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Urban Guajiros: Colonial Reconcentración, Rural Displacement and Criminalisation in Western Cuba, 1895–1902

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2011

GUADALUPE GARCÍA
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Abstract

This essay examines the Spanish reconcentración of Cuban peasants during the final war of independence. It argues that the forced relocation of the rural population produced negative associations between Cuban guajiros and blackness, criminality and disease that furthered the political interests of the Cuban, Spanish and US militaries. The essay also highlights how the US military occupation that followed independence reinforced the criminalisation of the guajiro and organised existing urban and rural divisions in Cuba.

Spanish abstract

Este ensayo examina la ‘reconcentración’ española de campesinos cubanos durante la etapa final de la guerra de independencia. Sostiene que la reubicación forzada de la población rural produjo percepciones negativas entre los guajiros cubanos y la negritud, la criminalidad y las enfermedades, lo cual se incrementó por los intereses políticos de los militares cubanos, españoles y norteamericanos. El ensayo también subraya cómo la ocupación militar de los EEUU tras la independencia reforzó la criminalización del guajiro y las divisiones ya existentes entre lo urbano y lo rural en Cuba.

Portuguese abstract

O ensaio analisa a reconcentración de camponeses cubanos durante a última guerra de independência. É argumentado que o deslocamento forçado da população rural gerou associações negativas dos guajiros cubanos com negritude, criminalidade e doenças, algo que beneficiou os interesses políticos das forças armadas cubanas, espanholas e americanas. A criminalização do guajiro e a organização de divisões urbanas e rurais em Cuba, reforçados pela ocupação militar norte-americana, também são focalizados.

Keywords

guajiroreconcentraciónwar of independencemilitary occupationHavanaguajiroreconcentraciónguerra de independenciaocupación militarLa Habanaguajiroreconcentraciónguerra da independênciaocupação militarHavana
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 209 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 ‘Havana Crowds Wait for Castro’, New York Times, 21 July 1959.

2 I would like to acknowledge the term's long political history. While the word ‘guajiro’ implicitly defines one as a small-scale ‘white’ farmer in western Cuba, it was an acquired and contested definition, as the term was also commonly used in urban areas to refer to rural residents, with little regard for occupation and race. See Guzmán, Francisco Pérez, La herida profunda (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1998), p. 18Google Scholar. The guajiro's appearance in the mid-nineteenth century heralded the creation of criollo identity. The idyllic images of Caribbean-born Alexandre Moreau de Jonnès and Spaniard Victor Patricio Landaluze, for example, were adopted by criollos as unilateral celebrations of the ‘true’ Cuban, a process that implicated race. After independence, guajiro representation maintained its connection to race but shifted to depict an increasingly impoverished population, a change that I suggest can be partly attributed to western Cuba's experience with the wars of independence. See Juan M. Chailloux Cardona, ‘Síntesis de la vivienda popular: horrores del solar habanero’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Havana, 1945; and Rodríguez, Fátima and Mégevand, Sylvie, ‘El guajiro: ¿figura de la identidad cubana?’, Histoires de l'Amérique latine, vol. 1 (2005), pp. 1–11Google Scholar. In this essay I use the term to describe rural workers in the western provinces who were negatively raced and stigmatised as a result of the war. I use the more generic term ‘rural population’ to refer to people in the Cuban countryside employed in various trades and who were also subject to reconcentration.

3 ‘Castro Resumes the Premiership’, New York Times, 27 July 1959.

4 ‘Havana Rally’ (Universal Newsreels 1959), part 7, story no. X02473. From the Associated Press Archive, www.aparchive.com.

5 See Alvarez-Tabio Albo, Emma, Invención de La Habana (Barcelona: Editorial Casiopea, 2000)Google Scholar; and Jorge E. Hardoy, ‘Theory and Practice of Urban Planning in Europe, 1850–1930: Its Transfer to Latin America’, in Richard M. Morse and Jorge E. Hardoy (eds.), Rethinking the Latin American City (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 20–49.

6 See de Leuchsenring, Emilio Roig, Males y vicios de Cuba republicana: sus causas y sus remedios (Havana: Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad de La Habana, 1961)Google Scholar; and Antonio Saco, José, La vagancia en Cuba (Havana: Ministerio de Educación, 1946)Google Scholar.

7 Hardoy, ‘Theory and Practice of Urban Planning’, p. 30.

8 For a discussion of the 1914 march into Mexico City, see Womack, John, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1970)Google Scholar; and Katz, Friedrich, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

9 The most notable celebration of the guajiro can be found in the popular figure of Liborio, a cartoon character reproduced in Havana newspapers who serves as a window into popular attitudes on race. In one representative example, Liborio is used to assure Cubans that ‘el negro bueno siempre sera un amigo’, while warning blacks that when it comes to politics, ‘la cosa deben pensar … pues les puede resultar muy caro’. See de Juan, Adelaida, Caricatura de la República (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1999), pp. 11–37Google Scholar. After the events of 1912 exposed the precarious nature of race relations in Cuba, Liborio became an even more polarising figure.

10 See, for example, Ferrer, Ada, ‘Rustic Men, Civilized Nation: Race, Culture and Contention on the Eve of Cuban Independence’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 78: 4 (1998), pp. 663–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scott, Rebecca J., ‘Race, Labour and Citizenship in Cuba: A View from the Sugar District of Cienfuegos, 1886–1909’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 78: 4 (1998), pp. 687–728CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 ‘Discursos pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, Primer Ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario, en la concentración campesina, efectuada el 26 de julio de 1959’, 26 July 1959, available at www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1959/esp/f260759e.html.

12 Tone, John Lawrence, War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895–1898 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 191Google Scholar. While there is a general consensus on the number of people who perished or were displaced as a direct result of the reconcentración, the numbers still vary from conservative estimates of 60,000 to those approaching 200,000. Early estimates were even higher, in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 people. For the purpose of this essay I consulted Cuban and US census records taken before and after the war, and figures provided by the US military administration in Havana, and relied on Tone's interpretation of census data.

13 In the Cuban press, Francisco Pérez Guzmán's seminal study on reconcentración, La herida profunda, recently revealed the social impact that the policy had on Cuba and has invited future work on the subject. The English-language historiography has lagged far behind, in part because early studies on Cuban independence focused primarily on the events of the war and were devoted almost exclusively to debating the role of the United States. For an excellent analysis on the history of the US historiography, see Pérez, Louis A. Jr., The War of 1898: Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)Google Scholar. While the scope of the literature has since broadened to consider other aspects of Cuban independence, the experiences of the Cuban peasantry outside of the rebel insurgency remain a topic largely understudied.

14 What little scholarship exists on the reconcentración is primarily concerned with determining the number of people affected by the relocation orders, including establishing the number of dead, who they were and where they came from. We know that women and children, for example, made up the bulk of reconcentrados in towns and cities after the colonial administration rescinded the reconcentration orders, but unfortunately there is little information available on the numbers. See Guzmán, Pérez, La herida profunda, p. 157Google Scholar.

15 Pérez's study, Louis A.Lords of the Mountain: Social Banditry and Peasant Protest in Cuba, 1878–1918 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989)Google Scholar traces the marginalisation and eventual politicisation of the Cuban peasantry to the impact that large-scale sugar cultivation had on the island.

16 See Miller, Stuart Creighton, ‘Benevolent Assimilation’: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Linn, Brian McAllister, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

17 See Benjamin, Jules R., The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire of Liberty in an Age of National Liberation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

18 Kapcia, Antoni, Cuba in Revolution: A History since the Fifties (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), p. 11Google Scholar. Such associations referenced the fear and popularity of leaders such as Antonio Maceo and his insurgent forces as they moved beyond Oriente and towards the significantly ‘whiter’ areas of the western provinces.

19 Smallman-Raynor, Matthew and Cliff, Andrew D., ‘The Spatial Dynamics of Epidemic Disease in War and Peace: Cuba and the Insurrection Against Spain, 1895–1898’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 24: 3 (1999), pp. 331–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 This was the first bando to affect western Cuba. The first reconcentration order, however, was issued on 16 February 1896 and affected only the eastern provinces of Sancti Spíritus, Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey) and Santiago de Cuba. Part of the reason the policy was not unilaterally implemented had to do with the importance of western agriculture and the colonial government's uncertainty as to whether it would be able to feed the reconcentrados. Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Concentration and other Proclamations of General Weyler, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess., 11 April 1898, pp. 549–51.

21 See Guinart, Félix Echauz y, Lo que se ha hecho y lo que se hay que hacer en Cuba. Breves indicaciones sobre la campaña (Barcelona: Imprenta del Diario de Barcelona, 1872)Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 13.

23 Presidente del Consejo de Ministros, Carta confidencial al Excmo. Sr. D. Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, reprinted in Weyler, Valeriano, ‘Bandos, decretos, órdenes’, in Mi mando en Cuba (Madrid: Imprenta, Litografía y Casa Editorial de Felipe González Rojas, 1910), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

24 ‘Circular del Cuartel General del Ejército’, 1 July 1895, in Weyler, Mi mando en Cuba, p. 34.

25 Weyler, Mi mando en Cuba, p. 427. Large rural enterprises were allowed to continue production if they were able to show a clear allegiance to the colonial administration.

26 Ibid., p. 41. The bandos were not all the same, and there were certainly exceptions to who was subject to the relocation orders. Planters not behind on their taxes, for example, were allowed to maintain production during the war.

27 Tone, War and Genocide in Cuba, p. 198.

28 Ibid.

29 The population of Sancti Spíritus found itself caught between the orders of the Cuban and colonial armies. Central zones often suffered greater physical destruction because they became the battleground for strategic territory in between ‘free Cuba’ and ‘colonial Cuba’.

30 ‘Circular del Cuartel General del Ejército Libertador, Jurisdicción de Sancti Spíritus’, 6 November 1895, reprinted in Weyler, Mi mando en Cuba, p. 33.

31 Tone, War and Genocide in Cuba, p. 11.

32 Pérez, Louis A. Jr., ‘The Pursuit of Pacification: Banditry and the United States’ Occupation of Cuba, 1889–1902’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 18: 2 (1986), pp. 313–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Tone, War and Genocide in Cuba, p. 59.

34 Ibid., p. 97.

35 Ibid., pp. 211–12. Reconcentración and mortality in the two eastern provinces of Puerto Príncipe and Santiago were comparatively low.

36 Reconcentrado data from Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Correspondence, United States Consulate-General Fitzhugh Lee to Mr. Day, December 14, 1897, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess., 11 April 1898, S. Rep. 727, p. 14. Total population from Smallman-Raynor and Cliff, ‘The Spatial Dynamics of Epidemic Disease’, pp. 331–52.

37 Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Correspondence, United States Consulate-General Fitzhugh Lee to Mr. Day, November 23, 1897, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess., 11 April 1898, S. Rep. 712, pp. 9–11.

38 Blanco revised this stipulation in November 1897 and did away with the legal distinctions that criminalised reconcentrados with family members suspected of supporting the insurgency.

39 In a bando dated 10 November and a communication issued on 13 November, Blanco agreed to the end of the reconcentración. The order did not apply to all reconcentrados, however; Blanco cited the high number of women and children who would perish without the daily rations the administration was attempting to provide. ‘Juntas Protectoras’ were also created to oversee the care of those who remained in towns and cities after the order. Funding, which was not nearly sufficient to cover the expense, was provided based on the number of reconcentrados living in each municipality. See Pérez Guzmán, La herida profunda, pp. 115–21.

40 ‘Blanco's Measures in Cuba’, New York Times, 11 November 1897.

41 ‘Blanco's Measures’, New York Times, 1 April 1898.

42 Smallman-Raynor and Cliff, ‘The Spatial Dynamics of Epidemic Disease’, p. 331.

43 National Institute of Health, Public Health Reports, 11: 50 (11 December 1897), pp. 1154–5, available at www.pubmedcenter.nih.gov.

44 National Institute of Health, Public Health Reports, vol. 12, no. 49 (3 December 1897), p. 1330, available at www.pubmedcenter.nih.gov.

45 Pérez Guzmán, La herida profunda, p. 114.

46 ‘Actas de las sesiones celebradas por la Junta Superior de Sanidad’, Havana, Archivo Nacional de Cuba (ANC), 1896–8, leg. 6, no. 6.

47 For a discussion of the relationship between disease, criminality and urban disorder, see Black Welder, Julia Kirk and Johnson, Lyman L., ‘Changing Criminal Patterns in Buenos Aires, 1890–1914’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 14: 2 (1982), p. 366Google Scholar.

48 Cassá, Jorge Le Roy y, Estudios sobre la mortalidad en La Habana durante el siglo XIX y los comienzos del actual (Havana: Imprenta Loredo y Ca., 1913)Google Scholar.

49 Smallman-Raynor and Cliff, ‘The Spatial Dynamics of Epidemic Disease’, p. 342.

50 Quoted in Smallman-Raynor and Cliff, ‘The Spatial Dynamics of Epidemic Disease’, p. 341.

51 The work of Cuban scholar Yolanda Díaz Martínez shows that crime rates almost doubled during the first years of the reconcentración in Havana Province and did not return to pre-war levels until the end of the US military occupation in 1902. See Yolanda Díaz Martínez, ‘Sociedad, violencia y criminalidad masculina en La Habana de finales del siglo XIX. Aproximaciones a una realidad’, in Yoel Cordoví Núñez, Yolanda Díaz Martínez and Mildred de la Torre Molina (eds.), La Sociedad cubana en los albores de la República (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2002), pp. 49–89.

52 ‘Position of the Junta’, New York Times, 8 April 1898.

53 ‘Four Reconcentrados Assassinated’, New York Times, 7 April 1898.

54 ‘Blanco's Relief Measures’, New York Times, 1 April 1898.

55 ‘Reconcentrados Sent Home’, New York Times, 21 September 1898.

56 Quoted in Smallman-Raynor and Cliff, ‘The Spatial Dynamics of Epidemic Disease’, p. 342.

57 ‘Blanco's Relief Measures’, New York Times, 1 April 1898.

58 Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Translation of the Articles of General Blanco's Proclamation of the 30th March, 1898, Suspending the Reconcentración, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess., 11 April 1898, Enclosure no. 1, S. Rep. 809, p. 28.

59 Barton, Clara, The Red Cross: A History of the Remarkable International Movement in the interest of Humanity (Washington, DC: American National Red Cross, 1898), p. 519Google Scholar.

60 See ‘Blanco's Relief Measures’, New York Times, 1 April 1898; and Barton, The Red Cross, p. 363.

61 See Barton, William E., The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross, vol. 2 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1922)Google Scholar.

62 Isabella M. Witherspoon, Rita de Garthez, The Beautiful Reconcentrado: A Tale of the Hispano-American War (Patchogue, NY: Advance Press, 1898), Wright American Fiction, vol. 3 (1876–1900), reel no. w-45, no. 6039.

63 See Bonsal, Stephen, The Real Condition of Cuba Today (New York: Harper, 1897)Google Scholar; and Remington, Frederick, Samuels, Peggy and Samuels, Harold, The Collected Writings of Frederick Remington (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1979)Google Scholar.

64 Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Correspondence, United States Consulate-General Fitzhugh Lee to Mr. Day, November 23, 1897, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess., 11 April 1898, S. Rep. 710, pp. 8–9.

65 ‘Blanco's Decree Commended,’ New York Times, 2 April 1898.

66 Pérez Guzmán, La herida profunda, pp. 149–55.

67 Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Statement made by Mr. Stephen Bonsal on the 11th day of June, 1897, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess, 11 April 1898, pp. 397–417.

68 Barton, The Red Cross, p. 528.

69 See Benjamin, The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution.

70 See, for example, Armus, Diego, ‘Disease in the Historiography of Latin America’, in Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 1–24Google Scholar; and Peard, Julyan G., Race, Place, and Medicine: The Idea of the Tropics in Nineteenth Century Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 ‘Cuban Refugees Waiting for Rations’, 20 May 1898, Center for History and New Media, Thomas A. Edison Collection, available at chnm.gmu.edu/aq/war/cubref.htm.

72 Ferrer, ‘Rustic Men, Civilized Nation’ pp. 663–86.

73 Ibid., p. 674.

74 Barnet, Biography of a Runaway Slave, pp. 162–3.

75 Ibid., p. 195.

76 Ludlow, Brigadier General William H., Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1898 (Washington, DC: US War Department, 1899), p. 15Google Scholar.

77 Pérez, ‘The Pursuit of Pacification’, p. 324.

78 Ludlow, Annual Report, p. 25.

79 Segre, Roberto, La vivienda en Cuba en el siglo XX (Mexico City: Editorial Concepto, 1980), p. 125Google Scholar.

80 Ludlow, Annual Report, p. 25.

81 Committee on Foreign Affairs, Statement of Dr. Foster R. Winn on the 21st day of June, 1897, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess., 11 April 1898, pp. 419–35.

82 Ludlow, Annual Report, pp. 52–3.

83 Ibid.

84 ‘Informe demógrafo, estado de defunciones ocurridos en La Habana durante la decena terminada 10 de agosto de 1903, Departamento de Sanidad de La Habana’, Fondo Secretaria de la Presidencia, ANC, 1903, leg. 115, no. 10; ‘Fiebre amarilla en los Distritos de La Habana, 1906’, Fondo Secretaria de la Presidencia, ANC, 1906, leg. 106, no. 78; and ‘Letter from Chief Sanitary Officer to William H. Taft, Recommending the Quarantine of the Harbor’, Fondo Secretaria de la Presidencia, ANC, leg. 106, no. 78.

85 Carlos J. Finlay, Jefe de Sanidad de la República, Departamento Nacional de Sanidad, ‘Informe anual sanitario y demográfico de la República de Cuba bajo la administración provisional de los Estados Unidos’, Havana, Library of Congress, 1908.

86 ‘Comunicación sobre el contracto para la compra del abono de los establos y la limpieza de La Habana’, Fondo Secretaria de la Presidencia, ANC, 1909, leg. 101, no. 90.

87 ‘Solicitud de parque público’, Fondo de Secretaria de la Presidencia, ANC, 1909, leg. 18, no. 13.

88 ‘Report of the Chief Engineer’, in Ludlow, Annual Report, pp. 186–92.

89 Espinosa, Mariola, ‘The Threat From Havana: Southern Public Health, Yellow Fever and the U.S. Intervention in the Cuban Struggle for Independence, 1878–1898’, The Journal of Southern History, 72: 3 (2006), pp. 541–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 ‘Report of the Chief Engineer’, in Ludlow, Annual Report, pp. 193–6.

91 Chailloux Cardona, ‘Sintesis de la vivienda popular’.

92 Segre, La vivienda en Cuba en el siglo XX, p. 125.

93 Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution, pp. 27–8.

94 Bohemia, 20 March 1938, pp. 40–5. Even as the guajiro continued to be hailed as the symbolic soul of Cuba, urban prejudices against ‘real’ guajiros continued to be produced. For a few examples, see ‘Tragedia del criollo’, in Roig de Leuchsenring, Males y vicios de Cuba republicana, p. 28; ‘De cubita Bella’, Social, 7: 6 (1922), p. 20Google Scholar; ‘En la paz del campo’, Bohemia, 21: 8 (1929), p. 21Google Scholar; ‘Niño rico, Niño pobre’, Bohemia, 30: 13 (1938), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

95 Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Correspondence, United States Consulate-General Fitzhugh Lee to Mr. Day, November 23, 1897, 55th Cong., 2nd Sess., 11 April 1898, S. Rep. 710, pp. 8–9.

96 Zequeria, Maria del Carmen Barcia, Una sociedad en crisis: la Habana a fines del siglo XIX (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2000), pp. 43–4Google Scholar; Lavastida, Fernando Inclán, Historia de Marianao de la época indígena a los tiempos actuales (Mariano: Editorial El Sol, 1943)Google Scholar.

97 Since the colonial era, the Cuban countryside has served as a foil to Havana. It was often represented as a space little touched by the colonial administration, thus allowing for an intrinsically ‘Cuban’ character to emerge. See Villaverde, Cirilo, Cecilia Valdés, ed. Fischer, Sibylle, trans. Helen Lane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.