Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy

4. Intervention and Occupation

Intervention and Occupation The new separatist war began in February 1895, in much the same fashion as others before it, with localized skirmishes, mostly in remote mountain folds of eastern Cuba, initially too distant to cause planters and politicians in western Cuba much concern. Rebellion in eastern Cuba was not uncommon, and no one in power or with property had any reason to believe that the "Grito de Baire" of February24 would end in any way other than its countless predecessors: a matter of no consequence. But in early summer matters assumed a sudden gravity, and what began as a local affair became national.The insurgent armies marched out of the eastern mountains into the rich cattle-grazing ranges of Camagiiey in the summer, through the fertile sugar land of Matanzas and Havana in the autumn, and into the lush tobacco fields of Pinar del Rio by winter. In the course of ten months, the insurrection had reached regions never before disturbed by the armed stirrings of nationality. The presence of separatist armies in the west, coincident with preparations for the 1896 sugar harvest, stunned local elites, peninsular and Creole alike. Prospects for the harvest were bleak, and when it was completed, even the pessimists were shown to have been overconfident: from a record i-million-ton crop in 1894 the harvest fell to 225,000 tons in 1896. Not since the 18408 had Cuban sugar production been so low. And in 1897 it dropped again, to 212,000 tons. Indeed, the purpose of the uprising was to disrupt the sugar economy . As early as July 1895, insurgent General Maximo Gomez proclaimed a moratorium on all economic activity—commerce, manufacturing , agriculture, ranching, but most of all and especially sugar production . There was to be no planting, no harvesting, no grinding, no marketing. Any estate found in violation of the ban, Gomez vowed, would be destroyed and its owner tried for treason. "All sugar plantations will be destroyed, the standing cane set fire and the factory 82 4 83 Intervention and Occupation buildings and railroads destroyed/' the decree warned. "Any worker assisting the operation of the sugar factories will be considered an enemy of his country . . . and will be executed/'1 The attack against property set the stage for the redistribution of property as a design for peace and gave decisive expression to the social content of Cuba Libre. The insurgent leadership committed itself to a nation of small landowners, each farmer to enjoy security derived from direct and independent ownership of land. In 1896 the insurgent army command issued an expropriation decree, pledging at the end of the war to redistribute among defenders of Cuba Libre all properties belonging to peninsulares and Creoles who supported Spanish rule. The war thus provided more than the opportunity to end colonial rule: it created the occasion to destroy one social class to benefit another. II Creole elites held few illusions after 1896. For decades localproperty owners had clung to the colonial regime for protection, and now in the waning years of the nineteenth century, Spain was at the verge of defaulting on the sole raison d'etre for its existence in Cuba. Membersof the beleaguered bourgeoisie contemplated their impending extinction with despair. Growing more certain in their conviction that Spain's hold over Cuba was slipping, they were now prepared to sacrifice traditional colonial relationships for an alternative source of protection and patronage. They confronted what they had feared most through the nineteenth century—a successful uprising of the underclasses— and they needed assistance quickly. Only U.S. intervention, many concluded, might end the insurrectionary challenge and redeem the beleaguered social order. As early as June 1896, nearly one hundred planters, lawyers, and industrialists petitioned President Grover Cleveland for North American intervention to end the crisis. "Wecannot," the petitioners wrote, "express our opinion openly and formally, for he who should dare, whilst living 84 CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES in Cuba, to protest against Spain, would, undoubtedly, be made a victim, both in his person and his property, to the most ferocious persecution at the hands of the government." Spain, the petition continued, could offer Cuba nothing for the future except continued destruction and ruin. Nor did property owners find comfort in the thought of independence. If continued Spanish rule threatened to result in ruin, independence promised to lead to havoc. "Can there be no intermediate solution?" the petitioners asked. Withoutconfidence...