CHAPTER XIII

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."