Chapter IV: The World’s Sugar Bowl (2)

But the world changes, and the time came when the Virgin entered, in all innocence, into conflict with practical modern forces beyond her control. Copper was discovered in the hill beneath her. An English company contracted to make good any damage their mining operations might cause to the venerated shrine. During their tenure the church suffered no injury. The mine was worked to what was considered the limit of its real productiveness under old methods and was then abandoned. When world conflict suddenly made copper worth increased exertion, Cobre was taken over by an American syndicate. The mine had meanwhile filled with water. When the new company began pumping this out, the old supporting timbers gave way and the church of the Virgin on the hilltop above began to sink. In time it fell completely out of sight. A new shrine, monotonously like the spire-less and uninspiring country churches to be found throughout all Cuba, was erected for the Virgin and her pilgrims farther down the valley. The Archbishop of Santiago—for the old Eastern city still remains the religious capital of the island despite Havana’s greatness—entered suit against the new company on the strength of the old English agreement. In his innocence of things worldly and geological the ecclesiastic feared that the tricky Yankees were forestalling him by washing out the ore in liquid form. An injunction ordered them to stop pumping, and the mine rapidly filled again with water. At length the prince of the church won his suit, with damages in excess of the value of the mine. The Americans abandoned what had become a more than useless concession, and to-day a mineful of water, colored with copper sulphates and lapping undetermined streaks of ore, remains the property of the Virgin of Cobre.

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Daiquirí is not, as Rachel was justified in supposing, a cocktail factory, but an eminently respectable iron mine belonging now to a great American syndicate. It lies a score of miles eastward along the coast from Santiago, and may be reached—when the company chooses it shall be—by a little narrow-gage railroad older than Cuban independence. From a dusty suburb of the eastern metropolis we traveled thither by _cigüena_, as Cubans call a Ford with railroad feet. The half-breed conveyance roared down a dry and rocky cavern to the coast, bursting out upon the incredibly blue Caribbean beside a forgotten Spanish fortress all but hidden under the rampant vegetation. For a time the line spins along on the very edge of the sea, which lashes constantly at the supporting boulders, and affords the seeker after scenic beauties an entrancing vista of mountain headlands protruding one after another into the hazy distance. This coastal region has little in common with the fertile and richly garbed flatlands of the interior. Jagged coral rock, known as _dientas de perro_ (dog’s teeth) to the Cubans, spreads away on the left and here and there rises in forbidding cliffs on the right. Vegetation is prolific, as always in the tropics, wherever a suggestion of foothold offers, but it is a dry and thorny growth, a menacing wilderness that invites few inhabitants. Only one abode of man breaks the journey, a cluster of sun-faded huts known as Siboney, on a rock before which stands a monument to the American forces that landed here for the march on Santiago.

Farther on, where the sea hides its beauty behind a widening strip of rocks and bristling vegetation, are a few fertile patches densely covered with cocoanut and banana groves. A cocoanut plantation is the lazy man’s ideal investment. Once it is planted, he has only to wait until the nuts drop to have a steady income, taking the trouble to husk them if he cares to save something on transportation, but needing to exert himself no further unless thirst forces him to walk up a tree and cut down one of the green nuts filled with its pint of cool and satisfying beverage. The mountains rose to ever more impressive heights as the tireless Ford screamed onward, their culminating peak exceeded only by the Pico Turquino, peering into the sky from a neighboring range. Half bare, brown of tint, wrinkled as the Andes, they rise majestically into the sky, and if they are not high mountains, as mountains go the world over, they are at least lofty enough to be cloud-capped in the early mornings and now and then during the day. Mining villages, of which there are several besides the “mother mine” of Daiquirí, began to appear, perched on projecting knobs and knolls, long before we drew up at the port where hundreds of tons of ore are dropped every week directly into the ships—when ships can be had.

The mines themselves are laid out in full sight between heaven and earth. For they are open-work mines, each “bench” like the step of a giant stairway, reminding one of the Inca terraces of Peru. Steam-shovels gnaw at the two horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters, frequent explosions rouse the languid mountains to the exertion of sending back a long series of echoes, and the gravity-manipulated ore-buckets spin constantly away across the void to the crushers below. Here, too, the workmen are Spaniards who remain in Cuba only long enough to carry a villager’s fortune back to their native land, and their labor in the open air gives them a tint far different from the human moles of most mining communities. Their houses are pitched high on a conical hill far above the mine, the married men living on the topmost summit, the “single village” farther down the slope, no doubt in order to convince the benedicts that they have risen to higher things. A locomotive dragged us up to the bit of a town, whence we rode on horseback to the crest of another foothill, on which stood in splendid isolation the residence of the bachelor manager. Of the veritable botanical and zoölogical gardens with which he had surrounded himself, of the beauty of the scene as the sun sank into the Caribbean far below, the rustling of the cocoanut palms in the steady breeze, and the distant sounds of the mining community settling down for the night I need say nothing except that we regretted we had not a hundred days instead of one to spend there.

The manager had lived through several revolutions, the latest less than three years before, and had grown accustomed to have some brakeman or miner in his employ march into his office at the head of a dozen ragamuffins and announce that he had been made a colonel overnight. Luckily our host was quite plainly liked by all classes of the community, so that such visits were usually mere social calls, and he had only to congratulate the new military genius, give him a drink and smoke a cigarette with him as a sign of equality to have him offer the mine his protection even unto death and stalk merrily away at the head of his “troops.” On the mountain-sides across a mighty gully and high above us were still the remnants of old French coffee plantations, with native squatters in the old houses. By daylight the steep slopes stood forth like aged tapestries, golden brown in tinge except where they were dotted with immense mango-trees which looked at this distance like tiny green bushes. There one may find dogs, cats, cattle, guinea-fowls, pigs, and coffee all gone equally wild since the days when the plantation owners fled.

Wedded as it is to its sugar industry, Cuba is nevertheless capable of producing many other things. Of four-footed game there is little, as in all the West Indies. The aborigines must have been mainly vegetarians, for the only animal on the island at the time of the discovery was the _jutía_, which looks like a combination of rat, opossum, and woodchuck, lives in mangroves and hilly places, feeds on the bark of trees, and is so tame and stupid it may be killed with a club. It is still eaten, “its flesh being much esteemed by those who like it,” as one description has it, though to the unaccustomed it is oily and insipid. During the last century deer were introduced, which are fairly plentiful in some parts of the island and would be more so if there were game laws and any feasible means of enforcing them. _Jutías_ and _boniatos_ frequently constituted the entire commissary of the insurgents against the Spaniards. The latter is a tuber so prolific that an acre, free from insects, has been known to produce fifty thousand pounds of it in eighteen months. Its chief rival in the peasant’s garden and on most Cuban tables is the _malanga_, the _taro_ of the South Seas, easily distinguishable by its large heart-shaped leaves. Of the feathered species there is a larger representation than of quadrupeds. Wild turkeys, called _guanajos_, abound, the flocks of guineas are sometimes so large as to do serious damage to the crops. The indigenous birds are distinguished more by their color than by their ability to sing. The best of them in the latter respect is the _sinsonte_, which not only imitates the songs of other birds, but has been known to learn short pieces of music. Snakes are rare and never venomous, the largest being a species of boa constrictor with a tan-colored skin, so sleepy and harmless that small boys climb the trees in which it sleeps and knock it to the ground with sticks. Cuban oysters are much smaller than ours, though the natives claim they are more succulent and nutritious. There are lobsters also, but the finest of all Cuban sea foods is the _congrejo moro_, a huge crab with a beautiful red and black shell. Little corn is grown, and still less rice, though the latter invariably makes its appearance at the two daily meals. Vegetables, except for the _malanga_ and _boniato_, are rare, as in all tropical America; fruit, on the other hand, almost unlimited. There are twenty varieties of bananas, seedy oranges may be had anywhere, the mango, pineapple, _mamey_, _guayaba_, _mamoncillo_, _guanábana_, _chirimoya_, _sapote_ or _níspero_, the _papaya_, a tree-grown melon superior to our best cantaloupes and with a taste of honeysuckle, and the grape-fruit are among the many island delicacies, but only the pineapple and grape-fruit are cultivated with any attention. Even with all these fruits to choose from the most familiar Cuban dessert is the apple, imported from our Northwestern States and retailing at from twenty to thirty cents each. Unfortunately, though most American fruits arrive in Cuba in perfect condition, few of those grown in Cuba can endure the journey to the United States. Lastly, for the ever-present _palma real_ could not be left out of any mention of Cuban products, this most beautiful of the island’s trees is as useful as it is incomparable as a landscape decoration. The royal palm has no bark and the trunk is hollow, so that with a very little labor it can be fashioned into waterpipes or split into a rough and ready lumber. The fronds make splendid roofing, light, yet impermeable. The _yagua_, or leaf base, has a score of uses. Pigs prefer the oily little nuts which hang in clusters beneath the leaves to any other food. The branches to which these seeds are attached make good brooms; salt can be had from the roots; the “cabbage” from which the leaves gradually form makes an excellent salad, raw or cooked, and lastly, the lofty tree is peerless as a lightning-rod.

Daiquirí and Cobre by no means exhaust the places of interest in the mammoth eastern province of Cuba. There are branch railroad lines, for instance, to the western, northern, and southern coasts of the province, each several hours from Santiago. On the way to Manzanillo one passes the village in which the “_Grito de_ Yara” began the revolt against Spanish rule, and in the neighborhood of which some of the old revolutionary leaders still live. Antilla, in the north, faces one of the most magnificent bays in the New World; beyond the town of Guantánamo, noteworthy for its unbroken chorus of roosters, two little railways flank the opposite shores of the gulf of the same name, one of them passing through an entrancing little valley. The other wanders across a flat, thorny, and rather arid land to Caimanera, noted for its salt beds and as the nearest place free from the American drought which reigns perpetually over the station of our marines and sailors holding our naval base of Guantánamo Bay.

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He who comes to Cuba with the rigid American conception of the gulf separating the African and the Aryan races will find our ward little inclined to follow our lead in that particular matter. In the Havana custom-house his belongings will be examined by a black man. The finest statue in Cuba is that of the negro general, Macéo; had he lived he would in all probability have been the island’s first president. One soon becomes accustomed to seeing negroes slap white men on the back with a familiar “Hello, Jim,” and be received by an effusive handshake. Sextets gathered for a little banquet at café tables frequently show as many gradations of color, from a native Spaniard to a full African, repulsive perhaps for his diamond rings and over-imitation of Parisian manners, and are served by obsequious white waiters. The majority of Cuban negroes, however, seem less objectionable than those in the lands where the color-line is closely drawn. Accustomed to being treated as equals, many of them have developed a self-respect and a gentlemanliness rare among our own blacks, or even among our working class of Caucasian blood. They have, too, a pride in personal appearance scarcely inferior to that of the sometimes over-dressed white Cubans. Mark Twain once stated that there is much to be said for black or brown as the best tint for human complexions; one is often reminded of the remark in noting how handsome some of these black Cuban dandies look under their stiff straw hats.

Negroes, of course, are by no means in the majority in the largest of the Antilles, though most Cubans probably have African blood in their veins. In the Oriente may still be found traces of the Siboney Indians. Immigrants from all the varied provinces of Spain, African slaves, Chinese coolies, creoles from Haiti, Louisiana, and Florida, and a scattering of many other races have mingled together for generations; and from this blending of east and west, north and south, tempered by the tropical climate, emerges the Cuban. To a certain extent all these types have kept their racial characteristics, but they are only lost under the overwhelming influence of what may be called the national Cuban character, which varies little from that of all Latin-Americans. Like all nations, the islanders have their good and their bad points. The simple amenities of life are more thoroughly cultivated than in our own quick-spoken land. Rudeness is rare; courtesy is wide-spread among all classes. One would scarcely expect to see duplicated in our large cities the action of a mulatto traffic policeman stationed on the busiest corner of Havana’s plaza, who waited for a lull in the task assigned him to cross the street and, raising his cap, corrected a direction he had given me a moment before. I have heard a woman tourist who failed to understand one of these immaculate guardians remark petulantly to her companions, “You’d think they’d make them learn English, wouldn’t you?” Our native tongue is often useless in Cuba, to be sure; but how would it be if _they_, whoever they are, required travelers to learn Spanish before entering a Spanish-speaking country? The general courtesy is sometimes tempered by unintentional lapses from what we understand by that word; Cubans call one another, for instance, and try to call Americans, by a hissing “P-s-t,” which is not customary in our own good society. They are emotional and excitable; their necessity for gesticulation frequently requires them to put down a telephone receiver in order to use both hands; they have little concentration of attention, and are much given to generalizing from superficial appearances to save themselves the labor of going to the bottom of things. Of quick intelligence, they learn with facility when there is anything to be gained by learning, but memory rather than thought is their dominant faculty. This last is probably due to the antiquated methods of the schools, that make the child a mere parrot and never develop his powers of judgment and comparison, which often remain inactive and dormant throughout life.

His politeness has its natural counterpart of insincerity until, in the perhaps too harsh words of one of his own people, “we cultivate falsehood with a facility which becomes prodigious.” This insincerity is perhaps natural in a society that lived for centuries under constant suspicion of infidelity and surrounded by an atmosphere of distrust on the part of the Spanish rulers. Pride, which often reaches the height of a virtue among the Spaniards, is apt to degenerate in the Cuban to mere vanity, making him more susceptible to flattery than to reason. “Our dominating nervous temperament,” says the native critic quoted above, “has contributed to make us irritable, sometimes insufferable. On account of this sensitiveness we have more sensations than ideas, more imagination than understanding, with the result that when we turn our attention to anything the pretty is apt to have more importance than the true or useful. We are better path-followers than originators; we prefer to triumph by astuteness rather than by reason; we are prodigal, and for that reason the thirst for riches is our dominant characteristic. The rascality of our priests, largely from Spain, has made the average Cuban, if not an atheist, at least a skeptic and indifferent in religious matters.”

Americans who have lived in Mexico, of whom there are many now in Cuba, all make comparisons unfavorable to the Cubans. We did not meet one of them who was not longing for the day when they, men and women alike, could return to the land of weekly revolutions. “I hear,” said a visitor from the North, “that the Cubans are rather slippery in business.” “Say rather,” replied an old American resident, “that they are good business men, with the accent on the business.” This verdict seems to be almost unanimous. The Cuban has a habit of beating himself on the chest and shouting about his _honor_ at the very moment when both he and his hearers know he is lying. It is natural, perhaps, that the heat of the tropics should breed hatred for work and cause men to become tricky instead. But this trickery is less conspicuous in business than in politics. The war gave Cuba an enormous commercial impulse, yet there are comparatively few Cubans in commerce. Parents prefer that their sons adopt professions or enter government service. A Cuban congressman ended his appeal for a bill authorizing the government to send a hundred youths abroad each year to study commerce with, “Those who do not succeed in business can become government agents and consuls.” The notion of foisting the failures upon the state awakened not a titter of surprise among his hearers; they had long been used to that custom under Spanish rule.

The Cubans are always discussing politics, though the great majority of them have no voice whatever in the government. To an even greater extent than with us the best men shun political office. The few of this class who enter politics soon abandon it in disgust and to an ignorant and avaricious clique are left the spoils. More than one representative has learned to sign his name after being elected. One admitted in public debate that he thought the Amazon was in Europe; another scoffed at the idea that Cuba was entirely surrounded by water. Congressmen go to their sessions armed, and revolvers are frequently drawn during some heated controversy. Some of them have been known to take advantage of the immunity from arrest to refuse to pay their rent and to make attacks upon women. A recent president was elected on a platform of cock-fighting, a national lottery, and _jai alai_, this last being the Basque game of _pelota_, at which gambling flourishes at its best. The president now in power was apparently all that a president should be during the first few months of his term; to-day only those on whom he has showered favors have a good word for him. “The Liberal who ruled before him was a grafter,” say natives and foreign residents alike, “but at least he let other people get theirs, while this man grabs everything for himself. In other words he is as Conservative as the other was Liberal.” If one is to believe local opinion, Cuba has had but two honest and efficient rulers since her independence, some say in her history,—her first elected president and her first American military governor. Love for the latter is almost universal; one frequently hears the assertion that, if he could run and honest elections could be held, he would be elected president of Cuba by an overwhelming majority, notwithstanding that the average Cuban does not like the average American.

Graft, known in Cuba as “_chivo_,” is hereditary in the chief of the West Indies. In olden days Spain looked upon Cuba as a legitimate source of quick and easy gain. Royal grants were bestowed upon favorites; titles and positions were created as a means of securing all the profit possible. The few years of American rule did little to eradicate this point of view, and the old idea still persists. Political positions are treated quite frankly as opportunities for amassing private fortunes, and the man in public life who does not take complete advantage of his position is openly rated a fool. The reign of “_chivo_” is supreme through all the grades of officialdom; it is not necessary to seek examples, they are constantly thrusting themselves upon the attention.

Investigation has shown that half the owners of private automobiles and many liquor dealers have paid no licenses, but have “fixed it up” with the inspectors. During a recent hurricane the new sea-wall along the Malecón in Havana was totally wrecked, though the portion built during American rule suffered scarcely any damage. The millionaire Spanish contractor had saved on cement by giving part of the sum which should have been spent for it to those whose business it was to pass upon his work. The director of the national lottery made enough in four years to buy one of the largest sugar _centrals_ on the island, and his position, you may be sure, did not come to him gratis. A real estate company offered to furnish the oil and tarvia if the government of Havana would pave the streets of a new suburb; one fourth of the material was actually used for that purpose and the rest was sold by the public officials. The church is not behindhand in the pursuit of “_chivo_.” Priests demand fabulous sums for marrying, and advise the _guajiros_ and laboring classes who cannot pay for the ceremony to go without, as thousands of families have done, many of them having accepted it years later as Christmas presents to themselves and their children from American employers. During the recent census conservative enumerators failed to enroll liberal citizens, thereby depriving them of the right to vote; and if the tables had been turned, the only difference would have been that the other party would have lost their ballots. During the war a chain was lowered each evening across the mouth of Havana harbor as a protection against submarines; an English captain who knew nothing of the new rule against entering the port at night was arrested by a Cuban naval officer and then told that the matter could be “fixed up” for a twenty-dollar bill.

“Concessions” and “permits” are the chief aids of the “_chivo_”-seeker. Each morning six men who have a “concession” netting them a neat little sum for gathering the rubbish floating on the water row across the harbor and back without touching the acres of flotsam, and hurry away to their private jobs early in the day. Havana has several new concrete piers, but they are not used because of “concessions” to the owners of tumbledown wharves. The same is true of a new garbage incinerator; lighterage “concessions” cost fortunes in time and money to ships entering the harbor. Nothing can be built in Cuba without a permit. The man who wishes to erect a house in Havana draws up his plans and submits them to the city architects. As often as he comes to get them, he is informed that “the man who works on these matters is not here now, but”—and if he takes the statement at par, the plans are placed at the bottom of the pile again as he leaves; but if he inadvertently slips a greenback of large denomination among them, the permit is forthcoming within twenty-four hours. One must have a permit to make the slightest alterations in house or office. An American who had secured a permission to paint his house was threatened with arrest for adding a second coat without another permit, and forced to “fix it up.” When he tried to erect a fence he found that it could not be constructed of wood, but ten dollars made the inspector so blind that one erected of that material is represented on the city maps as made of cement and iron. The man who examines your baggage upon arrival in Havana will not pass it for hours or even days unless you accept his offer to have it transported to your hotel by draymen of his choosing and at his price, and so on, through all the vicissitudes of life and every branch of daily intercourse. Like the lianas and parasites which cling to the trees of Cuban forests, the productive class of the nation is everywhere supporting these useless hangers-on; and like those giants of the vegetable world the fertility of the island makes it strong enough to bear the burden without any serious impairment of its health and prosperity.