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Authors: John Paul Rathbone
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THIS THEN WAS THE CUBA that Bernabé found when he returned to Camagüey from New York in 1898, the autumn of peace. Martí was dead, and Weyler and the rebels had left the country a smoking ruin. One journalist, traveling from Havana to Matanzas, described it as a “country wrapped in the stillness of death and the silence of desolation.” It was a beautiful land, he said, but he did not see in it a single house, man, woman, child, horse, mule, cow, or dog—not one sign of life, except for an occasional vulture circling in the air. After three decades of fighting for independence, the island was as quiet as a grave.
At Senado, Bernabé found that many of the houses, sheds, and warehouses around his batey were roofless. Nearby, where once had stood a village, there were only scattered piles of rubble and charred wood. Bridges had fallen and the railway lines that snaked though Bernabé’s land and had once carried cut cane to the mill from the fields were unusable: the wooden sleepers had rotted. A yellow fever epidemic broke out.
It began to rain. Bernabé grew anxious. Deep in debt, he was desperate to prepare for the zafra, which begins with the dry season in December. But the weather was like a curse. “We are living in the mill but it is raining so much that it is impossible to do anything, even leave the house,” he wrote to his brother. “You know what the rain is like here.” As rainstorms pounded the fields and the world around him turned brown—red-brown earth, damp-brown wood, black-brown clouds—Bernabé’s frustration became palpable. His handwriting grew smaller, more urgent, and he broke off his words at the margin of the page, continuing on the line below:
. . . it is still rai
ning . . .
Papa Né.
When the rain paused, Bernabé set to work immediately, rebuilding the mill’s chimney. The oxen he hoped to find to plow his fields were dead. So he bought mules that had pulled Spanish cannon only a few months before. He tried to hire disbanded Cuban troops to work in the coming zafra . But the fever epidemic complicated his plans; most men remained camped in distant hills, where they were safe from disease and could also forage for food. Then one of Bernabé’s grandchildren died of malaria, and his son Pedro caught dysentery. “It is true that Rome was not built in a day,” a despondent Bernabé wrote to his banker George Mosle in New York. “But Rome did not have debts to pay, nor was it subject to the caprices of nature and the consequences of war.”
Martí was right to call Bernabé Sanchez an “enemy of the revolution” when he learned of Loynaz’s betrayal to the Spanish. But Bernabé was not a selfish old fool. He was a pragmatist and a survivor. At the very least, autonomy would have preserved the island from the ravages of a dreadful war and the ambiguity of U.S. military rule that followed it. Alejandro Rodríguez, a young soldier who had carried the Camagüey Autonomists’ first message of protest to Martí in New York and then went on to fight as a general against the Spanish, confided as much to a friend after the war. “You know that abandoning my interests and family, I was among the first to reach for arms and support the revolution. . . . But I who have served my country, for which I have sacrificed everything, cannot even have my family by my side for lack of means to support it. I cannot embark on any business or reconstruct my farm due to lack of funds. I see myself perhaps forced to emigrate in search of bread in a strange land.” In letters written from his mill at around the same time, Bernabé had similarly contemplated his age, his looming poverty, and the destruction of his mill and his country. “Is this the price of a Free Cuba?” he asked sarcastically. Many Cubans have wondered the same ever since.
Three
A SENSE OF HOME
The house is no longer known to me, it does not speak to my memories.
—THE CONDESA DE MERLIN, Viaje a la
THIS THEN WAS THE CUBA that Bernabé found when he returned to Camagüey from New York in 1898, the autumn of peace. Martí was dead, and Weyler and the rebels had left the country a smoking ruin. One journalist, traveling from Havana to Matanzas, described it as a “country wrapped in the stillness of death and the silence of desolation.” It was a beautiful land, he said, but he did not see in it a single house, man, woman, child, horse, mule, cow, or dog—not one sign of life, except for an occasional vulture circling in the air. After three decades of fighting for independence, the island was as quiet as a grave.
At Senado, Bernabé found that many of the houses, sheds, and warehouses around his batey were roofless. Nearby, where once had stood a village, there were only scattered piles of rubble and charred wood. Bridges had fallen and the railway lines that snaked though Bernabé’s land and had once carried cut cane to the mill from the fields were unusable: the wooden sleepers had rotted. A yellow fever epidemic broke out.
It began to rain. Bernabé grew anxious. Deep in debt, he was desperate to prepare for the zafra, which begins with the dry season in December. But the weather was like a curse. “We are living in the mill but it is raining so much that it is impossible to do anything, even leave the house,” he wrote to his brother. “You know what the rain is like here.” As rainstorms pounded the fields and the world around him turned brown—red-brown earth, damp-brown wood, black-brown clouds—Bernabé’s frustration became palpable. His handwriting grew smaller, more urgent, and he broke off his words at the margin of the page, continuing on the line below:
. . . it is still rai
ning . . .
Papa Né.
When the rain paused, Bernabé set to work immediately, rebuilding the mill’s chimney. The oxen he hoped to find to plow his fields were dead. So he bought mules that had pulled Spanish cannon only a few months before. He tried to hire disbanded Cuban troops to work in the coming zafra . But the fever epidemic complicated his plans; most men remained camped in distant hills, where they were safe from disease and could also forage for food. Then one of Bernabé’s grandchildren died of malaria, and his son Pedro caught dysentery. “It is true that Rome was not built in a day,” a despondent Bernabé wrote to his banker George Mosle in New York. “But Rome did not have debts to pay, nor was it subject to the caprices of nature and the consequences of war.”
Martí was right to call Bernabé Sanchez an “enemy of the revolution” when he learned of Loynaz’s betrayal to the Spanish. But Bernabé was not a selfish old fool. He was a pragmatist and a survivor. At the very least, autonomy would have preserved the island from the ravages of a dreadful war and the ambiguity of U.S. military rule that followed it. Alejandro Rodríguez, a young soldier who had carried the Camagüey Autonomists’ first message of protest to Martí in New York and then went on to fight as a general against the Spanish, confided as much to a friend after the war. “You know that abandoning my interests and family, I was among the first to reach for arms and support the revolution. . . . But I who have served my country, for which I have sacrificed everything, cannot even have my family by my side for lack of means to support it. I cannot embark on any business or reconstruct my farm due to lack of funds. I see myself perhaps forced to emigrate in search of bread in a strange land.” In letters written from his mill at around the same time, Bernabé had similarly contemplated his age, his looming poverty, and the destruction of his mill and his country. “Is this the price of a Free Cuba?” he asked sarcastically. Many Cubans have wondered the same ever since.
Three
A SENSE OF HOME
The house is no longer known to me, it does not speak to my memories.
—THE CONDESA DE MERLIN, Viaje a la
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