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The Cuban Autonomist Movement's Perception of Canada, 1865-1898: Its Implication*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

J.C.M. Ogelsby
J.C.M. Ogelsby*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

The history of Cuba from the 1860s to 1898 has been written largely from the revolutionary, independentista perspective. It is a perspective that has been appealing to U.S. and Cuban historians alike, but it may well be a perspective that has distorted the Cuban political experience and made it more difficult to understand the Cuban reality. That this perspective is alive and well can be seen in recent publications which give short shrift to the Cuban Autonomist movement, a movement that was essentially Cuban and whose leadership came from the largely urban, professional elite that rejected both annexation and independence.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , April 1992 , pp. 445 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1992

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Footnotes

*

The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada supplied the bulk of the funding for research in Spain and Cuba. The Faculty of Social Science of the University of Western Ontario provided modest grants to initiate the study. The Embassy of Cuba in Canada and the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs facilitated my research in Cuba. I would like to thank them for their support. None of them is responsible for the results. A narrative of the autonomist experience is available in my José Gil Fortoul lecture to the Venezuelan National Academy of History, “Una Alternativa a la Revolucion: Los Autonomistas Cubanos y el modelo Canadiense, 1837–1898” (Caracas, 1989).

References

1 For recent examples see Benjamin, Jules R., The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution (Princeton, 1990);Google Scholar Mazaar, Michael J., Semper Fidel, America and Cuba, 1776–1988 (Baltimore, 1988);Google Scholar Pérez, Louis A. Jr., Cuba Between Empires, 1878–1902 (Pittsburgh, 1983).Google Scholar

2 Guerra, Ramiro y Sánchez, , et.al, Historia de la Nación Cubana (Havana, 1952), 6, p. 4.Google Scholar

3 The article is included in Saco’s, José Antonio Papeles Sobre Cuba (Havana, 1963), 3, pp. 160–193.Google Scholar The quotation is on p. 160.

For a discussion of Saco’s efforts in asserting a Cuban view of the colonial regime see Guerra, Ramiro y Sánchez, , Manual de Historia de Cuba (Económica, Social y Política) (2nd ed.; Havana, 1964), pp. 324–339.Google Scholar

4 See Montoro, Rafael, Obras (Havana, 1930), 2, p. 113;Google Scholar Valiente, Porfirio, Reformes dans les Íles de Cuba et de Puerto Rico (Paris, 1869), p. 168.Google Scholar Suchlicki, Jaime in Cuba: From Columbus to Castro (New York, 1974), pp. 70–72,Google Scholar and Pérez, Louis A. Jr., Cuba, Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford, 1988), p. 112,Google Scholar suggest the reformists were a party. This is perhaps too strong a term.

5 Piñeyro, Enrique, Morales Lemus y la Revolución de Cuba (New York, 1970),Google Scholar in the letter of 30 de agosto de 1862; Montoro, Obras, I, pp. 486–487.

6 Ibid., p. 493.

7 See Ibid., pp. 476–500 for Montoro’s lecture to Madrid’s Ateneo on the background and activities of the commission. The quotation is from de Ultramar, Ministerio, Junta Informativa de Ultramar, Extracto de las contestaciones dadas al Interrogatorio … para el gobierno de las provincias de Cuba y Puerto Rico (Madrid, 1869), pp. 104–105.Google Scholar

8 Actas de la reunión en la Biblioteca Nacional (Havana) 082/Morales/t.89. Lord Elgin accepted Durham’s recommendation that the Governor-General would act on the advice of the ministry formed from the majority party in the elected legislature (i.e., responsible government).

9 Valiente, p. 247.

10 Ibid., p. 248.

11 Llorente, Antonio G., La Revolución de Cuba, Examen de sus Manifestaciones y Tendencia (Havana, 1869), p. 27.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 28.

13 Ibid., p. 30.

14 Ibid., p. 32.

15 Ibid., p. 43.

16 Anonymous, , Constitución del Canadá y notas relativas a la Confederación de las provincias británicas de la América del Norte (Havana, 1869), pp. 6 and 24.Google Scholar

17 [Rafael María de Labra?], El Partido Liberal de Cuba (Madrid, 1882), pp. 5–8. See also Montoro’s “Historia del Partido Autonomista,” a typescript in the Montoro Manuscript Collection housed in the Biblioteca Nacional ‘José Martí.’

18 El Partido Liberal, p. 7.

19 Gómez, Juan Gualberto, La Cuestión de Cuba en 1884, Historia y Soluciones de los partidos cubanos (Madrid, 1884), p. 30.Google Scholar This description fits that presented in El Triunfo (Havana), 2 July 1878, which showed that of thirty-one attending a meeting to declare the journal’s founding nine were hacendados, while the bulk were lawyers with a sprinkling of doctors, journalists, and three or four from the commercial or financial sector. El Triunfo was the party’s official voice.

20 Guerra y Sánchez, VI, pp. 83, 86–87; Lambert, Francis, “The Cuban Question in Spanish Restoration Politics, 1878–1898” (D.Phil, diss., Oxford University, 1968), pp. 24–25, 36.Google Scholar

21 de Labra, Rafael María, El Primer Presupuesto de Cuba, Discurso de 15 de abril de 1880 (Madrid, 1881), pp. 5–14.Google Scholar

22 El Triunfo, 21 May 1881; Cabrera, Raimundo, Cuba and the Cubans (Philadelphia, 1896), 132–133 fn.Google Scholar

23 Montoro, , Obras, 1, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar

24 Guerra y Sánchez, VI, p. 37 and Govin, Antonio y Torres, , La Autonomia Colonial, Colección de Artículos Publicados por “El Triunfo” Órgano Oficial del Partido Liberal (Havana, 1887), p. 20.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 14.

26 Revista de Cuba, IX (mayo, 1881), 421–446. Canada’s High Commissioner was a recent innovation to ensure that the Dominion had a voice in London. Because Canadian-British relations were noi foreign relations a self-governing Dominion could not have an ambassador. Thus was born the office of the High Commissioner. Members of the Commonwealth continue to use this structure in their relations with each other.

27 Ibid., X (diciembre, 1881), 579–581 and X (octubre, 1881), 384.

28 Bernal, Calixto, La Reforma Política en Cuba y su ley constitutiva (Madrid, 1881), pp. 34–36.Google Scholar

29 Quoted in Partido Liberal, p. 18.

30 Anonymous, , Ocho Artículos sobre la autonomia de Cuba (Matanzas, 1882), p. 65.Google Scholar

31 de Armas, Francisco y Céspedes, , Régimen Político de las Antillas Españolas (Palma, 1882), pp. 30 and 53.Google Scholar

32 Revista de Cuba, XI (marzo, 1882), 283.

33 Autonomia Colonial, pp. 59 and 85–86.

34 Ibid., p. 46.

35 Ibid., p. 97.

36 Gómez, , Cuestión, pp. 97–98.Google Scholar Gómez lived to see it-he died in 1930, four years after the 1926 Imperial Conference made the Dominions equal in status and “in no way subordinate” to the United Kingdom.

37 Guerra y Sánchez, VI, p. 41.

38 Revista Cubana, VII (1885), 81–83.

39 Montoro, , Obras, 2, p. 13.Google Scholar Montoro would be such a statesman. He made such a mark on Cuba that his name is among the few carved in marble over the entrance to the National Library ‘José Martí.’

40 Montoro MS, XXXIII, Fernández de Castro a Govin, 19 de mayo de 1887.

41 Sanguily, Manuel, “Elementos y caracteres de la política en Cuba,” Revista Cubana, 5 (1887), 131–138.Google Scholar

42 Conte, F. A., La Lucha Política en Cuba, Los Unos y los Otros, 1878–1889 (Havana, 1889), pp. 7–8, 51 and 154.Google Scholar

43 Guerra y Sánchez, VI, p. 50.

44 Conte, F.A., Las Aspiraciones del Partido Liberal de Cuba (Havana, 1892), pp. 16 and 195.Google Scholar

45 Labra, , La Autonomía Colonial en España, Discursos de (Madrid, 1892), p. 35.Google Scholar

46 For discussion of the issue see Thomas, Hugh, Cuba, The Pursuit of Freedom (New York, 1971), p. 303 Google Scholar and Carr, Raymond, Spain, 1808–1938 (Oxford, 1966), p. 381;Google Scholar see also the correspondence between Maura and his Governor General in Cuba, Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid), Ultramar/Cuba/Gobierno/4943/No. 404.

47 y Romero, Luís Estévez, Desde el Zanjón hasta Baire, Datos para la historia política de Cuba (Havana, 1899), p. 517.Google Scholar

48 See Ibid., p. 535; Montoro, MS, “Historia Partido,” p. 26;Google Scholar and Thomas, p. 304 on the atmosphere in Spain, Maura’s resignation, and the difficulties in finding a suitable successor.

49 Montoro, , Obras, 1, pp. 427–444.Google Scholar

50 Giberga, Eliseo, Obras, 3 (Havana, 1930–1931), p. 189.Google Scholar

51 Ibid.

52 Labra, , La Reforma colonial en España (Madrid, 1896), p. 12.Google Scholar

53 Pérez, Louis A. Jr., Cuba Between Empires, 1878–1902 (Pittsburgh, 1983), pp. 65–72;Google Scholar Langley, Lester D., The Cuban Policy of the United States, A Brief History (New York, 1968), pp. 88–95.Google Scholar

54 Thomas, pp. 347-348; Guerra y Sánchez, VI, pp. 59–60; Vilá, Herminio Portell, Historia de Cuba en sus relaciones con los Estados Unidos y España (Miami, 1969), 3, p. 184.Google Scholar

55 Giberga, III, pp. 88 and 101–102.

56 El País (Havana), 17 de agosto de 1897.

57 Guerra y Sánchez, VI, p. 165; Baéz, Vicente, ed., La Enciclopedia de Cuba (Madrid, 1974), 4, p. 582;Google Scholar Archivo Historico Nacional (Madrid), Ultramar/Cuba/Gobierno/5007/No. 814, instructions to the Marqués de Peña Plata (Ramón Blanco).

58 Ibid./Gobierno/4970, Decretos estableciendo el Régimen Autonomista en las Islas de Cuba y Puerto Rico, p. 50.

59 El País (Havana), 8 de marzo de 1898.

60 Quoted in Pérez, p. 171.

61 See Montoro MS, XXXII, Actas, 26 January 1887 for the party’s debate on whether or not blacks should be granted the right to vote. The minutes reflect a variety of views but in the end the party’s leaders voted thirteen to eight for universal (male) suffrage.

62 de Bustamente, Antonio S. y Montoro, , La Ideología Autonomista (Havana, 1933), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar Giberga recognized the problem and thought that a Cuba without Spain would have to have the friendship of a powerful European nation in order to balance off the United States. [See Giberga, I, p. 31.]

63 Thomas, p. 380.

64 Pérez, Louis Jr. notes that “Cuban separatism was a fragile force” (Pérez, Cuba Between Empires, p. 376)Google Scholar and this perspective is often overlooked in the post-1898 emphasis on the revolutionary triumph.