerce of the British colonies with the island, the king granted still greater franchises and a new decree opened the entry of the Port of Havana to the flags of all nations, provided their ships introduced provisions only. But while these new decrees favored the commerce of the colony, they reacted unfavorably upon the commerce of Spain, the merchant navy of which had been annihilated during the many wars, until there were not enough vessels to transport the goods the colonies needed. The imports of foreign products which the monopoly permitted Spain to make were in value superior to the exports from America. Direct commerce with friendly nations was more convenient inasmuch as the foreigners could in turn export all the fruits of the country. The only remedy for the evils confronting Spanish commerce would have been the reestablishment of the merchant fleet; but in their short-sightedness Spanish merchants turned back to the old monopoly and at the foot of the throne begged for return to the old system. Under such pressure were exacted from the king the decrees of the twentieth of January and the fifteenth of April, 1784, which once more closed the ports of Spanish America to the friendly nations, carrying the prohibition to the extreme of denying merchant vessels entry, even if they were foundering!

Owing to this confusing and irritating condition of commercial legislation the growth and progress of the colonies received another setback, and probably caused the decrease in population which the Countess de Merlin mentions. It also seriously affected the agriculture of the island. For Spain had not enough inhabitants on her own soil to colonize her vast overseas territories; and even if her legislation in respect to commerce had been more liberal, her constant opposition to the admittance of foreigners to her provinces discouraged white immigration. Even during the reign of Carlos III., which seemed to inaugurate a new and more enlightened era, the distrust of the government towards foreigners is manifested in the new and abridged version of the law of the Indies, published in the year 1778, which decrees that in no port nor part of the West Indies, either the islands or the continent to the north and south, shall any kind of traffic with foreigners be admitted, even by way of barter or any other mode of commerce, those violating this order being liable to forfeit life and property.

The slave trade was therefore the means Cuba was forced to adopt to supply the lack of white laborers and artisans. It was subject to the same restrictions as all maritime commerce, with the important difference that it could not be carried on without a special permission from the king, which usually fixed the number of years in which a certain number of slaves should be granted certain individuals, companies or corporations. These permissions were called licenses, later assientos, and finally contracts and privileges, until in the year 1789 they entirely ceased to exist. A British concern, called the South Sea Company, had been the first to receive such a privilege, when in 1713 it was allowed to introduce into the colonies of Latin America, with absolute exclusion of Spaniards and foreigners, four thousand eight hundred negroes in the course of thirty years. Next came the permiso obtained by the Compania Mercantil of Havana in the year 1740, of which use was made until 1766. Then came the contract concluded with the Marquis de Casa Enrile, which lasted from 1773 to 1779; and finally the permission granted in the year 1780 on account of the war with England, that most Spaniards in America could have recourse to the French colonies for their supply of slaves.

The manner in which this trade in human flesh was carried on reflects sadly upon those engaged in this traffic. Loaded into vessels that were hardly considered fit for carrying freight, thousands were known to have perished in shipwrecks. Crowded into the dark, unventilated holds of these rotten hulks, more thousands succumbed to disease and were thrown overboard. Of the trades associated with cruel exploitation and inhuman abuses, that of the slavetrader ranked first, for the sufferings to which the poor victims were subjected in the transit from their native home to the foreign land defied description. There were captains of slave ships who loathed their task. One is quoted in a book by the Jesuit Sandeval as confessing his misgivings about the business; he had just suffered a shipwreck in which only thirty out of nine hundred on board escaped!