No. 479.
Mr. Mantilla to Mr. Evarts.
Washington, March 23, 1878. (Received March 25.)
The undersigned, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of His Catholic Majesty, in compliance with the desire to be accurately informed as to the present real condition of the island of Cuba, which was expressed to him by the honorable Secretary of State of the United States during their conference of Thursday, the 21st instant, takes pleasure in communicating the official information which he has received in relation to the latest phase and speedy termination of the civil contest in that island.
Without investigating the origin of the unjustifiable and useless Cuban insurrection, or enumerating the various causes, both internal and external, which have occasioned its duration for a longer time than it could have lasted under normal circumstances in Spain, or drawing a comparison between the ever-conciliatory policy of the Spanish Government and the until lately uncompromising one of the misguided sons of the mother-country, which task he thinks he could easily and triumphantly perform to the satisfaction of his countrymen and the enlightenment of foreigners, but which would require more time than he now has at his disposal, the undersigned will confine himself to a brief sketch of the most remarkable circumstances that gave rise to the latest events.
The insurrection having been broken by various causes, both internal and external, with its most active forces reduced by the action of time and the vicissitudes of the struggle to elements which were for the most part foreign, with no connection with each other, and having no direct interest in the future of the island, and having been conquered by the policy of energy in the field of battle, of generosity toward the misguided insurgents, and of clemency toward the vanquished, which was so happily inaugurated by Generals Jovellar and Martinez Campos, the present governor and captain-general of the island, and the general-in-chief of its army, the insurrection, I say, was in a visible state of decadence when, in October last, several of the most prominent Cuban leaders surrendered unconditionally to the Spanish authorities, and spontaneously undertook the task of bringing over to their pacific plans the few leaders of Cuban origin who still remained in the ranks of the insurgents.
Having been taken and tried by court-martial, by order of the general-in-chief of the Cuban forces, some of these leaders paid for their patriotic efforts at pacification with their lives, but almost at the same time the shadows of a legislative chamber and of a government of the imaginary Republic of Cuba, which never had any form or real life, nor foothold in any city, village, or hamlet, and which for some time had been wandering [Page 810] through the thickest forests of the most inaccessible portion of the extensive and thinly-peopled region of Camagüey, were at last overtaken and surprised by small bodies of Spanish troops—the chamber in its mountain encampment and the head of the government while leaving that encampment on a political errand. The result was the dispersion of the so-called Chamber (House) of Representatives, the death of its presiding officer, Don Eduardo Machado Gomez, and some of its members, that of the Secretary of War, Lieutenant-Colonel la Rua, and the capture of the President of the so-called republic, Don Tomas Estrada, who was not tried by any court, but sent to Spain by the government.
The treatment received by Mr. Estrada from the time of his arrival at the Spanish headquarters, the consideration shown him during his brief stay in the Morro Castle at Havana, by the captain-general of the island, and the complaints made by him against his political friends and partisans, not only on account of their abandonment of him, but also of the accusations of disloyalty which had been made by them against him, form the subject of the last part of a letter written by him to one of them residing in New York, which was published on the 15th of December, in the Cuban newspapers of that city. That portion which is the most interesting of this long letter will be found in Appendix A.
Speaking of the aspect then presented by the insurrection in Cuba, one of its organs in New York, La Independencia, in its number for October 27, 1877, after referring to the latest news received from Cuba as grave and highly important, sought to make it appear less significant, expressing itself thus:
The news to which we refer is by no means improbable. “We know what has happened in Cuba during the past year, and this news does not surprise us, it being, in our opinion, the finale of a great crisis which has been coming on in the insurgent camp since the citizen Tomas Estrada Palma became President of our republic, who, according to the Spanish dispatch, which we publish elsewhere, has been taken prisoner by a detachment of Spanish troops near Holguin, together with the secretary and several members of the legislative chamber. Suffice it to say that, according to all the private information that we have received during the past two months, it seems to be indubitable that President Estrada and the chamber had been deposed by the liberating army, and that they had consequently ceased to perform their official functions * * * The vitality of the Cuban insurrection does not depend and never has depended upon the government or the chamber; it depends exclusively upon the liberating army.
* * * The organization of the liberating army is such that a brigade, a regiment, a battalion, a company, or a party of twenty-five men can operate independently against the enemy in any department, without requiring any instructions save those of their immediate military officers, because their purpose is but one, and that is known by heart as well by the general, the soldier, by the negro as well as the white man, or the Chinese, viz, to make war on the enemy at all times, in all places, and by all means; with the gun, the machete, and the fire-brand. In order to do this, which is the duty of every Cuban soldier, the direction of a government or legislative chamber is not needed, the order of a subaltern officer, serving under the general-in-chief, is sufficient. Thus it is that the government and chamber have, in reality, been a superfluous luxury for the revolution.
What an admirable organization was this of the Cuban army, divided up into parties of twenty-five, the majority of them being negroes and Chinese, according to the organ of the insurgents! What wretched military tactics, according to which the use of the machete and the firebrand was allowable! What consideration and respect appear to have been shown to the executive and legislative branches of the Republic of Cuba by the general-in-chief, who is represented as having deposed those branches and having proclaimed himself dictator! The article in which a full statement of this is made is given entire in Appendix B, that it may be placed on file in the Department of State, since it is too late to submit it to the consideration and examination of those who favor the recognition of the belligerency or independence of Cuba.
[Page 811]This article is full of the passion and exaggeration of the inflammable spirit of the Cuban emigrants who, in the secure asylum of this country, and abusing the generous hospitality of the United States, have for many years been lending aid and comfort to the Cuban insurrection, advocating the extermination of the Spaniards, and upholding the use of the murderous machete and of the torch of the incendiary as the principal means of securing the independence of the island, to which task they are still ardently devoting their efforts, although the contest has been abandoned by those whom these emigrants, without incurring any risk themselves, would have wished to see convert the splendid and rich soil of Cuba into a vast pile of ruins and ashes; but there is a great deal of truth in the description of the character lately presented by the insurrection and in the description of the insurgent bands which could no longer be called Cuban, and in the assertion that for such bands and such purposes the chamber and the government were a superfluous luxury.
This being the view taken by the few but still influential Cubans who remained in Camaguey, the center of the insurrectionary movement, and who were fighting for independence, not for the ruin of the island, having more confidence in the well-tried generosity of Spain than in the fatal counsels of the emigrants in this country, in January last they made proposals of peace to the general-in-chief, seeking to obtain a suspension of hostilities in the territorial zone in which the Cuban chamber and government then were; the former being composed of only six members, the latter having been dissolved by the capture of President Estrada, and the general opinion of the people and of the armed force being expressed in favor of the termination of the struggle, only very few dissenting, the majority co-operating in the work of peace, and all intrusting the powers of the republic to a revolutionary committee which was instructed to make proposals of peace to the general-in-chief. By the middle of February a capitulation was reached, the preliminaries of which are not yet known to the undersigned, but whose terms were published in an extra issued by the Havana Gazette, the original of which is transmitted in Appendix C.
The arrangement made with the central committee having been made applicable to all the departments of the island, some of the principal leaders of the insurrection, among them, the most prominent of all, Maximo Gomez, put themselves in communication with the other insurgent leaders, with a view of persuading them to put an end to the contest and to capitulate, and the revolutionary committee, which had assumed all the powers of the insurrection, commissioned Brigadier-General Gabriel Gonzales to inform, verbally, the representatives in New York of the dissolved government “of the events that had just taken place in the territory of the republic.”
Meanwhile, the scattered bands of insurgents in Camaguey having been collected, on the 28th of February, which was the day appointed for the surrender, defiled in Puerto Principe before the general-in-chief of the Spanish army, amid the most enthusiastic acclamations, and on the day following, March 1, the undersigned received at New York the following telegram from the captain-general of Cuba:
Havana, March 1, 1878.
To the Minister of Spain:
Yesterday all the bands in the Department of Principe, to the number of about 1,000 men, with an equal number of women and children, surrendered, together with the central committee. Also, those of Sancti Spiritus and La Trocha, estimated at 800. Other surrenders are expected in a few days. The general-in-chief leaves Principe for the Oriental Department in order to accelerate matters.
JOVELLAR.
On the same day that the formerly rebel forces of Camaguey surrendered, Brigadier-General Gonzales arrived in New York, having been deputed by the revolutionary committee of that territory (at the head of whom was the ex-president of the legislative chamber, formerly provisional president of the republic, and the author of some of its most severe decrees, especially of the one against Cubans who should listen to proposals of peace not based upon the recognition of the independence of Cuba) to notify the representatives of the dissolved government of the events that had taken place in the territory of that ex-republic, which representatives, notwithstanding the recent public manifestations of some of them against the probability of the reported surrender of the insurgents without a recognition of Cuban independence, yielding to irresistible force of facts, recognized as no longer doubtful the dissolution of the Cuban chamber and government, and hastened to declare that “they no longer exercised the functions confided to them by said government.” The document in which this declaration was contained, was sent on the evening of the 1st to the newspapers at New York, and was printed in full in the New York Herald of the 2d, and published on the 9th in the Cuban revolutionary organ called La Independencia, in the form shown by the printed slip found in Appendix D.
Since that time all the newspapers in the United States have been full of telegraphic news concerning surrenders in Cuba of more or less numerous parties, under more or less prominent leaders, concerning hopes of speedy and absolute peace, concerning the feelings of fraternity and forgetfulness of the past now prevailing among those who were yesterday fighting on hostile fields, of which hopes and feelings the consul of the United States at Havana became the organ in a communication of the 5th to the Department of State, an extract from which was published in the Washington papers, and concerning the indignation with which the capitulating Cuban leaders and the sympathizers in Cuba, with the cause defended by them, regarded the warlike declarations of the uncompromising revolutionists in New York, and the purpose which was publicly expressed by them to organize fresh expeditions to prevent the complete pacification of the island; but the governor captain-general of Cuba, who acts in everything, especially in matters of so grave a nature as the one in question, with as much sincerity as circumspection, addressed to the undersigned in that relatively long space of time the following telegram only:
Havana, March 19, 1878.
To the Minister of Spain at Washington:
Yesterday ended the surrender of the insurgent forces of the Villas, whose territory is now entirely free. Those who surrendered were Major-General Roloff, Brigadier-General Maestre, 3 colonels, 55 officers, 404 private soldiers, and about 100 women and children. The bands in Bayamo, Manzanillo, and Tiguani had already surrendered on the 8th, with Modesto Diaz, so that the country is completely pacified as far as Holguin.
JOVELLAR.
As is seen by the foregoing telegram, and as may be verified by consulting a map of Cuba, the pacification of the island is far advanced, but it is not yet complete and definitive. Nevertheless, the civil and military authorities of Spain, reciprocating the goad faith with which the capitulators of Camaguey fulfilled the terms of their capitulation, on the day after they had defiled in Puerto Principe before the general in-chief of the army, that is to say, the 1st day of March, in strict fulfillment of Article I of said capitulation, issued a decree of the same date, which [Page 813] was published in the Havana Gazette of the 3d, and which the honorable Secretary of State will find in Appendix E.
By this decree it is provided that the island of Cuba shall be represented in the Cortes of the kingdom at their next session; that its government and local administration shall be modeled according to the municipal and provincial laws of the Peninsula, as they are in force in Porto Rico, and that the Government of His Majesty shall be requested to introduce in the island of Cuba, in the manner prescribed in article 89 of the constitution of the monarchy, the other laws which have been or which may hereafter be promulgated in the Peninsula. In virtue of Article I of the aforesaid decree, the undersigned thinks that, according to the census of its population, Cuba will be entitled to at least twenty deputies in the Cortes, in addition to the senators chosen by the people according to the electoral law, and to those whom it already has of its own right or by virtue of royal appointment.
In the decree in question the phrase is to be noted with which its preamble begins: “The war being now near its end” (not a regular war in the sense in which it is defined by international law, but an intestine struggle, civil contest, or armed rebellion, which in the military parlance of the Spanish language is commonly called war), which phrase shows that said military authorities do not consider the contest to be entirely at an end, although its termination is very near.
The first sentence in the second paragraph of the same preamble is also noteworthy, in which it is declared that had it not been for this contest, “Cuba would long since have enjoyed, according to the constitution of the state, the’ advantages which must necessarily accrue to her from a possible assimilation to the Peninsula,” which shows that the prevailing sentiment in Spain is in favor of treating Cuba as Porto Rico has been treated, that is to say, like a Spanish province, although she could not grant to rebellious subjects what they demanded with arms in their hands, namely, absolute independence during a time of trial for the mother-country, nor even what she was always ready to grant them voluntarily, and what she has now granted, at a time of greater prosperity for herself, to them, now that they have repented and sued for peace, which is an act of generosity and a guarantee of reconciliation.
A decree of the general-in-chief of the army of operations in the island of Cuba was also inserted in the Havana Gazette of the 3d. This was issued at Puerto Principe, on the 10th of March, and will be found in Appendix F. It guarantees the freedom, which was offered in article 3 of the capitulation, of all slaves who were in the ranks of the insurgents on the 10th day of February, and who have surrendered or who shall surrender before the 31st day of the current month of March.
Articles 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the capitulation have been fulfilled already, or are now in course of fulfillment, toward all who are willing to take advantage of their benefits. Article 4 requires no immediate action, and article 2 has always constituted the distinguishing trait of the Spanish policy in Cuba. Forgetfulness of the past, pardon of political crimes, release of property embargoed for the same cause, mitigation of the effects of these embargoes as regards the innocent members of the families of those whose property has been embargoed, and even the furnishing of means of subsistence to repentant rebels; all this has been frequently offered or granted by the government and authorities of Spain from the time of the decree of amnesty, issued on the 12th of January, 1869, by the governor captain-general of the island, Don Domingo Dulce, who was sent by the revolutionary government of 1868 to establish in Cuba the same liberties and franchises that were enjoyed by the Peninsula, [Page 814] until the royal decree of October 27, 1877, by which the unimproved public lands, certain forests belonging to the state, and town lands not used, are ordered to be divided among various classes, viz: 1st, licentiates and volunteers who have been mobilized or who have taken part in a battle; 2d, inhabitants of the towns of the island who have remained loyal to the government, and who have suffered considerable losses of property in consequence of the war; 3d, persons who have voluntarily surrendered to the authorities and forces of the government.
The reproduction and analysis of all these general acts, and many other private ones of pardon, clemency, and generosity, would render this note interminable, which had no other object, as remarked at the beginning, than to satisfy the desire of the honorable Secretary of State to become accurately acquainted with the present situation of Cuba, but which the undersigned, in his wish to correct false impressions which have been circulated by the conspirators against Spain in this country, has thought proper to extend sufficiently to indicate succinctly the policy of Spain in Cuba and the causes that have given rise to the recent events. Although the Government of Spain does not recognize the right of any foreign power to interfere in the internal affairs of that country, it values too highly the opinion of the sensible people of the United States and the friendship of its government, for its representative at Washington to neglect an opportunity like the one now offered to present, in their true aspect, the acts, intentions, and constant policy of Spain in her relations with the island of Cuba.
If it were necessary, or the honorable Secretary of State should desire it, the undersigned would amplify and prove, by means of trustworthy documents, the assertions which he has just made, and he proposes shortly to show that the only obstacle that can now retard, not absolutely prevent, the complete pacification of Cuba is the war-cry and the false promises of immediate aid which are once more sent from New York by the Cuban conspirators, who urge in public meetings the continuation of the struggle which is now so near its end. And it is a remarkable fact that in this struggle, by a sad fatality for the liberators of Cuba, a fatality which could not escape, and which has not escaped, the observation of the American people and the perspicacity of its enlightened press, foreigners have been its principal leaders, those who have most zealously maintained it, and who have most distinguished themselves in it: Jordan and Reeve, Americans; Maximo Gomez and Modesto Diaz, Dominicans; Roloff, a Pole; Caoba and Maceo, the one an African and the other a semi-African; Prado, the captor of the Montezuma, a Peruvian; and, finally, not to mention any more names, Gonzales, a Mexican, who was deputed by the revolutionary committee of Camaguey to announce the dissolution of the legislative chamber and of the government of the republic to its representatives in the United States. Even the diplomatic commissioner of Cuba abroad, Echevarria, who less than a month ago proclaimed throughout the length and breadth of this great country, by a circular telegram from the Washington agency of the Associated Press, that the news of the submission of the greater part of the insurgent leaders was false, and that they would accept no terms not based upon the recognition of Cuban independence—even that diplomatic agent whom the honorable Committee on Foreign Relations of the House of Representatives of the United States, having charge of Cuban affairs, received and listened to with interest, in the belief that he was a son of Cuba, is no Cuban at all, but a Venezuelan.
If an insurrection composed of such antagonistic elements as the Latin, African, Mongolian, and Anglo-Saxon races, led on by officers of all [Page 815] known nationalities, could have triumphed, the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel, and the memorable catastrophe which took place in the formerly French portion of the island of Santo Domingo, would have been cast into the shade by the spectacle which victorious, free, and africanized Cuba would have presented to the civilized world.
The undersigned avails himself, &c.