Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [64]
“—and I hereby declare the occupation of Cuba by the United States and by the military government of the island to be ended.” Wood saluted President Tomás Estrada Palma and handed over the documents of transfer.
From far across town, the Cayabas cannons boomed. Lieutenant McCoy remained at attention. He had to count forty-five concatenations, one for every state of the Union, before he hauled down a flag that he would have preferred to keep flying. Both he and General Wood felt they were abandoning a “saved” people to perdition.
By any standards, Wood’s two-and-a-half-year governorship had been a spectacular success. A trained surgeon, he had transformed Cuba from one of the world’s most pestilential countries into one of its healthiest. He had achieved the “miracle” of eliminating Stegomyia fasciata. As a result, Cuba was free of yellow fever for the first time in almost two centuries. The miracle had not happened gently. Doors barred against Wood’s sanitation teams had been smashed open, hidalgos forced to pick up their own litter, and public defecators horsewhipped at the scene of the crime. Buildings in Havana and Santiago de Cuba had been purged with disinfectant so strong that “even insects came out of the ground to die.” But, thanks to this draconian treatment, Havana was now a more sanitary city than Washington, D.C.
The cannons continued to thud as the crowd grew restless. Cubans had mixed feelings about what was happening. The old “Cuba-Libre” coalition—intellectuals, radicals, and peasants—welcomed the departure of the yanquis. Yet what Wood called the island’s “better class”—businessmen, teachers, merchants, plantation owners—regretted the hasty withdrawal of funds and social services. Wood, after all, had built three thousand new schools. He had paved Havana’s dirt streets, and transformed its parks from dangerous jungles into safe gardens. He had catacombed the city with new sewer systems, water mains, and conduits for power and communications. He had even protected the Cuban economy from exploitation by American entrepreneurs.
What protection, the “better class” wanted to know, could President Palma guarantee? Who would teach in the new schools, and out of what textbooks? Who would buy the sugar sacks already crowding every warehouse?
The forty-fifth cannon blast sounded. Lieutenant McCoy stepped to the flagstaff and undid the halyards. Old Glory seemed reluctant to descend. It sank a few feet, then the cords snagged, and it briefly rose.
There were groans and catcalls in the plaza. McCoy pulled till the cloth tumbled about him. To thunderous cheers, General José Miguel Gomez, hero of the war against Spain, appeared on the roof to hoist the colors of Cuba Libre. But the cords snagged again, and Gomez asked for a lighter flag. It fluttered aloft amid screams, tears, and ragged blasts of artillery.
“IT FLUTTERED ALOFT AMID SCREAMS, TEARS, AND
RAGGED BLASTS OF ARTILLERY.”
Independent Cuba raises her flag, 20 May 1902 (photo credit 6.1)
As soon as protocol permitted, General Wood bade President Estrada Palma farewell. He drove down to the harbor, escorted by troopers of the Seventh Cavalry, and boarded the USS Brooklyn. The white cruiser weighed anchor at four o’clock. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes watched it steam north past the wreck of the Maine, upon which some grateful islander had tossed a chain of flowers.
CHAPTER 7
Genius, Force, Originality
What’s all this about Cubia an’ th’ Ph’lipeens?
What’s beet sugar?
THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S TOTAL lack of inhibition—some said, of decorum—was much discussed at Washington dinner tables in the spring of 1902. Whether exercising, working, or pricking the bubbles of solemnity around him,