There is probably no way to bring about honesty in Cuba: elections, except by evolution toward better standards, or unless there is an upheaval that will overwhelm the present political class. Until one or other happens, election laws are likely to be just so much waste paper. There is nothing in sight at present, however, to make one expectant of either eventuality for many years.7

'This chapter is based in part on the various election laws, which may be found in the official Gazette, or Gaceta, at the appropriate date. Nearly every volume or article dealing with political happenings in Cuba has something to say about election

evils. The volumes of Barbarrosa Cabrera, Collazo, Dolz, Martinez Ortiz, Merino and Ibarzabal, and Pardo Suárez are particularly noteworthy, and among scores of articles those of Marvin, Ortiz, Scott, and Spinden are perhaps outstanding.

CHAPTER XXV

SOCIAL FACTORS IN CUBAN LIFE 1

Cuba has a population of more than three millions; at the close of 1922 it was estimated that there were 3,123,040 persons in the island, of whom 2,193,936, or almost exactly seventy per cent, were white, while most of the rest were black. The presence of two such dissimilar races in the island is only one factor, however, in the numerous problems of Cuban society. Foreigners make up a goodly proportion of the whites, and they do not become Cuban. The colored people are patriotic, but retain many of their ancestral traits. There are no organized classes. The white laborer is to be distinguished from the colored, and the Spanish capitalist from the Cuban. In fine, there is no real national unity, or, as one writer has put it, the Cuban state is "an almost hypothetical entity," because there is no "Cuban society."2

A discriminating census, taken by a group of men from Mississippi, would probably cut down the white man's pro

1

'As originally planned it was intended to include separate chapters on the Cuban social inheritance, race problems, women, and education. When eventually it was decided to deal primarily with political conditions since 1902, it seemed desirable to include at least some hint of these other matters, in addition to what appears, incidentally, elsewhere in the narrative. This chapter is not to

be considered as in any sense a summary, however, but rather as a suggestion that might work out in formulation into quite different proportions.

'Carrión, Miguel de, El desenvolvimiento social de Cuba en los últimos veinte años, in Cuba contemporánea, v. XXVII, pp. 6-27, at 24; Sept., 1921.

portion very materially from the now generally estimated seventy per cent. The difference is that in the United States a man is "colored" unless he is all white, while in Cuba one may "pass for white," notwithstanding a few kinky hairs and a shadowy complexion. Certainly, many of the "white" Cubans of the rural districts, or "guajiros," as they are called, have some negro blood in them. Even on this basis the whites were once so greatly in the minority that they were in terror lest Cuba become "another Haiti." That danger seems now to be too remote for serious consideration, as the whites, already in the majority, are gaining a greater and greater preponderance every year. This is due to immigration, which is for the most part white. Thousands of negro laborers come in each year from Haiti and Jamaica during cane-cutting season, but most of them are shipped out again as soon as the crop is gathered. Those who remain do not multiply to any extent, as they are rarely accompanied by wives. In 1919 the census showed 44,609 persons in Cuba born in other islands of the West Indies, of whom 8,318 were women.

He

As already pointed out, the Cuban negro differs from his racial brother in the United States, and many observers claim that the Cuban is the better of the two. He has the courteous Spanish manner and personal dignity; his features have little of the thickness so characteristic of the American negro; he dresses neatly and in reasonably good taste; and he is not domineering or loud-mouthed. makes a good laborer in the fields, and can be used with success in some of the lighter forms of manufacturing. His faults are those of the race wherever it is found. He lacks morality, as measured by Anglo-Saxon standards, but he confines his amours to people of his own color, and has not Cf. supra, p. 22.

been guilty of attacks on white women. He is inclined to idleness, and somewhat addicted to petty dishonesty. He retains a little more superstition, perhaps, than does the negro of the United States, and is reputed to find some medium for its expression in his ñañigos, or secret societies. While it could hardly be said that he is on a plane of social and political equality with the whites, there is a real toleration that allows him to aspire to distinction in any field. Two negroes have been among the leading figures in the political life of the republic, Martín Morúa Delgado (once president of the Senate and later Secretary of Agriculture) and Juan Gualberto Gómez (senator and spellbinder from Oriente), while there have been many others who have attained to high place not only in politics but also in journalism and literature.

There is a considerable number of Chinese who help to make up the thirty per cent of Cuba's colored population. They began to be imported into the country to serve as laborers during the latter half of the nineteenth century, but as their coming has always represented almost wholly an immigration of men, there were few of them left at the outset of the republican era. According to the census of 1919 there were 16,146 persons of the yellow race in the island, of whom 15,518 were men. Only 10,300, however, were definitely entered as Chinese, though doubtless there were many more in the group styled "unknown." Mention has already been made of their entry by the thousands in recent years, despite the existence of anti-Mongolian immigration laws. They serve mainly as laborers in the fields, although a few are merchants or truck gardeners. As in other parts of the world, they keep to themselves, and since there are not many women among them they appear Cf. supra, pp. 481-482.

4

4

to be a mere passing factor in the social history of the is land.5

By all odds the most important element numerically among the foreigners are the Spaniards. Thousands come into Cuba every year, most of them from Galicia and Asturias or other parts of northern Spain; in 1923, for example, the official records showed 46,439 immigrants from Spain. Most of them intend to return to their native country as soon as they have accumulated wealth enough to live comfortably thenceforward in the towns where they were born; so there is a heavy outgoing flow of the Spanish population. For the same reason the great majority of Spanish immigrants are men. The census of 1919 shows that out of a total of 272,030 foreigners, 245,644 were Spaniards, or about eight and a half per cent of the entire population of the island, but only 58,472 were women, as against 187,172

men.

However Spaniards may have lacked perfection in political matters, they have usually enjoyed a high rating in the business world. Certainly this is true of them in Cuba. They occupy a prominent place in the sugar and tobacco industries, but in the main they are not so much a landholding as they are a commercial, money-lending class. They are the principal retail merchants in the island, in big business and in little. While many of them remain in Havana,— there were 76,390 in the capital and 97,539 in Havana province as a whole in 1919,-they dominate the mercantile life of the rural districts almost as outstandingly as that of the

'It must be borne in mind that most uncivil elements of population," the racial situation indicated by the or, in other words, "uncivilized census of 1919 may have been Ethiopians and unabsorbable Asiatics. changed considerably by the activ- with their smallpox, malaria, feity of the Zayas government in en- tiches, opium, and misery." Ortiz. couraging "the public and clandes- 29. tine immigration of the worst and