Читать книгу Cuba: A History - Sergio Guerra-Vilaboy - Страница 7
ОглавлениеFrom the Original Inhabitants to Slave Plantations
“The fairest island human eyes have yet beheld… It is certain that where there is such marvellous scenery, there must be much more from which profit can be made.”
—Christopher Columbus, October 24, 1492
The Cuban Archipelago and the Indigenous Population
Christopher Columbus reached the northern coast of eastern Cuba on October 27, 1492. The Cuban archipelago, consisting of one large island, several smaller ones and hundreds of islets, amazed the Spaniards. They found Cuba a very pleasant sight, with its great variety of flora, beautiful scenery, delightful climate and low mountains, Turquino Peak being the highest at 6,476 feet (1,974 meters) and gentle rivers, like the Cauto, which flows for 213 miles (343 kilometers).
Indian peoples had apparently lived in Cuba for around 10,000 years, the first groups arriving from the Mississippi and Florida regions by way of Grand Bahama Island. Later waves of Arawaks arrived from what is now Venezuela and Central America, island-hopping along the Antilles. These migrations were still occurring in 1492.
The indigenous peoples of Cuba—the Guanahatebeys, Siboneys and Tainos—were generally hunters, gatherers, fishermen and early farmers. These groups of Indians never attained the cultural complexity and development of other societies in South and Central America, but some developed rudimentary agriculture and pottery. They grew tobacco, corn and yucca and lived in small hamlets either inland or on the banks of rivers.
By the time the Spaniards appeared on the scene, some of these societies had already achieved greater complexity, reflected in the custom of burying their dead and the emergence of a social division of labor, distinguishing between the tribal chief, the religious leader and the rest of the community. They also played sports, called batos, engaged in ceremonial songs and dances, and portrayed their surroundings in pictographs. The Spaniards’ arrival halted the development of these indigenous societies in Cuba and almost entirely wiped them out.
Under the Santa Fe Pact signed by Christopher Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, Columbus was to sail around the earth to reach Cipango and Cathay, in Asia. The pact stated how much of the booty obtained on the voyage would go to the contracting parties and how much the sailors would receive.
Cuba had almost none of the gold and silver the Spaniards sought for their nascent capitalist economy in Europe, so Columbus prioritized the colonization of Hispaniola to the east (the Dominican Republic today). On his second voyage, in 1493, he skirted the southern coast of Cuba, putting ashore near Cape San Antonio in the western part of the island, and he forced his crew to sign a document stating they had reached the mainland. He then returned to Hispaniola, which he viewed as more important; for the next 15 years, the Spanish monarchy displayed very little interest in Cuba.
In 1508, Nicolás de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, was instructed to organize an expedition to circumnavigate Cuba. Sebastián de Ocampo carried out this order and proved it was an island. A conflict developed between the Castilian monarchs and Columbus’s son, Diego Bartolomé Columbus, the new governor of Hispaniola. So it was Diego Velázquez, rather than Diego Bartolomé Columbus, who was appointed governor of Cuba in 1510 and he was ordered to begin the conquest and colonization of the island.
Velázquez arrived in Cuba near what is now Maisí and faced little resistance from the indigenous population. He founded Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Baracoa, the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, at the end of 1510 and the beginning of 1511. The Spaniards soon expanded throughout the island: a brig went along the northern coast; a column of men under the command of Francisco de Morales—who was soon replaced by Pánfilo de Narváez, a close friend of Velázquez’s—advanced through the central part of the island; and Velázquez himself traveled along the southern coast. None of the indigenous people put up much resistance, except for Hatuey, an Indian chief from Hispaniola, who was burned at the stake. So the conquest was quickly achieved.
Six new settlements were founded between 1512 and 1515 at San Salvador del Bayamo, Santísima Trinidad, San Cristóbal de La Habana, Sancti Spíritus, Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe and Santiago de Cuba (which replaced Baracoa as the seat of the island’s government). Some of these settlements were later moved to their present locations.
The Spanish idea of developing a colony by encouraging the emigration of families laid the basis for future conflicts between the representatives of the monarchy and the top level of local government, the town councils, whose members elected their own mayors. Over the decades, the town councils became ever more exclusive oligarchies reflecting the interests of particular regions and these frequently clashed with the interests of the mother country. Apart from the governor of the island, the most important Spanish officials in Cuba were the inspector (or agent), the accountant and the treasurer. The town councils also sent representatives to the Cortes. The Catholic Church also had a strong presence, whose main duty was to proselytize among the Indians.
One of the conquistadors’ main goals—finding gold—was not achieved in Cuba, which had no large deposits of that mineral. Some gold was obtained by forcing Indians to pan the rivers; but by 1542, raising cattle, pigs and horses—both for local consumption and for export to the newly conquered territories in South America—was becoming the basis of the new economy. Cattle ranching did very well in the forested areas of the island. At the same time, the need to survive forced the Europeans to use plants cultivated by the indigenous peoples, such as yucca, from which a substitute for bread was made. Tobacco was another plant the Spaniards learned about from the Indians and gradually it became very important to Cuba’s economy.
Without authorization, Velázquez allocated Indian land to his men. In 1536, following the established practice, the town council of Sancti Spíritus issued land grants to Spanish soldiers. This did not imply legal ownership as the land officially belonged to the king of Spain. Rather, it meant the right to use it on payment of a fee to the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic Church. The land grants were made in the form of farms of various sizes. The contradiction between right to use the land and lack of legal title would, in the long run, create a serious impediment to the development of capitalism in Cuba.
An indigenous work force was distributed along with the land, tying the Indians to the Spaniards not in the classical form of slavery but in a bond similar to serfdom. Torn from their families and culture, the Indians were forced to work between 14 and 16 hours a day. For indigenous people who had not been exposed to class exploitation, the system of being tied to the land, combined with the diseases brought by the Europeans, was catastrophic. Because the Spaniards brought no women with them, many mestizo children were born to Indian women and, in these early times, most of their descendants were integrated into the European society rather than the indigenous one.
In the first few decades of colonization, Africans, who survived under the system of exploitation better than the Indians did, were brought in as slaves. In small numbers at first, sporadically, and then more steadily, Africans were brought to Cuba, enhancing the racial mixture of the population. Different African cultures quickly began to blend with the nascent Spanish-Indian culture and, by the middle of the 16th century, some of the Cuban nation’s present-day cultural features began to emerge.
The Criollo Economy and Society
The island’s economy evolved slowly, reflecting the priority Spain gave to its new territories in the Caribbean and South America. At first, Cuba’s population decreased when men were sent to participate in the conquest of Mexico and other expeditions, such as that led by Hernando de Soto to Florida. The Spaniards who stayed in Cuba adapted more quickly than expected. In the middle of the 16th century, a new generation of Spanish descendants, most of whom had been born in Cuba, became influential in the nascent colonial world.
During the 16th and 17th centuries and through the first half of the 18th century, cattle ranching remained important, both as providing food for the settlers and as a commodity for trade. Vast cattle ranches covered the island, but these were soon displaced by the development of modern agriculture.
Sown on the banks of rivers, tobacco was a crop that required very little labor, as the Spaniards soon learned from the Indians. Nor did this product require any great capital outlay or large area of land, and the increase in its use in Europe led to a steady growth in demand. In addition, food crops were planted for the settlers, especially those living in Havana. Thus the cattle ranches were replaced by more profitable agriculture. The Spanish government and town councils tried to protect the very powerful group of cattle ranchers, but the Crown’s growing need to feed its soldiers and sailors, plus the taxes that agricultural products contributed to the treasury, meant the legislation was rather unclear and disputes between farmers and cattle ranchers filled many a long chapter in Cuba’s early history.
Spain’s trade monopoly, established through the Casa de Contratación de Sevilla, the king’s organization for handling trade with Latin America, weighed particularly heavily on Cuba as Spain failed to supply its colony with the bare necessities. With the creation of the Spanish fleet in 1566, ships began to congregate in the port of Havana, making it the most important port in the New World. The galleons were not supposed to remain there for more than a few weeks, but delays often meant they stayed for months at a time, which stimulated the production and sale of many goods in the settlement of San Cristóbal de La Habana.
The number of inns and taverns also grew apace, promoting the rise of prostitution, especially among black slave women, who were authorized by their owners to “earn” wages. To protect the wealth held in Havana, the mother country built La Punta Fortress and Real Fuerza and Tres Reyes del Morro castles at the entrance to Havana Bay, making the city the best-fortified one in the Americas. The important families whose members served on the town council and who were linked to businesses profiting from the visits of the Spanish fleet began to amass considerable capital, resulting in an economic boom in the 18th century.
Abandoned to their fate, the settlements outside Havana received no benefits from the visiting fleets and quickly turned to smuggling, using hidden coves and rivers as rendezvous points with English, French and Dutch pirates and corsairs, trading local goods for articles not sent by Spain. Both the settlers and the Spanish regional authorities engaged in this contraband trade. The Crown made great—but fruitless—efforts to halt these activities. Melchor Suárez de Poago, the representative of Governor Pedro Valdés, failed to stop the extensive smuggling operations of the people of Bayamo early in the 17th century. This led to legal action that was suspended while being tried in the Crown Court of Santo Domingo.
Corsairs of Spain’s enemy nations often attacked Cuba. They included Francis Drake, Francisco Nau, Henry Morgan and Gilberto Girón, who captured Bishop Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano in Bayamo in 1604. The bishop was rescued by a slave in an episode immortalized in Espejo de Paciencia (Mirror of Patience), the first poem about Cuba written on the island. To avoid such attacks, Spain tried to impose new administrative controls and approved the transfer of the capital to Havana in 1553.
The island was also divided into two administrative regions: Santiago de Cuba and San Cristóbal de La Habana, with the former subordinated to the latter. Trinidad, Sancti Spíritus and San Juan de los Remedios, the settlements in the middle of the island, were not included in either of these regions, so their inhabitants enjoyed some autonomy for decades. Spain exercised control through such laws as the Cáceres laws, promulgated by Judge Alonso de Cáceres in 1574, which regulated many aspects of Cuba’s economic and social life.
The Spanish fleets promoted urban development in Havana, such as the construction of the Main Parish Church between 1550 and 1574 and the Monasteries of Santo Domingo and San Francisco in 1578 and 1584, respectively, and the plan for the Royal Canal in 1592 to provide the settlement with water. There was little progress elsewhere, and only two more important settlements were founded some time later in Santa Clara and Matanzas.
Because of its interest in developing modern agriculture in Cuba, the Spanish monarchy established a state monopoly on tobacco. The Royal Treasury bought the entire year’s crop, paying whatever price it chose. Any tobacco it did not buy had to be destroyed. The tobacco growers protested vigorously, but their claims were ignored. Tensions mounted steadily from 1717, culminating in 1723, when the tobacco growers tried to burn down the tobacco warehouses in Havana, an action repressed savagely by Governor Gregorio Guazo who hanged 14 tobacco growers. This was just one of the many clashes that took place between the Spaniards in Spain and those living in the colonies.
By the middle of the 18th century, the monopoly system reached a new stage when the Royal Trading Company of Havana was created with capital contributed by businessmen living in Cuba and in Spain and by the Crown. The company imported and exported all kinds of commodities, including slaves. Shareholders, speculating in production and trade, made considerable profits. This benefited Havana but none of the other settlements. Havana’s urban and cultural development continued with the establishment of a Royal Examining Board of Physicians, to supervise the work of dentists, doctors and pharmacists; the arrival of a printing press in 1723; and especially, the founding of the long-desired University of Havana in 1728. With close to 50,000 inhabitants (half of the entire population of Cuba), by 1762 Havana was the principal Spanish city in the Caribbean and Central America.
This was highlighted that same year, when the Family Pact between France and Spain brought Spain into France’s war with Britain. Britain decided to seize Havana and landed an expedition of more than 10,000 men a few miles east of the city; after a fierce struggle, they occupied the elevation on which Morro Castle stood, on the eastern side of the entrance to Havana Bay, forcing the city’s authorities to surrender.
This placed the western part of Cuba under British rule for close to 11 months. Rather than changing the existing structures, the British made it easier to bring in slaves and this gave an enormous boost to the slave trade, especially with the 13 British colonies in North America, an initial contact that had unexpected consequences in Cuba’s later history.
Eventually, Spain recovered its beautiful city by swapping Havana for Florida. The most important aspect of all this was that, while the Spanish authorities did very little to prevent the loss of Havana, its inhabitants and those of neighboring towns—whites, free blacks and slaves—led by José Antonio Gómez (Pepe Antonio), the mayor of Guanabacoa, fought courageously to defend Havana, exhibiting a strong sense of national pride.
After recovering Havana, Spain further strengthened the city by building the huge La Cabaña Fortress next to Morro Castle, thereby indicating Cuba’s importance in the forthcoming new era.
Emergence and Evolution of the Plantation System
Slave plantations were the prevailing system of production in Cuba for nearly a century, from the end of the 18th century up to 1886. This system did not originate in Cuba but was already in use on the other islands of the Antilles and especially in the United States and Brazil. This socioeconomic system produced tropical raw materials for the world market, using slave labor that was generally imported from Africa.
Several closely related factors were responsible for the extension of the plantation system in Cuba’s specific conditions: the accumulation of capital in the hands of the Havana oligarchy; the “enlightened despotism” of the Spanish monarchy, which adopted more effective methods of rule; the 1804 Haitian revolution, which destroyed the coffee and sugar production of that colony; the fact that Francisco de Arango y Parreño and other key figures who established close relations with the Spanish government were members of the town council of Havana; the law regulating free trade between Spain and the Indies, promulgated in 1778, which liberalized the trade monopoly to some extent; the rapid increase in the numbers of slaves brought to Cuba, a vital stimulus to the economic boom; and the large amount of land still available.
The plantation system spread throughout the eastern and southern parts of what is now Havana province, which had not yet been urbanized, and throughout the areas that are now Havana and Matanzas provinces, as well as Sagua la Grande, Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo. As the plantations spread from west to east, the Havana-Matanzas region was dotted with sugar mills; more sugarcane production meant more blacks, both slaves and freed men and women, more Spaniards, better railroads, and greater scientific advances and cultural development. The traditional cattle ranches were largely replaced by the plantation system, which left its mark on all sectors of Cuban culture and society.
Reform, Annexation and Slavery
Inevitably, the ideology and culture emanating from the plantation system reflected the need to justify and maintain slavery. In Cuba’s case, from the theoretical point of view, this promoted reformism. It was a time when most of the Spaniards living in Cuba began to think of themselves as Cubans, and the seeds of the nationalist independence movement that characterized the second half of the 19th century appeared on the plantations, as well as in the towns. Reformist ideas were prevalent between 1790 and 1868, reflecting a wide range of ideas on everything from slavery to Cuba’s legal ties to Spain. Reformism, however, was far from homogenous and incorporated many different perspectives.
What were the sources that nourished Cuban reformism? It was informed by the best of Spanish liberal thought (Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and Francisco Pi y Margall); Latin America thought that inspired the wars of independence in South America; liberal-bourgeois ideas from the United States had an ever greater influence in Cuba; and, finally, the European bourgeois liberalism that led to the French revolution of 1789. Cuban bourgeois liberalism (or reformism) was never an imitation of trends elsewhere but rather amalgamated and adapted those ideas to Cuba’s situation.
Francisco de Arango y Parreño was the main representative of bourgeois reformism in Cuba in the first half of the 19th century. A profound scholar and champion of the European enlightenment, he was a slaveholder who was typical of the growing dissent on the sugarcane plantations. He was proud of being Cuban, although he confused the Spanish homeland with Cuba. For him, Cuba meant a nation of whites, whom he believed embodied the nascent sense of nationality, and he saw the slave trade and plantation system as fundamental to the economic development of the island. He rejected the idea of independence because he thought Cuba could exist under Spanish rule without separating itself from the monarchy. His efforts in Madrid allowed him to obtain significant benefits for the slave-owning sector he represented.
Arango’s reformism, therefore, produced very good results up to the time when independence movements developed in South America. The liberation of South America and the end of Spanish enlightened rule with the reign of Ferdinand VII changed Spain’s relations with Cuba. Spain now sought to obtain from Cuba the riches lost with the independence of its other South American colonies. Therefore, Madrid granted the captain-general exceptional, all-encompassing powers in 1825 and expelled the Cubans who had been elected deputies to the Cortes in 1837. In the 1830s, Cuba was no longer considered to be an integral part of the Spanish kingdom and was simply viewed as a valuable sugar colony to be exploited. This, along with the maturing of nationalist sentiment among new and broader social sectors in Cuba, meant that the bourgeois reformism of the large slaveholders was replaced by the reformism of other social groups.
The social scientist José Antonio Saco was the best representative of this new wave of reformism. A tenacious champion of Cuban nationalism and daring critic of the flaws of colonialism, Saco was prominent among young intellectuals, such as the educator and philosopher José de la Luz y Caballero. Their ideas were very different from the interests of the large slaveholders and based on the preaching of Bishop Juan José Díaz de Espada, which reflected the burgeoning middle classes in Cuba. The abolition of the slave trade presupposed the eventual end of slavery itself. Criticism of the Spanish government’s plantation system helped enormously to awaken various sectors to the evils of colonialism. But Saco left the country in 1834 and Luz y Caballero’s health declined, undermining the possible effectiveness of this reformist current in the 1830s.
In the 1870s, bourgeois reformist ideas were revived under Captain-General Francisco Serrano, Duke de la Torre, whose wife came from an important Cuban family. The plantation system was already showing clear symptoms of crisis, and production was increasingly focused on the US market. Thus, the language of the new reformists was more moderate than in earlier eras. Now headed by José Morales Lemus, this group advocated economic and political reforms and the abolition of slavery with compensation for the slaveholders. They presented their views to an Information Council in Madrid in 1866-67; but far from considering their demands, the monarchy imposed a new tax without abolishing the earlier ones. Ignored by the mother country, these Cuban reformists achieved nothing and were superseded in the political arena by those advocating independence.
At one time, within the reformist current, there existed a significant group in favor of Cuba’s incorporation into the United States. Annexationism, as it was called, should be considered in the historical context of its time. The level of socioeconomic development attained by the United States, the existence of a strong system of slavery in the southern part of that country and the republican ideology that imbued life in the United States are among the factors that explain why an annexationist movement arose in Cuba (mainly in the western part of the island) between 1840 and 1854.
Narciso López, a Venezuelan who had been a general in the Spanish army and lived in Trinidad (central Cuba), placed himself at the service of the Havana Club to try to block the abolition of slavery. In 1850 and 1851 he led expeditions financed by US Southerners who wanted to influence the balance between slave and non-slave states in the Union in their favor. The only result of these expeditions, tainted as they were by the sordidness of the slave system they espoused, was the creation of a Cuban national flag. López was captured and garroted, and Britain promised Spain it would not demand the abolition of slavery in Cuba; as a result, the annexationist movement went into decline.
Annexationism was a diverse movement. The main group of annexationists were slaveholders in western Cuba who fought tooth and nail to block abolition. In other regions, especially Trinidad and Camagüey, annexationism was motivated by a desire to share in the development and freedoms of the US North, which implied radical abolition. The most important representative of this group of annexationists was the Camagüeyan plantation owner, Joaquín de Agüero, who was executed by the colonial authorities.
Although it was not the predominant trend, a strong independence movement developed during the plantation era. Linked from its beginnings to the emergence of a distinct Cuban national identity, the independence movement was expressed in literature by the poet José María Heredia, who had a lasting influence on Cuban culture and thought.
Social sectors other than those represented by the slaveholders were committed to the creation of a free and independent country. One of their most important actions to achieve this was the conspiracy led by the freed slave José Antonio Aponte in 1812. Inspired by the Haitian revolution, this conspiracy was discovered and ruthlessly crushed. The middle classes organized the Soles y Rayos de Bolívar conspiracy in 1822 and the Gran Legión del Aguila Negra conspiracy in 1829-30, both of which were repressed by the colonial authorities. Nevertheless, these events made it clear that Cuba was no longer immune to the revolutionary movements that had arisen elsewhere in the Americas. These conspiracies also showed the growing strength of the urban middle class, especially in Havana, a city whose population was already more than 120,000 by 1817.
Father Félix Varela y Morales, a professor in Havana, was the main exponent of the independence movement in the first half of the 19th century. Professor of constitutional law at the San Carlos Seminary, a deputy to the Cortes in 1822 and a radical abolitionist, he was persecuted by the king and forced to go into exile in the United States, where he published a pro-independence newspaper, El Habanero, between 1824 and 1826. Varela’s ethics, his sense of patriotic duty, his support for the independence of South America and the brilliance of his students Saco and Luz made him the most outstanding intellectual of his time.
During the plantation period, a distinctive Cuban culture began to emerge. With Spain as its main influence, this nascent Cuban culture was also open to the best universal achievements from Europe, the Americas and Africa, assimilating what it needed and transforming it into something new and unique. History, pedagogy, literature, music, journalism, economics, demography, architecture, the natural sciences, medicine and philosophy all flourished in Cuba. Prestigious schools trained several generations of future patriots, although it should be noted there were very few schools for black children. In the colonial era, Cuba’s national culture reflected the emerging society.
“Cuba wants to be a great, civilized nation, to lend a friendly hand and a fraternal heart to all other peoples.”
—Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, 1868
