Cuban people

“ The Spanish settlers of Cuba had come chiefly from Andalusia and Estremadura, and were the very flower of the Iberian race, and from them had descended those who after three centuries were entitled to be regarded as the Cuban people. They retained unimpaired the finest qualities of the great race that in the sixteenth century had made Spain all but the mistress of the world, and they still cherished a chivalric loyalty to the spirit and the traditions of that wondrous age. In other colonies the settlement was more varied. ”

“ It would be pleasant, and not lacking in profit, to dwell at greater length upon these and other intellectual leaders of the Cuban people. What we have said is, however, sufficient to show how greatly and how masterfully the intellectual side of Cuban life was developed during the century of political stress and fitful military strife which served as the stormy prelude to Cuba's achievement of her independent rank among the nations of the world. ”

“ The great mass of the Cuban people was united and harmonious in its determination at last to achieve that independence of the island for which so many men during so many years had wished and worked and suffered. The Spanish party was implacable; and the Autonomists were largely unsympathetic—not all, for some in time joined the revolution ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the exception of a handful of boatmen and a few fruit venders, not a person came to the piers to gaze at the new arrivals, and in the town the people scarcely gave themselves the trouble to look out of their open dwellings and shops at the colonists. This may have been inherent courtesy—for the Cuban is nothing if not courteous—but to us it seemed more like indifference. The Cubans are certainly an indifferent people, and at this port they appeared to have no object or interest in life. ”

“ It will be a task of no mean magnitude, but of unsurpassed profit and pleasure, to trace the deliberate development of that early colony into this late nation, and to observe the causes and forces which so long repressed and thwarted the sovereign aspirations of the Cuban People,{viii} and also, more gratefully, the causes and forces which inevitably, in the slow fullness of time, achieved their ultimate fulfilment in the secure establishment of the Cuban Nation. ”

“ While the Habanese have had the freest communication with the United States during the last three years of the revolution, Americans have had little opportunity to hear from the true white Cuban population. The Cubans are mostly found in the provinces and provincial cities, especially in Pinar del Rio and the eastern provinces of Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, and Santiago. Although of Spanish blood, the Cubans, through adaptation to environment, have become a different class from the people of the mother country, just as the American stock has differentiated from the English. ”

“ Native writers also dwell upon the good manners of the Havanese, calling them the most polite and social people of Spanish America, much given to imitating the French customs and manners, which were then in vogue at the Spanish court of Madrid, both in their dress and their conversation, as also in the furnishings of their houses and the good table they set their guests. These descriptions of Cuba and Cuban life tally well with those of the foreigners quoted by the author, and indicate the progress made by the island, and especially by Havana, in the sixth and seventh decades of the century. ”

“ There do not seem to be any race distinctions where Cubans alone are concerned. The African and those of mixed blood mingle freely together; and in the insurgent army officers of all ranks were chosen from the pure or mixed-blood African as freely as from others. The Cuban colored people seem to be exceptionally intelligent and energetic, and have a high reputation as brave soldiers. The typical Cuban does not belong to the coast cities, the inhabitants of which are more distinctly Spanish, especially the dominant class. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cuba in its outward aspects is distinctly, unromantically modern. The black coat is de rigueur; the black hat or the panama is the only covering for the head, and even conventional millinery has begun to drive away the graceful mantilla from the brows of las señoras. There is no poetry, no artistic coloring in the life scheme of the Cuban. His face and movements lack the vivacity and alertness inspired by the keen, quickening air of the Mexican Highlands. Even the clothes he wears and the way he wears them bespeak the heavy, sea level atmosphere he breathes. ”

“ NATURE designed Cuba for greatness. That salient fact is written large and clear upon every page of the island’s history. He must lack vision who can not discern it even in the annals of political, military and social development of the Cuban nation. Although one of the earliest lands in the Western Hemisphere to be discovered and colonized, it was actually the last of all to be erected into political independence and thus to enter into an opportunity for improving fully the incomparable opulence of its natural endowment. ”

“ Thus Havana, like other capitals of the world, became gradually not only the cradle of Cuban culture, but also of that corruption of the simpler and purer instincts of human nature which seems to be inseparable from a certain degree of material comfort. ”

“ As long as Cuba was under Spanish domination, there was no use in parties. So long as there was doubt concerning the intentions of the United States in Cuba, there was little encouragement to their formation. But the moment the Stars and Stripes actually went down from the Palace and from the Morro, the great fact dawned upon the Cuban mind that what many had scarcely dared to expect or to hope for was actually achieved. Cuba was independent. ”

“ With Cuba under Spanish domination, they were enabled to amass great wealth, and they wanted such conditions and such opportunities of enrichment continued. That was not an exalted attitude, and it was naturally odious to the Cuban patriots who were serving without pay and sacrificing their all for the independence of the island and for the attainment of a degree of material prosperity as well as of civic and spiritual enfranchisement immeasurably beyond the sordid conceptions of these selfish time-servers. ”

“ To fill their places, the Spaniards imported negro slaves from Africa, who were treated, like the Indians, with excessive cruelty, but who were more tenacious of life than the unfortunate aborigines, and their descendants constitute a large proportion of the Cuban population at the present time. One of the largest and wealthiest of Spain’s islands beyond the sea, Cuba early became a prey to Spanish adventurers and English freebooters. ”

“ The interest of Great Britain in Cuban affairs was scarcely less than that of Spain or the United States. That country had once, for a time, possessed Cuba, and had never forgotten that fact nor ceased to entertain the desire to renew that possession as a permanent state of affairs. That country also had very important colonial holdings in the West Indies, and on the adjacent mainland; being, indeed, an American power second only to the United States itself. ”

“ Next to the pioneers of Andalusia and southern Spain, it is probable that the introduction of French blood has influenced the Cuban type and life more than any other race foreign to the Island. Back in the seventeenth century French traders and privateers made frequent visits to Cuba, and some of them found Cuban wives, whose descendants afterward became citizens of the country. ”

“ I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I hold it to be vastly significant that the majority of intelligent Cuban civilians seem to look forward, not with pleasure but with dread to that much-talked-of millennium, "Cuba for the Cubans." ”

“ It is this service, following the others which I have named, which differentiates the Cuban Republic from most of the other states which have been formed from the Spanish Empire in America. Of the two states which at one time planned to wrest Cuba from Spain by force and make her a part of their community of nations, Colombia was for half a century in a chronic condition of revolution, and Mexico through the same evil processes has given the word Mexicanize to the political vocabulary. It was the intention of the United States that Cuba should not fall into that category ”

“ There are in Cuba probably, at this time, more happy black than white people. The slave-owner is not happy. For him wave no palm-trees; the delicious winds do not caress him; for him the mild, bright heavens, shine not; between him and all the glory of nature stands the bohea and the sugar-mill, with their negro-slaves, who dread him, and of whom he stands in dread. The mild heaven of Cuba gives him no peace; he sees the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and the future is dark to him. Therefore his end and aim is merely to make as much money as he can, and then to—leave Cuba for ever. ”

“ The Cubans were thoroughly aroused against Spain, and more and more there began to grow within them the desire not for annexation to the United States but for complete independence, and a government of their own making. At last the people were finding themselves, and higher aspirations and new longings were stirring in their souls. ”

“ The Iroquois and Algonquins had for centuries enjoyed a degree of social, political and industrial development, the records of which still survive. The Toltecs, the Mayas and the Incas had risen to a height of culture not unworthy to be compared with that of Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, the remains of which to this day command the wonder and admiration of the world. But not so Cuba. Carlyle might well have had this island in mind when he said, "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books." ”

“ The object of the Spanish government is, and ever has been, to derive as much revenue as possible from the island; and the exactions imposed upon the inhabitants have increased in proportion as other colonies of Spain, in the western world, have revolted and obtained their independence. The imposition of heavier burthens than those imposed upon any other people in the world has been the reward of the proverbial loyalty of the Cubans ”

“ When we see how—as we do clearly—in a single night the well-contrived schemes of an adroit and unprincipled knave enslaved a brilliant and warlike people, like the French, who had more than once tasted the fruits of republican glory and liberty, who had borne their free flag in triumph over more than half of Europe, we can understand why the Cubans, overawed from the very outset, by the presence of a force vastly greater in proportion than that which enslaved France, have been unable to achieve their deliverance. ”

“ For the Cuban women were always unusually handsome, having the same regular features and rich coloring as the Spanish, the same large black eyes and bluish black hair, perhaps even accentuated by their placid immobility of expression. A strange type, bound to attract attention anywhere, they struck the strangers landing in this tropical city like rare exotic flowers, and they suddenly found themselves the objects of an admiration which manifested itself in ways that were new and irresistible. ”

“ Some of these early settlers made wives of comely Indian women, whose beauty had captured their fancy, and while the influence of the kindly, pleasure-loving “Cubenos” has not made any deep or striking impression on the race, it may account for the quite common fondness of display and love of gaiety found in the Cuban of today. ”

“ In the province of Havana, social life and the Cuban race itself, to a certain extent, were influenced by the various officials and army officers sent there from the mother country, many of whom found wives and made homes in Havana, bringing with them the predominating traits and customs of Madrid and other cities of Central Spain, which had given them birth. ”

“ The desire to accumulate wealth through the toil of the unhappy Indians, of whom the Spaniards made slaves, tempted even Las Casas, the great defender of the Cuban aborigines, to accept assignment of them as a gift from the crown, so that he might share something of the prosperity of the early conquerors. ”

“ The United States had always taken a lively interest in Cuban affairs, and when the Cubans revolted in 1895 for the sixth time against the cruel domination of the Spaniards there was deep sympathy for them in this country, that continued to grow as the months went by. ”

“ Eight great ship-loads of men, horses and provisions were quickly obtained, and sailed away for Florida, leaving behind them three classes of people in Cuba. There were those who lamented that there had not been room enough on the ships to take them, too. There were those who lamented that Cuba was thus being stripped and impoverished to enrich another country, if not in a vain and profitless quest. There were also those, the surviving Indian natives, who rejoiced, because the Spaniards were all leaving Cuba, so that the natives could come to their own again. ”