The History of Cuba, vol. 2

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

The third reason was this, that in the years, perhaps a full generation, preceding the South and Central American revolt, Spain had manifested toward Cuba a disposition and actual practices well calculated to confirm that country in its loyalty and in its expectation of enjoying liberty and prosperity under the Spanish crown in an age of Spanish renascence. With the brief English occupation, indeed, the modern history of Cuba began in circumstances of the most auspicious character. The English opened Havana to the trade of the world and caused it to realize what its possibilities were of future expansion and greatness. Then the Spanish government, reestablished throughout the island, for a time showed Cuba marked favor. The old-time trade monopoly, which had been destroyed by the English, was abandoned in favor of a liberal and enlightened policy. Commerce, industry and agriculture were encouraged, even with bounties. Cuba was made to feel that there were very practical advantages in being a colony of Spain.

Moreover, the island enjoyed a succession of capable and liberal governors, or captains-general; notably Luis de las Casas at the end of the eighteenth century, and the Marquis de Someruelos in the first dozen years of the nineteenth century. Under benevolent administrators and beneficent laws, and with Spain herself adopting the liberal constitution of 1812, Cuba had good cause to remain loyal to the Spanish connection.

But these very same conditions and circumstances ultimately made Cuba supremely resolute in her efforts for independence. The men of Andalusian and Estremaduran ancestry had been loyal to Spain, but they were just as resolute in their loyalty to Cuba when they were once convinced that there must be a breach of relations. The same characteristics that made their ancestors the leaders of the Spanish race in adventure and in conquest made them now equally ready to be leaders in the great adventure of conquering the independence of Cuba from Spain. And if the liberal laws and policy of Spain, and the Constitution of 1812, had greatly commended Spanish government to them, the restored Spanish king's flat repudiation of all those things equally condemned that government.

We must therefore reckon the rise of the spirit of Cuban independence from the date on which Ferdinand VII. repudiated the constitution which he had sworn to defend. From 1812 to 1820 that spirit passed through the period of gestation, and in the years following the latter date it was born and began to make its vitality manifest. The king's pretended repentance and readoption of the Constitution of 1812 in 1820 came too late, and when it was followed by several years of alternating weakness and violence, and by the French intervention in 1823, the Cuban resolution for independence was formed. To that resolution, once formed, Cuba clung with a persistence which for the third time entitled her to the name of "Ever Faithful Isle." But now it was to herself that she was faithful.

JUAN JOSÉ DIAZ ESPADA

Born at Arroyave, Spain, on April 20, 1756, and educated at Salamanca, Juan José Diaz Espada y Landa entered the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, and on January 1, 1800, was Bishop of Cuba. Much more than a mere churchman, he applied himself with singular ability and energy to the promotion of the mental and physical welfare of the people as well as to their religious culture. He strongly assisted Dr. Tomas Romay in introducing vaccination into the island and in the prosecution of other sanitary measures, and was one of the foremost patrons of education. He also gave much attention to the correction of abuses which had grown up in the ecclesiastical administration. He died on August 13, 1832, leaving a record for good works second to that of no other ecclesiastic in the history of Cuba.

Seldom, indeed, has there been an era in the history of the world more strongly suited to cause the rise of a revolutionary spirit in such a people as the Cubans, than was the early part of the nineteenth century. We have already referred to the United States of America and its attitude toward Cuba and Cuban affairs. That country had achieved its independence in circumstances scarcely more favorable than would be those of a Cuban revolt; and it presently waged another war which made it formidable among the nations. On the other hand, all Europe was in war-ridden chaos, with the rights of peoples to self-determination made a sport of autocrats. There was nothing more evident than that republicanism was the policy of order, stability and progress. The United States had just forced Spain to sell Louisiana to France, and then had forced France to sell it to itself. That was an object lesson which was not lost upon thoughtful Cubans any more than upon the peoples of Central and South America. It demonstrated that the power of Spain was waning, and that the dominant power in the western world was that of Republicanism. And Cubans, as well as others, were not blind to the practical advantages of being on the winning side.

Indeed, before that Cuba had had another great object lesson. At the middle of the eighteenth century the English had seized Havana. That in itself indicated clearly the decline of Spain and her inability to protect or even to hold her own colonies. But the English force which achieved that stroke was by no means purely English. It was largely composed of Americans, soldiers from the British Colonies in North America who were, of course, British subjects but who were more and more calling themselves Americans; and who in course of time altogether rejected British rule and established an independent republic. First, then, Spain was beaten by England; and next England was beaten by the United States. Obviously the latter was the power to whom to look for guidance and support.

There were still other circumstances making toward the same end. We have remarked upon the puissant opulence of Spanish intellectuality in the first century of her possession of Cuba, and upon, also, the paucity of native Cuban achievements in letters. But in the seventeenth century a decline of Spanish letters and art began, with ominous progression, until at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the very nadir of intellectual life had been reached. This was the more noteworthy and the more significant because of the contrast which the Peninsula thus presented to other lands. Elsewhere throughout Europe and in America that was an era of great and splendid intellectual activity. In almost every department of letters, science and art fine deeds, original and creative, were being done. The colossal military operations that convulsed the world from the beginning of the American Revolution to the fall of Napoleon sometimes blind our eyes and deaden our ears to what was then done in the higher walks of life; but the fact is that probably in no other equal space of time in the world's history was the mind of man more fecund, in both theory and practice.