Basques in Cuba

Diaspora and Migration Studies Series No. 11 Basques in Cuba Edited by William A. Douglass Translated by Aritz Branton Center for Basque Studies Press University of Nevada, Reno This book was published with generous financial support from the Basque Goverment. Basque Diaspora and Migration Series, No. 11 Series Editor: Xabier Irujo Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada 89557 http://basque.unr.edu Copyright © 2016 by the Center for Basque Studies All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Translation copyright © 2016 Center for Basque Studies Book design by Daniel Montero Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Douglass, William A., editor. | Branton, Aritz, translator. Title: The Basques in Cuba / edited by William A. Douglass ; translated by Aritz Branton. Other titles: Vascos en Cuba. English Description: Reno : Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, 2016. | Originally published in Spanish under title: Vascos en Cuba. Vitoria, Spain : Servicio de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco, 2015. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016017479 | ISBN 9781877802980 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Basques--Cuba--History. | Pais Vasco (Spain)--Relations--Cuba. | Cuba--Relations--Pais Vasco (Spain) Classification: LCC F1789.B37 V3713 2016 | DDC 305.899/9207291--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017479 We dedicate this book to the memory of the great Bascologist, Jon Bilbao Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface xi Editor’s Note xiii Introduction xv —William A. Douglass 1 A Poem to a Basque Immigrant, 1 by Agustín Acosta Félix Julio Alfonso López 2 The Ceiba and the Templete: History of a Polemic 5 Félix Julio Alfonso López 3 Basques in the Caribbean Slave Trade 19 (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) Urko Apaolaza Ávila 4 The Leadership of Manuel Calvo y Aguirre 37 in the Spanish Party and among Basques and Navarrese in Cuba Juan Bosco Amores Carredano and Jon Ander Ramos Martínez 5 The Parliamentarians Elected in the 51 Basque Country’s Cuban Connection, 1812–1939 Joseba Agirreazkuenaga 6 The Tragic End of a Colonial Adventure: 65 The Life and Death of the Basque Units in Cuba, 1869–1873 Óscar Álvarez Gila 7 The Cuban War (1895–1898) in Gipuzkoa: 79 A Critical Reading of Regional Government Acts Haizpea Abrisketa 8 The Cuban Connections of Military Personnel 95 Elected in the Basque Country for the Spanish Parliament, 1808–1939 Mikel Urquijo 9 From the Bidasoa Regatta to the Matanzas 107 Plain: American Heritage in the Mansion at Sunbilla Hilda Otero Abreu 10 Basques and Navarrese People in Santiago 121 de Cuba: Preliminary Notes María Cristina Hierrezuelo Planas 11 The Basques in the Cienfuegos– 131 Villa Clara Railway Project, 1847–1880 Miliada Hernández García 12 French Basques in Cuba: 143 Their Contribution to the Development of Tanning Beñat Çuburu-Ithorotz 13 Basques in Vueltabajo, Cuba: 157 Nineteenth Century Jorge Freddy Ramírez Pérez, Sergio Luis Márquez Jaca, and Pedro Luis Hernández Pérez 14 Immigration, Basques, and Santiago 171 de Cuba: As Seen from Notaries’ Protocols, 1902–1933 Mónica de la Caridad García Salgado and Maithe Sánchez Garrido 15 Overview of the Economics and 181 Business Presence of Basques in Havana, 1901–1930 Michael Cobiella García 16 Francisco Ulacia’s Cuban Novel 193 Cecilia Arrozarena 17 David and Goliath: The Affair of 227 Father Iñaki de Azpiazu and Franco’s Representatives in Venezuela and Cuba Alberto Irigoyen Artetxe 18 Incursions in Cuban Franciscan Territory 241 La Quincena and the 1959 Revolution Miel Anjel Elustondo Etxeberria 19 Hemingway and the Basques 257 Edorta Jiménez 20 Contemporary Economic, Institutional, 267 Social, and Cultural Relations between the Basque Country and Cuba Alexander Ugalde Zubiri Index 283 About the Contributors 293 Acknowledgments The eleventh International “Basque Country Mugaz Gaindi” (Beyond the Frontiers of the Basque Country) Seminar was held in Havana on January 12–14, 2015, and focused on the subject of the Basques in Cuba. The vast majority of these articles are based on papers read at that event and subse- quently amended. We also commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Amerikanuak: Basques in the New World by William A. Douglass and Jon Bilbao. We would like to thank all the sponsors of the event in Havana. It was organized by the Basque government (Eusko Jaurlaritza) and the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, Havana’s Colegio Universitario de San Gerónimo, Fundación Fernando Ortiz, the Grupo de Investigación País Vasco y América: Vínculos y Relaciones Atlánticas of the University of the Basque Country EHU/UPV, USAC-University Stud- ies Consortium, and La Asociación Vasco-Navarra de Beneficencia de la Habana. Asier Vallejo Itsaso of the Basque government, Fernando Ortiz Foundation, William A. Douglass of the Center for Basque Studies, Felix Julio Alfonso López of the Colegio Universitario de San Gerónimo, and Renato García Egusquiza, president of the Asociación Vasco-Navarra de Beneficencia de la Habana, gave the words of welcome and the farewell speeches. The director and staff at the Palacio de Conde de San Esteban de Cañongo were excellent hosts. The audience showed great interest and re- spect. All the speakers were highly professional and contributed their best efforts. I would like to conclude with a personal note of thanks. I had to organize the event based at Reno, Nevada and this—partly because of the x Basques in Cuba lack of normal relations between Cuba and the United States—gave rise to many difficulties. I do not know what would have happened without the help of Daniel A. Durán at the Fundación Fernando Ortiz. He took charge of all the details connected with the event—publicity, venues, logistics. He was in charge of editing this book in Spanish. –William A. Douglass Preface The Basques are linked to the Cuban historical process from its beginning. There were Basque mariners in Columbus’s ships when he arrived in the Antilles on his first voyage and, afterward, Basque surnames have been abundant and outstanding throughout Cuban history. If it is true that Basques were present in disproportionately small numbers, it is undeniable that, on the other hand, they have been signifi- cant protagonists in terms of their actions. When, in the mid-eighteenth century, Havana resisted fiercely attacks by the British, who by then had begun to dominate the seas, Basques were among those who led the combat against the redcoats of the British sov- ereign George III. Examples of Basque surnames in the historical vanguard of Cuba are repeated in many other areas of the social, economic, and cultural life of the largest of the Antilles. Consequently, we encounter Basques first throughout the colonial adventure and later in the struggle for independence; there are Basque sla- vers, owners of sugar mills, whose surnames still evince pride among the descendants of the slaves of those old plantations (and, while it might seem paradoxical, with affection as well). We also find other Basques, founders of libraries and businesses, as well as bishops and benefactors, fomenters of scientific research and art, of neoclassical architecture, for example, that is so common in Havana. It is in the nineteenth century, when the great economic, political, and social changes converted the island into one Spain’s most prosperous xii Basques in Cuba and appreciated colonies, that we must pause. For it is in the nineteenth century that the Enlightenment arrives in Cuba with its ideas regarding historical progress, utopia, and social transformation. Here, too, there are outstanding Basques: illustrious promoters of economic and development and ecclesiastical modernizers of education and social welfare. —María Ángeles Elorza Zubiria General Secretary of Foreign Affairs Eusko Jaurlaritza/Basque Government Editor’s Note The Spanish version of this work, Vascos en Cuba, appeared in the au- tumn of 2015 in time for a book presentation at the Congress of Basque Collectivities in the World held that October in Vitoria-Gasteiz. The present volume is a somewhat liberal, rather than literal, version of Vascos en Cuba. As editor I have made certain modifications to the translated texts for several reasons. First, literal translation from Spanish to English (and vice versa) is never totally satisfying. Proper academic prose in Spanish can be stylistically florid, with sentences running on through a series of clauses qualified by sub-clauses. In my many years of translating between the two languages I have even encountered whole Spanish paragraphs consisting of a single sentence. While it does have its own elegance, for the Anglo reader that style can become not only off-putting but rather confusing. In English academic prose sentences tend to be far briefer and more concise. There- fore I have taken the liberty to Anglicize this version of the book by divid- ing some sentences in the original into two or three in this translation. I have, of course, given each of the authors the opportunity to approve (or not) the changes. Second, there is the issue of intended audience. None of the partic- ipants in the Havana seminar are native English speakers and all wrote their contributions in Spanish at my request. Implicitly, then, they were addressing a Hispanic readership that shared with them certain back- ground knowledge. We could cite the two nineteenth-century Cuban Wars of Independence (1868–1878; 1895–1898) as a prime example. Our Cuban contributors know about them in great deal; our European ones possibly xiv Basques in Cuba somewhat less so but they are still a part of their own history. Conversely, the average North American reader knows little about them. References to these conflicts are present, even when only in passing, in almost all of the articles in this collection. Therefore, whenever I thought it necessary, I have added an explanatory sentence within the text when not a footnote to it.

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