On Becoming Cuban

Identity, Nationality, and Culture

Louis A. Pérez Jr.

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781469601410
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes

With this masterful work, Louis A. Perez Jr. transforms the way we view Cuba and its relationship with the United States. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of the ways that this encounter helped shape Cubans' identity, nationality, and sense of modernity from the early 1850s until the revolution of 1959. Using an enormous range of Cuban and U.S. sources--from archival records and oral interviews to popular magazines, novels, and motion pictures--Perez reveals a powerful web of everyday, bilateral connections between the United States and Cuba and shows how U.S. cultural forms had a critical influence on the development of Cubans' sense of themselves as a people and as a nation. He also articulates the cultural context for the revolution that erupted in Cuba in 1959. In the middle of the twentieth century, Perez argues, when economic hard times and political crises combined to make Cubans painfully aware that their American-influenced expectations of prosperity and modernity would not be realized, the stage was set for revolution. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of the ways that this encounter helped shape Cubans' identity, nationality, and sense of modernity from the early 1850s until the revolution of 1959.
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1 Binding Familiarities

Every young man’s ambition seems to be to go North.

—Samuel Hazard, With Pen and Pencil, 1871

We Cubans have come here in search of personal freedom, in return for which we brought with us capital, talent, honest labor and morality. We imported with us the great industry of cigar making and have built up large and prosperous cities, Key West, Ybor City and West Tampa. The first of these a poor uninhabited island and the others lonesome, uncultivated pine lands were soon converted into large and prosperous cities which is due to the constant, productive labor of the law-abiding, liberal handed Cuban people whom [sic] never . . . called for alms on the American people. But who instead has contributed more millions of dollars to the United States treasure annually than any other single industry in the whole entire country . . . enriching the business community and being less trouble to the courts of justice of the country than any other foreign people and even the natives themselves.

—M. A. Montejo, Letter to Editor, Tampa Morning Tribune, September 12, 1896

The Cuban, as traveler and observer, has visited all parts of the world in search of new ways to introduce into his country, to improve and perfect its industries, to make his life more comfortable.

—Enrique José Varona, 1896

Resemblance [between Cuba and the United States] has been increased by the proximity and frequency of intercourse between the two countries, by an identity of social institutions and aspirations, and by the large number of Cuban youth educated there. . . . The ideas and manner of thought with which they return to the island, are more American than Spanish, and these are continually extended by their influence and their example.

—John S. Thrasher, 1851

Havana will soon become as much American as New Orleans.

—Anthony Trollope, The West Indies and the Spanish Main, 1862

The connections began early—almost at the beginning, in fact: first as frontiers of the same empire, later as colonies of rival empires. But imperial rivalries intruded little, if at all, on colonial realities. New World requirements—not Old World regulations—served to shape much of the course and character of contact. Both economies adjusted to the participation of the other, and in the process developed vital linkages on which the well-being of each depended. Cubans and North Americans discovered early that colonists even of rival empires often had more in common with one another than they did with the authorities who governed them. They developed needs that each was uniquely qualified to meet, or perhaps it was the other way around: they developed those needs precisely because they could be so well met by the other. Proximity and accessibility promoted affinity, which joined them in a relationship that was simultaneously reciprocal and inexorable. Geography made these connections possible and convenient; circumstances made them practical and necessary.

SOURCES OF THE BEGINNING

Trade was one important link and early established the basis on which familiarity developed and contact increased. Access to North American markets made the expansion of Cuban sugar production possible and profitable, and the decision to pursue economic development through sugar exports quickly assumed a logic of its own, driven by expansion and more expansion: expanded cultivation, expanded production, expanded exports in pursuit of expanding markets.

But it was not simply a matter of producing more sugar, more efficiently, more profitably. Cuban success was very much derived from a strategy of specialization: production for export at the expense of production for consumption, increasingly to the exclusion of other products, eventually to the exclusion of other markets. It was more cost effective to rely on food imports for internal consumption than sacrifice sugar exports for external markets. That the United States could meet these needs, as well as provide Cuba with necessary industrial and manufactured supplies, from comparatively short distances, in relatively short periods of time, and at reasonably low transportation costs, gave Cuban development its distinctive and definitive characteristics.

The capacity of the United States to provide Cuba with the means with which to expand was at least as important as markets in which to expand. Sugar planters were soon alert to the possibilities of innovation and industrial progress; they were especially receptive to the use of new technologies to improve efficiency and increase production. Producers were direct beneficiaries of North American industrial development, and, indeed, the transfer of technology became a normal part of the stock in trade between Cuba and the United States. The logic of the connection was as compelling as it was self-evident. Reduced travel time and lower transportation costs meant that spare parts, repairs, and replacement pieces for North American machinery could be obtained faster and cheaper than for European equipment.¹

Technological innovation reached Cuba early and easily, often the instant it became available in the United States. New technology arrived in surges and in succession, often with unexpected results but always with effect. Innovation and renovation became the imperatives driving production, the means, too, by which Cuba was integrated into advanced industrial modes of the North.

Access to technology from the United States served to shape all facets of Cuban economic activity: production strategies no less than transportation systems, commercial relations as well as consumption patterns. Steam power was introduced as early as 1819 and immediately transformed sugar production through improved efficiency and increased exports. Coastwise steamship service arrived in the same year, when entrepreneur Juan O’Farrill bought the Neptuno in New Orleans and inaugurated weekly passenger and cargo service between Havana and Matanzas, only a decade after the first commercial use of steamships in the North. Additional steamships were subsequently purchased in the United States, and by 1842 a total of six vessels operated along both coasts of Cuba. Scheduled steamship service with the United States commenced in 1836 and by midcentury linked Havana directly with New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Mobile, New Orleans, and Key West.²

The railroad arrived during the 1830s and subsequently entered the key sugar zones of Matanzas–Unión de Reyes, Puerto Príncipe–Nuevitas, Cienfuegos–Santa Clara, Cárdenas-Colón, Remedios-Caibarién, Matanzas-Jovellanos, Casilda-Trinidad, and Havana-Matanzas. In all, more than six hundred miles of railroad extended across the island by midcentury, west to east, along both coasts, linking the major sugar districts in the interior with export points on the coast. By the 1890s Cuba claimed the highest ratio of railroad lines to total load mass of all Latin America: 24.6 kilometers of rail for every 1,000 kilometers of national territory.³

The telegraph was introduced by Samuel A. Kennedy of New York in 1851, only five years after the completion of the first successful system in the United States. Havana was linked with Bejucal, Güines, and Cárdenas; lines were subsequently extended to Batabanó and Matanzas. Within fifteen years, the Cuban telegraph system connected twenty cities and towns, reaching as far east as Santiago de Cuba. By the late 1850s telegraph service was handling nearly 50,000 messages annually. In 1859 Cuba was linked by boat with the telegraph terminus in Cedar Key, Florida. Submarine cable connected Havana directly with Key West in 1867, only one year after the completion of the North Atlantic cable.⁴

As a result of these developments, production modes, transportation systems, and communication networks expanded around goods and services originating from the North and gave decisive form to the ways in which both economies were forging structural unity. Steam-powered machinery was manufactured by Merrick and Sons of Philadelphia, the Novelty Iron Works of New York, Isaac and Seth Adams of Boston, and the West Point Foundry. Locomotives were built by Porter and Company and Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, Schenectady Locomotive Works, and Boston Locomotive Works. Freight cars and passenger coaches were purchased from Davenport and Company of Cambridgeport, New Haven Car Company, Harlan and Holingsworth of Wilmington, and Eaton and Gilbert of Troy. The International Ocean Telegraph Company of New York operated the cable system.

These developments had implications of other kinds. North American machinery required the expertise of trained personnel to install, operate, and service the new equipment. Coastwise steamship service was maintained by North American crews. Railroads were constructed under the supervision of U.S. engineers and operated by U.S. conductors and crews. Poet William Cullen Bryant was not the first foreigner to marvel at traveling in Cuba “by railway, in a car built at Newark, drawn by an engine made in New York, and worked by an American engineer.”⁵ North Americans provided continuing maintenance of locomotives, rolling stock, track, roadbed, and stations. All through the 1850s, thousands of U.S. workers—mainly engineers, mechanics, and foremen—traveled annually to Cuba to work on the railroads.⁶

Technicians and machinists (maquinistas) also arrived to operate and maintain the steam-powered machinery on the sugar estates. “American steam-engines are fast taking the place of animal power,” Maturin M. Ballou observed in 1854, “and more or less are monthly exported for this purpose from New York, Philadelphia and Boston. This creates a demand for engineers and machinists, for whom the Cubans are also dependent upon this country.” Visiting Cuba several years later, Richard Dana met a North American engineer employed on a Matanzas sugar estate, “one of a numerous class, whom the sugar culture brings annually to Cuba,” he noted. “They leave home in the autumn, engage themselves for the sugar season, put the machinery in order, work it for the four or five months of its operation, clean and put it in order for lying by, and return to the United States in the spring. They must be machinists, as well as engineers; for all the repairs and contrivances, so necessary in a remote place, fall upon them.”⁷

North Americans integrated themselves at all levels of the Cuban economy. They owned and operated sugar estates, coffee plantations, tobacco farms, and cattle ranches. Visiting Cuba in 1856, George Williams was surprised to find “quite a number of planters from the United States residing here.”⁸ Increasingly, too, North Americans expanded into other sectors of the economy. U.S. geologists, engineers, and surveyors operated the mines around which developed thriving boomtowns in Pinar del Río, Daiquirí, El Caney, and Santiago de Cuba.⁹ In Regla, the great depot of molasses trade, the foundry vital to the maintenance of molasses tanks was constructed and operated by the North American firm Van DeWater and Company.

U.S. mercantile houses, retailers, and shipping agents spread across the island, becoming a ubiquitous presence in almost all port cities along both coasts, east to west (see Appendix Table 1.1). They provided foodstuffs and manufactured goods, extended credit arrangements, and accepted in return sugar and molasses as payment. As transmitters of innovation and material progress, they were one of the principal mediums through which new industrial technologies, production strategies, and equipment entered Cuba.

North American merchants served as channels through which capital subsidized the movement of Cuban exports to U.S. markets and thereby helped finance local production. Merchants summoned into existence new financial structures, insurance systems, shipping agencies, freight handlers, and a host of enterprises specializing in the financing and transportation as well as marketing and distribution of exports and imports. They were conversant with production specifications, price levels, and marketing trends at a time when few other sources of such information were available. “The prosperity of the island has derived no small advantage from those numerous American establishments,” asserted English writer Richard Madden in 1849. He continued:

Improved modes of agriculture, of fabrication, of conveyance, were introduced by the Americans. . . . The substitution in Cuba of the old grinding-mill, rudely constructed of wood, by steam-engine machinery, is also chiefly due to the Americans. To them, therefore, Cuba is indebted for the various improvements in the fabrication of sugar, and modes of conveyance of the produce of its plantation, which enable the proprietors to compete so successfully with those of the English colonies. Cuba, ever since I knew it, has been slowly but steadily becoming Americanised.¹⁰

As the volume of trade increased, so did maritime traffic. “Vessels are constantly arriving and departing, for the commerce of this place is immense,” Margaret Morton Quincy observed in Havana as early as 1828. At midcentury the Cuban trade accounted for as many U.S. merchant vessels as were engaged in the total trade with England and France: 1,702 in 1850 and 2,088 in 1856; only trade with Canada and England exceeded the total tonnage of U.S. trade with Cuba. Hundreds of merchant vessels crowded into Havana harbor; many more lighters swarmed around the port, moving cargo and passengers from ship to shore and back again. The view was breathtaking. Richard Dana marveled at the sight: “What a world of shipping! The masts make a belt of dense forest along the edge of the city, all the ships lying head into the street, like horses at their mangers; while the vessels at anchor nearby choke up the passage ways to the deeper bays beyond.”¹¹

The number of permanent North American residents swelled throughout the nineteenth century. Between 1846 and 1862 the U.S.-born population of Cuba almost doubled: from 1,260 to nearly 2,500.¹² They settled mostly in the capital— “Havana is crowded with Americanos” George W. Williams commented in 1855—and across the northern coast, as far east as the mining regions of Oriente province. John Glenville Taylor noted that the “district of Holguin, of which Gibara is the port of entry, can boast of more English-speaking society than many other foreign places, of equal size and note.” Richard Madden was astonished to discover that “some districts on the northern shores of the island, in the vicinity, especially, of Cárdenas and Matanzas, have more the character of American than Spanish settlements.” This presence had become more pronounced ten years later, when R. G. Gibbes visited the province: “Matanzas being mainly settled by citizens from the United States, our language is more common there than in any other Cuban city, and the customs of the place are more Americanized.” Cárdenas, in particular, was filled with North Americans and in such numbers that by midcentury it was commonly described as an “American city.” “Cárdenas contains about 5000 inhabitants and quite a number of these are Americans,” wrote Joseph Dimock in 1859. “I noticed among the clerks and correspondents a great many Yankees. . . . A great number of Americans have come out here with the intention of locating. . . . Cárdenas harbor is full of vessels of which more than half are American, and one sees so many Yankees in the streets that it seems quite homelike here.”¹³

Spanish authorities were less cheerful about the growing U.S. presence in Cuba. As early as 1838, Governor General Miguel Tacón was troubled by the increasing number of foreign mining enterprises in Oriente province, warning that it “appears impossible . . . to prevent the miners from introducing Methodist sects and doctrines, that could cause insubordination among the slaves and introduce into our midst confusion and disorder.” A decade later, concerned officials in both Cuba and Spain urged that North American acquisition of property on the island be restricted. Three successive governor generals noted the pernicious effects of the North American presence. “The colonies of the Americans on the island increase from day to day,” Conde de Alcoy reported in 1849, “as can be seen in the increase registered in Sagua la Grande, Cienfuegos, Matanzas, Cárdenas, etc. Daily the Americans purchase extensive territories and under their auspices Cárdenas is being reborn into a new city.” Two years later José G. de la Concha sounded a similar alarm, but with greater urgency and sobriety. The island “has been inundated with foreigners,” he argued, “principally from the American Union,” who “without doubt [are] the most prejudicial, not only because it appears so natural that they participate in the spirit of expansion . . . that characterizes their country and their democratic tendencies, but also because they are distributed mostly in the countryside, working on the sugar mills and railroads as maquinistas, they disseminate their subversive doctrines everywhere.” North Americans had “expanded fully across the island,” de la Concha declared, “with far-reaching and baneful consequences.” Some of these consequences were apparent even as he wrote. “The English-language has spread among the natives (naturales),” remarked Valentín Cañedo shortly thereafter, “not only among the youth of both sexes in the cities and large towns, but even among men well beyond school age.”¹⁴

The island also attracted a large floating population of North Americans. They arrived year-round, for business and for pleasure, travelers in transit, workers under contract, tourists on holiday—mostly to escape the rigors of northern winters and for rest and respite. Many, like former presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland, traveled for reasons of health and convalescence, to take the warm baths of Güines, San Diego de los Baños, and Madruga. Chemist Richard McCulloh found Güines “a place much frequented by strangers, and particularly by consumptive invalids from the United States.” Julia Ward Howe divided the guests in her Havana hotel into “two classes”: “invalids and men of business.”¹⁵

Cuba entered the North American imagination as the “tropics,” which is to say, as the opposite of what the United States was, specifically what it was not. This was travel less to a place than to a time, to a past in ...