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The war organized by Martí brought more refugees to the United States, but this time they came to stay only for a short period; three years after the war began, through heroic efforts and brilliant military feats, the Cubans had won their independence. The United States precipitated events by declaring war on Spain. On April 20,1898, the U.S. Congress had approved a "Joint Resolution" declaring that "the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent." To limit expansionist ambitions already in the air in President McKinley's administration, the document further added: "The United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over the island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the Island to its people."
With war declared, the North American Atlantic fleet, which had been concentrated in Key West, moved to block Cuban ports. In the meantime, the military landing forces waited in New Orleans, Mobile and Tampa. Protected by Cuban troops, they went ashore in the island's Oriente province on June 10, 1898. Shortly afterwards, a defeated Spain handed over the provisional government to the United States, who, in turn, handed power over to the Cubans on May 20, 1902. Since the emigration had come about for political reasons, as could be expected the majority of Cubans returned to their country when the Spanish-Cuban-American War was over.
Cuban participation in United States life produced very positive results. Wherever and in whatever field they were active, Cubans left a favorable mark that served to strengthen the appreciation and affection felt by North Americans for their neighbors to the South. Evidence of this can be found in the one hundred Spanish-language newspapers and magazines founded by Cubans. Equally positive was the mark this country made on those who lived here during the nineteenth century and then returned to the island. Among the most notable, in addition to those already mentioned, were the following patriots who lived here during different periods: Francisco de Frías, Count of Pozos Dulces (1809-1877), educated at Mount Saint Mary College in Baltimore, an agronomist and author, who fought tirelessly for the betterment of Cuba; Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, Marquis of Santa Lucía (1824-1914), who settled in New York at the end of the Ten Years' War, in which he had participated actively, and who, in 1895, became president of the Republic in Arms; José Morales Lemus (1808-1870), a prestigious attorney in Havana, who fought hard in Washington to have President Grant's government recognize the Cuban Republic in Arms; Enrique José Varona (1849B1933), philosopher and noted author who, in 1895, replaced Martí as editor in chief of the newspaper Patria, published in New York, and who became a mentor for the Republic's early generations of intellectuals; and Manuel Sanguily (1848-1923), a colonel in the war prior to 1895, and a noteworthy orator, who served in the Republic as senator, Secretary of State and Dean of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Havana.
Among the authors who lived at some point in the United States were José Antonio Saco (1797-1879), the foremost intellect of his time in Cuba, who had taken over the Philosophy Chair in Havana from Father Varela in the latter's absence; Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros (1803-1866), educated in Philadelphia, the most important Cuban journalist of his time, who, along with José Aniceto Iznaga (1793-1860) and other compatriots, traveled to Colombia to ask Simón Bolívar for help in fleeing Cuba; Cirilo Villaverde (1812-1894), considered one of the finest Latin American writers in the literature of manners genre, author of the giant novel, Cecilia Valdés (published in its final version in New York, in 1882), who, together with his wife, the revolutionary activist Emilia Casanova (1832-1897), founded a school in Oak Point, New York; Miguel Teurbe Tolón (1820-1857), poet and professor of Spanish, who designed the Cuban National Emblem in New York; Francisco J. Estrampes (1827-1855), who fled Cuba for New Orleans, where he taught languages, and who left the United States in an armed expedition whose aim was to free Cuba so that it would not be sold to the United StatesCan expedition which led to his capture by Spanish authorities and his execution; Rafael María de Mendive (1821-1886), Martí's teacher, whose poetry Longfellow translated to correspond to the Spanish translations of Longfellow's poems that Mendive had done; Enrique Piñeyro (1839-1911), a recognized literary critic and editor of the first great Spanish-language magazine published in this country, El Mundo Nuevo-América Ilustrada; Pedro José Guiteras (l814-1890), a famous researcher who wrote his Historia de la Isla de Cuba from a small town in Rhode Island; and Néstor Ponce de León (1837-1899), author of the Diccionario tecnológico inglés-español (English/Spanish Technological Dictionary), New York bookseller, and editor of a number of works by Cuban authors.
The path laid out by Heredia in the teaching of Spanish was also followed by Luis Felipe Mantilla (1833-1878), a pioneer of bilingual education in this country, who was a professor at New York University as well as the author of various Spanish textbooks and readers; Tomás Estrada Palma (1835-1908), the first president of free Cuba, who for many years ran a school in Central Valley, New York; and Luis Alejandro Baralt y Peoli (1849-1933) who, in addition to having practiced medicine at Bellevue Hospital in New York, wrote the theater page for the New York paper The World and taught at Columbia University and New York City College. Emilio Agramonte (1844-1918) made important contributions as a teacher of music and supporter of North American composers. Several noted artists of the period were formed in Agramonte's School of Opera and Oratory, in New York; another political exile who gained recognition in musical circles in this country was Ignacio Cervantes (1845-1905), whose piano recitals (particularly of Chopin's music) were lavishly praised in the American press. He was the composer of the "Danzas Cubanas," which have retained their popularity and are published in new editions even now.
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In the field of medicine, there were many distinguished Cubans at the time, among them Manuel González Echeverría (1833-1897), a specialist in mental diseases, who was responsible for founding and managing the first asylum for epileptics and the mentally ill in New York, and who also taught at the State University of New York; Ramón Luis Miranda (1831-910), who studied in Paris and Madrid and then settled in New York, where he built a strong medical practice and served both as Martí's physician and as a collaborator in his revolutionary endeavors; and Juan Guiteras (1852-1925), a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he later taught, and who also taught in other North American cities (St. Louis, New Orleans, Charleston), until Cuba achieved her independence and he returned to serve as Secretary of Health and Sanitation.
Noteworthy engineers included Francisco Javier Cisneros (1836-1914), who carried out seven armed insurgent expeditions from the United States, earning the rank of general, and who opened a consulting office in New York in 1872 with Aniceto Menocal (1836-1908), a graduate of the School of Engineers in Troy, New York, who later became the head of the Navy shipyards in Washington and chief engineer of the Panama Canal; and Fernando Figueredo (1846-1929), another graduate of Troy, who held important posts during the Ten Years' War until he emigrated to Florida, where he was Member of the Legislature, Superintendent of Schools and Mayor of West Tampa.
Three attorneys also should be cited here: José Agustín Quintero (1825-1885), a graduate of Harvard, where he knew Emerson and Longfellow, whose poetry he also translated; José Manuel Mestre (1832-1886), a graduate of Columbia University, also a man of letters and collaborator with Enrique Piñeyro in publishing La América Ilustrada; and José Ignacio Rodríguez (1836-1907), who exerted great influence through his office in Washington, and who advised Secretary of State James G. Blaine at the International American Conference in 1890.
Many wealthy CubansCbusinessmen, industrialists and landownersCwere also forced to seek refuge in the United States because of their activities against Spain. Referring to their patriotism, Martí once said: "The singular and sublime aspect of the Ten Years' War was that the rich, who everywhere else oppose war, were here the ones who waged it." Along with those already named —Aguilera, the Count of Pozos Dulces, the Marquis of Santa Lucía, doctor Ramón Luis Miranda— mention should be made of Miguel Aldama (1821-1888), the millionaire whose mansion in Havana was ransacked by Spanish soldiers enraged by his revolutionary activities in New York, after he had freed his one thousand slaves in Cuba. Among those who emigrated from Cuba as simple workers and made huge fortunes in the United States, the best example is Eduardo Hidalgo Gato (1847-1926), the cigar maker who, through hard work and ingenuity, became a millionaire in Key West and contributed generously to the cause of Cuban independence.
Nineteenth Century Cuban-Americans
The list of Cubans who were raised here and later contributed their knowledge and labor to the enrichment of the Republic is likewise extensive: among the journalists, Martín Morúa Delgado (1857-1910) and Rafael Serra (1858-1909), both black, who lived in Tampa and New York and became outstanding congressmen in Cuba; Víctor Muñoz (1873-1922), who learned journalism in various United States cities and, when the Republic was inaugurated, returned to Cuba, where he founded the Association of Reporters; and Gerardo Castellanos (1879-1956), educated in Key West, a prolific historian who also wrote for various Cuban newspapers.
The following became professors at the University of Havana: Pedro Calvo Castellanos (1859-1927), Doctor of Dental Surgery and graduate of Pennsylvania College and the University of Philadelphia, who became the first director of the Dental Association of Havana; Raimundo de Castro (1878-1951), a graduate of Columbia University and Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Havana; José M. Cadenas (1891-1939), an engineering graduate from Boston, where he was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's friend, who became rector of the University of Havana; Luis A. Baralt y Zacharie (1892-1969), born in New York, obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy in Havana in 1917, later studying at Harvard, and serving as Dean of Faculty in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Havana until 1960, when he was exiled from Cuba, dying while a professor at Southern Illinois University; and Luis de Soto (1893-1955), also a graduate of Columbia University, in 1928, a specialist in art history, and author of several books (Ars, Los estilos artísticos, Filosofía de la Historia del Arte).
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In this same group of Cubans raised here are Mario García Menocal (1866-1941), a graduate in engineering of Cornell University, who worked on the Panama Canal and later fought in the War of Independence, in which he attained the rank of Major General, and served as president of the Republic from 1913 to 1921; Manuel Ruiz y Rodríguez (1874-1940), a graduate of the Catholic University of America who became the first Archbishop of Havana; Emilio Núñez (1855-1922), a distinguished general in the war of independence, who practiced dental medicine in Philadelphia and in 1917 became Vice President of the Republic; Gonzalo de Quesada (1868-1915), attorney, a graduate of New York City College and Columbia University and José Martí's closest collaborator, who later became the Cuban ambassador to Washington and Berlin; Carlos M. Trelles (1866-1951), the father of Cuban bibliography and author in 1892 of the first historical study in Spanish of scientific developments in the United States; Raimundo Cabrera (1852-1923), whose book, Cuba and the Cubans, made North American readers aware of Cuban intellectual life and who translated Andrew Carnegie's Triumphant Democracy (1888) and practiced law in Cuba and wrote other important books; Carlos Loveira (1882-1928), novelist and labor leader, who emigrated to New York when he was a child, set off from Tampa with an expedition to participate in the Cuban war, in the Republic organized unions and wrote novels of social content, and in the 1920's collaborated with Samuel Gompers in the American Federation of Labor in Washington; Leonardo Sorzano Jorrín (l877-1950), a graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, who later wrote various texts for teaching English which were widely used in Cuba; José Tarafa (1869-1932), businessman, who completed his education in the United States and, after the last war of independence, made a big fortune in sugar production, railroads and distilleries; and José Manuel Carbonell (1880B1968), educated in Tampa, a propelling force in Cuban culture (his eighteen volumes of Evolución de la cultura cubana, published in 1928, gathered the most important Cuban works to that date), who was president of the National Academy of Arts and Letters.
Among Cubans who lived in the United States and later distinguished themselves by their activities in Cuba, Carlos J. Finlay (1833-1915) deserves special mention. Soon after the war, the U.S. authorities governing the country were faced with a widespread epidemic of yellow fever. More Spanish soldiers were felled by this disease than by Cuban bullets, and a number of North American soldiers had already succumbed. It is estimated that since the middle of the eighteenth century the disease had caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. It was also the scourge of other Caribbean islands, the coasts along the Gulf of Mexico and extensive areas of Africa and Asia. In the United States it had appeared as far north as New Hampshire, and during one epidemic in Philadelphia more than ten percent of the population died. The glory of discovering the transmitting agent was to belong to this Cuban doctor who had been educated in the United States.
Carlos J. Finlay had hypothesized that the disease was transmitted by a variety of mosquito. When the war broke out he moved to the United States to interest the Americans in his theory. Later, while living in New York, as troops were preparing to land in Cuba, he asked the army to name him medical assistant. In the beginning, the American commission assigned to study the disease was skeptical about Dr. Finlay's theory, but with the failure of their research and the disease's increase, they successfully tested the Cuban's recommendations. Finlay had dedicated his whole life to research: after attending high school in France and Germany, he had studied medicine at Jefferson Memorial College in Philadelphia, where one of his professors, Silas Weir Mitchell, had turned his interests toward epidemic fevers. In 1905 Finlay was nominated for a Nobel prize by the English physician, Sir Ronald Ross, who had won the prize in 1903 for his discoveries about the causes of malaria.
Another Cuban who studied in the United States contributed to the fight against yellow fever. Arístides Agramonte (1868-1931), a graduate (and later Doctor Honoris Causa) of Columbia University's Medical School, practiced medicine at Bellevue Hospital and with New York's Department of Health. In 1900 he went to Cuba as part of the American commission that would study the disease. After the inception of the Republic he was named professor of bacteriology at the University of Havana, and he represented Cuba at numerous scientific and medical congresses held in many countries. Agramonte spent his last year in New Orleans, where he taught tropical medicine at Tulane University and received an honorary doctorate.
North American intervention in the war of independence of 1895 and the United States presence in Cuba until power was handed over to the Cubans in 1902 brought the two countries closer together, although it did not make relations between them more cordial. The favorable view of the United States that had prevailed among Cubans in the nineteenth century began to diminish. Many were offended by the fact that as a condition to the end of U.S. military rule, the United States required that the Cuban Constitution permit future intervention in the island. Over the years several U.S. interventions and other negative aspects of American Cuban policy caused the feelings of distrust to grow. Nevertheless, Cubans and North Americans frequently enjoyed good economic, political, cultural and artistic relations, and two-way tourism sustained mutual understanding on other levels. Cubans continued to visit the United States as though it were the home of an old friend; North Americans traveled to Cuba to enjoy the country's climate and natural beauty, while at the same time relishing the joyful nature of the Cuban. It can be said that the war led North Americans to discover Cuba, since before the war, notwithstanding the Cuban presence in the United States and the proximity of the island, there were not many visitors to Cuba, and there were even fewer settlers. After the war, however, many North AmericansCmainly from the SouthCsettled in Cuba to devote themselves primarily to industry and agriculture.
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To increase cultural ties between the two countries, in the summer of 1900 the U.S. provisional government in Cuba joined with Harvard University in inviting some 1,300 Cuban teachers to Boston to take an intensive course in modern pedagogy. This was an unprecedented experiment in international relations. Their studies at Harvard completed, the teachers visited various educational centers in the East, including New York and Philadelphia, and were received in Washington by President McKinley. Upon their return to various parts of Cuba, these teachers shared an improved perspective on the United States and applied valuable new knowledge of the most advanced teaching methods.
The Cuban refugees of the last century were also political exiles who had not come to seek a new life but rather to seek a haven of freedom until the circumstances which had forced them to leave their homeland changed. That is why a great majority of them returned to their island when Spain was defeated. In addition to demonstrating a love of liberty and democratic institutions, Cubans in the United States showed themselves to be an imaginative and hard-working people; in the new Republic, these same virtues which had distinguished them abroad had fill play, and as a result Cuba became one of the most advanced and progressive countries in Latin America.
In the first fifteen years of the Republic, economic progress was impressive: sugar production went from 300 thousand tons to 3 million, and in 1924 it reached 5 million, which represented one-quarter of total worldwide production. Tobacco production tripled in this same period. In 1898, there were fewer than 1,000 miles of rail lines, but by 1917 there were some 4,000 in use. From a level of 100 million dollars of commercial activity in 1900, Cuban trade reached a par with that of Spain (whose population was ten times greater) before the Republic celebrated its twentieth anniversary, and in 1924 it reached 700 million dollars. Public health and education also attained previously unknown levels. With a population increase of almost one million inhabitants in these first fifteen years, seven times more children received an education than in 1895, and the University of Havana obtained five times more funding than during the colonial period. Culture, journalism and public works also advanced during the early years of the Republic, although these areas ultimately suffered setbacks caused by corruption and political abuses.
The political emigration of Cubans to the United States in this century can be said to have begun in 1917. In that year, the second president of the Republic, General José Miguel Gómez (1858-1921), was forced to leave Cuba to settle in Miami. General Gómez had opposed the reelection of the third president, Mario G. Menocal (cited previously) and stared a revolution to oust him. Gómez was sentenced to prison, and after serving time, went into exile. He died in New York shortly after meeting with President Warren G. Harding regarding the issue of Cuba. In time, three other Cuban presidents would come to settle in Florida: Gerardo Machado (1871-1939), who was removed from office by popular uprising and died in Miami; Fulgencio Batista (1899-1973), who lived in Daytona Beach when his mandate ended in 1944; and Carlos Prío Socarrás (1903-1979), whose government was overthrown by Batista in a coup d'état in 1952 and who also died in Miami.
During the 1930's and 1950's, political turmoil in Cuba resulted in small, temporary waves of refugees who clustered mainly in Miami and New York. Thus Cubans once again began to participate in certain sectors of American life. José Antonio Ramos (1855-1943), a noted novelist, dramatist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was such a refugee. He returned to Havana when the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado ended in 1933 in order to continue his career as author, diplomat and librarian. Following the tradition of other Cubans in the past century, in 1935 he published in Mexico a history of North American literature which provided Spanish-speaking readers with a basic knowledge of contemporary authors. Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), a sociologist and folklorist, emigrated to Washington in 1931, where he lived until 1933, the year of Machado's fall. In the United States, he gave lectures on the economic relations between this country and Cuba, stressing the extent of the damage the Cubans had endured. Ortiz collaborated on the Hispanic Historical Review and a journal of the Pan- American Union, among others, and years later was awarded an honorary doctorate by Columbia University for his writings on the black culture and social problems of Cuba. Jorge Mañach (1899-1961), Cuba's premier essayist of the twentieth century and a Harvard graduate, was forced to flee when for the first time dictator Fulgencio Batista came to power, and between 1935 and 1939 he taught at Columbia University. As a professor, through the Instituto de las Españas (Spanish Institute) and in Columbia University's Revista Hispánica Moderna, Mañach contributed significantly to knowledge of Latin American authors among students of Spanish literature. Afterwards Jorge Mañach held high-level positions in Cuba's political and intellectual circles until he was forced into exile again in 1960, this time in flight from communism. Likewise Carlos de la Torre (1858-1950), scholar, scientist and Doctor Honoris Causa at Harvard, came to the United States for political reasons. In 1932 he founded and directed in New York a Revolutionary Board comprised of important political exiles living in this country: an ex-president, General Menocal (cited previously); three future presidents —Carlos Mendieta (1873-1960), Ramón Grau San Martín (1887-1969) and Miguel Mariano Gómez (1890-1950)— and numerous prestigious professionals and intellectuals. Another professor who taught in this country in the 1940's was Herminio Portell Vilá (1901), who was on the faculty of George Washington University and American University, both in Washington, D.C., and of the University of California at Los Angeles. Between 1931 and 1935 Portell Vilá received several grants from the Guggenheim Foundation. The author of several books about U.S.-Cuban relations, he taught at the University of Havana until 1959, when he settled in Washington as a political refugee.
Although not for political reasons, other prestigious Cubans came to settle in the United States prior to 1959: doctors, lawyers and other professionals and artists and athletes. Among the professors, some notable examples are Eugenio Florit (1903), a professor at Barnard College and Columbia University in New York between 1945 and 1979, when he retired as Doctor Emeritus; José Juan Arrom (1910), also retired as Doctor Emeritus from Yale University, where he taught after graduating in 1937; and José Antonio Portuondo (1911), a professor from 1946 to 1953 at the Universities of New Mexico, Wisconsin, Columbia and Pennsylvania, and later rector of the University of Santiago in Cuba.
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