Читать книгу The History of Cuba (Vol. 1-5) - Willis Fletcher Johnson - Страница 18

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Bartholomew Ortiz was at last, on his earnest entreaty, relieved of his duties as alcalde mayor in the fall of 1542, and for some time the insular government was again without a head. But in August, 1543, since nothing had been heard from or of de Soto for three years, the crown assumed that he was dead and that his office was vacant. It therefore appointed Juan de Avila to be not alcalde mayor but governor; permitting the title of Adelantado of Florida to fall into desuetude. The new governor was a young lawyer, whose chief recommendation was that he was a member of the de Avila family, a relative of Lady Isabel de Soto and of her father, the formidable Pedrarias d'Avila. He seems to have been doubtful of his own ability to administer the office successfully, and therefore reluctant to assume its duties. However, he finally came to Cuba, arriving at Santiago at the beginning of February, 1544, nearly six months after his appointment. He was, of course, regularly appointed and commissioned by the crown, with the full powers of governor, and for those reasons he was received at Santiago with grateful rejoicings. The people of that city and indeed of all Cuba had become tired of having an absentee governor and an alcalde mayor in his place.

Juan de Avila's first official act of importance was to make the usual examination of his predecessor's affairs. This was a slight task, because of the short time in which de Soto had actually administered the governorship, and nothing wrong appears to have been found. The affairs of all other officials were likewise in good order. He then turned his attention to the question of the Indians; after which, the deluge.

The royal government had for the time acquiesced in the ruthless policy of de Soto. At least it had not vetoed nor opposed it. But now it had reconsidered the matter, and had resumed its former and better policy, of treating the natives justly and kindly, and giving them their freedom. Perhaps it was moved to do this partly through horror at what Pedrarias d'Avila had done at Darien, in all but exterminating an entire race, and was minded to make atonement by requiring the young kinsman of that "Timour of the Indies" to do the opposite in Cuba. At any rate orders were sent to Cuba that there should be no more enslavement of the natives in gold mining. In fact, they were not to be employed in mining at all. Now as mining was practically the only work in which the Indians were engaged, the effect of that order, if enforced, would have been very marked. It would have stopped gold mining, and would have left the natives in idleness. In fact, it was not enforced. The governor received it, and transmitted it to the various local officials for promulgation and enforcement; and they ignored it. Presently the governor wanted to know why the order had not been obeyed, and was curtly told that it would have been disastrous to the industries and interests of the island. This he reported to the crown, asking for further directions.

The reply was a reminder that the new Bishop, Sarmiento, was Protector of the Indians, and that the governor and he should cooperate for their welfare and for the enforcement of the decrees in their behalf. But the people were no readier to listen to the bishop than to the governor; particularly since that ecclesiastic was himself a slave-holder. Indeed, the municipal council of Santiago formally protested against his appointment as Protector of the Indians and refused to recognize his authority. There were some actual conflicts with force and arms between the two factions, in which the followers of the local government appear to have triumphed over the fewer adherents of the Bishop, and from which no profit nor advantage of any kind accrued to the unhappy objects of the strife.

When these things were reported to the King and his advisers, there was much indignation, and new and peremptory orders were sent to the governor, that involuntary service by the Indians was immediately to be abolished, and that the natives were to be free to work for whom they pleased, or not to work at all. Moreover, they were to be treated in all respects as well as the Spaniards themselves. This radical decree seems to have impressed the governor and bishop as going a little too far, and an appeal was made by common consent to the Council for the Indies, in Spain. That body was divided in opinion, but the majority of it inclined to a modification of the order, to which the King agreed. The governor and the bishop were directed to act together for the welfare of the natives, with a view to granting them ultimately entire liberty and equal rights. There was to be no more slavery. All the Indian slaves who had been brought to Cuba from other islands or from the mainland were to be released and returned to their homes. To hold such slaves, or to engage in the slave trade, was made a grave penal offense. The native Cubans who were held under the repartimiento system were not immediately to be released, but they were not to be transferred from one master to another, and upon the death of their master they were not to be bequeathed as chattels to his heirs, but were to be released. Moreover, if any of the proprietors were proved to be cruel to their native workmen, or neglectful of their interests, the natives were to be released from their authority and set at liberty. In all cases, the natives were to receive fair wages for their labor, and were not to be compelled to do any kind of work for which they were not suited or to which they objected. Finally, it was forbidden for the governor, the bishop, or any other functionary of state or church to hold native Cuban Indians in bondage, though negro slavery was apparently still permitted.

These regulations, put forward by the King and the Council for the Indies, were actually more far-reaching than the order of the crown which had been disputed, though they would not take effect so abruptly. The governor received them, and himself had them publicly proclaimed throughout the island; with prodigious effect. The whole island rose against them. Municipal councils and others officials, as well as planters and gold miners, protested against them, and pleaded for at least postponement of their enforcement until they could have an opportunity to appeal to the crown and to the Council for the Indies against them. To this plea for delay, De Avila acceded; to his own subsequent undoing, as we shall presently see. His own brother, Alfonso de Avila, turned against him, and went to Spain as the chief spokesman of the opponents of the new rules.

While the question of the Indians was thus held in suspension, De Avila turned his attention to other matters, largely matrimonial and domestic. On coming to Cuba, a young bachelor, he made his home in the house of the wealthy widow of Pedro de Paz. This lady, who had otherwise been much married, and who was by birth a member of the formidable Guzman family, whose name she now bore, was past fifty years old, or about twice the age of the young governor. Indeed, she had sons and daughters of about De Avila's age. It was therefore assumed to be quite permissible for the governor to live in her house. The arrangement proved in the end, however, to be disastrous. It was probably the lady's intention from the beginning to take the young man for her husband—her fourth or fifth. At any rate, his domestic association with her, while it could not compromise her reputation, did so compromise his that he could get none of the eligible young women of Cuba to marry him, although he sought the hands of several of them. So after a time, despairing of any other bride, and doubtless much impressed by the wealth of his mature hostess, he married her; and thereafter was her slave.

SAN LAZARO WATCH TOWER, HAVANA Built 1536

For the remainder of the ill-starred administration the lady was the real governor. A large part of her fortune was in Indian slaves, or in enterprises dependent upon their labor. Therefore it was she who was foremost in opposing the enforcement of the decrees for their emancipation. It was owing to her influence that De Avila acquiesced in their suspension. Then, when the matter was being appealed, it was she who constrained De Avila to leave Santiago for a tour of the island, ostensibly for inspection, but in reality to get away from Santiago, where the social atmosphere was not agreeable, and to settle in some more advantageous place.

That new place was found at Havana. Since the burning of it by French buccaneers that city had been rebuilt in a much more attractive style than Santiago, and society there was more hospitable to the governor's wife. A plausible excuse for settling there was, moreover, readily found. It was necessary, for the protection of the place against another French attack, that the valiant governor should remain there in person. For the furtherance of this purpose, he procured the free granting to him of a choice tract of land, and also the free gift of materials for building him a fine mansion. Whether the citizens of Havana gave the materials willingly, for the sake of having the governor of the island living among them, or under some sort of compulsion, may not certainly be declared. Two traditions have been extant. One was, that they gave the materials under compulsion, and that for that reason the governor's mansion was called the "House of Fear." The other was, that they gave them willingly, even eagerly, because of actual dread of another French descent; thinking that if the governor himself lived there, he would take all possible measures for the defence of the place; and that it was for that reason that it was called the "House of Fear."

After completing the house and living there for some time, however, De Avila deemed it politic to return to Santiago. His absence from the latter place had given rise to great dissatisfaction there and throughout all the eastern part of the island, where of course the majority of the population, of wealth and of political and other influence were still to be found. Indeed, protests had been lodged with the crown against what was described as the governor's abandonment of the lawful seat of government of the island. Suspicions of his unworthiness had already strongly arisen at court, and orders were sent for the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, which still had jurisdiction in Cuba, to investigate his conduct. The report was unfavorable, and in consequence the crown summarily appointed Antonio Chaves to succeed him as governor; directing Chaves to conduct a searching inquest into De Avila's administration without regard to the report already made by the agent of the supreme court of Hispaniola.

The sequel was the greatest public scandal that had thus far marred the history of Cuba. It was at the beginning of October, 1545, that Antonio Chaves was commissioned to be governor of Cuba, and it was at the beginning of June in the following year that he arrived at Santiago and entered upon the duties of his office. The first task was to investigate his predecessor, and this he performed with a thoroughness which seemed ferocious and which certainly suggests either some personal hatred of De Avila or a natural desire to be cruel and ruthless. He charged De Avila with having committed malfeasance of office for the furtherance of his wife's interests; with having engaged in commercial and industrial enterprises himself, to the detriment of public interests; with having established monopolies for enriching himself or his wife; with having both given and accepted bribes; with having intimidated local officials and the people; and with having, largely at the instance of his wife, neglected to enforce the order of the King for the emancipation of the natives.

It is quite probable that De Avila was guilty of most of these charges, particularly of those in which his wife was concerned. Certain it is that Antonio Chaves set about trying to prove them with a strenuous zeal which had never before been displayed. One of his first acts was to seize and search the governor's house; not merely in its public or semi-public offices but in its most private parts. The wardrobe of the governor's wife was ransacked, the furniture examined, the walls and floors sounded and even broken in quest of concealed treasure. To some of these proceedings the governor, or ex-governor, and his wife, too, attempted to offer physical resistance, but they were overpowered and bound while the search went on. Their servants, or slaves, were questioned and even, it is said, threatened with torture if they did not tell all they knew. Under such compulsion they told of bars of gold hidden underneath the floor of a country house; which were found.

Chaves went so far as to order De Avila to be chained fast to a post in the market place, where fugitive slaves had formerly been chained, and the former governor was actually subjected to this indignity, though he had not yet been convicted and sentenced by a court of justice. But this was carrying prosecution too far. It was regarded as not prosecution but persecution. There was a reaction of popular sentiment in favor of De Avila, and he was assisted to escape from his bonds and to find sanctuary in the Franciscan monastery. After a time he undertook to get away, to Spain, but was quickly detected and recaptured by Chaves. After some further controversy, Chaves discreetly agreed that De Avila might go to Spain, to defend himself if he could before the Council for the Indies; doubtless expecting that such defence would be in vain because of De Avila's offences against that Council's decrees.

So De Avila departed for Spain, with his advocates and his accusers on the same ship. Most fortunately for him, his wife also went, carrying with her an ample store of gold and gems which had escaped the search and confiscation of Chaves. Her conduct in this emergency indicates that she had a sincere devotion to her young husband, in addition, of course, to a desire to protect her own material fortune. Certain it is that she constituted herself his chief and most effective champion, freely expending in his behalf the gold which she had taken to Spain. She testified that all the property which he was accused of having unlawfully acquired was in fact hers and not his, possessed by her before she was married to him, and that if he had in any sense acquired it, it was solely through having married her; and there was no law against a governor's marrying a rich wife.

Her argument prevailed. The litigation in Spain lasted for several years, during part of which time De Avila was in prison. But in the end he was released; the heavy fines which had been levied against him were remitted; and the sentence of perpetual banishment from Cuba was revoked. Thereupon the devoted couple returned in triumph to Cuba, with a great retinue of servants, and reestablished themselves at Santiago. They held aloof from political affairs, and gave their attention to an exceedingly profitable commerce between Cuba and other West India Islands and Spain; which happy state of affairs lasted until De Avila's death, a dozen years later. He left behind him the reputation of being one of the worst of Cuban governors, not so much because of any inherent viciousness as because of his weakness of character and his complete subservience to the often sordid and sometimes unscrupulous doings of his wife.

That there was any gain for Cuba in the substitution of Antonio Chaves for Juan de Avila is scarcely, however, to be maintained. On the contrary, there was probably some loss. It was a substitution of King Stork for King Log. De Avila had been weak and passive. Chaves was strong and aggressive; as his campaign against his predecessor demonstrated. In point of morals there was probably little to choose between them. So far as enforcement of the laws concerning the natives was concerned, Chaves was worse than De Avila. For De Avila personally wished to enforce them, but was dissuaded from so doing by the influence of his wife and the almost unanimous demands of the officials and people. Chaves, on the other hand, appears to have been personally opposed to all emancipation laws, and inclined to subject the natives to ruthless slavery. Although he had savagely attacked De Avila for acquiescing in the suspension or postponement of the royal decrees, Chaves himself went even further in the same direction. He declined to enforce the laws, protested against them, and petitioned for their repeal on the ground that they would be ruinous to the material welfare of the island. The rule against employment of natives in the mines was especially obnoxious to him, and he advised the crown that unless it were repealed, together with all other such measures, the island would soon be "possessed of the devil."

Seeing that Chaves was now doing the very thing that he had condemned his predecessor for doing, the King was disgusted with him, and sent him the sharpest kind of a reprimand, reminding him of his gross inconsistency and bidding him to enforce the law without further ado. Chaves pretended to obey. In fact, he promptly replied that he was obeying. But he obeyed only in pretence. He did not scruple to declare—in Cuba—that he was opposed to giving the natives their freedom. He did not consider them fit for it. Why? Because they were not Christians, and if set free they would not become Christians, and therefore would infallibly be damned eternally. Therefore to save their souls from hell fire, their bodies must be enslaved, so that they could find salvation through being physically compelled to conform with the external practices of Christianity. Particularly necessary was it, he argued, for this system of spiritual salvation through corporeal bondage to prevail in the provinces of Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus and Puerto del Principe, because they had no agricultural interests but were dependent upon mining, and if they could not compel the Indians to work in the mines, they would be ruined.

This logic, more ingenious than ingenuous, did not favorably impress the King, nor was he better pleased with Chaves's proposal that the Indians should be made free in name only, and that while traffic in them as chattels should be forbidden, they should in fact remain in involuntary domestic servitude. Another sharp reprimand was accordingly sent to Chaves, with an intimation that something worse might follow; to which warning the governor was blind and deaf. Accordingly, the blow soon fell.

We have hitherto heard much of Lopez Hurtado, the crabbed, surly and cantankerous old royal treasurer, with his impregnable honesty. It was quite impossible that he should countenance even passively such conduct as that of Chaves. So at the end of 1548 he sent to the King an appalling indictment of the governor, charging him with all manner of public crimes and private vices. He declared that Chaves was enriching himself at the expense of the people, and that he was neglecting public business for private enterprises, that he was permitting his subordinates to practice extortion and oppression, that he was ill-treating and persecuting honest men, and that he was corrupting the women of the island; all of which was probably true.

The King acted promptly. Chaves had been appointed governor in October, 1545, for a term of four years, at a salary of a thousand ducats a year. He had now, at the end of 1548, been in office three years and more; though he claimed that his term ran for four years from June, 1546, when he actually took office. However, there was no tenure of office law to keep him in his place beyond the royal pleasure; certainly not to protect him from removal for cause. So the supreme court of Hispaniola was directed to investigate him, and Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor in his stead. The court of Hispaniola sent Geronimo de Aguayo to Cuba to make a private investigation of the governor's doings; Hurtado agreeing to pay the expenses out of his own pocket. Aguayo came to Santiago in April, 1549, while Chaves was absent at Havana, planning to remove the seat of government to that city. Three months were spent in the investigation, and then Aguayo reported to the court a docket of about three hundred charges against Chaves, some of which were serious enough but many of which were altogether trifling. The court decided to take no action upon them, but to hold them for the new governor, Angulo, to use as the basis of the investigation which he, according to law and precedent, would at once make into his predecessor's administration.

Gonzalo de Angulo had been appointed at the beginning of September, 1548, but did not at once come to the West Indies. He reached Hispaniola in the summer of 1549, shortly after Aguayo had made his report, and he remained there for some time, considering the report and conferring with the members of the supreme court. Finally, at the beginning of November, he proceeded to Santiago and assumed the governorship. He entered upon the investigation, using Aguayo's three hundred charges as the basis of it, despite the protest of Chaves that Aguayo had been a prejudiced investigator, moved by political and even pecuniary considerations and intent not upon discovering the truth but merely upon defaming him (Chaves) to the fullest possible extent.

The result of the new governor's inquest was that at the beginning of July, 1550, Chaves was arrested and sent as a prisoner to Spain, for trial there upon a multitude of accusations. These were partly grave and partly—mostly—frivolous. In the former category was the charge that Chaves had refused or at least failed to enforce royal decrees for the enfranchisement of the natives. That was a very serious matter, apparently, and there was no question that it was true. Indeed, Chaves admitted it. But, he said, some of these decrees had been suspended, there had been pleas for the suspension of others, officials had failed to proclaim some, and the Hispaniola court had interfered with others; so that the whole business was in a hopeless tangle and he really could not determine what he ought to do. This argument impressed the Spanish authorities, and they consequently dismissed that and other like charges against him.

But when it came to other charges, they could not be got rid of so easily. Thus, he had refused to pay an apothecary for a dose of medicine. He had called Hurtado's nephew a Jew! He had called certain citizens "conspirators" because they were forming some sort of a secret organization. He had arrested a priest for acting disrespectfully toward him. These were indeed serious matters; particularly when the irate Hurtado produced voluminous affidavits, from parents, physicians, clergy, and whom not, to prove that his nephew like himself was a good Christian. So for these things Chaves was thrown into prison, and even, it is said, bound with heavy fetters, until he should pay the fines which were imposed upon him.

It must be recorded in Chaves's favor that he was unable to pay these fines. Indeed, he seems not to have had means sufficient to employ a lawyer to defend him, wherefore he was compelled to conduct his own case; which he was quite competent to do, being a licentiate of the bar. There was, then, of course no thought of his being able to influence the course of justice by the use of money, as De Avila was supposed to have done. Whether he was actually so poor, or whether his fortune had been so invested in Cuba that he was unable at once to realize upon it, does not appear. In charity we may accept the former theory, as the more creditable to him. At any rate, after two years of litigation and imprisonment, he secured a final reduction of the fines levied against him to a little more than 100,000 maravedi, which he was required to pay within a year. This trifling amount he contrived to raise and so regained his freedom; going thereafter back to Cuba to settle up his personal affairs there, and thence to Peru, to engage no more in Cuban politics.

Apart from his prosecution of Chaves, the first act of Gonzalo de Angulo on assuming the governorship was to attempt a radical solution of the Indian problem. This he did by proclaiming the full and universal emancipation of all natives, however and by whomsoever held. Seeing how strenuously and vociferously similar action had been resisted only a few years before, as sure to be ruinous to the island, it is worthy of remark that this provoked no remonstrances and caused no economic disturbance. The explanation is simple. The former proposals for emancipation included slaves who had been brought to Cuba from other lands, while this one applied only to natives. Now the latter, through disease, fighting, and other causes, had been steadily decreasing in numbers, until they were now practically a negligible quantity. They probably numbered not more than twenty-five hundred in the entire island. It really mattered little, from an industrial point of view, whether they were enslaved or free. They were in fact set free, in good faith, and then practically disappeared. They did not relapse into primitive barbarism, but they lived in squalor, most of them, and gradually died out.

Not all of them, however, suffered such a fate. Some settled on lands near if not actually among the Spanish colonists, adopted the ways of civilization, and prospered. They acquired freehold of land and houses, kept herds of cattle, built ships and engaged in commerce. Some of them intermarried with Spanish families, and the offspring of such unions often rose to honorable rank in society and the state.

The question of slavery was not by any means disposed of by this emancipation of the native Indians. There was a much larger number of slaves in the island who had been brought thither from other countries, including both insular and continental Indians and African negroes. Governor Angulo was directed to order their emancipation and repatriation at the same time with the others. But he withheld the decree. These foreign slaves were far more numerous than the natives and were consequently more important to industry and commerce. They had not been simply "assigned" to owners, like the Cuban Indians, but had been purchased outright for cash, like any other merchandise, and were legally as much the property of their owners as land, houses or cattle. In view of this circumstance, Angulo declined to proclaim their emancipation.