The History of Cuba, vol. 2

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

From the standpoint of the agrarian reformer, the land problem was at the bottom of all the evils that retarded the development of the colony, so richly endowed by nature that it should have been a paradise for those who came there to settle. The noble Spanish adventurers of Castilian blood, who had accompanied the early explorers and in a spirit of romance followed in their wake, were the first to obtain grants of land. They returned to Spain, brought with them their families and servants and settled upon the land, which became their new home. But they were hardly of a type willing to rough it after the first glamor of romance and novelty had faded, or able by hard labor to transform the wilderness into richly yielding fields and gardens. Stockbreeding was very much easier and according to their ideas required no particular exertion on their part. They let nature take care of the increase of their herds and flocks. A few of them retained the land, made their haciendas the home of generations to come, and attained to some rank and standing by virtue of these great holdings. Essentially domestic by nature, they lived there sometimes two or three generations under one roof, frugally and contentedly all the year round.

Among the earliest Cuban landholders were nobles, Castilian, Andalusian and others, who received great grants of land in recognition of some services to the crown. These people, who had not known the spell of adventure in strange tropical climes, did not settle permanently on the island, but became absentee landlords. They owned perhaps a residence in Havana, which they visited briefly during the winter. They had a hacienda, which saw them even less frequently and more briefly. The traditions and conventions of their caste did not allow them to work, even if they had been able and willing; so they left the management of their land to an agent, whose paramount concern was to hold his position long enough to fill his pockets and who beyond that was no more interested in the colony than was his master. Whatever profits the latter made on the products of his Cuban estate, did not accrue to the benefit of the island; they were spent in the old country. Madrid was the place where these absentee landlords of Cuba wasted their wealth in extravagance and dissipation, instead of investing it in improvements of their estates and works of civic importance and advantage to the island. These property-holders looked out only for the revenues they could get out of their Cuban estates; but they were not concerned with the problem of revenues for the island. They have their counterpart today and not only in Cuba, but in other countries where vast tracts were acquired by foreigners, some for the hunting they afforded, some for speculative purposes, while native citizens had to go without the little plot of land that could insure them a home and sometimes even a living.

Thus were the best tracts of land apportioned among or pre-empted by people having no vital interest in the development of the island's resources. When the real workers came, peasants from the Basque provinces, from Catalonia and other parts of the Peninsula, they again had no capital to invest in the necessary improvements, and being obliged to content themselves with a small plot of land and to work it with their own hands, soon drifted into a deadly indifference towards anything beyond the satisfaction of their most urgent daily needs. Even if their land had produced more than they needed for their own consumption, they would have been at a loss how to dispose of their products, since there were no transportation facilities and since every movement of the producer was subject to local customs and other restrictions, limiting the possibilities of creating a market and from the profits realized to set aside a fund to spend on current improvements or to insure their future.

There is little doubt that much of the indolence attributed to the climate was gradually developed in the people by the lack of opportunities to market their products and to get into touch with the outside world. The Cuban settler of that class had in course of time to acquire a habitual indifference toward the morrow, which developed into shiftlessness. His initiative being paralyzed at the beginning, he never could rouse himself to conceive of another life. His children growing up about him under these same circumstances, true to the clannishness of Spanish family life, remained with the parents and followed in their footsteps. This may explain the lack of backbone with which the Cuban has been reproached. Official repression, even if founded upon a sort of paternal solicitude, is bound to stunt the growth of individuals as of nations; and of this repression the people of Cuba were for centuries the victims.

The French traveler and writer quoted before, E. M. Masse, describes the life of Cuban rustics at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. He calls them monteros, which means huntsmen, and they were probably the more shiftless descendants of this first class of settlers. For he speaks of their simple, frugal and indolent ways; tells how satisfied they are just to own a little plot of ground, with a bananery beside the hut, or a rice or corn-field, and perhaps a few cows. They were happiest when they could afford a slave, who would go fishing and hunting for them; for that would allow the master to lie in the hammock and smoke cigarettes. It seems natural that the home of such a montero was usually a wretched little "cabane," a shack of one room in which he dwelt with his family, which was sometimes numerous, and in close companionship with a pig, and other domestic animals. Yet this same man, preferring to lie in the hammock rather than to exert himself in some much needed work, was very fond of lively sports, as horseback-riding. Even the women of the monteros were splendid horse-women.

The dress of these people was extremely simple. The men wore trousers of oiled linen extending to the ankles; shoes of raw leather, a short shirt of the same material as the trousers, a kerchief wound tightly about the head and a big straw hat with a black ribbon or one of felt with gold braid. An indispensable article of accoutrement was the machete, cutlass, in his belt. The women wore a calico skirt, a white shirt with a bracelet at the elbow to hold the sleeves and a fichu on the head. When they went to mass, they dressed their hair, wore a mantilla on their head and put on shoes with big silver buckles. At dances they donned a round hat woven out of the tissue of plantain leaves, trimmed with gay ribbons, or a black hat with gold braid. Modest as was the montero in his demands upon life, there was one entertainment he could not forego: the feria de gallo, cock-fight. Many a one saved up his money for months to spend it on that day.

This description by M. Masse, of the montero of Cuba at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, tallies well with the description of the guajiro of today by Forbes Lindsay in "Cuba and Her People Today." Lindsay sees in that Cuban rustic a descendant of Catalonian and Andalusian settlers:

"Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land, but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of that no man's land which seems to be so extensive in the central and eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has title to a few acres, lives in a passably comfortable cabana, possesses a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry. Much more often he lives in a ramshackle bohio, the one apartment of which affords indifferent shelter to a large family and is fairly shared by a lean hog and a few scrawny chickens. There is nothing deserving the name of furniture in the house and the clothing of the family is of the scantiest. A nag of some sort, usually a sorry specimen of its kind, is almost always owned by the guajiro, who loves a horse and rides like the gaucho of the Argentine pampas."

That montero of a hundred and more years ago and the guajiro of today have so much in common that it seems safe to consider the latter a descendant of the former.

The lack of proper facilities for the exchange of commodities between city and country caused the fact that Havana up to the beginning of the nineteenth century raised almost all her necessities on her own soil. The economical cassava was still generally used. The ground in the environs of the capital, though not the best soil on the island, within a short time attained considerable value. The administration of the navy yard opposed the cultivation of ground rich in trees that it could use for shipbuilding. By this monopoly alone many people were barred from owning and cultivating land. The preference of the earlier Spanish settlers for stockbreeding also limited the agricultural area. Besides, real estate conventions and regulations were as rigid as other customs of the country, and were never changed, be the need for a change ever so pressing.