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Disinfecting the Dead, Sanitizing Empire: The Cultural Memory of Fallen Soldiers in Cuba
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2024
Abstract
The misremembering by Americans of the Spanish-Cuban-American War was not an accident of either time or place. Rather, it was a collaboration between the citizenry, political and business elites, and the military-industrial complex centered on the cult of the fallen soldier. As businessmen carved up the Cuban landscape and the military occupied Guantanamo Bay, the war dead played one last service of memory. American commemoration of fallen soldiers acted as a shroud to obscure the practices of American imperialism. The recovery of the war dead thus provides an interesting example of how officials wanted Americans to remember the conflict. Most of the fallen died from disease rather than combat. Recovering the war dead thus entailed an elaborate process of sanitizing the “sick” dead and disinfecting the remains of warriors buried in foreign and tropical soil to repatriate them back to the United States. The metaphorical intersected with the medical in presenting dead soldiers from an imperialistic war with “clean and sterile bones” that would neither threaten the health of the general public nor their collective memory. Such a re-presentation would help shape how Americans remember a clean and sterile “Splendid Little War” without acknowledging the mucky details of empire-building.
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)
References
Notes
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26 Massey to Quartermaster General, Nov. 6, 1901.
27 Memorandum, John Van Rensselaer Hoff, Jan. 1900, NA, RG 92, Records Relating to Cemeterial Functions, 1828–1929, box 1, folder “Operations of Burial Party under C. E. Norton in the Department of Cuba.” Mercuric chloride is poisonous and can cause significant health problems and even death after long-term exposure.
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29 Report, Marvin to Norton, Feb. 9 1901.
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32 Norton to Baker, Feb. 11, 1901.
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34 Telegram, Humphery to Major Chauncey B. Baker, July 1901, NA, RG 92, Records Relating to Cemeterial Functions, 1828–1929, box 1, folder “Operations of Burial Party under C. E. Norton in the Department of Cuba.”
35 Telegram, Major Baker to Captain Palmer, Mar. 12, 1901, NA, RG 92, Records Relating to Cemeterial Functions, 1828–1929, box 1, folder “Operations of Burial Party under C. E. Norton in the Department of Cuba.”
36 War Department Memo, Major Chauncey B. Baker to Lieutenant Bruce Palmer, Dec. 28, 1901, NA, RG 92, Records Relating to Cemeterial Functions, 1828–1929, box 1, folder “Operations of Burial Party under C. E. Norton in the Department of Cuba.”
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