CHAPTER IV PORTO RICO
Porto Rico was discovered by Columbus in 1493, and he entered the port of San Juan, naming it San Juan de Porto Rico—St. John of the Fine Harbor—hence the name of the island itself—Porto Rico. The Indians there were in a low state of civilization and showed little sign of wealth. The island seems at first to have presented less interest than its neighbors: Santo Domingo became the beloved of Columbus, Cuba became the chief Spanish base for exploration and conquest. Porto Rico enjoyed therefore comparative peace for sixteen years after its fatal discovery. Then came Ponce de Leon, and after him plunderers and pacificators with sword and hemp; killing, ravishing, enslaving. The despoiling of the Indians of their gold and jewels was followed by dispossession of their lands and then the capture of their persons for the slave trade. Ships were fitted out in Cuba, with the sole mercantile objective of capturing the Indians of the islands and selling them into bondage.
Slaving may have proved profitable, but in the long run it was unpractical. The Indians entirely disappeared, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century were reported to Spain as extinct. There were no longer enough servile hands to do the hard work. So in place of the lost Indians the Spanish colonists felt forced to import Africans.
The Negro slaves throve under conditions which killed Indians; they increased, and the Spaniards mixed their blood with them and bred from them. Hence the large Negroid population of the Indies at this day.
The same happened in Darien, Panama, Costa Rica—Negroes largely displaced Indians. In Mexico, however, Africans were not imported to any extent, as the Indians, though rebellious, were in large numbers and there were many tribes accustomed to slavery.
The Spaniards settled Porto Rico, and grew sugar and bananas which they brought over from the Canaries, and tobacco which was indigenous. They lived in a humdrum state, taxed, of course, interfered with a great deal by Spanish governors, but generally enjoying the wealth and ease of a luxuriant tropical island—thus for three centuries, when suddenly all the Spanish colonies followed the example of the North American demarche and endeavored to throw off the yoke of the mother country. Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, all gained their freedom before 1825. Porto Rico fought for three years and failed (1821-1823). Spain remained in possession. Fifty years later slavery was abolished. The free republics of Central America had abolished it in 1824. However, in 1873 the Negroes of Porto Rico became free Spanish subjects. In 1897 Porto Rico even obtained Home Rule under a Spanish Governor-general. But next year came the war between the United States and Spain, and Porto Rico was annexed.
Cuba had also failed in 1823, and for the rest of the century remained disaffected. The Cuban is of a much more violent disposition than the Porto Rican. Cuba has never been wholly in a state of peace and contentedness since it was discovered. A widespread guerrilla warfare lasted from 1868 to 1878, and in 1895 Maximo Gomez led another revolutionary war. By that time, despite constant unrest, foreigners had acquired considerable property in Cuba. There were American, British, and French planters besides Spanish ones. Naturally, in a state of civil war, as in Mexico during 1910-1920, there was much damage done to foreign property. At this, the United States took umbrage.
On February 15, 1898, the U. S. battleship Maine blew up in the harbor of Habana. The Spaniards say it blew up accidentally; the American impression given in the American press was that the Spaniards, to whom the presence of the vessel was thought to be distasteful, had blown it up on purpose. Others think the Cubans blew it up to instigate the war. On the other hand, some Cubans aver that the Americans themselves blew it up—but that is not credible. Probably it was an accident.
But this was the spectacular event which an emotional public needed, like the hauling down of the Flag at Fort Sumter in 1861, like the supposed onslaught of the Mexican Army upon the forces of General Taylor in 1846, the sinking of the Maine was just what was needed to rouse the democracy of the North to war. An ultimatum was presented to Spain.
Spain must make immediate peace in Cuba. Spain was very polite and promised to do what she could. But the war feeling demanded more. On April 19, 1898, the United States Congress voted that Cuba was henceforth an independent state, and called upon Spain to give up Cuba. Next day the Spanish Ambassador left Washington and there was war.
In the arbitrament of force Spain stood no chance. There were a few months of one-sided warfare, and the honor of Spain was satisfied. Spain faced her challenger, shots were exchanged, Spain was wounded and retired from the field. Cuba was given liberty. Porto Rico was annexed.
Does one need to stress the annexation of Porto Rico? Is it worth while inquiring whether the Porto Ricans should also have been given their liberty? Perhaps not, generally speaking, as the government of States and Empires goes on to-day. Porto Rico has only a million and a quarter inhabitants, is only 3400 square miles in extent. But I stress the annexation in this study because it seems specially important in the development of the power of the United States of North America.
The Spaniards took Porto Rico for greed. No tears need be shed over them. The United States did not take it over from that motive. But it was a step forward in her quest of power. The Castilian flag went down—the flag of the quest for gold. The American flag went up—the flag of the quest for power.
San Juan de Porto Rico is a gay and pretty little city, without crime, without dirt, and without much poverty. Revolvers are not fired promiscuously. Heaven's water-carts lay the dust each afternoon. There is a luxurious American hotel, and Spanish ones which are less luxurious. You eat to music, and can be fed in airy restaurants by eager Italians. Babbitt orders his stacks of hot cakes and soft-boiled eggs for breakfast; Francisco Morales sits down meekly to coffee and a small roll. The well-fed, broad-faced business men of the States walk with india rubber step—happy, tubby Texans, lordly lumps of Louisiana. The tropic, which dries the Spaniard, does not reduce the North American. The young men are clean-cut and handsome, but soon sag, owing to lack of exercise and the habit of bathing in hot water instead of cold. The Porto Rican is not so dependent on a car, eats less, and certainly bathes less, be it in hot or cold. You know the ex-Spaniard by his spare form and swarthy complexion. The Spanish sombrero is being chased off the island by standard American hats; likewise the Spanish shirt by the more expensive silk shirt of the American working man. The blue overalls or "slops" of the laborer are also common. It is difficult to buy an article of attire which is of local manufacture and style; even Panama hats it appears have to be sent to New York and reëxported. Inter-island trade is very scanty; once a month a small Dutch cargo boat arrives from Jamaica, but it seems to bring very little.
Characteristic of modern San Juan is the barber shop with its striped pole revolving in glass case: there the Spaniards getting their hair cut have their necks shaved also and a bareness left above the ears; and having "gotten" a shave they get an American hot towel also pressed upon their brows and temples.
Truly, as you stand on the quay and watch the ferry boats, modeled on those of the Hudson River, go screaming across the harbor, you feel there is some justification for the saying that San Juan is a miniature New York.
One thing, however, it lacks, and that is an adequate number of "shoe-shine parlors." Like the Bedouins who have a monopoly of the visitors to the Sphinx, so a tribe exists in San Juan who hold the blacking brush to the world. When an imperial race arrives there is great competition among the natives as to who shall clean their boots. The tribe especially swarms around the town square which, banked with flora and shaded with luxuriant palms, might otherwise be a pleasant place of rest. Even at night, after supper, when the town band is playing to a flocking crowd under a dreaming moon, you are treated to a sort of jazz interposition of "Shine! Shine! Shine!"
The voices of the street urchins and news venders have the same quality of voice as those of Cadiz. Boy babies come forth from their mothers' wombs howling "Demokratia." The stones of the high houses repeat their cries. But there are no parrots shouting on the streets of San Juan. There used to be, for Spanish sailors brought them. But in some streets of Cadiz one might have thought there was a riot, what with the news venders below and the parrots in the upper storys. Coming direct from Cadiz one noticed many divergencies in the detail of life. For instance, Cadiz had no cinemas; San Juan had five or six, showing all the Californian stars. In Cadiz there were several theaters with dancing and singing. In San Juan there was only one with a visiting Spanish artist. In Cadiz no one rocks or swings on a veranda. In San Juan, on the other hand, there are no bullfights. Most of what bound the island to Spain has been now cut. Only a few educated people know who is King of Spain.
Out in the country, however, life is more definitely Spanish and American influence is less felt. The Negro life is greater there and seems to relate neither to Spain nor to America. It hardly seems to relate to Africa either.
The Negroes live in saffron- and marine-colored boxes little bigger than bathrooms, and what they crowd into these cabins makes them like Noah's arks with all the toy furniture and animals inside. You'll see them stuck right in the midst of a swamp with thousands of land crabs crawling on the tips of their claws and feeling in the air with their portentous extra talons.
The mangoes hang their fruits like tassels. The palm trees rise up like vast, lissom, feminine forms swathed to the waist and then bright naked to their matted heads, where cluster their giant nuts. The banana palms bask in solar radiance and hot mist; and last year's shabby sugar plantation stretches for a mile of bashed canes and sprawling withered leaves. And naked children improvise a throb of music with a tin can band while others dance to it a natural shimmy shake.
Living among the colored folk are poor white Spanish Porto Ricans on quite an equal basis, and their pale babies run about in the sun, too, only they are not musical and do not dance. The grown girls, white and black, are beautiful creatures, dazzling with their bright dresses, their vitality, and their unthwarted curves. The Negro men are finer than the Spanish ones, however, and naturally a long way simpler. I never saw Negro men so happy and untroubled as here—the Negro without a complex, without the blues.
Nearby goes the military high road, hard and straight, and along it hoot America's cars. The little island is traversed by a whole series of magnificent roads of great value from the point of view of war, but now a happy means of touring the country. The automobile parade from Packard to Ford goes past before your eyes, and beside private cars fly strings of little motor buses, all packed with people. Each bus has a name, and that adds greatly to the amusement of the road. Thus we have "Coney Island," "Cristobal Colon," "Excuse my Dust," "Maria Luisa," and a hundred more. These are worked by the Spanish-speaking people for Spanish-speaking people. You will seldom meet an American in one. I found afterwards in Colon and Mexico City, in Santo Domingo and Port au Prince, and other places, these converted Ford trucks swarm, and are a great if risky means of locomotion. The Porto Rican wagonettes are if anything quieter in their demeanor than the Mexican ones. So they scour the ways from ports and tobacco-towns, over the low ranges of tree-covered sugar-loaf mountains, to other towns and ports and villas and resorts. When far away on the verdure-covered hills they show where the roads are by their turbulent dust.
You see almost the whole range of class life in Porto Rico from the bottom to the broad top, from yellow wooden cabin to the latest type of American home. For whites an American standard of life has been set. Rich as the island is, and simple and remote, the artificial prices of New York, nevertheless, range. Your room at the hotel, with bath and telephone, will cost you from three to five dollars a day. You will sit down to the characteristic breakfast of grapefruit, ham and eggs, corn cakes, and coffee. Ice and water continually tinkles in glasses. Yonder is the ice-cream soda bar. The suit pressers are all busy keeping proper creases in the breeches of the islanders. American men, wearing their white suits and linen collars, look smarter than the Porto Ricans, and the women, if quieter in looks, at least keep to the fashions.
Business of course is king. You feel that, at every turn, by the look of the advertisements and the trend of the talk. Porto Rico hums as it has never hummed before. It goes. It is a real live place. The dominant spirit of the Anglo-Saxon has overcome the gentle, sluggish conservatism of old Spain. Rich Porto Ricans, and there are many of them, live in luxury, in beautiful villas with every possible means of material happiness—books, baths, electric light, fans, tiled floors, perfect mosquito nets, and the whitest sheets and the softest of pillows. And the water is pure and the drains are good—thanks in great part to a quarter of a century of ownership and exploitation by the U. S. A.
The material benefit which has come to Porto Rico through annexation is considerable. In 1901 she was included within the American tariff union and all her products could enter American harbors duty free. She entered the American postal unity. The American dollar became her unit of currency. American traders taught Porto Rican middlemen how to make money, and American planters from Louisiana showed the proper way to raise sugar. The annual output of sugar has been increased to ten times what it was in 1898.
On the other hand, there are material and political disadvantages. Though Porto Rico has free trade with America she has it not with the rest of the world. A high tariff excludes European goods. Spanish America has profited immensely by cheap German wares. But the Fordney tariff keeps them out of Porto Rico. Porto Rico pays excessively for scores of articles and commodities which she could otherwise import cheaply from France and Spain, to say nothing of England. Prohibition of wines and spirits is said to have been achieved by local option—but, if so, it was before the population was able to vote. Trial by jury is not given in Porto Rico. Porto Ricans are citizens of the U. S. A., by virtue of the Jones Act of 1917. They were enabled to be conscripted for the Army. But they do not have the power to vote. They are represented in the United States Congress only by a Commissioner. They have no Senator. They have no part in electing the President.
Now there has sprung up what may be called a Porto Rican Sinn Fein movement, featured in a concerted attack on the Administration. Many Americans now advocate "Statehood" for Porto Rico. But the Porto Ricans clamor for independence. Porto Rico is in the anomalous condition of belonging to the U. S. A. but is not a State nor governed by the Constitution. She is a possession. And the general Spanish discontent which rules in Cuba, Haiti, and Santo Domingo outcrops in Porto Rico also. Just as the popular song "Es mi hombre" which tires the ears in Madrid has gone through these islands and is no doubt ravaging Mexico and all the mainland, so the one insurgent Spanish emotion has infected all the islanders. And, in Porto Rico, journalists in the newspapers and street orators in the squares are flirting with the idea of a revolt. The street politicians seemed very nervous when any one looking like an American came near.
It is difficult to know what test to apply to the institutions of Porto Rico where, for instance, trial by jury cannot be claimed. If the test of Empire, the trouble would be hardly worth considering; but if the test of Lincolnian democracy, the Porto Ricans have grievances which could be removed. The removal would take little effort. The island is well governed, and is civilized and prosperous. Given her independence it is all too likely that her present happiness would fall away from her.
CHAPTER V SANTO DOMINGO AND HAITI
1
Over the sea in a tiny boat to the island of Haiti, and to the eastern half of it which is called Santo Domingo. The voyage is still westward and along the eighteenth parallel and not for long out of sight of land, be it the northern shore of Porto Rico or the southern shore of Santo Domingo. The sea reeks with warm exhalations, and in the turgid water lurk sharks. Don't fall off the ship as she lurches and rolls and you hold to the ropes—you may not be saved if you do.
Twenty-four hours brings you to the little tropic river where the massed palm trees with their bushy heads peep forth out of the jungle at the intruder. And we slush slowly along the banks through the heat to a jaded-looking dock and some clammy warehouses, and behold, it is the capital of the Dominican Republic; I suppose one of the meanest and dirtiest capitals in the world. Yonder is the Government Building, on which flies the white-crossed flag of the Republic and level with it the Stars and Stripes of the United States. For the republic has the brokers in. She borrowed heavily and unwisely, and then could not pay—and so the customs were seized, and, with the customs, government itself. Santo Domingo is now virtually an American possession and part of the new empire which is springing into being and promising to condition the future of the American people. On a little hill outside the city is a training camp with its motto picked out in white stones in an attractive pattern: "In time of Peace, prepare for War." And one wakens in the morning to the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner," played somewhere afar.
Down by that tropic little river stands the stump of Columbus's tree, the actual tree to which the discoverer moored his ship when he came in on that morning of the fifth of December, 1492, and was met by the amazed tribesmen. Nine months ago it was a still living tree, and it is part of the grievance of the Dominicans that the marines tried to preserve it for all time by cutting it open and filling its hollow center with cement. That killed it. But it is a mighty burly stump, some fifteen feet high and of great girth. It sprawls rather, it has a burly moving shoulder and a bearded aspect that suggests a sort of Rip Van Winkle Christopher Columbus, enchanted for four hundred and thirty years and now stepping ashore.
What a change for the old man to see! Those chiefs, those red men and women who gave jewels for beads, all killed to the last child two hundred years ago. Africans are in their place, smooth and black, everywhere, as if they had come and conquered it. But they came as slaves and then won their freedom from Spaniards and from Frenchmen. Some speak Spanish, some speak bits of French. Further on, in Haiti all speak French. Where are the bold Spaniards with their flashing eyes and flashing blades, their wills, their lusts? Gone like the great trees of the river side. Gone like the Indians. Gone like the French who came after them. Mixed and married with the Negroes, or else gone soft and gentle as Orientals.
"These strapping fellows, these giants in sand-colored clothes?" Columbus might ask. "American soldiers," you would reply, and then conduct the poor old wight to the Carnegie Library and the shelves of the Encyclopedia Americana. It needs some explaining. Discovering America was child's play compared with explaining to Columbus the rise of the American Republic of the North.
Anyhow, here I am at the Hotel Inglaterra, and down below me is a bar where there is "beer on ice" and the "best old rum," for Santo Domingo has not been made dry, and there sit marines all in white and argue it over their pots. The question is: "Do not the Haitians eat their children at the age of five—not all of them, of course, but selected kids at festivals? Do not the outlaws and brigands of Santo Domingo need to be stamped out? Or again, Who has prior rights in the Panama Canal? Do not British warships come through without paying dues while American warships pay? Are not all vessels towed by electric mules through the canal?" They bet millions of dollars, they bet their adjectival shirts, because they know.
Outside is the city market place, where are sold live crabs and tortoises on strings and mangoes and gourds and coconuts and sugar-candy babies on wire. And black girls with coral ornaments and vari-colored turbans or kerchiefs do the selling—while purchasers on asses, on backs of calves, or walking with huge bundles on their heads, go past. The black people laugh and shout. It doesn't seem to mean much to them that they have no President and that their republic is in abeyance. They do not bet on what is going to happen, and they do not know. When you buy an orange for a cent they say to you Grand merci and are ever so pleased. In the square is a fine statue of Cristobal Colon, who points west by southwest to Latin America, bidding all men still think of a new world. But I am forgetting. Did I not leave him in the Library with the encyclopedia? Is it not there, on the shelf, that he will find his true place, in a history that is past?
2
Though at first sight the population of the capital of the Dominican Republic may strike the traveler as being wholly black, there are nevertheless a number of persons of fairer complexion—the people of the first families, the aristokratia. One or two of these are German. These keep within their houses more than do the Negroes who trade and traffic and gossip in market place and main street.
The island has a bad history. Columbus loved it as the first large materialization of his dream of a beyond—a transatlantic land. But the Spaniards raised Cain there, and the Negroes and French after them. The Indians were killed off early, and the Spaniards were soon killing one another. Bandits and pirates have lived there more securely than any one else.
It was in 1697 that the French came in. Spain ceded half the island to her. The French bred in rapidly with the colored people. The country became known as Haiti, and French was the spoken tongue. French Negro slaves in considerable numbers were imported. A hundred years later the rest of the island was ceded to France. That was in the Napoleonic era. England was at war with Spain, and in 1809 British warships stood off the little tropic harbor and gave encouragement to an uprising of Spanish colonists who proved successful in wresting the city from the French. By the Treaty of Paris in 1814 French rule was confined to the eastern part of the island—Haiti.
There came then speedily the great liberation movement of Latin America (1821-1825). Santo Domingo was able to succeed where Porto Rico failed. But hardly had the new republic proclaimed its independence when the Negroes of Haiti descended upon it and broke it up. Haiti by that time had also won independence. For nearly a quarter of a century the Haitians remained in control of the whole island. In 1844 a Dominican insurrection was successful, but there was no peace with Haiti, who seems to have been always the stronger power. Santo Domingo was forced to try to return to the bosom of Spain. In 1861 the president of the republic became governor, and the republic joined Spain. Two years later war against Spain was started and in 1865 the republic was restored. In 1868 the republic tried to join the United States, but America was not then willing. Insurrectionary movements followed one another with rapidity till the Negro general Ulysses Heureux obtained control of the country. He, it is said, pursued the policy later adopted by Lenin in Russia of having all his enemies killed, but he himself did not escape and was assassinated at last. It is said he ran the republic very deeply into debt. One wonders why financiers should have been willing to lend money to such a State. Some five millions sterling were owing, later it became six and a half millions. There was talk of foreign intervention. Some European power might have felt entitled to seize the country.
American policy had, however, somewhat changed. In 1899 the United States entered into possession of Porto Rico and into control of Cuba. Santo Domingo was one half of the island that lay between. Rather than see a foreign power installed, America decided to control Santo Domingo also.
The republic was asked if she still required aid from Washington, and the United States agreed to control the customs, organize receipts, pay interest on debts and pension the government. This she has done very effectively and remains in economic and military control to-day; Santo Domingo with a constitution in suspended animation having become an American Protectorate.
Apparently now most Dominicans would like the Americans to go, but they have no power to make them. The Americans for their part can point justifiably to the improved conditions on the island. If they went, the human dogfight would begin anew. However, let us to the country!
3
I have heard it said in London that those who live in half-houses are the aristocrats of the slums. The quaint expression may also be applied to the colored folk who live in cabins. They are the black aristocracy of the islands. It was in vain that I pitied the plight of the dwellers in the marine- and saffron-colored dolls' houses of Porto Rico. The real underdog of these parts does not pretend to any little wooden hut. He lives gregariously in the bush like the larvae of the Lackey Moth. He squats in the shadow and shine of tattered palm branches, he is rustling with his family just beyond the green fans of the wild bananas. In crossing the island of Haiti only two things share the attention—the magnificence of untamed nature and the wildness of man.
Not that the men and women have relapsed to primitive savagery. They are fully dressed, as fully as any one could care to be, and, except for little children, seem to be afraid of nakedness. In Russia, in some parts, you may see scores of men, women, and children promiscuously naked upon a river bank; but the wild children of the sun of Haiti will not even bathe in the sea unless discreetly covered. In the Africa whence they came they wore little more than a cache-sexe, but the slaves learned a decorum of dress from the Spaniard in the old Colonial days and it has remained.
They are very civil too, and talk to you willingly in a French patois or in a broad Spanish which is far from the Spanish of Madrid. But they are poor, live largely on fruit, have none of the amenities of life, and being exposed to the tropical heat, they are also exposed to the exhalations of the jungle and to its insects. They are magnificent specimens of the human race till disease touches them. What erect and beautiful women, what positively Adamlike men! My eyes fed on many pictures of human perfection. But alas for disease! Smallpox rages among them. You see beautiful boys and girls the color of the mahogany trees amongst which they live, but all blurred and shadow-marked as if there were a fault in the tissue. And when one of them dies he is just buried somewhere at the back, like a dog or a cat.
Little smallpox-stricken girls with the disease still on them come up with bunches of bananas or mangoes for sale, their open faces looking out from a hundred disease-eyes. It makes the heart ache, and also prompts the thought—what a place for a medical missionary!
The island swarms with bandits. There is only one road across it and that was opened only a month before. Its interior is extremely obscure, unvisited, and uncontrolled. It offers in an otherwise unqualified way a divine adventure for a young doctor willing to devote his life to human beings.
Personally I do not believe the stories of moral depravity, the cannibalism, which is said to have broken out among the people. They are not so starved as that. They have not been exploited in the way the people of the other islands have. Cubans will eat one another before Haitians. But they get married without going to church, it is true, and have children who remain unbaptized. Otherwise they are "good Catholics," some of the best I have seen. There is no doubt about it—the inside of a church, where there is a church, is one of the best social scenes in Haiti. The women may often go in uncovered, and the holy water bowl be dry, or the worshipers may not know when or how to cross themselves—but the loveliness and simplicity of service are in utter contrast to the world outside, to the jungle, and to the ordinary ways of men and women.
You sit in a vast sky-blue church in the evening and watch the children, with chaplets in their hair and garlands of flowers in their hands, and listen to the Spanish singing. And girls all in white go up to the Madonna with armfuls of flowers and, throwing their heads and their breasts to her, yearn to her and gesticulate and perorate and fling down their flower sacrifices and go. And the priest lights the incense over the flower-heaped altar so that every blossom smokes upwards to the Virgin's feet.
Oh, to live in that atmosphere always and be at peace! You realize the sweet emotion, though you know that character and the world's reactions forbid that you shall take it far.
I stayed at a pleasant city called Santiago of the Gentlemen. The Americans call it Santiago of the Bandits, but it seemed to be a brighter city than the capital, having more pretensions to civilization. The steel mosquito gratings on the verandas of the hotel were commendable. How can one enjoy one's days when the mosquitoes chase you all night!
It would, however, be vain to seek in the island of Haiti the comforts and conventions of Porto Rico. The United States is in control, but it is proving more difficult to introduce new ways of living. The mahogany-colored chambermaids of the hotel smoke heavy black cigars as they work, and every time Yokine, who waits on me, wants to light up afresh she makes an errand to my room for the matches beside my candlestick. My bedroom is just a section of a dormitory divided off by wooden partitions. The bed is surmounted by a high-domed-mosquito-netting cage which is a room in itself once you are inside.
There is no such thing as a "room with a bath" on the island. Round the corner from the veranda is a mildewed douche which drops water on your back in beneficent but not abundant trickles. It is not entirely private and you should keep your eyes on two doors whilst you wash. And there are sometimes other occupants beside yourself, to wit, the giant Roach and his family. Father Roach is very fond of water, and when you turn on the shower he also comes forth to share in the splash.
In other parts of the hotel the roaches are portentous. One tries to find a likeness for them. They are like old-fashioned brown metal trunks, a little reduced in size. The sideboard in the dining room might be the grand terminal station of some city of the gnomes, and drawn up outside it are a score of brown cabs, some waiting, some moving.
Or if they are not cabs they are little brown pups. The waiters treat them brutally, but I feed them from my plate and they make off with a bit of bread or a quiver of Spanish omelette as readily as cat or dog.
I see little lizards also running up the dining-room wall. The most interesting extra gentleman lodger, however, is the tropical spider. He is not gigantic but gigantesque, as big as the palm of your hand; speedy, audacious, voracious. He lives not in a web but on a wall, on a series of walls, and no other spider dare stay on it with him for a couple of minutes. Ah, here he comes, sprawling over the dusty map of the island of Haiti hanging in the hall. A Dominican politician smiles and points at him and would whisper something about the military government of which he sees a symbol.
There is a steady malice against Americans, and as I am English the other guests of the hotel open their hearts. They take pleasure in scratching crosses on the figure of Liberty on the American money. Their own money has largely disappeared, but a fine coin the size and appearance of a silver dollar is now reckoned as only twenty cents. They say it is intrinsically worth forty cents, and that an American bank collected some millions of them, took them to New York, and sold them at a large profit. There are two great banking institutions on the island: one is American, the other is the Royal Bank of Canada. The Dominicans assure me they place all their business with the Royal Bank. They say that the dollar has impoverished them because it has raised the cost of living so terribly. They retaliate by using the British bank.
I imagine that may be so, as I pay forty cents for a half bottle of very bad Hamburg beer. It could not have cost more than four cents in Hamburg. The dinner is very simple, no French flourishes of cuisine, no Spanish traditions either, but there is enough; three beef courses and then guava jelly and coffee. And for this you pay at the same rate as you would at Shepheards hotel in Cairo. Or you may pay more.
I am told by Dominicans that the republic in bondage is doing so well that the 1908 bonds due in 1958 will probably be paid off in 1925, and the 1918 bonds due in 1938 would be paid this year (1923). There is a certain new artificial prosperity. It is due to the fact that the inhabitants have been forced to think in dollars and cents, and cease thinking in pesos and gramos. But the Dominican, it seems, will not take the blessings of peace and prosperity into account when it is balanced against political liberty.
I go out to the promenade of the town. I see the lonely American soldiers sitting bored on the park seats, and not one of them with a girl or a chum.
"No one will go with them," says a Dominican. "We don't feel anything against them personally, we know they are only sent by their government and have to obey. But we are against their government and always shall be till they go."
This was spoken by one of the white Spanish aristocracy who are now endeavoring to organize a passive boycott in the island.
Santiago of the Gentlemen is Santiago of the Ladies also. Behold a remarkable festival takes place, which brings the ladies forth in all their finery. The fiesta is in honor of the new road which has joined city with city. After four hundred years Santiago has been connected with the Capital by a road. Up till May of this year there was only an adventurous horseman's trail. But due to the bustling United States of America the hundred and seventy kilometers between Santiago and the city of Santo Domingo has been bridged. Henceforth it is undignified to be seen on a horse—only the poor people, the blacks, the beggars, go on horses. All people who are people go in Ford cars. The super-hooters tear along the highway, and the sultry mango trees drooping with their fruit look as if civilization were dawning on them at last. And the snakes that would bask on the way have learned of a new fast-going enemy that roars like a lion and bumps over them like an elephant and yet flies past like an eagle.
The worthies of the city have issued the most grandiosely worded invitations to the Capitalaños to a three days' general "at home," banquet, and ball. It is a good idea. Santiago is up in the fresher air, a wind is always blowing. The mosquitoes are fewer, and the nights are cool. Indeed, the ladies of the capital carry fur wraps in the evening when the temperature drops to about 70°. Not that any one walks anywhere by day. It is much too hot for that, and if I set off for the river on foot they look at me from their cars and stare. Many people wear green or yellow sun spectacles, which look quaint against a dark complexion. The light is not, however, so glaring as in Egypt or Central Asia, and the heat seems much easier to bear.
I have come to the conclusion that life on these tropical islands can be very good all the year round. The heat does not devitalize one, though something in the air seems to whisper that nothing in the whole world is of any importance. Those who come to Santo Domingo soon feel the "lure" and are ready to stay there forever. I watched the routine of the American soldiers at the white and antique "Fortaleza de San Luis," and the sentries standing languidly but happily, with their bayonets smiling in the sun, and I saw the dreamy look in their eyes, though they were not dreaming of home. Drink, however, seems to be a strong temptation. I saw one never sober warrant officer who was drinking himself to death; an educated man, who boasted comically that he had been "exposed for two years to Cornell." America has not enforced the Dry Law in Domingo nor in Haiti. She has not suggested it in Cuba, though it holds in the zone of her territory in Panama and it has been hinted at in Northern Mexico.
The fiesta, however, means but little to the garrison. It means more to every one else than to them. Down below the earth bastion of the fortress and the deep gun emplacements foams the broad and fresh flowing Rio, and black and brown children are floating in it like luscious fruits, and there are crimson-foliaged trees beside the broad beach where scores of donkeys and ponies with panniers are waiting for water. Every pannier holds two petrol cans, and when the cans are filled the boys squat across them and beat the donkeys up the long hill to the town, and then hawk the water from street to street. Thus here, as in old Spain, water selling is a trade. And the ladies of the capital need water to wash off the dust, and the boys make double profits.
On all street corners the Dominican flag is flying, and a marvelous unwanted animation has possession of the people. Bands are playing; horns are being blown; halls are being festooned with flowers. Santiago begins to look a gay resort. Toledo in Spain has no cinema, but Santiago has two, with biseminal releases from New York and a fitting fade away for "Blood and Sin." Santiago has its shady and pleasant drinking saloons and "Eden" with its annex.
The male guests at night, wearing evening dress, or at least black coats and white ties, all look very dapper. The grown women look stupendous. Imagine them in strawberry pink, three times as stout as a stout woman, and with loose girdles about imaginary waists. But the young women, on the contrary, are slight, dainty, with latticed sleeves and jeweled bird combs in their hair.
They will dance till they drop, no matter what the heat. It is oppressive enough at eight, but the ball lasts till four in the morning, beginning very quietly with waltzes and ending with sex dances. At midnight the town orchestra gives way to a Cuban band which beats a tom-tom for hours. In comes the drum like a storm and then subsides, or it mounts upon the music like some big-cheeked black man getting upon an elephant in front of an army, while on each side of him are pagan heralds blowing dissonances on horns.
Next day after this orgy the faces of the women are a wreck, which no powder or cosmetic will disguise. Yet one of them told me that she belonged to a party club of thirty families where they took it in turn to invite all the others. "At my house I have a hundred and fifty guests, all day, all night," said she to me.
The fiesta, as in other Spanish countries, is a sort of national institution.
4
I was not fortunate enough to be present at a fête on the French part of the island—the Republic of Haiti—but I obtained the impression that the Haitians are much wilder than the Dominicans. The Negroes do not readily identify their needs, they are more ebullient, more pious, and I should say more haunted by a prehistoric past than are the Spaniards.
Nothing is more serene, more utterly sweet, than Mass as sung in the great Cathedral at Port au Prince. But the scene outside the Cathedral for a square mile is primitive in the extreme. It is like the low suburbs of Nizhni Novgorod in Fair time, massed together and increased.
Port au Prince is built widely on a sun-bathed strand, and looks more like a capital city than Santo Domingo. A few khaki-clad Americans meet the eye, but the black population is too striking for one to consider Americans long. It seems as if the peasantry swarms into the city every day to market their produce. And what a peasantry! It would be impossible to match them. They seem to have all the salient characteristics of the southern French and of the Africans also. Their old-world, alert, shrewd, rough-hewn faces, their wit and mirth, their clamorous noisy French patois, their gay cottons and classical faces, the frankly exposed bare breasts of the women, all these tell of a people of force.
Unfortunately, owing to the calling of "dry" American ships, there is a good deal of vice. Champagne is brought to the quay, and the thirsty, indiscriminate passengers and crew knock the tops off the bottles and pour it down their throats like lemonade. The concomitants of drunkenness are all at hand. Possibly in no port in the world will a man, will any man, receive such attentions from women, be he even a somber-visaged missionary. The black girls swarm about you and fight for you.
But this may be overlooked, though I am surprised the American authorities tolerate it. Probably the soldiers like it. But Haiti is sad because she is denied her liberty. The colored people all over the world have a legitimate pride in their two independent States—Liberia and Haiti. There is no reason why Haiti should not be left to govern herself according to her lights and temperament, no reason except that Haiti furnishes a new field for exploitation. It is a place in which a good deal of money could be made if the population could be tamed.
But the people are too numerous and too fierce—they are in a way indomitable. The French blood is vigorous in them. I venture to suggest that Haiti is not a practical possession for an idealistic democracy. The political conceptions on which America has grown will never be adopted by the black French.
5
The time came for me to move on from an extremely interesting island. I wished a passage to Vera Cruz or Jamaica or Colon, but the chance of small vessels sailing adventitiously seemed to determine my way. I went to Puerto Plata and thence to Santiago de Cuba, of Cortes' memory, city of which he was Mayor, city which provided much of the capital for his adventure to Mexico.
Here is Puerto Plata, on the northern shore of Santo Domingo, the Spanish-speaking part; Puerto Plata, the Plate port, a fine ocean harbor where no doubt rested often the treasure ships of the Plate Fleet. Here is the place, one of the places, but where—where are the galleons of Spain?
There stands the British steamer Teviot, loading tons of cigar tobacco for Marseilles, all astir with British sailors, while up at her masthead three green parrots are pecking at one another and conversing, or edging off along the taut ropes. Over beyond is the Yankee freighter Dorothy, attended by waist-naked Negroes and barges of fruit. A streaming smoke on the horizon and a long-distance hooting tells of an incoming hulk of the reappearing Hamburg-Amerika line. Two little Norwegian tramps have been and gone. The fast American mail steamer from New York will come gliding in to-morrow. Spanish cripples creep abroad the ships in the harbor to show their sores, their withered legs and arms; Spanish negro peddlers squat on the stone pier with bunches of mangoes, pineapples, and coconuts. The town grasshoppers come pottering along with their wooden boxes to black the boots of sailors, and all the English they know is "Wahn a shine?"
But the tall galleons and the flashing faces of Castile have vanished away like a mirage, like something unreal, that never was. So I sit in the port and wait. None of the ships will take me the way I want to go. The quickest and cheapest way to Mexico is, after all, via New York, I am told. And that is disconcerting. The galleons have all been sunk, and now one must go via New York.
But patience conquers civilization. A little Spanish boat at length appeared, a mere toy beside its neighbors in the harbor, but going in the same old way of Spanish ships, owned by a Cuban company, commercial as the rest, bearing no banner of Castile over the ocean, and yet Spanish enough, Spanish of to-day.
On this I made a romantic voyage to Cuba. I realized for a moment once more the glamour of the days of the Discoverers and the piratical pioneers. The sea was like velvet; the hazy mountains were of ineffable grandeur; the ship scarcely moved, yet went on, went on, and the flying-fish, silver and gleaming, raced us as she circuited and curved and planed o'er the ocean.
I voyaged with Fabio Fiallo, the poet and patriot of Santo Domingo, and he poured into my ears the story of his country's wrongs. He had with him a fierce-looking peasant from the interior, Cuyo Baez, who took off his shirt to show me the rose-red efflorescences and brutal channels on his body where red-hot irons had been applied to him by torturers.
It was like an inverted picture from Kingsley's Westward Ho, and for a moment I could fancy I saw a British sailor victim of the Spanish Inquisition. I looked at the fierce, unforgiving, taciturn Cuyo, and then at the fine cultured face of Fiallo. How it would have stirred the blood if Cuyo had been Anglo-Saxon and had been thus treated by Spaniards! For our noble rage has an ignoble appetite—it feeds on atrocities, must have atrocities. But here was a Spaniard, alleged to have been tortured with hot irons by one of us, by an Anglo-Saxon. It was incredible.
Fabio Fiallo looked down into the depths of the tranquil sea and meditated, as if he were looking for the Spanish ships and Spaniards down below, and their banners and their crosses and the spoils of the Indies. He could not see them. He could only see the sharks following the boat.
The sailors came out with pistols and began shooting at sharks. For when one shark gets killed the others feed on it and cease following the ship for a while. But it does not disturb the poet, nor the imperturbable Baez. They are thinking of all that is Spanish, hating all that is American, and they are sailing over the sea to stir up the Cubans and eventually to stir up Washington. Cuyo Baez will show his mutilated body to many, and whether he was actually tortured by Anglo-Saxon or by one of Spanish blood, he inevitably will rouse passion and malice against the starry banner of the North.
The ship glides on, leaves Haiti, crosses the Windward Passage, labors through a long noontide over little waves, and in the afternoon comes "unto a land in which it seemed always afternoon." And I went up into the peak of the prow of the ship and it ceased to be on a Cuban merchant-man. I had raised one of the lost galleons, and behind me were no moderns but the clamorous, audacious mariners of the first days of the New World.
The treasure ship drifts westward on a merely dimpled sea, and in the evening comes to the shelter of Cape Maysi. The sun sets in a lake of fire, and we traverse shadows of cloudlets instead of waves; and the shadows are blue and then peacock blue with black circulating lines, like cobra's eyes, and then blood red, and then red gelatine and then green. And from where in the mountains the sun made a lake of fire, a marvelous red brilliance has been enkindled and great black radii shoot outward across bands of red glowing burning color. It is a dreadful and grandiose scene, the surface of the sea so calm and yet possessed of fast-wandering, circulating, wallowing color reflections—the place of actual sunset meanwhile, far o'er the waves, made gigantic and romantic by the great black spokes of a wheel that is rolling through illimitable fires.
And the treasure ship in the enchanted twilight goes on, goes on, with all the pulse of Castile behind it.
CHAPTER VI CUBA
1
There must be twenty thousand mendicant venders of lottery tickets in Cuba, from ragged urchins to reputable graybeards wearing straw hats and carefully creased trousers. These friars of chance know no shame, and are more persistent than bluebottles, coming to you five or six times after having been sent off. They shout the number of their series and whisk the red sheets in your face, knowing that you have no redress against them—for they are in a way Government servants, or at least Government commission agents. Every lottery ticket they sell helps the national exchequer of the Republic of Cuba. People buy—they have not the wills to stand out against such persistence. They vaguely hope to draw a lucky number—though they may have deep doubts of the honesty of the Administration.
But the quickest way to get rid of a lottery vender is to cry in a loud voice: "These are no good; these draw no prizes." That scares them. It is easy to buy a ticket for a lottery that has already been drawn. Besides that, there are forgeries and "unlucky numbers."
If there are twenty thousand ticket venders there must be fifty thousand bootblacks on the island. Such a passion for blacking your boots! And then as many beggars. There are beggars of all ages, and as plentiful as in Moscow, and more active than the Russians. From the moment I arrived in Cuba, away in the east at Santiago, I was besieged with people wanting money. It was astonishing. I was sailing to a dream island, to "the little lazy isle where the trumpet orchids blow," to a new world, to El Dorado, the golden one, to a verdant tropic land where God and the sun and the benevolent, ever-freshening trade wind made work almost unnecessary and poverty impossible—Cuba, called the Pearl of the Antilles. And instead, I found a land made ugly and a people destitute and desperate.
At the dock in Santiago de Cuba, torn to this side and to that by the clamorous ragamuffins who wanted to carry my knapsack, and hung on to by beggars and lottery venders at the same time, I plunged through dusty and filthy streets to the Plaza of this breathless commercialized city of which Cortes was first Mayor. Here stand two grandiose hotels, one of them called the Hotel Venus, surely an amusing name for would-be respectability. Both hotels are expensive. No provincialism of price holds here—dinner costs you five dollars.
Cuba has a southern coast reminding one of the southern coast of England where Santiago would be Southampton. Santiago is of great strategic importance to the island, and its capitulation on July 17, 1898, ended the war with Spain. This southern coast faces Jamaica, from which it is distant less than two hundred miles. Habana on the northern coast is over five hundred miles distant and is reached by a tenuous, rickety, narrow-gauge railway. It may be said that this railway keeps to the worst of the island all the way—but that is because the railroad is naturally the artery of cane transport. Camaguey, about two hundred miles north-west of Santiago is the center of an immense sugar-planting area, of which the ox teams drawing cane trucks on caterpillar wheels through deep soft earth are most characteristic. The sinister-looking progress of war "tanks" along the alleys of the sugar plantations has a strange effect. Camaguey itself is such that no educated person would live there except for a short while, to make money. When you continue your journey to Santa Clara there is a good deal of improvement and more of the Spanish dignity of living. Habana, of course, is a well-shod city of pleasure of remarkable brilliance. Habana does not feel to be Cuba. It is the Coney Island of Key West, Florida.
2
Of course it is possible to see Cuba in a more pleasant light. There is much glamour over Cuba if you half close your eyes. It is an ideal place for a wicked elopement. The hero of the Hergesheimer novel thither resorts. It is certainly the place for a good cigar. Cuba has become a sportsman's island, the place par excellence where an American can get a drink. The characteristic sound of the towns is the rattle of ice in the inverted metal tumblers where the cocktail is coming to birth. The cocktail and the cigar are the first emblems of Habana. Then comes the Cuban girl sans peur, and then the gamblers' dice. Horse racing and boxing and cockfighting and betting and gambling are tremendous human interests—stronger in the Cuban than in the visiting American. Even the ice-cream venders carry dice boxes on their barrows and will "shake you for one" as soon as sell you straight.
You can go back and forth to Florida, not like Ponce de Leon, but by airplane in an hour or so. You read in the Habana News how over at Tampa the Floridians are trying to enforce even the blue law which makes the blues compulsory on Sundays, and you realize what a contrast the Cuban sporting resort affords.
Among many places of pleasure one stands out in my experience as both novel and fascinating, and that is the Galatea Lawn Tennis Club, on the Prado. Here is played all the evening and until late into the night a game of human roulette.
Gay lights adorn a pleasantly painted wooden structure which possesses a doorway but no windows, and a rapturous thundering Cuban band clamors from the interior; men stroll in and out all the time as if it were a drinking saloon, but there is nothing outside to indicate the nature of the entertainment. "Probably a cabaret with screened rooms and suppers and dancing girls," you surmise. But once inside you are aware that it is nothing of the kind.
Instead, behold a closed asphalt tennis court and six beautiful girls in white with racquets. They play, and on all four sides in tiers and in the gallery above are men gloating upon the game. There is the greatest animation. Up on its perch rattles the band. Down below, at a series of counters, men are constantly buying tickets and going back to their seats. Negroes are going about collecting money and talking to men in the audience. The girls slash the balls, the bells on the top of the net tinkle, the men cheer. And there does not appear to be one woman among the spectators—they are all men. I turned to an American and asked what was the interest. Was it a tennis tournament?
He laughed.
"It's a betting camp; that's all there is to it," he replied.
I took a seat.
The girls were named Margot, Justine, Esther, Norma, Tosca, Nena, and their names in bright-colored letters gleamed on the scoring board. Before each girl's name was a square of color to indicate her favor, and this corresponded to the color of the ribbon girdle which each girl wore on her white dress. Margot was blue, Justine was white, Esther was red, Norma was green, Tosca was yellow, and Nena was brown.
Chalked on a panel of slate after each girl's name was the number of dollars and cents laid on her winning. And electric star lights showed the score, point by point.
I at once chose Margot as my favorite, not because of her play but because of her style, her form, her glittering dark face. I imagine most newcomers did the same. For I soon realized that though she did not win she was a rapturous favorite of the men, who applauded every good stroke she made and were almost ready to leap over the nets with excitement when she was leading.
It was not the ordinary game of tennis, but one in which directly you lost a point you returned to your seat and gave way to the next in turn. The games were singles. Six points was the game. The scorer was mounted at a table on which were electric buttons, and when a girl won a point he pressed the corresponding button on the table and a star light appeared opposite her name on the scoring board.
All the girls played well, but there was no winning or losing on service. The ball had to be bounced first and then struck over the net for the service. This precluded fast skidding services. After that the play was quick and clever and very fascinating, for each girl had a different style of play. And not one was so much better that you could be sure she would not at last miss a stroke. Frequently three of the girls would reach four points, and once all six stood level at four, and three got to five before steady little Norma captured the sixth and took all the dollars which had been bet on the others and shared them with those who had bet on her.
It seemed to me there was a greater thrill and allurement than at a roulette table. For the figures of chance were not of ivory, but living and human. If you wished strongly enough you might make them win. But what of the girls themselves in this camp of betting men—they were always expressionless toward them. That was part of the fascination. No girl showed by her face that she knew any one of them or was interested in anything else but the game. And they never seem to tire, and the courts are never empty and two girls are always playing. And the drums and horns of the band are clashing, and the Negro bookies are collecting the bets. Each man chooses his own little white goddess to win—six Galateas and six hundred Pygmalions, the Galatea Lawn Tennis Club.
3
Cuba is the largest and the richest of the West India islands, and has attracted more colonists, more financial capital, and more attention than the rest. It must be thought, however, that the Spaniards from the first were ill-fitted to possess it. For from the time of the crafty and mean Velasquez, who wrought for the ruin of Cortes, until the Spanish-American war it is a pitiful history. Since that war the history of Cuba has had a problematical aspect.
In 1898 the United States made war on Spain to free Cuba and give her independence, not perhaps entirely grasping the fact that the disorders of Cuba were as much due to bad Cuban citizens as to bad Spanish governors. This, however, became rapidly clear to soldiers and administrators, and Cuba has never been given complete liberty and independence. Now and then, for a year or so, she has been given freedom on a string, but that is all.
American troops occupied the island till 1902 and began the great task of "cleaning it up." General Leonard Wood made his mark there as Governor. The measure of his efficiency is the measure of his unpopularity. There was a rumor this summer that he was returning, and the newspapers almost came out with black edges. But he eliminated a great deal of crime and also of disease during his régime.
In 1900 America prepared a constitution for Cuba, and chose the Cubans who were to adopt it. The president was to be chosen by an electoral college, the Senate by electoral colleges, and only the Congress by direct personal vote. In this way much scope was left to an outside power controlling the presidency. The constitution was adopted in 1900, and next year the famous Platt amendment was dictated by the United States and signed by the Cuban government.
The chief point of the amendment was that it forbade Cuba to enter into alliance or make treaty with any foreign power if thereby her independence were impaired; it granted to the United States certain coaling stations on the island; and it reserved to the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs at any time to protect life or property.
This proved almost too much even for the pocket politicians of Cuba, but they were unable to obtain any modification of the terms. A favorable president negotiated a strong commercial treaty in 1903 but the terms of the Platt amendment had caused a dissentient movement which it was difficult to quell. The parties took to arms and the pro-American president was forced to resign.
The constitution therefore had to be suspended. From 1906 to 1908 the island was occupied by the United States army. Charles Magoon became governor of Cuba.
Then the Cubans were given another chance, and in 1909 the Liberal, Miguel Gomez, became president and the army was withdrawn. But almost at once Gomez' political following broke up, half of it demanding the withdrawal of the Platt amendment. There was much irregular fighting, the United States army was held in readiness, and American political influence was thrown on to the side of the Cuban Conservatives. Their candidate for presidency was satisfactory and was elected in 1912.
The control of the country continued, with political storms. Cuba entered the World War with the United States, voted a considerable sum of money for it, and conscripted its adult male population. By Christmas, 1918, if the war had lasted so long, there would have been a Cuban army in the field. The Armistice was fortunate for Cuba.
After the war sugar maintained a high price, but the Cubans hoarded their excellent crop and tried to hold up the world for a fortune. But ignorance of world prices, tendencies, and powers of recuperation misled the people. Even Americans failed to grasp the facts, and thought prices could be kept up. In 1919 came the crash, when Cuba was forced to sell her sugar at a peace-time price. The United States in control declared a moratorium (January, 1920), and the poverty-stricken country became blockaded by unsaleable American goods. Sixty million dollars of American merchandise poured into Cuba, but the consignees, not being able to meet the price, refused to accept delivery. That merchandise in large quantity still choked the warehouses of the chief ports in 1922. It has now been compulsorily evacuated and much of it is to be seen in shops offered at a price which suggests bankrupt stock. So at least in March, 1923, when I visited Habana again.
The planters and the middlemen were badly hit but, as ever, the chief weight of the blow fell upon the laboring masses. Hence the poverty and misery of Cuba enduring in 1923 despite a new rise in the price of sugar. As regards the political situation, it is controlled by an American General and a council of financial experts. Budget-estimates of Cuba have to be initialed by the United States before they may be passed. The United States government chooses who shall be president and then makes sure that he is elected.
"Anyhow, our coming has done them all a lot of good," says an American planter. "You should have seen the place before we came."
"Yes," said I. "That is what I am trying to see."
"But the Cuban," says a banker, "is a man you can do nothing with. He's as crooked as a dog's hind leg."
"Look at them!" says another. "Thugs; rolling necks, low and brutal brows, searing eyes that dry up any dew they pass over; vicious to the last degree, shady, underhand, corrupt. They can't govern their country. They murder one another on the least pretext. All of them carry guns and knives."
There lies the way to an understanding of the predicament of the Cubans and of the peoples of Latin America. Their ways are essentially distasteful to the Anglo-Saxon. The blond Northerner feels a genuine instinctive moral mandate to "clean up" these peoples. His conscience is invulnerable—for his spoliatory business self is cased in the chain mail of the moral mandate.
Though the Cuban is overtaxed and also smitten with the lottery plague, the Government is ever in financial distress. Why? Not only because of the failures of the markets but because the Treasury leaks in many directions, and the republic will not live on its income, and cannot find enough integrity to cover its activities. It is capable of buying for three quarter of a million dollars the Santa Clara convent which cost a quarter of a million a few months before governmental purchase. State thrift is unknown. Public offices are means of personal enrichment. The Government will constantly seek aid from America, mortgaging its liberty to get it, year by year ever necessitating the presence of American authority at Habana and upon occasion the persuasive gleam of the bayonet.
Cuba is a protectorate.