The History of Cuba, vol. 4Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
The History of Cuba, vol. 4
Johnson, Willis Fletcher
Cuba -- Economic conditions; Cuba -- History
The attitude of the people of Cuba toward the revolution, so far as at
this early date they knew what was going on, was varied according to
their occupations, interests and relationships. The professional
classes, the lawyers, physicians, educators, men of letters and others,
for the most part wished for complete separation from Spain, and aided
the cause of independence with their money and their influence. There
were, however, some of them, including not a few of the most estimable
and most patriotic men on the island, whose faith was not able to
forecast victory. They saw on the side of the Cubans lack of money, lack
of arms and ammunition, and lack of that direct connection with the
outer world which was indispensable for support; and on the side of
Spain plenty of money, equipment and communications, and an army of
200,000 trained soldiers thrown into a territory about the size of the
State of Pennsylvania, together with an inflexible resolution never to
surrender the island but to suppress every insurrection at no matter
what cost. It was surely not strange that they regarded such odds as too
formidable to be overcome, by even the most ardent and self-sacrificing
patriotism, and therefore thought that the course of greater wisdom
would be to persuade, compel or otherwise prevail upon Spain to bestow
upon the island a genuine and satisfactory measure of autonomy.
The merchants and commercial classes very largely consisted of
Spaniards, a fact which sufficiently indicates their attitude. They were
not only resolutely committed against the revolution, and indeed against
autonomy, but they were almost incredibly bitter against the Cuban
Independence party. It was from those classes that the notorious "Cuban
Volunteers" had been recruited in the Ten Years' war, men who, though
living in Cuba and enriching themselves from her resources, were "more
Spanish than Spain." They corresponded with the Tories of the American
Revolution, and not merely the Tories who sat in their chairs and railed
against the Revolution, but rather those who took up arms in the
British cause, and who allied themselves with the Red Indians with
tomahawk and scalping knife. The animus of these Spaniards in Cuba was
not, generally speaking, love of Spain, nor yet hatred of the Cubans,
but rather greed of gain. They were not patriotic, but simply sordid.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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