Reviewed by Jorge Domínguez
“Slavery was not debatable. Abolition was not negotiable. That the pursuit of independence as an end implied the necessity to end slavery as a means foreclosed any likelihood of Creole mobilization to challenge Spanish colonial rule” (16). This succinct formulation, in yet another of Louis Pérez’s splendid books, highlights how race and slavery cast a long shadow during the first half of Cuba’s nineteenth century. It is the decisive explanation for the most salient non-event in the country’s history, namely, why did Cuba not join other Spanish-American colonies to rebel in pursuit of independence in the early years of the nineteenth century, or indeed even in the decades following independence elsewhere in the Spanish empire.
Fear. Fear of a ‘second Haiti’. Fear of a slave rebellion. Fear of rule by Blacks, whether slave or free. Fear of the loss of sugar plantation ownership. Fear of financial ruin. Independence was not a good business proposition. Race was the stain, race was the motivator, and race was the link that connected the ‘loyalty’ of white Cuban-born Creoles to Spain to fears for their wealth, dependent as it was on slave ownership and Spain’s colonial property protection. A war of independence would have overturned the political order of the colony, rendering it impossible to sustain the social and economic order of slavery, upon which Creole prosperity depended.
Race starts this book in order to explain the Cuban anomaly – loyalty to Spain – amidst an otherwise Spanish-American continental insurrection. Race concludes this book in order to explain why many Creoles and remaining Spaniards rallied to support the US occupation of Cuba following the 1898 US defeat of Spain. US rule came to “rescue a colonial system under siege” and to restore the “prerogative of race as the premise of governance,” producing a “remarkable class cohesion” among the whites (171). Prevailing US racist practices 1 of governance could be relied upon to defend white privilege in Cuba, pending the restoration of the prosperity that the wars of independence had destroyed.
The book’s two middle chapters explore the two big wars of independence, namely, the Ten Years’ War from 1868 to 1878 and the War of Independence from 1895 to 1898. Pérez’s purpose in these middle chapters is to explore the complexity of each war, the shifting bases of support for Spain and for the insurrection, and the impact of the strategies of the insurrection and the colonial government to fight the wars, all as informed by the racial question.
Regions matter, as Pérez makes clear. The 1868 insurrection began in eastern Cuba, led by a “downwardly mobile patriciate” (47) in those provinces, where fewer people and less wealth were to be found. Spain’s war-fighting strategy successfully contained the insurrection in the eastern regions, thereby protecting the wealthiest sugar-producing regions in the central and western regions, and consequently securing the enduring support of the wealthiest Creoles for the Crown. The insurrection during the Ten Years’ War never exceeded its regional confinement.
The Ten Years’ War had also tested the hypothesis that slave owners had long held, namely, that rebellion would soon make the slave system untenable. Indeed, as a war-fighting strategy, both the leaders of the insurrection and the colonial government freed slaves, conditioned upon their becoming soldiers during the war (90). The competitive recruitment of Black soldiers engaged both newly freed slaves and pre-existing Black freedmen on both sides of the war. Thus, slavery unravelled gradually, though formally abolished only in 1886.
Regions mattered again for the war begun in 1895. The insurrectionists knew that their forces could not be bottled up in the east if they truly expected to win the war. Thus, in 1895 the strategy of the insurrection, again launched in the east, was to breach Spanish defences to bring the war to the West. In ten months in 1895, more had been accomplished militarily than during the preceding Ten Years’ War (100). Havana had been safe during the Ten Years’ War; Havana was in panic by the end of 1895.
In 1895, the strategy to bring the war to the West and destroy the prosperity based on sugar and slavery sought to highlight that “a government unable to discharge the purpose upon which it based its moral claim to authority and its political rationale to govern” – the maintenance of the intertwined political, economic, and social race-based order – “had no justification for continued existence” (112). Wealthy Creoles might not have wanted independence, but now they experienced the uselessness of continuing colonial rule, which no longer could protect their social standing and privileges or their wealth. Faced with Spain’s governing incompetence, at least independence promised an end to property destruction.
Throughout the book, Pérez combines his characteristic meticulous research with ear-catching literary eloquence as he drives home the book’s key claim, namely, no one can understand Cuba’s nineteenth-century history without foregrounding the role of race.
And yet, there is an unresolved puzzle at the book’s heart. Pérez is so thorough, so systematic, and so persuasive that race and slavery had paralysed possible Creole desires for independence during the nineteenth century’s first half that it becomes inexplicable why a war of independence could begin in 1868, why slave owners set free their slaves, and why Creoles came to support a war effort led by impressive Black officers such as General Antonio Maceo and many others.
There are other unresolved puzzles. Why did so many Cubans – whites and Blacks – join the Spanish Army to fight against the insurrection? They were called guerrillas, an odd name from today’s perspective to describe the most effective counterinsurgency forces that Spain came to deploy. These Cuban fighters on behalf of Spain guarded towns, thereby freeing the Army to enter combat. They provided eyes and ears for the Army to fight and confront the insurrection. And on foot and on horseback, many of these guerrillas were as effective as the insurrectionists in fighting and winning in the jungle and on plain, in daylight and under torrential tropical rain.
Pérez does not have an answer, as he transparently and admirably reports. It is “difficult to discern the politics or determine the motives of the Cubans who enrolled” in the Spanish-supporting guerrillas. Pérez notes that they were paid and that such service got them through hard times, especially during the “reconcentration” (strategic hamlets) Spanish war policy in 1896–1897. Pérez also found instances of personal grievances against the insurrectionists. But, in the end, Pérez does not know. He is such an indefatigable researcher, always and in this book, that I believe him. It is a topic for future research.
Cuba’s War of Independence was both a war between some Cubans and Spain and a civil war between Cubans. White Cubans fought for independence and for the colony. Black Cubans fought for independence and for the colony. Before as well as during the wars, the colonial government authorised and sponsored eight batallones de pardos y morenos, namely, the Black regiments that fought for the Crown, each with 750 soldiers (90). Captain General Valeriano Weyler, often called a “butcher” in Cuban patriotic histories, showed “racial solicitude” and engaged Blacks as his personal security escort. “My confidence in that race so long committed to Spain” (147) led Weyler to recruit thousands of Black counterinsurgency guerrillas to devastating effect.
Pérez’s impressive and heart-churning book succeeds in many ways. It also provides a key perspective on the newly independent Cuba at the start of the twentieth century. The Republic was born amidst race fear and hatred. The Republic was launched as the former Cuban insurrectionists hunted fellow Cubans, that is, the former counterinsurgency guerrillas, deemed traitors to the cause of Cuban sovereignty. The Republic was born hosting thousands of Spaniards who, up until then, had fought to prevent its very existence. The Republic was born as an adjunct to the newly emerging US empire. Cuba was neither truly free nor at peace with itself.