Keithwcaniano's Blog

I know I promised to update this once a week, but I had a busy weekend and an even busier week of work and thesis writing, so I will now contextualize in a rather rough draft some documents from the consular correspondence of American officials in Havana to support my larger claim that the Spanish-Cuban War and the American intervention into it occurred in an international system that  strictly protected the sovereignty of a state only if it resembled Europeans in institutional form, racial complexion, and conduct.   All three parties,  I argue, strained to rhetorically legitimize their acts through this rather recent construction of sovereignty.

The three documents I present are from within three weeks of one another.  The first was a press release dated October 27,1897 and comprises the inital Cuban response to rumors of autonomy from the Spanish government.   In it, the Cuban government rejects an offer of limited self-government from Spain on the grounds that the Cubans were close to capturing independence and Spain was in no position to offer compromises.  The second comes two weeks later from the commander of the Cuban forces operating within the Havana province.  He claims Spanish war crimes rendered the Cubans righteously incapable of accepting anything short of complete and total independence.   The third document is a proclamation from the new Spanish governnor-general,  Ramon Blanco, Weyler’s replacement, who defended the practice of the now  by

A New Sovereignty: Cuban Propaganda Responds to the Autonomy Proposal, October 27, 1897

As news of a new autonomy proposal reached Cuba, the insurrectionist government wasted no time producing a press release refuting any offer of limited self-government.   The revolutionaries declared autonomy was too little too late and maintained their independence was nearly at hand.  The first of twenty points in their rebuttal included:

1. The insurgents occupied [minor] cities and maintained public order there within

2. The insurgents controlled the coastlines from which they drew war munitions from abroad

3.  A new Cuban government had been recently elected which represented the will of the people.

Why would the Cuban insurrectionists claim occupying provincial towns the Spanish had abandoned conferred upon them independence and make claims on the possession of coastal areas and a government the focal point of their essay?  The answer lies with the intended audience of this pronouncement.

International law maintained that a rebelling state only possessed legitimacy on the world stage if it met certain preconditions, including controlling territory and towns, a coastal port, and possessing a political government from which military actions were directed.   American policymakers reluctant to intervene in Cuba continually cited the “paper government” of the Cubans with their imaginary capital and roving bands of pillaging insurgents as unworthy of recognition of the United States, no matter how repugnant Spanish efforts at combating them proved.   The Cubans sought to move public opinion in the United States against considering Spanish proposals reasonable by claiming international law had conferred upon them independence.

The truth, of course, was that the Cuban insurrection more closely resembled the caricature of its detractors than the fervent imaginations of its patriots, a fact that did not escape the McKinley Administration or policymakers who could be bothered to learn the “facts” about Cuba.

Nonetheless, the Cubans continued their plea by reciting Spanish failures, specifically the bankruptcy of her treasury and the incapacitation of her army to illness and battle-fatigue.

The aim of these points is clear.  In launching the autonomy proposal, Spain had hoped to move American opinion against the Cubans by making their resistance appear stubborn and radical.  The Cubans retorted the Spaniards had forfeited all claims to sovereignty by this point by failing to properly exercise the responsibilities of the nation-state, which included the protection of innocent life and property.

Other points alluded to the legitimacy of the Cuban cause in the countryside and the suffering Spanish war efforts had brought upon the Cuban people.

Only a week earlier, the vice-consul in Cuba had surveyed the starving refugee camps around Havana and reported home:

“The Spanish Government is indifferent to all this misery, considering extermination by starvation a just punishment and a fitting war measure against this people for the crime of independence.”

The Cubans understood Americans possessed finite patience for noncombatant suffering within Cuba and offered the world a state that could discharge the responsibilities of law and order more competently than the Spanish, thereby delegitimizing any Spansih offer as worthy of consideration.

“Outrages Inflicted Upon Humanity and Civilization”: Cubans Further Reject the Legitimacy of Spain as an Honest Broker – November 8, 1897

In the first document, the Cuban insurgents defended their rejection of peace by insisting the Cubans were on the verge of independence and needed no help from the Spanish to attain it.  Perhaps sensing this claim seemed premature  given the 100,000 Spanish troops in the field and their control of every important city and port on the island, the Cubans produced another statement, which also appears to target an international audience.

The Cubans apparently felt further compelled to justify their resitance to the Spanish proposal and called upon Colonel Nelson Aranguren to produce a statement to that effect.

Aranguren commanded insurrectionist forces within the Havana province and had a reputation for magnamity toward Spanish prisoners.  It is therefore not surprising that the Cubans placed his signature upon a document intended for an American audience that outlined Spanish war crimes as provoking uncompromisng Cuban resistance.

The bulk of the prouncement goes as follows:

“We shall not forget the cruel offenses of the blood-thirsty Weyler, representative here of the Spanish nation.  His assassination of men, women, and children; his conflagarations and pillages; the insults to our families admist the horror and disgust of the most repugnant scenes; outrages inflicted upon humanity and civilization by brutal soldiery guided by their cheifs for the purpose of exterminating all elements of Cuban society; therefore we declare, deeply rooted in our convictions; that we do not accept nor shall we accept any other transaction but that based solely in absolute Independence.”

There is much to unpack here.   First and foremost is the characterization of Weyler and Spain.  War, of course, is always cruel.  Weyler and Spain crossed the line of civilized conduct through the deliberate actions undertaken by the state to exterminate the Cuban population for military ends.   This argument was nothing new and had been repeatedly made in American newspapers and on capital hill, with terms like “butcher,” and “assassin” applied to Weyler.   In this note, Weyler and Spain are conflated into one, thereby making his removal immaterial to the grievances the Cubans possess; as an honorable people they could not abide the insults to their families and as civilized men it was their responsibility to repel the barbaric Spaniards.

“Brutal soldiery guided by their chiefs” – The language is careful and the distinction is key.  Here Aranguren connects the “outrages against humanity and civilization,” to Spanish military policy, rather than individual actions.  The Spaniard is thus by default cruel, in contrast to the noble Cuban Aranguren presents at another point in this document.   The Cuban is also righteous to resist Spanish offers for peace as these offers were illegitimate and any peace short of independence inconsistent with Cuban honor.

Spain cannot be sovereign in Cuba because it behaves in a manner unbefitting of sovereign in its inability to maintain law and order and its barbarity in its futile attempts to do so.  The October 27 document offers an international audience evidence that a civilized alternative to Spanish soveriegnty exists on the island.  The November 8 proclamation maintains that the Cubans can retain their civilization even while refusing Spanish attempts at compromise by delegitimizing Spain’s capacity to make such an offer due to its repeated and deliberate trangressions against civilized conduct.

Spanish Moderation: Reaffirming Spanish Humanity While Conceding Defeat: November 17, 1897

Pressure from the United States made the disavowal of reconcentration an expedient move for Praxedes Sagasta, whether or not it proved decisive in doing so remains contested.   The Spanish Government correctly claimed Weyler had been ineffective in pacifying the island and announced his replacement, Ramon Blanco, would pursue a more moderate strategy aimed at reconciling the sensible elements of the Cuban population and placating a clamor within the United States.

In a November 17 communique, Blanco announced that reconcentration was coming to an end and that the Spanish Government would work to relieve the suffering it had caused.  The latter point proved crucial in enlisting President William McKinley into postponing any American intervention.  Yet the General did not hesitate to defend Spain’s adoption of reconcentration, claiming it was:

“A natural consequence of a violent and unjust insurrection.”

For years the Spanish had not unfairly claimed the insurgency were responsible for the destruction on the island as their method of guerilla warfare could only be checked by draining the countryside of their logistical support.  The guerillas indiscriminatly destroyed property and targeted civilians.  Yet Spain’s crimes were on a higher magnitude and a scale unprecedented in human history to this point, as over 175,000 would die as a  result of the civil war, the bulk of which came from starvation provoked by their forced relocations into urban areas where they could neither farm nor find productive work.

Blanco not only blamed the suffering on the insurgents, but recast history to make the entire conflict the product of a radical collection of ideologues, arsonists and criminals that succeeded in polarizing the island and making life uninhabitiable for anyone.  The rebellion was

“An attempt against the national sovereignty; and as a work of devastation of the country, but especially as the result of extreme passions let loose against the majority of the Cuban population; honest, active, and loyal; contented with the progress of its increasing culture, satisfied with the prosperity attained by its arts, its agriculture, industry, and commerce, proud of its race and nationality, and which after having undergone without disturbance the transformation from thr work of the slaves ot that of freemen, offered to the world as a special case of history, one of the most beautiful triumphs of liberty, united with the cause of order, was resolved to preserve in the noble presence of obtaining through the evolution of ideas and by the peaceable struggles of law the consecration of its aspirations within the Spanish sovereignty.”

Here the Spaniard espouses the mission civilisatrice.  Spanish hegenomy on the island had been a positive good, offering the Cuban people advancement in material and cultural life.  The island was progressing toward equilibrium until disrupted by the treasonous insurgents who sinned against country and humanity in depriving the Cuban people of their right to ordered liberty.

In claiming Spain represented ordered liberty, Blanco suggests the rebels can only offer anarchy.  Autonomy under Spanish rule offered an evolution toward higher freedom for the Cubans, once they proved ready for them.

The Spanish adopted an imperial discourse prevelant throughout the late-nineteenth century world.   European sovereignty was beneficial to those living under it and abetted the moral advancement of the subject peoples.  Although race is not explicitly referred to, one can assume this document had three audiences: wealthy Cubans, the American public, and European nations.

Wealthy Cubans were almost uniformally descendents of Spanish settlers and were unanimously unenthusiastic about the rebellion, but equally dismayed at Spain’s inability to quash it.  With this note, the Spanish attempted to create an ideological allegiance between the metropole and its most moderate subjects by playing on the latter’s prejudices and hinting at their fears.  Of course, Spain had lost all legitimacy in the eyes of this class by the close of 1897 as the country lay ruined, but Blanco’s words on ordered liberty and his triumphal recasting of colonial history only make sense when this class is considered.

Like the Cuban planters, the American audience was largely unreceptive to Spanish words that came unaccompanied by results.  Blanco’s promise to mitigate suffering on the island served to delay an American response until his plan was put into effect.  His attempt at decivilizing and criminalizing the insurgency would gain little resonance in an American public where interested parties already had their minds made up.

The European audience proves most interesting as Spain during this period was fruitlessly seeking to find a great power backer to raise the cost of an intervention by the United States.  Rhetorically, grounding Spain’s policy in this language appealed to European imperialists familair with the struggles a colonial power undertakes and no doubt sympathetic to the arguments made on the beneficence of a white presence in a foreign land.

Spanish sovereignty is thus correlated with civilization in this document.

Conclusion:

I don’t know if I can make a conclusion as I gotta peace in a few minutes.  I also apologize for typos and awkwards sentances above.  Nonetheless, a close reading of these documents illuminates how important each party in the Spanish-Cuban War sought to justify their actions as within the pale of humanity and civilization and how closely each considered international opinions of sovereignty as correlated to civilized conduct and behavior.

A note to anyone thinking of writing history  papers in the future: I found these three documents today and typed this up in just under two hours.  Rhetoric is your friend, especially if you are just starting a project.  Now, off to dinner and reading all night.