The prosperity of a new country and the happiness of the people depend
largely upon a just apportionment of the land of that country and the
opportunity to exploit the resources of the soil and sell the products
thereof at the greatest possible profit to the producer. Had this simple
truth been recognized as the cornerstone of Cuban colonization the
island would have been spared centuries of hard up-hill struggle for
healthy economic conditions.
From the standpoint of the agrarian reformer, the land problem was at
the bottom of all the evils that retarded the development of the colony,
so richly endowed by nature that it should have been a paradise for
those who came there to settle. The noble Spanish adventurers of
Castilian blood, who had accompanied the early explorers and in a spirit
of romance followed in their wake, were the first to obtain grants of
land. They returned to Spain, brought with them their families and
servants and settled upon the land, which became their new home. But
they were hardly of a type willing to rough it after the first glamor of
romance and novelty had faded, or able by hard labor to transform the
wilderness into richly yielding fields and gardens. Stockbreeding was
very much easier and according to their ideas required no particular
exertion on their part. They let nature take care of the increase of
their herds and flocks. A few of them retained the land, made their
haciendas the home of generations to come, and attained to some rank and
standing by virtue of these great holdings. Essentially domestic by
nature, they lived there sometimes two or three generations under one
roof, frugally and contentedly all the year round.
Among the earliest Cuban landholders were nobles, Castilian, Andalusian
and others, who received great grants of land in recognition of some
services to the crown. These people, who had not known the spell of
adventure in strange tropical climes, did not settle permanently on the
island, but became absentee landlords. They owned perhaps a residence in
Havana, which they visited briefly during the winter. They had a
hacienda, which saw them even less frequently and more briefly. The
traditions and conventions of their caste did not allow them to work,
even if they had been able and willing; so they left the management of
their land to an agent, whose paramount concern was to hold his position
long enough to fill his pockets and who beyond that was no more
interested in the colony than was his master. Whatever profits the
latter made on the products of his Cuban estate, did not accrue to the
benefit of the island; they were spent in the old country. Madrid was
the place where these absentee landlords of Cuba wasted their wealth in
extravagance and dissipation, instead of investing it in improvements of
their estates and works of civic importance and advantage to the island.
These property-holders looked out only for the revenues they could get
out of their Cuban estates; but they were not concerned with the problem
of revenues for the island. They have their counterpart today and not
only in Cuba, but in other countries where vast tracts were acquired by
foreigners, some for the hunting they afforded, some for speculative
purposes, while native citizens had to go without the little plot of
land that could insure them a home and sometimes even a living.
Thus were the best tracts of land apportioned among or pre-empted by
people having no vital interest in the development of the island's
resources. When the real workers came, peasants from the Basque
provinces, from Catalonia and other parts of the Peninsula, they again
had no capital to invest in the necessary improvements, and being
obliged to content themselves with a small plot of land and to work it
with their own hands, soon drifted into a deadly indifference towards
anything beyond the satisfaction of their most urgent daily needs. Even
if their land had produced more than they needed for their own
consumption, they would have been at a loss how to dispose of their
products, since there were no transportation facilities and since every
movement of the producer was subject to local customs and other
restrictions, limiting the possibilities of creating a market and from
the profits realized to set aside a fund to spend on current
improvements or to insure their future.
There is little doubt that much of the indolence attributed to the
climate was gradually developed in the people by the lack of
opportunities to market their products and to get into touch with the
outside world. The Cuban settler of that class had in course of time to
acquire a habitual indifference toward the morrow, which developed into
shiftlessness. His initiative being paralyzed at the beginning, he never
could rouse himself to conceive of another life. His children growing up
about him under these same circumstances, true to the clannishness of
Spanish family life, remained with the parents and followed in their
footsteps. This may explain the lack of backbone with which the Cuban
has been reproached. Official repression, even if founded upon a sort of
paternal solicitude, is bound to stunt the growth of individuals as of
nations; and of this repression the people of Cuba were for centuries
the victims.
The French traveler and writer quoted before, E. M. Masse, describes the
life of Cuban rustics at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth century. He calls them _monteros_, which means huntsmen, and
they were probably the more shiftless descendants of this first class of
settlers. For he speaks of their simple, frugal and indolent ways; tells
how satisfied they are just to own a little plot of ground, with a
bananery beside the hut, or a rice or corn-field, and perhaps a few
cows. They were happiest when they could afford a slave, who would go
fishing and hunting for them; for that would allow the master to lie in
the hammock and smoke cigarettes. It seems natural that the home of such
a montero was usually a wretched little "cabane," a shack of one room in
which he dwelt with his family, which was sometimes numerous, and in
close companionship with a pig, and other domestic animals. Yet this
same man, preferring to lie in the hammock rather than to exert himself
in some much needed work, was very fond of lively sports, as
horseback-riding. Even the women of the monteros were splendid
horse-women.
The dress of these people was extremely simple. The men wore trousers of
oiled linen extending to the ankles; shoes of raw leather, a short shirt
of the same material as the trousers, a kerchief wound tightly about the
head and a big straw hat with a black ribbon or one of felt with gold
braid. An indispensable article of accoutrement was the machete,
cutlass, in his belt. The women wore a calico skirt, a white shirt with
a bracelet at the elbow to hold the sleeves and a fichu on the head.
When they went to mass, they dressed their hair, wore a mantilla on
their head and put on shoes with big silver buckles. At dances they
donned a round hat woven out of the tissue of plantain leaves, trimmed
with gay ribbons, or a black hat with gold braid. Modest as was the
montero in his demands upon life, there was one entertainment he could
not forego: the _feria de gallo_, cock-fight. Many a one saved up his
money for months to spend it on that day.
This description by M. Masse, of the montero of Cuba at the end of the
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, tallies well with
the description of the guajiro of today by Forbes Lindsay in "Cuba and
Her People Today." Lindsay sees in that Cuban rustic a descendant of
Catalonian and Andalusian settlers:
"Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land,
but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of
that no man's land which seems to be so extensive in the central and
eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has
title to a few acres, lives in a passably comfortable cabana, possesses
a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry.
Much more often he lives in a ramshackle _bohio_, the one apartment of
which affords indifferent shelter to a large family and is fairly shared
by a lean hog and a few scrawny chickens. There is nothing deserving the
name of furniture in the house and the clothing of the family is of the
scantiest. A nag of some sort, usually a sorry specimen of its kind, is
almost always owned by the guajiro, who loves a horse and rides like the
gaucho of the Argentine pampas."
That montero of a hundred and more years ago and the guajiro of today
have so much in common that it seems safe to consider the latter a
descendant of the former.
The lack of proper facilities for the exchange of commodities between
city and country caused the fact that Havana up to the beginning of the
nineteenth century raised almost all her necessities on her own soil.
The economical cassava was still generally used. The ground in the
environs of the capital, though not the best soil on the island, within
a short time attained considerable value. The administration of the navy
yard opposed the cultivation of ground rich in trees that it could use
for shipbuilding. By this monopoly alone many people were barred from
owning and cultivating land. The preference of the earlier Spanish
settlers for stockbreeding also limited the agricultural area. Besides,
real estate conventions and regulations were as rigid as other customs
of the country, and were never changed, be the need for a change ever so
pressing.
From the first days of the colony the circular form of plot had been
adopted, the extent of a _hatos_ being fixed at two miles and that of
the _corrales_ at one mile in circumference. This curious system of
measurement gave rise not only to difficulties in computing the area of
contiguous properties, but to misunderstandings and disputes which
caused much litigation. It was difficult to buy a plot of ground that
was not in some way subject to legal controversy. The great number of
lawyers on the island had probably a certain reason for existence owing
to the innumerable boundary and other land disputes. It is evident, too,
that complicated boundaries and questionable titles were a rich source
of dubious activity for unscrupulous members of the profession. Land
cases were wont to drag on from one generation to the other, and while
the lawyers representing the interests of the clients waxed rich, the
clients themselves had often to sacrifice the land itself in order to
settle their claims.
The changes brought on by gradual cultivation of unimproved lands on the
other hand enriched the owners of such lands quite out of proportion to
their original value. When pastures were converted into farm plots, the
price was augmented. A hato contained more than sixteen hundred
caballerias at thirty-three acres per caballeria. The corral contained
more than four hundred. The caballeria pasture land cost from ten to
twenty-five pesos; as soon as it was cultivated, its lowest price was
three hundred pesos. Thus a hato, worth at most forty thousand pesos,
was in its new state worth more than four hundred and eighty-four
thousand. Likewise a corral, originally valued at most at ten thousand
pesos, rose in price to one hundred and twenty thousand. The same was
true of building lots. A caballeria in the suburbs, divided into
_solares_, house plots, could sometimes bring eighty-five thousand
pesos. A caballeria to the southwest of Havana was worth three thousand
pesos, one in the neighborhood of Matanzas only five hundred. The
extraordinary wealth of certain convents, frequently commented upon by
economists and historians, was due to the gradual and enormous increase
in the price of the land which had originally been given to them. From
these early grants and concessions were derived the privileges which
some private properties and some convents enjoyed; they had for instance
the right to forbid the building in their neighborhood of houses beyond
a certain height, a precious privilege in a city where the circulation
of air had not been overencouraged.
M. Masse comments at length upon these conditions in his book on Havana.
He says:
"The immense fortunes of certain Havana families are thus explained. The
sobriety of the Spaniards, the very limited taste and luxury found in
their residences and their furnishings, a commercial management which
favored agricultural products, would have ended in concentrating in a
few hands fortunes rivalling those of kings, had not libertinism, the
rage of lawsuits and the passion for gambling produced that
instability, which some moralists would have liked to secure by other
means, though these were not easily found."
The prospect of becoming hopelessly entangled in interminable lawsuits,
and of having large tracts of land on one's hands without the certainty
that the products of this land would find a market and bring a price
commensurate with the amount of money and labor spent upon it, prevented
many residents of the island from becoming landholders. Only when the
conflict between the landholders and the monopoly that robbed them of
their profits became acute, did certain patriots concerned with the
welfare of Cuba unite to secure a radical reform in the legislation of
the Indies. The demand for an extension of maritime commerce was the
first to be urged upon the authorities, and the first to be granted. As
has been related in a previous chapter, the British occupation of Havana
opened the eyes of the Spaniards to the benefits of free commerce with
and among the colonies, and led to a gradual relaxation of the law which
gave to one or two Spanish ports the monopoly of transatlantic trade.
When greater freedom of maritime commerce had been secured, and
agriculture began to be carried on on a larger scale, not only for home
consumption, but for export, the questions of repartition of land, of
introducing different standards of measurement, of diminution of taxes
on the fruits of the country and of duties on articles of importation,
and lastly of securing the labor needed for these larger enterprises,
began to occupy the minds of the leaders.
The chief branches of Cuban agriculture were the raising of live stock
and the cultivation of tobacco and sugar. Until the beginning of the
eighteenth century the breeding of cattle was the principal occupation
of the Cuban farmer. It suited the taste of the Castilian and
Andalusian immigrant, for it required comparatively little work and lent
itself to the acquirement of habits of idleness which the climate of the
country tended to confirm. Guiteras is right, when he says:
"Had our ganaderos (ranch owners) cultivated the plains for the
alimentation of the animals and established a regular order in the care
of breeds and in the management of their haciendas, this branch would
have made greater progress and served as a powerful stimulus and been of
great benefit for our agriculture. It would have supplied fertilizer for
the fields, furnished the markets with meat for consumption by employers
and laborers, and moreover, would have supplied oxen for our ploughs."
But it seems that the Cuban farmer, as are many in other countries, was
too short-sighted to perceive the advantages of a well-organized system
of production, and indulged in a laissez-faire policy which did not much
advance his interests or those of the community.
The product next in importance was tobacco. The sections of the island
best adapted for the cultivation of tobacco are the sandy fields west of
Havana in the district of la Vuelta Baja, a country bathed by the waters
of the San Sebastian, Richondo and the Consolacion of the south, and the
Cuyaguateje or Mantua; also those in the palm belt running between
Sierra Madre and the southern coast which forms a rectangle of
twenty-eight leagues in length and seven in breadth. Other tobacco belts
of great value are las Virtudes, between San Cristobal and Guanajas in
the same Vuelta Baja, and in the east that nearest to Holguin and Cuba.
The tobacco harvest of the year 1720 was six hundred thousand arrobas.
But, as the historians say, "a severe system of monopoly, odious
examinations and vexatious regulations and restrictions limited the
profits, and the excessive cost of indispensable tools and the distance
of the tobacco fields from the capital, discouraged the production of
tobacco and visibly diminished the cultivation of this most important
product of the island." The frequent disputes between the vegueros and
the factoria, as the royal agency which owned the tobacco monopoly was
called, abundantly prove the existence of conditions which were not
likely to benefit the colony.
The most valuable product of the island was sugar; and the cultivation
of sugar cane was in such a backward state that it reflected upon the
intelligence and enterprise of the native farmers. It revealed their
ignorance, habitual indifference and lack of resources most lamentably.
One of the oldest sugar planters of the island, Captain D. José Nicolas
Perez Garvey, presented a series of memorials to the Sociedad Economica
of Santiago de Cuba, which give a fair idea of the processes employed in
the elaboration of this precious product. Sr. Garvey was a pioneer in
demonstrating the imperfections of the existing methods and in advising
the introduction of innovations. But his recommendation of modern
inventions horrified the majority of the farmers and was violently
objected to by the laborers.
At first in order to press the juice out of the cane the same means were
employed as for the grinding of wheat. They were cylinders set in motion
by mules or oxen, a process in which half of the juice was wasted. At
the beginning of the eighteenth century a more efficacious process was
employed in imitation of that which was in use in Hayti. Not until the
government itself took the initiative and encouraged the use of
implements and machines that had proved of advantage in other
sugar-raising colonies, was a change gradually effected. The great
planter and landowner of Havana, D. Nicolas Calvo de la Puerta, was the
man through whose influence and insistence upon certain innovations the
sugar production was slowly improved. Finally there was the problem of
converting the guarapo or fermented cane juice into sugar, which was at
first also very primitive and slowly yielded to more productive and
profitable methods. Lastly the sugar production of the island developed
another product, which was not only popular on the island, but became an
article of exportation. From 1760 to 1767 Havana, which was the only
port qualified to export sweetmeats, sent out annually thirteen thousand
cases of sixteen arrobas each. In the period of five years from 1791 to
1795 inclusive, the export was 7,572,600 arrobas. White sugar was then
worth thirty-two reals per arroba, brown sugar twenty-eight. The French
immigrants from Santo Domingo were an element that contributed to the
improvement and promotion of the sugar industry.
Though they furnished a far smaller proportion of the island's wealth,
hides, cane, brandy, refined honey and wax also began to figure in the
economic records of Cuba. Wax became a valuable product about the year
1764 when Bishop Morell brought a few swarms of bees from his Florida
exile. It was exported to the ports of the Gulf of Mexico where it was
highly esteemed for its superior quality. The indigo plant which was
introduced during the administration of Governor Las Casas proved in
time a new source of Cuban wealth. Coffee plantations and cocoa groves
had also multiplied in number, and were slowly furnishing new products
for home consumption as for exportation.
The following figures will give a limited but reliable survey of the
growth of agriculture towards the end of the century. Before the year
1761 there were only between sixty and seventy sugar refineries on the
island. By the end of the century there were four hundred and eighty.
Before the year 1796 there were only eight or ten coffee plantations, so
that the island barely produced enough coffee for its own consumption.
By the end of the century there were three hundred and twenty-six
"cafeyeres." At the same time the island had two thousand four hundred
and thirty-nine vegas, or tobacco fields, and one thousand two hundred
and twenty-three _colmenares_ or apiaries. The revenues of the island
from 1793, when they amounted to over one million pesos, rose steadily
until at the beginning of the century they were about three million
pesos annually. The sugar plantations yielded great profits, but they
also required big investments of money and labor. One of the most
prominent sugar planters on the island, D. José Ignacio Echegoyen,
calculated that to produce ten thousand arrobas of sugar, an expenditure
of twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven pesos was needed,
besides a capital of sixty thousand. He was one of the foremost citizens
that protested against the tax of one tenth on sugar. Work on the sugar
plantations was the hardest imaginable; even the negro slaves could not
stand it longer than ten years. Then their working capacity was
completely exhausted and they were given their liberty.
Though the importation of negro slaves essentially helped the
development of agriculture and the industries connected with it, there
still existed restrictions and regulations which acted as a continual
check upon the growth of the population, and had a paralyzing effect
upon the intellectual development of the colonists. A favorable solution
of these important questions offered great obstacles. Although the
principles on which Spain founded her restrictive system had been
relaxed, there existed a great number of interests that had been created
through this system and were unwilling to give up their privileges.
Derogation of these restrictions would have meant loss and injury to
some peninsular subjects that had grown rich and powerful through them.
The historian Guiteras elucidates this point when he says that higher
state reasons, supported by the right that, according to the notions of
the epoch gave them the international law and the famous bull of
Alexander VI. and was sustained by a great and expensive war against the
nations that attempted to colonize America, had influenced the conduct
of the government for nearly three centuries. The government only agreed
by force of invincible circumstances to have the British and the French
establish themselves in and continue in possession of a part of North
America and a few islands of the Antilles; but it always insisted on
maintaining the vast possessions that recognized its authority closed to
the commerce of the allies according to the agreement. With the
existence of a new and independent nation near these states, whose
political organization, religious principles and national character were
diametrically opposed to those of the Spanish government, these
possessions and dominions of the crown seemed to be in danger. The
imprudent demonstration in the state of Georgia had already shown the
spirit of hostility which when the republic of the United States was
barely established began to manifest itself against the neighboring
possessions of a country which in her diplomatic relations had from the
beginning of the Revolution always showed herself friendly. Such
considerations very likely increased the aversion of the monarch as of
his court towards Britain and the British race, in whose favor they had
yielded more than to any other power concessions demanded by the
interests of their subjects in America.
These were some of the great impediments which the champions of progress
encountered in their valiant endeavors to free the economic development
of Cuba and to help its much hampered industries. But one of the most
serious obstacles was the restriction of Spanish and especially foreign
immigration.
It seems that these restrictions which dated from the accession of
Philip II. had two definite objects; the first was to preserve the
purity of the Spanish stock in the West Indies and other possessions of
Spanish America; the second was to prevent foreigners from learning the
extent and the resources of Spain's American colonies. Edward Gaylord
Bourne says in "Spain in America":
"In regard to Spaniards, the policy adopted was one of restriction and
rigid supervision. No one, either native or foreigner, was allowed to go
to the Indies without a permit from the crown (or in some cases from the
Casa de Contracion) under penalty of forfeiting his property. Officers
of the fleets or vessels were held strictly responsible for infractions
of this rule. In the code the details of these restrictions are
amplified in seventy-three laws. The reasons for such strict regulations
covering emigration was to protect the Indies from being overrun with
idle and turbulent adventurers anxious only 'to get rich quickly and not
content with food and clothing, which every moderately industrious man
was assured of.'"
Another reason for this strict supervision is given in a law enacted in
the year 1602, which directs the deportation of foreigners from the
ports of the Indies, because "the ports are not safe in the things of
our holy Catholic faith, and great care should be taken that no error
creep in among the Indians." An exception to the rule was made twenty
years later, when expert mechanics were allowed, but traders in the
cities remained excluded. So rigidly was this policy upheld that
Humboldt during five years of travel in Spanish America met only one
German resident.
It is more difficult to understand the object of this policy than to
realize its effect upon the country's growth and progress. M. Masse says
in his book "L'Isle de Cuba et la Havane":
"No Spaniard was allowed to sail for America without permission of the
king, a permission granted only for well-defined business reasons, and
for a period limited to two years. The agreement to settle there was
even more difficult to obtain. A special permission was needed even to
pass from the province first chosen to another. Priests and nuns were
subject to the same rule."
These restrictions were enforced even at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. M. Masse continues to say that travelers were detained on board
several days before they were allowed to land in Havana. They had to
present a passport, a certificate of birth and baptism and a certificate
of respectable life and good conduct, all signed by a consul of Spain.
In individual cases these severe requirements may have been evaded--M.
Masse mentions the fact that minor functionaries were ready to do the
foreigners any favor--for a consideration. But upon the whole it must be
admitted that their observance tended to keep up a certain moral
standard in the colonies, which may not have been without some good
influence in moulding the character of the people. While other powers of
Europe allowed--and even encouraged--their colonies to become
dumping-grounds for human refuse, to populate them with their derelicts
and those of other nations, until America was spoken of by the Germans
as the big reformatory, Spain made an attempt at what some centuries
later, in our scientific age, might have been called "race culture."