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Cuba Between Empires,

1898- 1899

Louis A. Perez, Jr.

The author is a member of the history department in the University of South Florida, Tampa

I

As THE BATTLESHIP Maine steamed toward Havana harbor in February 1898, insurgents in Cuba prepared to commemo- rate the third anniversary of the renewed war for independence, a struggle launched first in 1868 and thereafter continuing intermittently in various parts of the island. By 1898, Cubans had fought nearly thirty years against Spain for the inde- pendence of the island.l If an appeal to arms as the means of independence enjoyed general endorsement among Cuban patriots, the precise meaning of independence failed to achieve comparable consensus within insurgent ranks. Beyond a com- monly shared notion that independence involved minimally separation from Spain, the final structure of "Cuba Libre" remained vaguely if not often incompatibly defined by the various sectors of the separatist movement.

For many separatists independence from Spain signified only the preliminary act of a larger drama in which Cuba would ultimately find fulfillment in union with the United States. Indeed, for the better part of the first decade of the thirty- year struggle, annexationist sentiment occupied a central position within the body of separatist thought.2 Annexationism

1This theme is skillfully developed in Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, La guerra libertadora cubana de los treinta ahos (2nd ed., La Habana, 1958).

2Francisco J. Ponte Dominguez, Historia de la guerra de los diez anos (La Habana, 1944), 27-29, 184- 189; Jose Ignacio Rodriguez, Estudio historico sobre el origen, desenvolvimiento

473

O 1979, by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association

Pacific Historical Review

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received most support from patrician separatists, creoles for whom annexation offered the most practical resolution of con- tradictions arising from Cuba's growing economic dependence on the United States while it remained politically dependent on Spain. Detecting in the social heterogeneity of the Liber- ation Army the sources of future unrest, moreover, annex- ationists sought in union with the United States the salvation of a socio-economic system now threatened by the political forces released by the armed struggle against Spain. United States sovereignty, many reasoned, promised at once to fill the vacuum created by the expulsion of metropolitan Spain and to guarantee the preservation of the status quo.3 In the end, annexationists questioned the ability of Cubans to manage the responsibilities of self-government successfully. "Cuba Libre" raised for many the spectre of the apocalypse and evoked images of race war, civil strife, and chronic political instability. Both as precursors of the thirty-year separatist struggle and later as leaders of the movement, such wealthy planters as Miguel de Aladama, Jose Morales Lemus, and Francisco de Frias (Count of Pozos Dulces) emerged as leading advocates of annexation.

Other separatists shared many of the fundamental assump- tions of the annexationists but refused to disavow the indi- viduality of Cuba or renounce the vision of ultimate inde- pendence. Like their conservative counter-parts, moderate separatists acknowledged the perils attending premature independence. Independence in this instance functioned as a future goal attainable only through preparation and guidance. In this view, moderate separatists contemplated a period of apprenticeship in self-government during which Cuba would submit itself to the United States as a protectorate for an unspecified period of time. Special treaty arrangements, more- over, promised to guarantee a market for Cuban products while allowing the island to advance toward complete political

y manifestaciones prdcticas de le idea de la anexidn de la isla de Cuba a los Estados Unidos de America (La Habana, 1900), 220-235.

3Herminio Portell Vila, "Anexionismo," Humanismo, VII (Enero-Abril de 1959), 28-42; Pedro Garcia Valdes, La idea de la anexidn de Cuba a los Estados Unidos (Pinar del Rio, 1947), 39-40; compare Jorge Ibarra, Ideologia mambisa (La Habana, 1967), 44-50.

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Cuba Between Empires 475

sovereignty. Only supervised training in self-government under controlled conditions, moderates argued, offered any reason- able likelihood of success at nationhood. Tomas Estrada Palma, a former president of the republic in arms during the Ten Years War (1868-1878) and the ranking Cuban diplomat in the United States between 1895 and 1898, gave clearest expression to the protectorate tendencies within the separatist movement. "Associated" with the United States, Estrada Palma predicted confidently in 1878, Cuba would after a short period of time be fully prepared to assume the full responsibilities of statehood.4

Separatist ranks included, lastly, those patriots for whom the ideal of independence represented an inviolate absolute. For the independentista sector of the separatist movement, sover- eignty necessarily involved independence from the United States as much as it required separation from Spain. Indepen- dence as an uncompromising ideal moved into a position of central importance within insurgent ranks during the late 1880s and early 1890s largely as the result of the efforts of Jose Marti.5 Passionately devoted to the cause of independence, Marti worked tirelessly to forge the politico-military agencies necessary to renew the armed struggle against Spain. These efforts culminated in the 1890s with the organization of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC), the appointment of the command hierarchy of the Liberation Army, and, in February 1895, the renewal of the separatist struggle.

The death of Marti early in the war consecrated the cause of independence. The renewal of armed struggle in 1895 and the definition of its goals were linked mainly if not exclusively, to the efforts of Marti. Marti's martyrdom and the doctrines he

4Tomas Estrada Palma to Benigno and Placido Gener, 13 de enero de 1878, in Tomas Estrada Palma, Desde el Castillo de Figueras. Cartas de Estrada Palma (1877-1878), ed. Carlos de Velasco (La Habana, 1918), 72-75; Panfilo D. Camacho, Estrada Palma, el gobernante honrado (La Habana, 1938), 93.

SJose Marti, Ideario separatista, ed. Felix Lizaso (La Habana, 1947). The literature on Marti is voluminous. The best biographies in English are Jorge Manach, Marti, Apostle of Freedom, trans. Coley Taylor (New York, 1950) and Felix Lizaso, Marti, Martyr of Cuban Independence, trans. Esther Elise Shuler (Albuquerque, 1953). A general sampling of Marti's writing can be found in Jose Marti, The American ofJose Marti, ed. Juan de Onis (New York, 1953). Richard Butler Gray, Jose Marti, Cuban Patriot (Gainesville, Fla., 1962), provides an excellent study of the impact of Marti on the Republic.

PACIFIC HISTORICAL REVIEW

had forged over a lifetime all but silenced the advocates of anything less than the cause for which Marti had offered his life. Public discussion of annexation and protectorate schemes ceased. Not that these sentiments disappeared; on the contrary, discredited and largely banished from patriotic forums, annex- ationists and advocates of the protectorate sought alternate means through which to influence the course of events.

The "Grito de Baire" found Cuban patriots united around little more than an unsettled notion of independence. By 1895, moreover, the ideological diversity within the separatist move- ment had acquired generational dimensions. Marti had sum- moned to the cause of independence a new generation of patriots, typically without experience in previous separatist struggles, and for whom the idea of independence had been shaped by the currents of the 1890s. By late 1898, finally, a peculiar distribution tended to fix the location of the various sectors of the separatist movement. The advocates of annex- ation and the protectorate, financially capable of sustaining exile, tended to serve the separatist cause abroad; often diplo- matic representatives of the republic in arms and typically spokesmen of the various patriotic organizations established in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Tampa, Paris, and London, these exiled separatists came to exert a powerful influence on public opinion abroad. Moderate separatists remaining on the island tended to locate in the cities or remain on their large estates, surreptitiously subsidizing the revolution through periodic financial contributions. Independentista senti- ment, on the other hand, came to reside largely in the politico- military agencies of the armed struggle in Cuba.6

By late 1895 and early 1896, the war in Cuba had assumed distinct anti-annexationist qualities. The army command had organized a military campaign around the destruction of the

6Much more research is required on the important but complicated subject of Cuban emigrations between 1868 and 1898. Three distinct separatist exile centers emerged and attracted three different social groups: cigar workers in Tampa and Key West, middle class professionals in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, and property owners in Paris. Most of the literature is confined to the Tampa-Key West group. See Manuel Deulofeu y Lleonart, Marti, Cayo Hueso y Tampa. La emigraci6n. Notas historicas (Cienfuegos, 1902) and Fanny Azcuy, El Partido Revolucionario y la independencia de Cuba (La Habana, 1930).

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sugar estates.7 In attacking the agricultural wealth of Cuba the insurgent command sought to destroy the economic base of annexationist strength; it hoped thereby to neutralize annexa- tionist influence in the separatist ranks and to deprive the Spanish treasury of the funds traditionally derived from Cuban sugar. Indeed, by 1896, the insurgents directed the struggle as much against the sources of Spanish wealth in Cuba as against the military sources of Spanish political authority.8 The in- vasion of the sugar producing provinces of the west gave dramatic form to insurgent strategies. By 1898, the insurgents had effectively disrupted and almost completely destroyed the foundations of the colonial economy.

II

By 1898, separatists in the United States had little to show for their labors to secure support from Washington. Two succes- sive administrations had viewed the Cuban insurgency with disfavor. Only the prospect of a Cuban victory over Spain seemed to trouble Washington more than the possible prolon- gation of the war. Both Grover Cleveland and William McKin- ley plotted a Cuban policy around efforts to exact from Madrid reforms designed simultaneously to placate partisan leaders and guarantee Spanish sovereignty over the island. Indeed, for both administrations, Cuban independence represented some- thing of an anathema if not an outright threat to U.S. national interests. "There are only too strong reasons to fear," Secretary of State Richard Olney wrote, "that, once Spain were with- drawn from the island, the sole bond of union between the different factions would disappear; that a war of race would be precipitated, all the more sanguinary for the discipline and

7See Cuartel del General del Ejercito Libertador, "Circular," noviembre 6 de 1895, enclosure number 1, in Ramon Williams to Edwin Uhl, Nov. 27, 1895, Despatches from United States Consuls in Havana, 1783-1906, U.S. Dept. of State, Records, National Archives.

8See Jose Antonio Lanuza to Tomas Estrada Palma, julio 14 de 1896, in Partido Revolucionario Cubano, La revolucion del 95 segun la correspondencia de la delegacion cubana en Nueva York, ed. Le6n Primelles (5 vols., La Habana, 1932-1937), V, 198-199.

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478 PACIFIC HISTORICAL REVIEW

experience acquired during the insurrection." Olney offered "to cooperate with Spain in the immediate pacification of the island on a plan as, leaving Span [sic] her rights of sover- eignty . . . yet secure to the people of the island all such rights and powers of local self-government as they can reasonably ask."9

United States preparation for war with Spain in 1898, hence, included scrupulous disregard for the politico-military author- ity advanced by the insurgent republic in arms. Washington feared that recognition of the Cuban government promised to limit American freedom of action during the war and, ul- timately, to commit the United States to Cuban independence after the war. A "neutral intervention," the State Department reasoned, offered the United States the opportunity to "dictate the terms of peace and control the organization of an inde- pendent government in Cuba."'0 McKinley rejected recog- nition for similar reasons. "In case of intervention," the Presi- dent explained, "our conduct would be subject to the approval or disapproval of such government. We would be required to submit to its direction and to assume to it the mere relation of a friendly ally."" Indeed, the intervention outlined by McKinley on April 11, 1898, was not designed to assist the Cubans with independence but functioned as a maneuver of "the United States as a neutral to stop the war."12

III

The imminence of United States intervention in 1898 evoked mixed reactions among Cuban separatists. American silence on the question of Cuban independence had a generally dis-

9Richard Olney to E. Dupuy de L6me, April 4, 1896, U.S. Dept. of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1897 (Washington, D.C., 1898), 541-544. See also Stewart L. Woodford to William McKinley, March 18, 1898, in Private Correspondence-General Woodford to the President, Aug. 1897 to May 1898, John Bassett Moore Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Cleveland's opposition to Cuban independence is well developed in John A. S. Grenville and George Berkeley Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy (New Haven, 1966), 179-200, and Ernest May, Imperial Democracy (New York, 1961), 85-92.

'0Alvey A. Adee to William R. Day, April 7, 1898, William R. Day Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

"Congressional Record, XXXI (April 11, 1898), 3701. 12Ibid.

Cuba Between Empires

quieting effect on all separatist spokesmen. Indeed, when confronted with the prospect of an American intervention which might be deaf to Cuban pleas for independence, separa- tists publicly repudiated Washington's "neutral" intervention. "In the face of the present proposal of intervention without recognition," the Cuban Junta in New York proclaimed, "it is necessary for us .. .to say that we must and will regard such intervention as nothing less than a declaration of war by the United States against the Cuban revolutionists. If intervention shall take place on that basis, and the United States shall land an armed forced on Cuban soil, we shall treat that force as an enemy to be opposed, and, if possible, expelled."13

In Cuba, insurgent chieftains received news of the im- pending intervention with similar misgivings.14 From the very outset of the insurrection, military leaders shared little of the enthusiasm displayed by their diplomatic counter-parts for American recognition of belligerency. For many insurrectos, the energy directed toward securing recognition represented mis- placed, if not counter-productive efforts. The premium placed abroad on recognition tended to confuse the issues, often obscuring among separatists the sharp distinction between recognition as a short-run tactic and as an end result. "Recog- nition is like the rain," General-in-Chief Maximo G6mez often mused; "it is a good thing if it comes and a good thing if it doesn't come."'5 Nor did Cuban separatists in the field seek foreign assistance. Supremely confident in the ultimate tri- umph of Cuban arms, Gomez asked from his colleagues abroad only weapons, ammunition, and supplies for the men already in the field.'6 The news of the war between the United States and Spain generally had an unsettling impact in many insur- gents camps across the island. Several army chieftains confided to diaries their concern for the ability of Cuban independence to survive the "Spanish-American war."17

13The State (Columbia, S.C.), April 7, 1898, p. 1. See also "Bulletin," April 6, 1898, Day Papers.

'4Gen. Jose Mir6 Argenter to Bartolome Mas6, 3 de junio de 1898, in Rufino Perez Landa, Bartolome Mas6 y Mdrquez. Estudio biografico documentado. (La Habana, 1947), 244.

5 In Grover Flint, Marching with Gomez (Boston, 1898), 189. 'Ram6n Infiesta, Mdximo Gomez (La Habana, 1937), 203-204. "See, for example, Manuel Piedra Martel, Mis primeros treinta anos: memorias (La

Habana, 1944), 487.

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The Joint Resolution of Congress on April 20, 1898, recog- nizing that the "people of Cuba are and of right ought to be free and independent" and disclaiming any disposition to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over the island except for its pacification,18 tended to calm separatist mis- givings.19 Satisfied that the intervention made common cause with separatist goals, Cubans from all sectors of the insurgent movement pledged support to their new allies. In Cuba the Council of Government promised complete cooperation and ordered army chieftains to submit themselves to the authority of the American army command.20 In the United States, exiles participated actively in preparations for war. Scores of Cubans offered the War Department their services as guides, trans- lators, navigators, and pilots.21

Beyond the congressional pledge of April 20, however, officials in Washington declined to make any further com- mitment to the separatist cause. Indeed, the Joint Resolution notwithstanding, McKinley's preparation for war conformed entirely to the spirit of the broader policy constructs outlined in the presidential message of April 11. Washington continued to disregard official agencies of the insurgent government. Amer- ican commanders coordinated military policy with individual army chieftains in Cuba, thereby ignoring the civil authority of the republic represented by the Council of Government and the military command in the person of General-in-Chief Maximo Gomez.

Separatists accepted the anomalous alliance uneasily. Many made no effort to conceal their displeasure at being ordered to cooperate with a government that denied in policy and practice the existence of the Cuban republic. Only confidence in the stated American pledge, outlined in the Joint Resolution, encouraged Cubans to believe that the intervention shared aims in common with their struggle. No matter that the

'8Congressional Record, XXXI (April 16, 1898), 3988. '9Manuel Arbelo, Recuerdos del la ultima guerra por la independencia de Cuba, 1896 a

1898 (La Habana, 1918), 303-305. 20Joaquin Llaverias y Martinez and Emeterio S. Santovenia, eds., Actas de las Asambleas

de Representantes y del Consejo de Gobierno durante la guerra de independencia (6 vols., La Habana, 1927-1933), IV, 54-57.

21The Tampa Tribune, March 29, 1898, p. 1.

Cuba Between Empires 481

Americans refused to recognize the republic, as long as Wash- ington endorsed the goals for which the republic stood. What- ever else may have separated the Cubans and Americans, the Joint Resolution, in the end, established the common ground upon which war-time collaboration rested.

The fragile alliance did not survive the first weeks of joint operations. At the front lines of eastern Cuba and in the trenches outside El Caney, San Juan, and Santiago de Cuba, tensions between the allied armies mounted. For many in- surrectos, first contact with the Americans confirmed deep- seated fears. Far too many American officers, the Cubans sensed uneasily, moved in their midst brusquely, preemptively, and, worst of all, unsympathetic to the separatist cause.22 Cuban officers balked at assignments that would have converted the soldiers of the Liberation Army entirely into messengers, pack- carriers, and trench-diggers.

Nor was the United States command prepared for its first encounter with the most intransigent independentistas in the field. Insurgent soldiers, Americans quickly discovered, de- parted radically from the mold of separatists known in New York and Washington. These Cubans were not neatly attired, well-educated white diplomats; on the contrary, insurgent soldiers in eastern Cuba were often virtually unclad, typically illiterate, and largely black. Weary after some three years of war and wary of the American purpose in Cuba, the insurgents conveyed little of the gratitude their would-be deliverers deemed appropriate to the circumstances. Conscious of the self-proclaimed role of liberators, Americans took umbrage in the reception greeting their arrival in Cuba. "The American soldier... ," war correspondent Stephen Crane observed, "thinks of himself as a disinterested benefactor, and he would like the Cubans to play up to the ideal now and then... He does not really want to be thanked, and yet the total absence of anything like gratitude makes him furious."23

By mid-summer, outright contempt for Cubans had become commonplace behind American lines. "The Cubans are a dirty

2Stephen Bonsai, The Fightfor Santiago (New York, 1899), 532-534. 23New York World, July 14, 1898, p. 3. R. W. Stallman and E. R. Hageman, eds., The

War Dispatches of Stephen Crane (New York, 1964), 181.

PACIFIC HISTORICAL REVIEW

filthy lot," one American officer complained.24 Cuban insur- gents "hear nothing but words of scorn from our men as they pass," the Associated Press correspondent in Santiago de Cuba reported. "Even our officers," the correspondent continued, "no longer conceal their disgust for their allies, and it is understood that the warm friendship displayed toward them at first has now turned into contempt."25 Sensing hostility from the people they had apparently come to liberate, enthusiasm among American commanders for "Cuba Libre" and their affection for its advocates in the field waned noticeably.

The capitulation of Santiago de Cuba dramatically under- scored the contradictions of the alliance. By the terms of the surrender, the United States assumed control of key cities and towns in the province.26 Much to the dismay of General Calixto Garcia, the ranking commander of Cuban forces in eastern Cuba, the capitulation ratified incumbent Spanish civil officials in their positions. The American army command, moreover, prohibited Cuban soldiers from entering the eastern capital. Disappointed with the terms of the capitulation and angered by the disregard the United States had displayed for Cuban sensibilities, Garcia protested directly to General William R. Shafter, the American commander, and thereupon forwarded his resignation to Cuban authorities. Events in Santiago de Cuba, Garcia wrote, had made any further cooperation with the United States impossible; rather than disobey government directives ordering Cuban officers to submit to American orders, Garcia chose to resign.27

Shafter, too, sensed the compelling implications underlying the dispute. The "trouble with General Garcia," Shafter wrote with some impatience, "was that he expected to be placed in

24Lt. Col. Clinton Smith to Col. Augustus R. Francis, July 31, 1898, published in New York Times, Aug. 12, 1898, p. 1.

2sThe State (Columbia, S.C.), July 20, 1898, p. 1. 26Jose Miieller y Teijeiro, Battles and Capitulations of Santiago de Cuba, Office of Naval

Intelligence, War Note No. 1, Information From Abroad, in U.S. Senate, Notes on the Spanish-American War, 56th Cong., 1st sess., document no. 388, ser. 3876 (Washington, 1900), 145.

27Cuba, Ejercito Libertador, Parte oficial del Lugarteniente General Calixto Garcia al General enjefe Mdximo Gdmez el 15 dejulio de 1898 sobre la campaia de Santiago de Cuba (La Habana, 1953), 22-23. Calixto Garcia Iniguez, Palabras de tres guerras (La Habana, 1942), 98-99.

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command at this place; in other words that we would turn over the city to him." The American commander reported that he had "explained fully that we were at war with Spain, and that the question of Cuban independence would not be considered by me."28

The dispute surrounding the disposition of Santiago de Cuba brought the developing estrangement between allied leaders into sharp relief. The peace protocol a month later further heightened the anomalous features of the alliance. Cuban denunciation of United States policy in Santiago de Cuba served to fix in the minds of American leaders the view of the Cubans as ungrateful rabble. Between the capitulation of Santiago de Cuba and the protocol of August 12, moreover, the scorn of Cuban insurrectos assumed increasingly political dimensions.

After the August 12 peace protocol, the central issue turned on sovereignty over the island. Alluding to the Cubans' claim of sovereignty over the occupied regions, General William Shafter stressed to Washington that "a dual government can't exist here; we have got to have full sway of the Cubans." Other- wise, Shafter predicted, there would inevitably be a war be- tween the former allies to resolve competing claims of sover- eignty.29 Indeed, the prospect of war between the Americans and Cubans loomed as a real possibility in the minds of many American officials. Only days after the protocol, General H. L. Lawton, the American commander in Santiago de Cuba, ap- pealed urgently for instructions from Washington about the policy to be pursued toward the Cuban army. Cuban troops still maintained their organization, Lawton explained, and were "threatening in their attitude," keeping the "inhabitants stirred up and panicky by threats and acts of violence."30 Washington telegraphed its response within hours. Interference in the

"8Gen. William R. Shafter to R. A. Alger, July 29, 1898, U.S. Dept. of War, Corre- spondence Relating to the War with Spain (Washington, D.C., 1902), 185 (hereafter cited as Correspondence).

29Gen. William R. Shafter to Adj. Gen., Aug. 16, 1898, U.S. Cong., Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the War Department in the War with Spain, 56th Cong., 1st session, ser. 3859-3866 (8 vols., Washington, D.C., 1900), II, 1052 (hereafter cited as RCAP).

30Gen. H. W. Lawton to Adj. Gen. Corbin, Aug. 16, 1898, file 116542, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, Record Group 94, National Archives.

484 PACIFIC HISTORICAL REVIEW

exercise of American authority, Lawton was instructed, could not be tolerated. Washington demanded Cuban recognition of the military occupation and the authority of the United States over the island.31

IV

By late summer and early fall, the rupture between the United States and the insurgent leaders was all but complete. Earlier disparagement of their Cuban allies during the war gave way to increasing public doubts about whether the Cubans possessed the virtues necessary for self-government. In the weeks and months that followed the peace protocol, the Ameri- can supposition of Cuban incapacity for self-government hardened. "Self-government!" Shafter responded intemper- ately to a reporter's query. "Why those people are no more fit for self-government than gunpowder is for hell."32 It would be another generation, General William Ludlow, governor of Havana informed President McKinley, before Cubans would be sufficiently fitted for the responsibilities of self-govern- ment.33 General S. B. M. Young, a cavalry brigade commander in Santiago de Cuba, concluded early in the occupation that the "insurgents are a lot of degenerates, absolutely devoid of honor or gratitude. They are no more capable of self-government than the savages of Africa."34 "If we are to save Cuba," one correspondent exhorted, "we must hold it. If we leave it to the Cubans, we give it over to a reign of terror-to the machete and the torch, to insurrection and assassination."35 The United States, officials proclaimed, would simply not turn the island over to the insurgents for plunder and pillage. Indeed, the very pledge contained in the Joint Resolution underwent increasing re-examination and subtle re-definition. On the day of the

31Gen. H. C. Corbin to Gen. H. W. Lawton, Aug. 26, 1898, Correspondence, 231. 32New York Times, Dec. 19, 1898, p. 2, and The State, Dec. 19, 1898, p. 1. 33James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag (2 vols., New York, 1912), II, 490. 34In Walter Millis, The Martial Spirit: A Study of Our War with Spain (Boston, 1931),

362. 35New York Times, July 29, 1898, p. 4.

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peace protocol, the New York Times reflected official thinking in an editorial:

We are bound by a pledge which we must observe in good faith to allow the people of the Island of Cuba to set up a Government of their choice. They are obviously incapable of doing this at once ... When the time comes we shall withdraw and leave them to work out their own destiny. If that time never comes we shall continue to control the island, and ultimately, in all probability, it would be annexed to the United States. The pledge we made by no means binds us to withdraw at once, nor does full and faithful compliance with its spirit and letter forbid us to become permanent possessors of Cuba if the Cubans prove to be altogether incapable of self-government. A higher ob- ligation than the pledge of the resolution of Congress would then constrain us to continue our government of the island.36

The organization of the military occupation left Cuban insurgents contained in the interior countryside, while it brought the American command into immediate and direct contact with those elements most hostile to "Cuba Libre." Distributed almost entirely throughout the towns and cities, American forces found among the island's urban citizenry confirmation of their earlier misgivings of their Cuban allies. Contemptuous of the Cuban insurrectos, Spanish residents lost little time communicating their views to American authorities. Fearful of the Cuban insurgent, often hysterical in their opposition to Cuban independence, Spaniards consistently denied that the Cubans possessed the aptitude necessary for

36New York Times, Aug. 12, 1898, p. 6. Anti-Cuban sentiment apparently worked and emanated directly from the White House. The Hartford Herald, owned by McKinley's private secretary, John Addison Porter, railed against the Cubans in the aftermath of the Santiago dispute: "Our Cuban Allies-would we have been saved from calling them such!-are utter failures. They will neither fight nor work.... Lucky, indeed, was it for the United States to have as a wall between them and their recognition as an independent government so acute an observer and stanch a statesman as President McKinley. Had it not been for our Chief Magistrate, these good-for-nothing allies of ours would have been made superior in the command of fighting forces to our gallant Miles .... The Government long ceased to put the slightest confidence in anything the insurgents says .... President McKinley was right when with all his power he successfully resisted the demand of Congress and of a large section of people that these cowardly, good-for-nothing insurgents be recognized as an independent government." See "General Garcia and Cuban Conduct," Literary Digest, XVII (July 30, 1898), 122-123.

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the rigors of self-government.37 Spaniards warned of pillage, race war, and endless vendettas against peninsulares by vengeful insurgents-all certain to follow in the wake of independence.38 After the defeat of Spain, Spanish residents transferred their loyalties to the United States and emerged as advocates of indefinite American sovereignty. Outspoken opponents of Cuban independence, urban conservatives viewed the immi- nent departure of Spain with alarm; without an independent power base, discredited and vulnerable for having supported a losing cause, these sectors perceived their hope for a future in Cuba reduced to the protection afforded by the American flag.

Across the island, Spaniards emerged as the first and most active supporters of the military occupation and also the most hostile to "Cuba Libre". Businessmen, merchants, landowners, and local officials flocked around the occupation in search of salvation from Cuban independence.39 Spaniards rushed to volunteer their services to the military authorities and quickly received local appointments; many incumbent officials were ratified in their positions pending later reorganization. After the peace protocol, Spanish and American troops fraternized and together found in the Cuban insurrectos objects of scorn and ridicule.40 "After the surrender of Santiago," Secretary of War R. A. Alger, later wrote, "the relations between our troops and the Spaniards were of the most cordial character."41 In the peace, the former adversaries moved closer together while the breach between the former allies widened.

The early military occupation also placed American author- ities in direct contact with Cubans who, after the defeat of Spain, transferred their affections to the United States. Well- placed businessmen, absentee landowners, and merchants, the majority of influential Cubans in the cities had supported Spanish authority in fear of Cuban independence. The count- less tens of thousands of Cuban-born residents who had served Spain at various levels of insular government and had volun-

37Gen. William R. Shafter to Adj. Gen. Corbin,July 29, 1898, RCAP, II, 1053. 38"Los espanoles anexionistas," Patria, 3 de agosto de 1898, pp. 2-3. 39Franklin Matthews, The New-Born Cuba, (New York, 1899), 42-43. 40Manuel Corral, iEl desastre! Memoris de un voluntario en la camparna de Cuba

(Barcelona, 1899), 232-233. John D. Miley, In Cuba with Shafter (New York, 1899), 224. 41R. A. Alger, The Spanish-American War (New York, 1901), 279.

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teered their services to the Spanish army found the transition to American authority easy to make.

American visitors in Cuba gave full circulation to the views of Spanish and Cuban opponents of "Cuba Libre." The "higher classes," a New York Times reporter wrote, "are opposed, above all things, to an out and out Cuban Government .... If the Cuban revolutionists get control, there will be a long reign of terror in which all who have opposed the insurrection will suffer greatly."42 Another Times correspondent predicted that compliance with the terms of the Joint Resolution "would mean to turn over the island to a worse condition of anarchy from which we are seeking to rescue it."43 The Associated Press correspondent wrote of the "dread" existing in Santiago de Cuba at the prospect of independence and concluded that the "better classes ... fervently hope that the United States will retain the reins of government in the island, as the only guarantee of stability and prosperity."44

With the restoration of peace, expatriates began to return and swell the ranks of potential collaborators. By early fall, thousands had arrived in Cuba in search of positions in the rapidly expanding occupation bureaucracy. After years of residence abroad, the exiles returned to Cuba often as Ameri- can citizens in possession of varying degrees of fluency in English; it was an asset of immediate practical value to the occupation and accounted in part for the exiles' quick inroads into the bureaucracy of the occupation. Exiles filled positions in civilian agencies almost as quickly as they were established. By early 1899, in fact, the vast majority of positions in civilian agencies had been distributed to the returning exiles.45

The ranks of the returning expatriates included many moderates for whom the military occupation functioned as the phase preliminary to the establishment of the protectorate. Indeed, for many Cubans, the objectives of the insurrection

42New York Times, Aug. 5, 1898, p. 2. 43Ibid., Aug. 1, 1898, p. 6. 44The State, July 30, 1898, p. 4. 45See Tasker H. Bliss, "Annual Report of the Collector of Customs for Cuba, Fiscal

Year Ending June 30, 1899," Aug. 1, 1899, in John R. Brooke, Civil Report of Major General John R. Brooke, U.S. Army, Military Governor of Cuba, 1900 (Washington, D.C., 1900), 374-375.

PACIFIC HISTORICAL REVIEW

had been achieved. In October 1898, the exiles abolished the Department of Expeditions, which was charged during the independence struggle with supporting the Liberation Army with arms, ammunition, and supplies.46 In December, the New York Delegation announced the dissolution of the PRC, en- joining patriotic juntas throughout the United States to disband local organizations.

V

The events of the late summer and early fall had an unsettling impact on separatist leaders. The August protocol had divided the urban centers between Spanish and American forces, leav- ing the vast majority of the 30,000 Cuban officers and men encamped in the devastated countryside. Accustomed to living off the land, dependent on supplies from abroad and levies exacted locally from merchants and landowners, the Cuban army had survived between 1895 and 1898 through extra- legal measures sanctioned more or less by the exigencies of the war. The end of the war signaled the end of the insur- gent modus operandi. Confined to the interior countryside and devastated by three years of war, conditions grew increas- ingly desperate for the veterans.47 As long as the status of the American military presence in Cuba remained undefined, the insurgent leadership showed a marked disinclination to order the disbandment of the rebel armed forces. Interred in central Cuba and distant from the centers of authority, General-in- Chief Maximo G6mez brooded over late summer develop- ments, enjoining his commanders to hold the army together until further notice.48

In October 1898, the Council of Government convened a National Assembly composed of representatives elected by the

46General Emilio Nufiez a los Jefes y Oficiales del Departamento de Expediciones, octubre 15 de 1898, Patria, 19 de octubre de 1898, p. 1.

47Maximo Gomez, Diario de campana (La Habana, 1968), 366. Gen. Jose M. Rodri- guez to Bartolome Mas6, n.d. [ca. October 1898], Llaverias and Santovenia, Actas de las Asambleas, IV, 151.

4SOrestes Ferrara, Mis relaciones con Maximo G6mez (2nd ed., La Habana, 1942), 221-222.

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various Cuban army corps. Two issues loomed before the Assembly. The first concerned the posture of the insurgent government toward the American occupation. The second question involved an inquiry into the methods available to finance the disbandment of the Liberation Army. To resolve both these issues, the Assembly appointed a commission headed by General Calixto Garcia to seek information in Washington.

The Cuban Commission passed the early part of December in Washington negotiating unsuccessfully with American authorities for ample funds to dissolve the Liberation Army. A meeting in the White House early in December ended with President McKinley offering the Cubans the balance of the war appropriations-$3,000,000-as a relief fund for the army veterans; the sum proved unacceptable to the commission.49 The death of Calixto Garcia near the end of the negotiations practically halted further meetings between Cubans and Amer- icans. The commission returned to Cuba recommending re- jection of the White House offer and encouraged the full Assembly to seek the necessary funds elsewhere.

The growing breach between the Assembly and the United States deepened as the military government formally com- menced in January 1899. As long as the Assembly continued to function and speak for the insurgent republic, American control over the island remained incomplete. As a rival to American political authority, the Assembly's repudiation of McKinley's offer and its subsequent determination to seek funds from private sources promised to raise innumerable obstacles in the path of the military government.50 Much to the dismay of separatist military chieftains in the interior, more- over, Washington had commenced the organization of the occupation without consulting ranking representatives of the insurgent civil-military agencies in Cuba. Uneasiness swept across insurgent camps as the veterans witnessed public offices and administrative positions distributed to non-participants-if

49Nestor Carbonell y Rivero, En torno a una gran vida (La Habana, 1948), 65-66. 50Gen. John Brooke to Adj. Gen. Corbin, Feb. 20, 1899, Division of Cuba, Letters

Sent, File 808, Records of the United States Army Overseas Operations and Commands, 1899-1942, Record Group 395, National Archives. R. A. Alger to John Brook, March 13, 1899, William McKinley Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

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indeed not outright opponents-in the separatist struggle. The insurgents bridled against the contempt of their former allies, Spanish-American fraternization in the cities, and growing American attacks on "Cuba Libre." Talk of renewing the war, this time against the United States, increased through the fall among the younger officers.51

In central Cuba, General-in-Chief Maximo G6mez ap- proached the end of the year in silent isolation. Communi- cation with senior officials of the Cuban government had been haphazard and infrequent; indeed, G6mez's relations with the Assembly had deteriorated markedly in the course of the fall.52 More than five months had passed, moreover, since the Amer- icans had arrived in Cuba, and they had not once acknowl- edged the authority of the Dominican-born generalissimo. Despondency settled over army headquarters in Las Villas province; uneasiness among senior army commanders in- creased as fear spread that the United States planned to disavow its commitment to Cuban independence.53 G6mez lived in constant fear that the slightest incident, the smallest altercation between the former allies, would be seized upon by Washington to substantiate charges of Cuban incapacity and provide the pretext with which to abrogate the pledge of the Joint Resolution altogether.54 Certainly the mounting dispute between the Assembly and the military government did little to allay Gomez's apprehensions. In late December 1898, another controversy brought both armies to the brink of confrontation. Governor General John Brooke's decision to exclude the Cuban army from the formal ceremonies in Havana marking

5"See Horacio Ferrer, Con el rifle al hombro (La Habana, 1950), 135-137, and Enrique Collazo, Los americanos en Cuba (La Habana, 1905), 189-190.

52Tensions between the civilian leaders and military chieftains mounted steadily throughout the war and often threatened to undermine the independence movement. The split between the soliders and the statesmen was disastrous in 1868-1878 and Marti sought unsuccessfully to avoid its reappearance in 1895. One of the better treatments of the civil-military dispute is Lawrence R. Nichols, "Domestic History of Cuba During the War of the Insurrectos, 1895-1898," (Masters thesis, Duke University, 1951).

53Maximo Gomez to Gonzalo de Quesada, 20 de septiembre de 1898, Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda, Archivos de Gonzalo de Quesada, ed. Gonzalo de Quesada (La Habana, 1948), 230.

54Maximo Gomez to Federico Henriquez y Carvajal, Maximo G6mez, Cartas de Maximo Gomez, ed. Emilio Rodriguez Demorizi (Ciudad Trujillo, 1936), 30-31.

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the end of Spanish sovereignty aroused considerable bitterness among senior Cuban officers and no few murmurs of dis- content within the ranks. Some weeks later, Cubans and Americans were again locked in dispute, this time over the position of the insurgent delegation at the funeral of Calixto Garcia. Inadvertently assigned by Brooke and displaced to the rear of the funeral procession, the Cuban representation protested but without securing redress and thereupon promptly withdrew from the procession.55

Any one of these incidents, Gomez feared, was capable of precipitating disorders that would confirm Washington's charge that the Cubans lacked the aptitudes to govern them- selves, thereby justifying the abrogation of the congressional pledge. Of more immediate concern to the generalissimo, however, was the state of the Liberation Army. Still largely intact and encamped in the interior countryside, the army had fared poorly in the months following the peace protocol. By the end of the year, illness, malnutrition, and death from starva- tion had become common throughout the insurgent camps.56 Despondent over the plight of the soldiers of liberation, the army chieftain simply lacked independent resources to relieve the distress. These conditions, moreover, led to periodic clashes between the occupation authorities and desperate veterans forced to resort to extra-legal means in order to survive. By the end of the year, the incidents Gomez had come to fear the most had the greatest likelihood of originating from within the army over which he presided.

In late December 1898, Gomez broke his long silence to alert Cubans in arms about the perils attending the American military occupation. Independence remained unfulfilled, G6mez warned. And as long as the task to which he had devoted his life remained incomplete, the insurgent chieftain pledged cryptically that he remained "ready to help the Cubans finish the work." In a direct, but veiled allusion to the Assem- bly's delay in resolving the urgent matter of relief for the army, G6mez pledged himself to secure assistance for the weary

55David F. Healy, The United States in Cuba, 1898-1902 (Madison, 1963), 70-71. 56Enrique J. Conill, EnriqueJ. Conill, soldado de la patria, ed. Gaspar Carbonell Rivero

(La Habana, 1956), 21.

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veterans.57 At the same time, Gomez appealed personally to President McKinley to provide the Cuban soldiers with much needed assistance.58

G6mez watched the events near the end of 1898 with growing uneasiness. The saber-rattling in late December served to force perhaps a measure of recognition. However much G6mez called attention to his position at the head of the standing army, he could not, in the end, contemplate launching a new war against the United States with any degree of equa- nimity. Indeed, throughout the fall, the sixty-two year old general reconciled himself to the reality of the American presence. The military occupation, G6mez believed, repre- sented something of a transitory arrangement that found sanction in the same Joint Resolution that had also promised Cuba its independence. Any contemplated abrogation of this pledge, Gomez reasoned, could find justification only within the context of the Joint Resolution and would necessarily involve a continuation of "sovereignty, juristiction or control" to meet the requirements of pacification. American doubts of Cuban ability to govern the island, repeated allusions to civil war, and the general disfavor into which the Cubans had fallen appeared to G6mez to form the basis upon which Wash- ington would postpone indefinitely the congressional pledge of April 20.

VI

Washington responded swiftly to the apparent split devel- oping between the Assembly and G6mez over the question of the army. The general's appeal provided Washington with the opportunity to overcome some of the more difficult obstacles in the path of the occupation, namely the Assembly and the Liberation Army. Indeed, the insurgent general offered the United States an alternative to the troublesome Assembly;

57Israel Consuegra y Guzman, Mambiserias. Episodios de la guerra de independencia, 1895-1898 (La Habana, 1930), 61-62.

58G6mez, Diario de campana, 420.

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through him they might be able to dissolve the potentially troublesome Liberation Army.

First, the White House quickly met G6mez's request for food and supplies. Some weeks later, in January 1899, McKinley dispatched Special Commissioner Robert Porter to Cuban army headquarters in Las Villas province to confer with the General- in-Chief. In early February, Porter met with G6mez and offered the army chieftain the same arrangement spurned earlier by the Assembly: $3,000,000 to assist the Cuban soldiers return to peaceful pursuits and ease what promised to be an otherwise a difficult adjustment to civilian life. G6mez, for his part, sought clarification of the American purpose in Cuba, specifically the prevailing American position on Cuban in- dependence. The American envoy reassured G6mez in cate- gorical terms that Washington intended to honor in full its original commitment. The military occupation, Porter pledged, would not last a moment beyond the time required to complete the pacification of the island, as stipulated by the Joint Resolu- tion.59 The first important step toward meeting these condi- tions, Porter suggested obliquely, necessarily involved the release of the 30,000 officers and men under arms.

Maximo G6mez emerged from his discussions with Porter entirely persuaded that the United States planned to honor the congressional pledge of April 20. From this central conviction, G6mez sought to assure the salvation of Cuban independence through surrender to the military occupation. Conscious that the Americans feared Cuban reprisals against the Spanish residents, G6mez emerged from his meeting with Porter as the advocate of national reconciliation as a means toward inde- pendence. "Neither victors nor vanquished," G6mez pro- claimed in the course of his subsequent peregrinations across the island.60 Aware that the Americans had little confidence in the separatists' ability to govern themselves, G6mez exhorted

59 Robert P. Porter, Report on Commercial and Industrial Conditions of Cuba. Special Report on the Commissioner's Visit to General Gdmez, and in Relation to the Payment and Disbandment of the Insurgent Army of Cuba (Washington, D.C., 1899); Ferrara, Mis relaciones con Maximo G6mez, 226-227.

6?Maximo G6mez, El general Mdximo G6mez y su politica de paz, uni6n y concordia (La Habana, 1900), 24-38, 69-80.

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Cubans to seek positions in the military government to demon- strate to the United States that they possessed the talents necessary for independence and self-government. Knowledge that Washington looked upon the Liberation Army with sus- picion, lastly, led G6mez to accept the $3,000,000 to facilitate its dissolution. Personally convinced that the United States planned to honor the Joint Resolution and fully sensitive to the ob- stacles-real and imagined-still before the realization of "Cuba Libre," G6mez dedicated his peacetime energies to the elimination of all conditions capable of obstructing indepen- dence. In his zeal for independence, in his conviction that independence now turned on the performance and behavior of the Cubans in the course of the American military occupation, G6mez emerged as the outstanding advocate of reconciliation and peace.

G6mez's acceptance of the $3,000,000 without prior authori- zation from the Assembly provoked a crisis within the insurgent ranks. Almost immediately, the General-in-Chief was rebuked by the Assembly.61 Some weeks after the Porter-Gomez con- ference, the Assembly responded to Gomez's insubordination by ousting the Dominican generalissimo.62 The news stunned Cubans. In deposing the General-in-Chief, the members of the Assembly appeared to the public as a group of quarrelsome and ungracious malcontents, devoid of the gratitude appropri- ate to the general chosen personally by Marti to lead the revolu- tion and the man who had devoted the better part of his adult life to the cause of Cuban independence. The Assembly was discredited nationally. A wave of indignation swept across the island; rallies, mass demonstrations, and public processions protested Gomez's ouster.63 By early March, under constant attack and lacking support, the Assembly dissolved. Some months later, without further obstructions, the Liberation Army disbanded uneventfully.

61"El general G6mez y la Asamblea," La Discusi6n, 13 de marzo de 1899, p. 2. 62Asamblea de Representantes del Ejercito, "Manifiesto al pueblo y al ejercito cu-

bano," La Lucha, 15 de marzo de 1899, 2-3. 63Rafael Martinez Ortiz, Cuba: los primeros anos de independencia (2 vols., 3rd ed., Paris,

1929), I, 58-59. Compare Sergio Aguirre, "La desaparici6n del Ejercito Libertador," Cuba Socialista, III (Diciembre, 1963), 59.

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VII

The decision of Maximo Gomez to work for the indepen- dence of Cuba through cooperation with the military occupa- tion and the subsequent dissolution of the Assembly and the Liberation Army brought into alignment the last and largest body of opinion behind the American military government. Throughout the first half of 1899, veterans secured positions in the newly organized Rural Guard and key political positions at municipal, provincial, and national levels.

Gomez's decision to support the occupation further allowed local army commanders to arrange with provincial occupation authorities the disbandment of insurgent units. Indeed, by early 1899, collaboration had acquired a unique local character. From the outset of the occupation, well before Washington had completed the organization of the superstructure of military government in Cuba, American commanders had acquired considerable freedom of action in the provinces. The absence of a well-defined policy in Washington during the early months of the occupation, together with the appointment of strong- willed personalities to positions of provincial command, guar- anteed a measure of autonomy from the governor's palace in Havana.64 During the early months of the occupation, these circumstances permitted provincial military governors to deal with specific-and often unique-local problems in a thor- oughly improvised and pragmatic manner.

The early organization of collaboration conformed to the peculiar nature of the Cuban insurgency. The independence struggle had been in many ways a combination of regional ef- forts held more or less together under a single political-military authority by the exigencies of the war. With some notable excep- tions, the war for independence organized around collaborative

64Gov. Gen. John Brooke was all but eclipsed by the near-celebrities appointed provincial governors. Gen. Leonard Wood in Santiago had strong ties to the White House. Gen. James H. Wilson of Santa Clara was a major personality in Republic politics, a former national committeeman who knew important men in Washington and New York. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, the former Consul General in Havana, assumed command in Pinar del Rio in full possession of old connections in policy levels in Washington.

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efforts among provincial caudillos who were often loath to oper- ate outside their home districts. Few leaders of national stature emerged from the war for independence due largely to the absence of an enduring national effort. Too many local at- tachments prevented a coherent national perspective from developing.

The Cuban response to the American military presence at the local and provincial level turned also on improvised ex- pedients. Jealous of their local autonomy, regional chieftains joined the Americans with more or less complete freedom of action. The personalistic quality of insurgent leadership, more- over, placed added pressures on Cuban chieftains to meet the immediate needs and long-term hopes of their following at the end of the war. It was one means of preserving the politico- military preeminence established during the insurgency. Most immediately, local collaboration involved negotiations for the food and supplies desperately needed by the veterans. These efforts led typically to the disbandment of rebel units, with relief supplies exchanged for arms. Long-term considerations, in which insurgent chieftains sought the means of preserving war-time hegemony, necessarily involved collaboration with the provincial agents of the military government, who were the immediate dispensers of privilege and patronage.

Provincial insurgent army commanders emerged as the core around which local political machines organized. Patronage, one of the few instruments available to reward loyal military followers during the war, came to constitute the basis of political adhesion during the peace. The quickest and surest way for local insurgent commanders to secure access to the sources of patronage was to collaborate with American author- ities. In this sense, collaboration had the mutually expedient result of offering the provincial military governments local preeminence while, at the same time, securing after the peace the hierarchy previously established during the war.

In conferring upon the provincial occupation authorities a measure of legitimacy for the insurgent ranks, rebel chieftains received in return a means for establishing a provincial power base. In the province of Santa Clara, for example, General Jose Miguel G6mez, the local war-time chieftain, secured

Cuba Between Empires

appointment as civil governor of the province and proceeded to place in provincial and municipal government virtually every key officer of his command. From this base, the miguelistas came to dominate provincial politics and played a major role in national politics for the better part of the next three decades.65

Indeed, within a decade, the national system passed under the political control of the veterans. Between 1868 and 1898, the Cuban elite took on its definitive characteristics, organizing not around the acquisition and expansion of control over the means of production, but, rather, around the cause of inde- pendence. In the course of thirty years of intermittant war- fare, exile, and imprisonment, the creoles' hold over the sources of wealth grew increasingly tenous; by 1898, much of the island's traditional sources of wealth had been absorbed by non-Cubans. Without the funds to revive the estates damaged during the war and to make good on loans secured before the insurrection and without the resources to aggregate fresh capital, the Cuban libertadores came to constitute an elite orga- nized around the quest of political office as the means to economic well-being. With the establishment of the republic, Cuban politics acquired a particular distributive quality. With so much of the national wealth passing into the hands of foreigners, national office in the republic guaranteed the victorious candidate and his immediate constituency access to the levers of resource and benefit allocation in the only enter- prise wholly Cuban-government. Few libertadores were able to overcome the economic pressures of the early republic through pursuits other than politics.

VIII

The military occupation enjoyed a remarkably trouble-free installation. In large measure, U.S. intervention at once fell

65Similar patterns of provincial power bases emerged in Camagiiey (Puerto Principe) and Oriente provinces. Together with Santa Clara, these three eastern provinces were under the longest and most complete insurgent control. In the western provinces, conservatives and moderates, typically autonomists during the war, secured better representation.

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heir to the separatist movement and compounded the contra- dictions inherent therein. The failure of the separatists to resolve among themselves conflicting definitions of indepen- dence created the opening through which the United States consolidated control without bloodshed. In this sense, the Joint Resolution offered something to everyone. First and foremost, it provided a definition of independence and, equally im- portant, the conditions of that independence were more or less acceptable to all residents of the island.

In the end, the military government met with little organized resistance. The corporate expression of Cuba nationalism, those institutions summoned into existence to secure the inde- pendence of the island, failed to survive the early months of the military government. Successively, the PRC, the Assembly, and, lastly, the bastion of independence sentiment, the Liberation Army, disappeared between 1898 and 1899. Then, too, na- tional leaders who were most conspicuously associated with the ideal of independence and were capable of giving independen- tista sentiment a focal point did not live into the period of the military government. Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo, and Calixto Garcia died before the formal organization of the occupa- tion. Only Maximo G6mez lived to see the American occupa- tion. In this sense, Gomez's adhesion to the military govern- ment exerted a powerful influence on the approach Cuban independentistas took after 1899. As defined by G6mez, collab- oration with the United States emerged as a policy of singular patriotic virtue; resistance to the American presence promised only to jeopardize the independence to which the Americans had already pledged themselves.66

In a curious manner, the objectives of all collaborating sectors prevailed in the end. Cuba did, indeed, ultimately secure an independence of sorts. The annexationists and the advocates of the protectorate saw their goals partially vindi- cated in the Platt Amendment. Through the Platt Amendment, the United States established indirect control over a nominally sovereign republic. The propertied sectors triumphed in the

6Alvaro Cata, Cuba y la intervenci6n (La Habana, 1899), 49.

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reciprocity treaty of 1903, for planters received preferential access to a guaranteed market for Cuban sugar.

But if the American occupation came to mean all things to all men, it also failed to resolve many of the fundamental prob- lems in Cuban society for which the separatists had earlier sought redress. Indeed, the occupation tended to compound those problems and at the same time subdue the socio-eco- nomic reform impulses of the separatists. The issue of racism, for example, had preoccupied the patriotic leadership. A commitment to the elimination of racism in Cuban society had moved into a position of central importance in the insurgent vision of "Cuba Libre." Indeed, Afro-Cubans had secured key positions in a variety of separatist organizations, most notably in the Liberation Army. The American occupation arrested and reversed these tendencies and strengthened the institu- tional foundations of racism on the island. The vast prepon- derance of Cuban officeholders during the militancy occupa- tion were white. In dissolving the Liberation Army, the United States destroyed the one national institution in which Afro- Cubans had held positions of rank and authority. The subse- quent reorganization of the army under American supervision systematically denied commissions to blacks.

The nature of the armed struggle for independence, more- over, had destroyed the basis of the Spanish colonial economy. Never before had Cuba been in a better position to pursue diversified economic development as it was in 1898-1899. To be sure, economic diversification had not occupied a position of central importance in separatest thought. During the war, however, separatist leaders had come increasingly to identify the evils of latifundismo and to reexamine the efficacy of an economy organized around the sugar estate.67 The occupation served to reconstruct the colonial economy by promoting, to the exclusion of virtually all other sectors, the sugar latifundia.

The lesson of the occupation was not lost on Cubans. Suc-

67See Jorge Castellanos, "El pensamiento social de Maximo G6mez," America (Febrero-Mayo, 1946) 22-28, and Louis A. Perez, Jr., Army Politics in Cuba, 1898-1958 (Pittsburgh, 1976), 3-67.

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ceeding generations of Cuban politicians came to see colla- boration with the authorities in Washington as the surest means of securing national ascendancy. From Tomas Estrada Palma (1902-1906) to Fulgencio Batista (1934-1944 and 1952- 1958), future presidents of the republic saw U.S. support as the vital factor for a successful incumbency. Increasingly, the Cuban political drama was played for the benefit of an Ameri- can audience. Opposition to the United States became asso- ciated with a lack of patriotism, for such opposition was fraught with the perils of American intervention and, ultimately, a compromise of national sovereignty. In the end, plattismo became a state of mind.

A clientele political class came to be supported by armed forces organized by the United States. Between 1899-1902 and 1906-1909, the United States organized the Cuban armed forces around American needs.67 As one more lever at the disposal of authorities in Washington, Cuban army officials were as keenly tuned to the signals emitted from Washington as were their civilian bosses-and sometimes more.

Resting atop the politico-military substructures forged in part during the occupation lay the expanding sugar system. The sugar economy reconstituted between 1898 and 1902 passed within two decades under the control of North Ameri- can capital. Like its politico-military counterpart, Cuban capi- tal chose to collaborate rather than compete with American capital. Before the generation of independence had run its course in Cuban history, an entire national system had orga- nized around collaboration.