Cuba - Lonely Planet [13]
Historically speaking, the Haitian episode influenced Cuba in a number of important ways. Firstly, it led to a huge influx of skilled French immigrants to the island, a class that brought with them an enterprising mix of farming know-how, plentiful money and a new Francophile culture. These immigrants went on to set up the island’s first commercial coffee plantations, establish new cities and add a fresh new dynamic to Cuban culture, particularly music.
Secondly, the sheer violence of the Haitian debacle instilled in Cuba’s colonial class an underlying fear – a type of ‘black legend’ – which resurfaced on numerous occasions in the ensuing years. This fear went a long way in watering down independence demands in Cuba long after the rest of Latin America had broken free from the Spanish rule. It also deferred the abolition of slavery on the island until 1886.
Elements of French and Haitian culture are still traceable in Cuban society today, particularly in the French-founded settlements of Guantánamo and Cienfuegos. Eastern musical forms such as changüí and guaracha are the bastardized descendants of the French contredanse, while the resplendent neoclassical architecture that characterizes the city of Cienfuegos on the south coast has a definitive Parisian feel.
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The War for Independence
Fed up with Spain’s reactionary policies and enviously eyeing Lincoln’s new American dream to the north, criollo (Spaniards born in the Americas) landowners around Bayamo began plotting rebellion in the late 1860s. The spark was auspiciously lit on October 10, 1868, when Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a budding poet, lawyer and sugar-plantation owner, launched an uprising from his Demajagua sugar mill near Manzanillo in the Oriente (Click here). Calling for the abolition of slavery and freeing his own slaves in an act of solidarity, Céspedes proclaimed the famous Grito de Yara, a cry of liberty for an independent Cuba, encouraging other disillusioned separatists to join him. For the colonial administrators in Havana such an audacious bid to wrest control from their incompetent and slippery grasp was an act tantamount to treason. The furious Spanish reacted accordingly.
Fortuitously, for the loosely organized rebels, the cagey Céspedes had done his military homework. Within weeks of the historic Grito de Yara the diminutive lawyer-turned-general had raised an army of more than 1500 men and marched defiantly on Bayamo, taking the city in a matter of days. But initial successes soon turned to lengthy deadlock. A tactical decision not to invade western Cuba, along with an alliance between peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain but living in Cuba) and the Spanish, soon put Céspedes on the back foot. Temporary help arrived in the shape of mulato general Antonio Maceo, a tough and uncompromising Santiagüero nicknamed the ‘Bronze Titan’ for his ability to defy death on countless occasions, and the equally formidable Dominican Máximo Gómez, but, despite economic disruption and the periodic destruction of the sugar crop, the rebels lacked a dynamic political leader capable of uniting them behind a singular ideological cause.
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In 1824 priest Félix Varela published an independent newspaper called El Habanero in Philadelphia. It was considered to be the first Cuban revolutionary publication.
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With the loss of Céspedes in battle in 1874, the war dragged on for another four years, reducing the Cuban economy to tatters and leaving an astronomical 200,000 Cubans and 80,000 Spanish dead. Finally, in February 1878 a lackluster pact was signed at El Zanjón between the uncompromising Spanish and the militarily exhausted separatists, a rambling and largely worthless agreement that solved nothing and acceded little to the rebel cause. Maceo, disgusted