Guantánamo (26 page)
Authors: Jonathan M. Hansen
In November 1916, Cuban president Mario GarcÃa Menocal, a member of the Conservative Party, won reelection in a poll in which the number of votes exceeded the number of voters. Liberals protested, prompting Cuba's Supreme Court to schedule a second vote for the following February. But on the eve of the second election, Liberals revolted and took up arms under the leadership of José Miguel Gómez, like most politicians of this era, a veteran of the War of Independence. By February 1917, the U.S. government was on the verge of declaring war on Germany, and expected a pacified Cuba to serve as a first line of defense of U.S. interests in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. As a result, the United States supported President Menocal against the rebels, despite the rebels' considerable backing in the United States and among some American interests in Oriente province.
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In mid-February, the U.S. Navy commander at Guantánamo Bay became embroiled in negotiations between Cuban and rebel forces over the fate of the harbor at Santiago de Cuba, which the rebels controlled and threatened to block by sinking vessels across its mouth. As the self-appointed representative of U.S. business interests in the area, Captain Dudley W. Knox did not want to see the harbor closed
to U.S. commerce. Knox convinced the rebels to refrain from shutting down the harbor at Santiago in exchange for a promise that the Cuban warships would not force the entrance. Knox's initiative, undertaken without authorization from Washington, won the enmity of U.S. consular and State Department officials, who supported Menocal against the rebels, with whom they refused to negotiate. Knox returned to Guantánamo after several days. In the ensuing weeks, rebel forces, increasingly desperate and hard-pressed, began to do as Cuban political minorities before them had done in Oriente province, namely, threatening U.S. property in the hopes of triggering a full-scale U.S. occupation of Cuba under the Platt Amendment.
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to U.S. commerce. Knox convinced the rebels to refrain from shutting down the harbor at Santiago in exchange for a promise that the Cuban warships would not force the entrance. Knox's initiative, undertaken without authorization from Washington, won the enmity of U.S. consular and State Department officials, who supported Menocal against the rebels, with whom they refused to negotiate. Knox returned to Guantánamo after several days. In the ensuing weeks, rebel forces, increasingly desperate and hard-pressed, began to do as Cuban political minorities before them had done in Oriente province, namely, threatening U.S. property in the hopes of triggering a full-scale U.S. occupation of Cuba under the Platt Amendment.
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But with war against Germany all but inevitable, the U.S. government had its hands full. President Wilson ordered marines from the naval base to guard American and foreign property, while sending sailors from American warships into Santiago, Guantánamo City, and other eastern towns. The presence of U.S. troops in eastern Cuba bolstered weak Cuban government forces. Again, with the Americans guarding their backs, the Cuban Army was able to confine the rebels to an increasingly diminishing area, so that by midsummer 1917, the rebellion was essentially smothered. But not before thousands of U.S. troops had been dispersed throughout southeastern Cuba for the second time in a decade, allowing the corrupt Menocal to be inaugurated for a second term.
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The social unrest that gripped Oriente province in the first two decades of the twentieth century reflected structural defects in Cuban society traceable to the encomienda system of land and labor distribution introduced onto the island by early colonial Spain. From the arrival of Diego Velázquez in 1511 through the seizure of American assets at the time of the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban economy was dominated by absentee landlords who regarded Cuba as a source of status and wealth rather than as a home. The dissolution of the great cattle estates at the end of the eighteenth century and the simultaneous opening of Cuba to foreign trade gave rise not to the diversified and indigenous free market economy that Havana's Creole merchants and entrepreneurs anticipated, but to a capital-intensive, foreign-owned,
export-oriented sugar monoculture based on plantation slavery and supplemented with Chinese indentured servants.
export-oriented sugar monoculture based on plantation slavery and supplemented with Chinese indentured servants.
The U.S. hijacking of Cuban independence exaggerated these structural flaws. In contrast to the American patriots' expropriation of British Loyalist property during the American Revolution, the United States allowed no nationalization or redistribution of peninsular (Spanish) or Creole property at the end of the “Spanish-American War.” On the contrary, Spanish loyalists, “peninsulares,” Creoles, Europeans, and Americans retained their property and political and economic influence. In the cases of the few Spaniards or foreigners who did abandon their property during or after the war, an absence of Cuban capital and credit inhibited the disbursement of property to the Cuban people. In fact, in the aftermath of independence, foreign control of Cuba's economy expanded while Cubans remained essentially sidelined.
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The ravaging of the Cuban countryside during the war provided the opportunity to decentralize Cuban agriculture. One can imagine the proliferation across Cuba of small and midsize farms producing diversified goods for both local and global markets. But this flew in the face of both U.S. and foreign capital interests in Cuba, as well as global trends. Big is in, Henry Cabot Lodge had announced back in 1895, in reference to America's new interest in overseas colonies. But Lodge might just as well have been talking about agriculture and industry. The three went handsomely together. Leonard Wood's first aim as military governor of Cuba was to get the Cuban economy up and running. Wood's administration underwrote the recapitalization of Cuban agriculture and industry on an ever-larger scale, creating insurmountable barriers to entry for Cuban farmers shy of capital. In his letter to Shafter of July 1898, Cuban general Calixto GarcÃa expressed dismay that Shafter would leave Spanish officials in charge of Santiago at the end of the war. Something similar happened throughout the Cuban economy. In Cuba's emerging industrial sector, for example, the influence of Spanish merchants and entrepreneurs actually
expanded
in the first three decades after Cuban independence. By 1927, foreigners owned two-thirds of Cuba's general stores, Spaniards themselves roughly 50 percent. Similarly, Spaniards dominated the professions, education, and the clergy.
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expanded
in the first three decades after Cuban independence. By 1927, foreigners owned two-thirds of Cuba's general stores, Spaniards themselves roughly 50 percent. Similarly, Spaniards dominated the professions, education, and the clergy.
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The result was a Cuban economy from which the Cuban middle class was virtually excluded. The lower classes were welcome, but only as laborers. Not even the old Cuban planter elite, small as it was, remained in power. Having tied its fate to the cause of autonomy under Spain, it had no standing when the old political regime fell.
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American and foreign investors were ready to fill the void. In the fertile central province of Camagüey, for example, some seven thousand Americans possessed land titles; in nearby Sancti Spiritus, Americans owned seven-eighths of the land. By 1906 it is estimated that the United States owned 15 percent of Cuba. Put another way, roughly 60 percent of rural property in Cuba was in the possession of foreign companies. Some 15 percent was owned by Spanish residents, leaving approximately 15 percent of Cuban land to Cubans. Similar imbalance prevailed across the Cuban economy, including mining, transportation, and utilities, and the manufacturing, banking, and finance industries.
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American and foreign investors were ready to fill the void. In the fertile central province of Camagüey, for example, some seven thousand Americans possessed land titles; in nearby Sancti Spiritus, Americans owned seven-eighths of the land. By 1906 it is estimated that the United States owned 15 percent of Cuba. Put another way, roughly 60 percent of rural property in Cuba was in the possession of foreign companies. Some 15 percent was owned by Spanish residents, leaving approximately 15 percent of Cuban land to Cubans. Similar imbalance prevailed across the Cuban economy, including mining, transportation, and utilities, and the manufacturing, banking, and finance industries.
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The effect on Cuban morale was devastating. For two generations, Cuban patriots had struggled for control of Cuba. Victory in the War of Independence had brought them nothing. When social alienation bred political upheaval over the fall and winter of 1905â1906, disgruntled Cuban politicians solicited U.S. intervention. If initially reluctant, the Roosevelt administration was at the ready. “I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth,” Roosevelt told his confidant Whitelaw Reid the following September. “All we have wanted from them is that they would behave themselves and be prosperous and happy so that we would not have to interfere.”
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U.S. policy had made that impossible.
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U.S. policy had made that impossible.
In the immediate aftermath of war, U.S. officials granted favorable tariff concessions to (largely U.S.- and foreign-based) Cuban sugar producers in exchange for reciprocal benefits for U.S. manufacturers. The cheap U.S.-manufactured goods undercut a nascent Cuban manufacturing sector already suffering from a shortage of investment capital. Naturally, the defects of the sugar monoculture influenced the plight of Cuban labor. In boom times, the sugar industry employed a mostly African- and Chinese-derived labor pool on a seasonal basis
and under highly exploitative conditions. In slack times, laid-off sugar workers joined a large pool of under- and unemployed workers.
and under highly exploitative conditions. In slack times, laid-off sugar workers joined a large pool of under- and unemployed workers.
The structural flaws in Cuba's economy affected Cuban politics. With Cuban sugar production dominated by foreigners, and lacking an industrial base, Cuban elites turned to politics as the surest way to make a living. Government became the instrument not for solving the nation's problems but for distributing political spoils. By the 1920s, as the federal bureaucracy (and payroll) swelled to unimaginable levels, Cuba became a welfare stateâfor Cuban elitesâchanneling scarce resources into the pockets of professional politicians.
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In the early twentieth century the fate of Cuba's ruling political parties depended on maintaining the good graces of the United States, always ready to intervene under Platt to protect U.S. business interests. More than anything, this meant maintaining law and order, no mean feat in the midst of economic hardship and rampant corruption. It would take Cuba years to descend to the level of political violence that characterized the intimidation and violence (
gangsterismo
) of the 1940s and '50s; but by the mid-1920s, dissident labor leaders were literally being fed to sharks as Cuba's poor confronted the unpalatable choice of participating in the violence as the arm of the ruling party or risking becoming victims of the violence itself.
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gangsterismo
) of the 1940s and '50s; but by the mid-1920s, dissident labor leaders were literally being fed to sharks as Cuba's poor confronted the unpalatable choice of participating in the violence as the arm of the ruling party or risking becoming victims of the violence itself.
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Like the political parties, the Cuban military had a great stake in maintaining the status quo. U.S. intervention jeopardized Cuban Army legitimacy, making the army a force of political stability at the expense of fair elections and political and economic reform. Beginning in the 1910s, when President Mario GarcÃa Menocal responded to a wave of labor unrest by unleashing the army on workers, the Cuban Army was never far offstage. Far from stabilizing Cuban politics, the rising influence of the army contributed to the social volatility, adding deadly force to an already explosive relationship between government and labor. Despite their differences, the ruling party and the army agreed on maintaining a pliant workforce. In the second decade of the twentieth century, Cuban agricultural and industrial workers began to protest living and working conditions with increasing regularity and forcefulness. With the United States fiercely opposed to even minimal labor concessions (a minimum wage, for instance, or a majority Cuban
labor force), Cuban politicians refused to negotiate with workers, which only added to worker unrest.
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labor force), Cuban politicians refused to negotiate with workers, which only added to worker unrest.
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By the 1920s, opposition to the Platt Amendment was becoming increasingly widespread among Cubans and Americans alike. For their part, U.S. officials were becoming fed up with Cuban manipulation of an instrument designed to maintain U.S. hegemony, and which threatened to embroil the United States permanently in Cuba's dysfunctional politics. It was Cuba's money the United States wanted, not its reins of government. Meanwhile, Cuban nationalists denounced U.S. meddling in Cuban affairs to greater effect, forcing the ruling parties to acknowledge Platt's cost to their political legitimacy. Finally, Platt had lost its only indigenous support among the Cuban bourgeoisie, who had come to regard it as the principal impediment to agricultural diversification and the promotion of domestic manufacturing. Foreign-owned and exploitative, sugar becameâlike Platt itselfâa focus of nationalist opposition to the United States.
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Just a few years after Herbert Corey's sojourn at Guantánamo, writer K. C. McIntosh described Caimanera to readers of the popular magazine
American Mercury
. “A rickety wooden building like a squat barn built on piles over the whispering, greenish water; a long, battered mahogany bar; a hundred white and gold uniforms at white-topped tables that are littered with remnants of salad and fried chicken, and are sloppy with beer-froth and the chill sweat of highball glasses. A hundred grinning black faces at the wide glassless windows on the street side.”
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The walls of the bars of Caimanera, like the fence marking the boundary of the U.S. naval base, separated Americans and Cubans along lines of nationality, class, race, and gender. But the walls had windows, and the windows were “open,” and through those openings U.S. sailors and their Cuban hosts came to know one another in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Like the fence itself, those windows facilitated all manner of border crossings that blurred, while not ultimately obliterating, the differences that distinguished Americans from their Cuban hosts.
American Mercury
. “A rickety wooden building like a squat barn built on piles over the whispering, greenish water; a long, battered mahogany bar; a hundred white and gold uniforms at white-topped tables that are littered with remnants of salad and fried chicken, and are sloppy with beer-froth and the chill sweat of highball glasses. A hundred grinning black faces at the wide glassless windows on the street side.”
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The walls of the bars of Caimanera, like the fence marking the boundary of the U.S. naval base, separated Americans and Cubans along lines of nationality, class, race, and gender. But the walls had windows, and the windows were “open,” and through those openings U.S. sailors and their Cuban hosts came to know one another in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Like the fence itself, those windows facilitated all manner of border crossings that blurred, while not ultimately obliterating, the differences that distinguished Americans from their Cuban hosts.
Like Corey's Guantánamo, McIntosh's is distinguished first and
foremost by race. Besides the “hundred grinning black faces” at the windows of Caimanera, the Guantánamo base was populated by “Chinese coolies” working at the direction of “a brown Cuban foreman.”
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A few of the local bars were owned by whites, but all were staffed by Cubansâby Manuel, Pablo, Pepe, Jim, and Chico. Different grades of officers drank in different places: the higher the grade, the closer to the base. Time was of the essence. At Caimanera, Peanut Mary, a Jamaican, sold peanuts and evidently a little more to the Americans, her gender providing a competitive advantage over her rival, a “thin brown urchin.”
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foremost by race. Besides the “hundred grinning black faces” at the windows of Caimanera, the Guantánamo base was populated by “Chinese coolies” working at the direction of “a brown Cuban foreman.”
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A few of the local bars were owned by whites, but all were staffed by Cubansâby Manuel, Pablo, Pepe, Jim, and Chico. Different grades of officers drank in different places: the higher the grade, the closer to the base. Time was of the essence. At Caimanera, Peanut Mary, a Jamaican, sold peanuts and evidently a little more to the Americans, her gender providing a competitive advantage over her rival, a “thin brown urchin.”
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U.S. sailors worked as well as drank at Guantánamo Bay. Long before the base became home to the Navy's Fleet Training Group in 1943, it was used to put the fleet through its paces. Visits to local watering holes followed exhausting days of drilling and target practice at sea. But the same cannot be said for women at the base. When the fleet is out, McIntosh reports, the base falls quiet, and if the heat allows, the navy wives may be found “riding lazy ponies over the hill to call on the ladies of the Marines Corps.” On the base itself, “there is just enough tennis to keep in condition, just enough swimming to keep moderately cool, just enough bridge of an evening to exhaust the conversation of your neighbors, and an occasional ride up the bay for a cocktail on Pablo's back gallery or a cold bottle of beer in Jimmy Beauzay's or O'Brien's.”
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