The History of Cuba, vol. 3

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

For a time, indeed, there was a measure of relief. That was when under the McKinley tariff of 1890, Cuban products, particularly sugar, gained freer access to American markets. While this system lasted, there was an accession of material prosperity in Cuba. But upon its repeal, due to a change of politics in the United States government, prosperity in Cuba waned, while discontent, dissatisfaction and disaffection waxed apace, and undismayed and resolute patriots began preparing for another general insurrection.

During the period between the Ten Years' War and the final War of Independence there was a succession of Governors-General, varying chiefly in the degree of their unacceptability to the Cuban people and of the ineptitude with which they maladministered the affairs of the island and thus contributed to the ultimate and inevitable catastrophe. Martinez Campos served, with the best of intentions, until the late summer of 1883. Then on September 28 he was succeeded by Ignacio Maria del Castillo. His administration endured for three years, and was replaced in 1886 by that of General Emilio Calleja y Isasi, who gave place the next year to Saba Marin. Another change occurred on March 13, 1889, when Manuel de Salamanca y Negrete took office. He served for less than a year, being succeeded on February 7, 1890, by General J. Chinchilla. To the latter must be accorded the distinction of having the shortest term of all, for on June 10 following his place was taken by General Polavieja. He served for two years and was succeeded on May 31, 1892, by General A. R. Arias, who in turn, on August 10, 1894, was replaced by General Emilio Calleja, who thus entered upon his second term, in which he was to suffer the penalty of the misdeeds of a long line of predecessors, and was to begin reaping the whirlwind harvest of the evil wind which for four centuries Spain had been sowing with a perverse and ruthless hand.

CHAPTER XVIII

"NEW occasions," sang a great American poet of freedom and of progress, "new occasions teach new duties"; and splendidly was the truth exemplified in Cuba in the era of which we have been writing in this volume. There befell the island at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century a new occasion, the greatest thus far in all its history since the landfall of Columbus. It was perhaps only partially realized at first, and it took many years for the complete realization to dawn upon the universal popular mind. But even before the realization came, the Cuban people, not yet cognizant of the tremendous force which was working within them, began to rise to meet the new occasion, the new opportunity which was opening before them, with a triumphant spiritual puissance which has not often been rivalled in the annals of the nations.

FELIPE POEY

One of Cuba's greatest natural scientists, Felipe Poey, was born in Havana on May 26, 1799, and was educated at the San Carlos Seminary and in France. He became a lawyer in Madrid, but in 1822 left that city because of political conditions and returned to Cuba to devote himself to ichthyology and entomology. He published a monumental work on "Cuban Ichthyology," and others on "Cuban Lepidopteres," "Cuban Mineralogy," the "Geography of Cuba," and the "Natural History of Cuba." He was for many years professor of zoology at the University of Havana and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences. He died in 1891.

Writing of that very period, in his essay on Jean Paul Richter, and referring to the British domination of the sea which Nelson had achieved, to the mastery of the lands of Europe which Napoleon had won, and to the intellectual primacy which Germany—though beaten to the dust in war—was then enjoying, Carlyle observed that "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of—the air!" It was a fine conception, as true then as it would be untrue to-day. In a significant sense the same shrewd observation is apt to the situation of Cuba a hundred years ago. Spain held control of the material interests of the island, on sea and on land, but she could not restrain the Cubans from self-control, which meant immeasurable progress, in the air—that is, in the intellectual life. It was thus intellectually, in the only way as yet within their power, that the people of the island met the new and transcendent occasion.

It was, as we have seen, a period of revolution and of counter-revolution, a time of flux, throughout the greater part of the world. The mighty liberal impulse of the French Revolution, following in the wake of the American revolution, was by no means annihilated by the infatuated imperialism of Napoleon or by the reactionary movement which prevailed for a time after his fall. It was felt, and it prevailed, in North and Central and South America, from the Golden Gate to the Strait of Magellan; and in the islands of the Caribbean and the Gulf. In Cuba, as we have seen, there seemed to be at first no response, for reasons which also we have hitherto considered. But all unconsciously the Cuban people received and felt the impulse, and answered it.

Periods of revolution are usually periods of intellectual activity, and such was the case in Cuba. While there was in the first quarter of the century little thought of a revolt against Spain, or of independence, the revolutionary spirit which was in the air inspired the minds of Cubans, not only with activity but also, largely, with thoughts and aspirations of freedom. There was indeed in particular a striking likeness between Cuba and the Thirteen Colonies in North America just before the Revolution in that country. It will be recalled that down to a few months, perhaps even weeks, before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, very few American leaders contemplated independence. The war which they had begun at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill was not a war of secession, but a civil war intended merely to secure for British subjects in the colonies the same rights and privileges that British subjects in the British Isles enjoyed. But a little later it was seen that this would not suffice, and that complete separation and independence must be achieved. Precisely so did some of the foremost Cuban minds at the time of which we are writing, and indeed in much later years, incline toward reforms and autonomous freedom under the Spanish crown.