Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [162]
Twelve years earlier in Guares, Siña Damita had observed political disaffection, although in the late 1840s there was no organized leadership. After the indefensible government response to the cholera epidemic—closing off the capital, burning barrios, sending thousands of homeless into the roads and byways of the island—politicized, educated, courageous, outspoken young men and women emerged as leaders. The most prominent among them was Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances, an ophthalmologist, poet, writer, and Mason who’d already challenged the colonial government and had been threatened with exile by the authorities.
Betances reminded his followers that the Cortes in Madrid continually met requests for reforms from Puerto Rican colonos with indifference and disdain. He exhorted Puerto Ricans to take the future of their island into their own hands. To the horror of the more conciliatory liberals, Betances advocated armed revolt like the successful struggles that had resulted in independence for every former Spanish colony, with Cuba and Puerto Rico the only exceptions.
In the American hemisphere, Betances wrote, political independence and reform had been won only through armed struggle. He envisioned Puerto Rico not as the half-forgotten outpost of a dying empire, but as a shining jewel adorning an Antillean Confederation composed of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. It was a grand idea, and Miguel and Andrés wanted to be part of its creation.
A revolution, however, needed more than young men’s nationalistic ardor and dreams of glory. A revolution needed leaders, a coherent message appealing to the masses willing to fight to the death for an ideal, and money to fund rebellious activities. Miguel was too much a follower to be an effective leader, and too introverted to be an orator able to incite others to battle. But the generous allowance from don Eugenio made it possible for him to contribute his share toward the costs of recruiting, arming, and training rebels.
Miguel and Andrés were compelled by the revolutionary concepts espoused by Betances and the activities of his supporters, who depended on a network of secret societies. Unlike those who gathered in the botica and places like it, the truly secret societies didn’t meet in the easy-to-infiltrate tertulias of poets, apothecaries, and known liberals. They met in small groups in members’ homes, along the narrow streets of the capital and outlying towns, in the back rooms of bordellos like the Alivio house, on the fincas that dotted the landscape near rivers and harbors, on the estancias where men came together to ride and race horses, watch bullfights, enjoy a bloody cockfight, to drink, gamble, and plot.
Leaders forced from the island were kept informed through visits from their associates with freedom to travel. Correspondence was hand delivered by trusted members who carried documents sewn into their clothes.
The question at the forefront of the leaders’ discussions was how to motivate the average campo-dwelling, poor Puerto Rican to rise against the oppression that was so obvious to the upper-class criollos leading the nationalist movement. The burgeoning patriots wanted to go from talking about reform to making it happen, something that would be impossible without popular support.
But pamphlets, bulletins, posters, and other written materials were useless in a population that couldn’t read. Public discussion, speeches in town squares, even songs and poems with what the authorities considered subversive content were banned.
As the members argued about how to bring their message to the jíbaros, as ideas were batted