Begin Knight on B Side of Fourth Audiotape, Begin Dat 7

TAPE 17 CONT’D

BEGIN INTERVIEW

INT: Give a thumbnail sketch of Spanish colonial history.

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KNIGHT: There are three phases of Spanish colonial history, an early phase in which Cuba is really a settlement colony with two fortified cities, Havana in the north, Santiago in the southeast, and then a second phase after 1762 in which a sugar plantation develops, and a third phase where an industrial revolution transforms the wealth of the colony after Spain has lost its mainland colonies, beginning about 1840.

INT: What were US-Cuban relations like mid-1800 and onward?

KNIGHT: Well, a number of Cubans fought in the American War of Independence and -- and the relationship between both countries precedes this date. One of the most important helpers, individual helpers, of the American War of Independence was a Cuban called Juan Mireas,who went into business with Richard Morris in Philadelphia supplying George Washington with flour and sugar from Cuba, transshipment of arms, Spanish arms, ah, for the revolutionary cause. So this is a very important support system. And then, of course, there is a lot of migration between Cuba and Florida, Cuba and Louisiana, Cuba and Charleston, based on the ports, but also with family connections. So in the 19th century already there is a substantial Cuban exile (Background Phone) colony living in the United States. ...

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KNIGHT: What is different about Cuba in the 19th century is the close economic relationship with the United States. The fact that Cuba developed a railroad immediately after it started running in Baltimore meant that Cuba was industrializing and using the industrial technology of the United States. Clipper ships were also another area connecting Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, ahm, Boston with Cuba. And in fact in the 19th century up to 1820, Cuba was the best foreign trader with any Atlantic port in the United States. Its biggest market was in Philadelphia. Of course, that moved north after about 1820. So the relationship between Cuba and the United States is one which is centuries old and very intimate at the personal and familial level as well as the commercial level.

INT: Can you characterize the sugar industry in the United States? What was the interest in keeping Cuba? Well, sort of. What sort of political system were they interested in keeping in Cuba?

KNIGHT: Well, I don't think they were interested in keeping a political system as such. They accepted Spanish colonialism. There were efforts to wrest Cuba away by the filibustering, ah, expeditions such as that of Narciso Lopez, who paid for it with his life. But there were also attempts to buy the island. For the United States, it provided cane sugar, but as the 19th century went on and on, then beet sugar industry of the United States became competitors with Cuban cane sugar. And so the whole tariff issue which is to plague the relationship up to the turn of the 20th century is one which has interest, because before the Civil War, Louisiana was developing a sugar cane industry, which was destroyed by the Civil War. But by the time the United States pulled out after the Civil War, it is beet sugar producers from Ohio and Indiana who are interested in buying raw sugar outside the United States, of course, which makes the tariff issue such an important one in the 1880s and the 1890s.

INT: What was the nature of Cuban dissatisfaction with Spanish colonial rule?

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KNIGHT: The dissatisfaction stemmed from three main areas. First was, of course, the smallness of the Cu-- of the Spanish domestic market. Cubans wanted, as they produced more and more sugar with more efficient methods, free trade to sell their sugar wherever it was bought. That market had to be the rest of Europe or the United States. In the 19th century, the United States was the most elastic sugar market. The people in the United States consumed more sugar than any other country buying sugar at that time. So this was the first. The second was the source of -- of investment capital. Spain was very poor. Investment capital came either from United States, from Britain, from France or from Germany. And, therefore, this was dissatisfaction about the inability of Spain to supply this. And the third area was technology. Both in the process of sugar manufacturing, the new centrifugal process of sugar manufacturing depended upon technological developments from the United States mainly, from France of Great Britain or Germany. And the railroads. Spain was, of course, not a constructor of engines. Engines came mainly from the United States. So the expansion of the railroad meant that the United States became the primary supplier of engines for Cuban railroads through the 19th century.

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KNIGHT: Economic reasons, but ...

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KNIGHT: It's a good question because it allows me to clarify something about the economics as a social dimension, which is fundamental.

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KNIGHT: The important aspect of Cuban economic development in the 19th century is that it could not be done without slave labor, and that's where the economic and the social issues became closely interlinked. The decision to remain a Spanish colony after the mainland colonies became independent was because Cuban sugar planters needed Spanish military might in case there were slave, ah, rebellions such as occurred in Haiti or Jamaica, endemic in slave systems. Once, however, the United States Civil War abolished slavery in the South, then the Spanish -- the Cubans came the other the realization that Spain was not a good defense against slavery and, therefore, decided that they would abolish slavery and that in fact they would go on the free market with free labor. And that's what they tried. Spain then became indispensable. And so the revolution of 1868 to '78 is as much about the issue of slavery as it is about the issue of free trade and commercial development.

INT: Can you describe very briefly the Ten-Year War? Just why it began and sort of why revolutionary activity continued after that point.

KNIGHT: Throughout the 19th century there were always groups of disaffected colonials, creoles mainly, that is, people who were born in the colonies of parents who were born in the colonies who wanted independence, because by the 19th century the independence state was considered the perfect vehicle for economic development. So in the 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, I've mentioned before the filibuster movement of Narciso Lopez, for example, there are groups who want to break away from Spain and it's put down by military force. In 1868, what brings the situation to a head are two factors which come together. The first is that under the monarchy, then the shrewish Isabella the Second of Spain, the Spanish called a (Unintell.) and allowed the colonials to vote members to the Spanish cortez(?). They arrived in Spain in late 1867 willing to participate in Spanish politics. But the following year there is a military revolt against the queen and she's thrown off the throne, hooted out of the country. It's called a glorious revolution. It does give Spain the currency which it has today, the peseta, and it begins a lot of liberal reforms intended to benefit the count-- the colonies. The colonies, however, used this opportunity, in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, in particular, to declare for independence. It's quickly put down in Puerto Rico because it's in an inland town with a few coffee growers. In Cuba it becomes very serious because at first the Cubans felt that -- and the Spanish felt that this is just a group of disaffected petty land owners in the east. In fact, it was a very serious problem and it involved cross-sections, as civil wars will, of class, of families, and of economic conditions. Most large sugar producers, however, supported Spain and once they supported Spain and once they had the military hardware and the strength to keep the revolution from coming to the western part, the sugar producing area, the revolt could not succeed. So the revolt stalemated about 1870 with the insurgents dominant in the east in Oriente(?) and -- and the Spanish government dominant in the west. And in the middle of Cuba at that time was a real no man's land. It was not as it is today, sugar areas developed. It was wide expanses of grazing land and very low population. And that's how it remained in 1878.

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INT: Describe what Cuba Libre meant ...

KNIGHT: Cuba Libre ...

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KNIGHT: "Cuba Libre" is the slogan which is born out of the 1868 revolt. It is the slogan which is taken into the exile communities of Cubans outside, particularly in the United States, but some in Europe and the mainland in newly independent states of Latin America. The difference in "Cuba Libre" as a slogan is when it starts, after 1878, to be the cry of the liegas, the associations of Cubans in places like New York or Tampa or Key West. The first leader of this is actually Calixto Garcia and his Cuban Republican Party, ah, Cuban Revolutionary Party, which Marti joins and becomes the chief spokesman and then creates the Cuban Revolutionary Party in exile and, therefore, takes it to Cuba. Marti, of course, realizes that the weakness of the previous attempt at independence was that Cuba was not united. It was divided by class. It was divided by race. It was divided by -- between Cubans in Cuba and Cubans abroad. And so he decides, first of all, to mobilize the exile community and to tell them that the cause of Cuba is one of all Cubans, wherever they are. It's not a unique or original cry, but he articulates it in a way it had never been articulated before. That is, "Let's get our priorities in order. Throw out Spain and we can resolve internal domestic dissension." He then goes carefully to all the military leaders in 18-- who had left the island in 1878. He goes to Antonio Maceo personally and pleads for him to come back for his cause. He goes to the Dominican Republic and talks to Maximo Gomez, and then he brings them all back to Cuba under this "Cuba Libre" slogan and the idea is that they're not going to discuss things about differences of political leadership. They are going to unite under Marti and under Calixto Garcia and throw Spain off the island. Then they will decide the form of government, and they want to do it quickly.

INT: How, why would they try to enlist American support, like why would Cuban Juntas or Cuban Propagandists try to enlist American support?

KNIGHT: Well, the American support was for manpower, but it was also for war material. And it was very difficult for them to get this because from time to time, the United States government, under the neutrality laws, would take away, confiscate their war material. So having an American public that was sympathetic to the Cuban cause was very, very important and in fact turned out to be what made a difference in the long run, because the yellow press kept saying that Spain was not fit to rule Cuba and by exaggerating, sometimes fantasizing, sometimes inventing evil conditions in Cuba drew the American government eventually in 1898 to the Cuban cause.

INT: Were there certain elements of Cuban cause, let’s say the race of the Cubans or the social and political agenda…

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KNIGHT: Americans were not very sophisticated about what was going on in Cuba, and in fact most of them were woefully ignorant about it. The types of journalists and artists sent down by Pulitzer, most of them just drank in bars and made up pictures of it. What they did have was an antagonism toward that legacy of the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s, an antagonism towards continued European imperialism in the Americas, because the Americas was more and more seen in the 1890s as an American sphere of influence pertaining to the United States. The second thing that bothered a lot of Americans, those were who imperialists because there was an anti-imperial dimension as well in the United States, was Roman Catholicism. They really felt that Cuba as a Catholic country was congenitally inferior. However, they felt that they could convert them to Protestantism and develop their economy.

INT: But I’m talking about the Cuban propagandists who tried to enlist the support – was there anything about the … (Inaudible)

KNIGHT: Well, Marti himself wrote ...

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KNIGHT: Marti himself wrote that Cuba had to be a new Cuba. And he looked at the different social problems. In a letter to Maceo he said that "We have to transcend race," and that's a big thing about Cuba, is neither black nor white. In the, at the economic issue, he said, "A country which has several rich people and a lot of poor people is not a developed country. And Cuba has to be for those Cubans who fight for it and it has to be divided equitably." So there was, for the time, a radical economic program, but not a socialist program. What, I think, Marti reflected, because he was not really familiar with the Cuban condition -- he'd been there for 16 years in Havana as a young man -- he was never from a rich family -- he came back in 18--1877 having married into an upper class Cuban family, the Zaes Pasan family. You don't get better than that in Cuba at that time. Expelled a few months after coming, he came back briefly in 1880 and then he came back, I think, once before his death in 1895. And when he came back, he spent just a little over a month before he died. So what he's talking about is an ideal society which is reconstructed so that everybody's working hard and benefitting from this economic development. That's the one aspect of Marti that's very difficult because in his writings it's so general. There is really no concrete prescription of how do you go from the society that is to the society that is to be in the writings of Marti. And that led, of course, to a lot of interpretations through the years about what he really would have done had he lived.

INT: You mentioned before that there were some stories…Do you know the stories

KNIGHT: One of the stories ...

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KNIGHT: One of the stories which, ah, attract -- which brought the Maine to Cuba was the destruction of American property. By 1895 all sorts of property was being destroyed in America and -- in America? In Cuba. And so it was not surprising that American property was also being destroyed, but the idea was communicated that American property ...

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KNIGHT: The first story which, of course, was sensationalized was the destruction of property, greatly exaggerated, that lives were being lost, American property was being particularly targeted for destruction. And in the general situation of malicious destruction of property, some of this was true, but, of course, it's the exaggerated nature that, of course, required American intervention to help us. The second one was what was called "abusive treatment of gentle women", that is, the upper classes were strip-searched by Spanish officers repeatedly and there was even in one of the New York newspapers a painting, a drawing, pencil drawing sketch, of a Cuban upper class woman being strip-searched by Spanish officers, which, of course, was a figment of the artist's imagination, probably under the influence of good Cuban rum.

INT: Now what do you think is Hearst and Pulitzer's agenda in printing these stories? What is their personal stake in, ah, Cuban independence?

KNIGHT: I think at the minimal general level, it's to sell newspapers.

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KNIGHT: The -- the -- the -- what drives Hearsts and Pulitzers is the competition to sell newspapers in an age where newspapers, of course, are the general means of communication. But they're competing with early photography and so they're employing artists to give word and, ah, visuals to their stories. The other thing that I think drives Hearst is the fact that he's definitely in favor of American imperialism. And this might be true of Pulitzer, too, but it's a bigger market, it's a bigger economic enterprise for them and they, therefore, see this manifest destiny of the United States to rule the Americans as a wider, ah, venue for their services and their friends. And their friends are actually going to rush into this quite quickly. You know, there's banking to be had in Cuba. There's the sugar refining business that's gonna be controlled by Americans. And already there's a big connection in insurance business with Cuba and Philadelphia, and the furniture business in Philadelphia as well as with the whole services of transport up and down the coast. So there is quite important economic interest on the part of the United States in Cuba. In 1895, Americans owned $50 million worth of real estate in Cuba, which was considered a lot at that time.