REPUBLICAN IDEALS AND THE REALITY OF PATRONAGE: A STUDY OF THE VETERANS’ MOVEMENT IN CUBA, 1900-24 STEVEN HEWITT A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2009 This work or any part thereof has not previously been presented in any form to the University or to any other body whether for the purposes of assessment, publication or for any other purpose (unless otherwise indicated). Save for any express acknowledgements, references and/or bibliographies cited in the work, I confirm that the intellectual content of the work is the result of my own efforts and of no other person. The right of Steven Hewitt to be identified as author of the work is asserted in accordance with ss.77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. At this date copyright is owned by the author. Signature Date 1 Contents Declaration 4 Abstract 5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Chapter I - The Cuban Independence Movement 26 Chapter II – The Relationship of the United States to the Emerging 57 Cuban Nation and the Disarming of the Cuban Revolution Chapter III – The Frustration of Cuban Nationalism and the 85 Foundation of US Hegemony Chapter IV - The Veterans’ Campaign 1902-12 129 Chapter V – The Role of the Veterans’ Movement until the 204 emergence of Radical Nationalism in Cuba Conclusion 277 2 Bibliography 285 Appendix I 302 Appendix II 305 3 Declaration I declare that all the work presented in this thesis is my own. All quotations have been appropriately referenced. © Steven Hewitt 2008 4 Abstract This thesis analyses the emergence of Cuba as a sovereign nation, and the political corruption that plagued the republic. It investigates in detail, not only the independence movement that established this republic in its various wars against the Spanish empire, and its fracture and fission under the emerging power of the United States, but also the impact that this had on Cuban politics, and the consequences for Cuba’s native would-be rulers. The aim is to develop an understanding of what became of the veterans of the wars of liberation, and further the somewhat neglected subject of the relationship of the official Veterans’ organisations with the political parties and associations of the republican period. A short conclusion summarises the arguments and suggests further avenues of research. 5 Acknowledgements Writing the thesis has been a long and difficult task. I owe several people many thanks. Firstly, I am equally indebted to my two supervisors, Dr. Paul Henderson and Professor Antoni Kapcia. They not only arranged accommodation in a city new to myself when I began my research, but also office space, and a place in Spanish classes at Wolverhampton, a language I had until that point only studied for one year as a hobby. I must not forget, of course, their copious knowledge of Cuba. Special thanks to Professor Kapcia for access to the Henessy Collection, and many books from his own private collection. I owe much gratitude to the staff at the Learning Centre of the University of Wolverhampton, and to Julie Hayward, the Secretary for the History and Governance Research Institute. I owe similar gratitude to the staff at the libraries of the universities of Warwick and Sheffield. Thanks to Hilda Torres and Carlos de la Incera for providing me with accommodation in Havana. Thanks also, to Ana Cairo Ballester, and to the library staff at the University of Havana, as well as the staff at the José Martí Library, the National Archive, and the Economic Society of Friends of Cuba located at the Institute of Literature and Linguistics. Thanks are due to Robert Whitney for answering questions via email, and to fellow researchers at the History and Governance Research Institute, notably: Julia Speht, Jill Ingham, and Anne Luke. Last but not least, I would like to thank my friends and family for helping me through several instances of homelessness and financial difficulty during my studies. It was my mother who first prompted my interest in history, and for this reason, as well as many others, the thesis is dedicated to her. 6 Introduction Overview Although the Cuban independence movement (1868-98) and the Cuban republican period have been documented by Cuban and non-Cuban historians alike, the role of veterans and their organisations has been somewhat neglected, with most historians only dedicating a few pages, at best, to the prominent and formal Veterans’ organisations1 and their protests of 1911-12 and 1923-24. However, if the history of other nations is any indication of the importance of a topic, especially if it is the history of their emergence from colonialism, then the study of ‘veterans’, particularly if they are the veterans of an explicitly nationalist, radically egalitarian, and abolitionist fighting force, has surely been overlooked in the case of the Cuban nation. Moreover, studies of republican Cuban politics, while they have extensively focused on the political parties of the new nation, their notoriously corrupt nature, and their obstreperous, yet ultimately servile subordination to the interests of the United States, they have seldom, if ever, focused on their direct relationship with the personnel of the Liberation Army and the various organisations of the disbanded revolutionary movement and government. Likewise, they have not looked at the relationship of the Veterans’ organisations to the political parties themselves, nor to the (in many ways successful) Liberal Party revolt of 1906. 1 I will use the phrases ‘Veterans’ movement’ and/or ‘Veterans’ organisations’ in their capitalised forms, to refer collectively, to all the organisations claiming to be the authentic representatives of the military veterans of the independence struggles during the period from 1900 until 1924. Where there are explicitly named and short- lived organisations, these will be cited by name. 7 Cuba struggled against the old colonial power of Spain in order to enter the twentieth century as a modern republic. Beginning with the Ten Years War of 1868- 78, continuing with the Guerra Chiquita [Little War]2 of 1879-80, and culminating with the Spanish-American War (later named the Spanish-Cuban-American War) of 1895-8, the struggle by Cubans against the Spanish regime was long, protracted, and very bloody. Indeed, it was one of the first incidences of guerrilla3 warfare, with much of the support for the Cuban Liberation Army coming from the general population (farmers and black slaves), while the Spanish in turn implemented the reconcentrado policy: one of the first historical manifestations of the concentration camp. Clearly then, the Veterans’ organisations are very important to the study of the history of Cuba. The organisations and their ideology that emerged during this bloody struggle for independence were responsible for much of the nationalist feeling in Cuban society during the republican period, and it is therefore important to look at this in detail to understand the Veterans’ organisations and the politics of the era. After three wars of independence, the last one creating a body of over 30,000 armed rebels fighting for a unified goal of a free Cuba, the question of what happened to those soldiers after the war was over and they were demobilised is a crucial one. In Cuba, the familiar economic and social problems were complicated by the underlying political one: if tens of thousands of Cubans had fought a bitter war for liberation, and racial equality, i.e., for political reasons - then those motives needed to be accommodated in the post-war settlement. In such circumstances, any 2 Henceforth, Spanish phrases and passages will be translated immeditately afterwards in square brackets. Some English terms however, may also be italicised but this will simply be for emphasis. 3 The term guerrillero, however, refers to the volunteers who fought for the Spanish Army. 8 Veterans’ organisations ought to have played some important role, (after all they made this liberation possible) - either they might have acted as a brake, to control any political unrest from the ex-fighters, or they might have had the opposite effect, as a radical rallying-point and platform for action. Veterans’ organisations in the years after 1901 were bound to be even more significant in Cuba, considering the problems besetting the new republic: US hegemony assured by the Platt Amendment, nationalist frustration at the outcome of the war, disillusion over corruption, political fraud, political instability, and so on. In 1898 the United States intervened in the struggle for Cuban independence, but it did so for its own economic and strategic interests in the region, setting its own interpretation of international law as doctrine: maintaining a military government and modelling a civil one for three years, and intervening militarily twice more (each time for three years again), before 1924. While the United States ostensibly sought to ‘protect’ Cuba’s sovereignty, the veterans of the wars for independence, seldom if ever asked for this help, having their own interpretation of a sovereign constitutional republic and how it should be protected. This relationship with the United States, and its economic basis, was to deeply influence politics and government in the early republic. For this reason, it will be necessary also to look at Cuba-United States relations in depth to understand the problem of the research question. While many Cuban veterans and politicians had been schooled in, and regularly visited, the United States, the United States itself consistently preferred members of the old colonial and ‘autonomist’ regime when suggesting or recommending candidates for public administration and political rule after independence was attained. Not surprisingly, then, the frustrated nationalism of the 9 revolutionary struggle was exacerbated by the ‘neo-colonial’ practices of the United States in the early republican period.