Near the foot of the Prado, and occupying one of the most prominent sites in the city, is the immense yellow building of the Havana Carcel, which is not infrequently mistaken by tourists for the Palace. It is used as a Carcel or city jail, with entrance on the Prado, and a Presidio or penitentiary for the island, entrance on Zulueta street, and also contains an audiencia or court room. It was built in 1839 by Governor-General Tacon, chiefly by convict labor of chain gangs made up of runaway slaves, white malefactors and Carlist prisoners from Spain; and it is recorded that Tacon financed the undertaking with certain public funds which, before his time, had been diverted by dishonest officials. The building is 300 by 240 feet, and surrounds a large interior court or patio, which is filled with shrubbery. It has room for 5,000 men; there have been at times 1,000 prisoners within its walls. There were 600 here when the Americans came to Havana, many of whom had been incarcerated for years without trial. One hundred of this class were released, and of sixty others the sentences were commuted. The Americans cleaned up the dreadfully filthy building, and introduced many reforms of administration. The Carcel contains the garrote, which is the Cuban instrument of capital punishment. It consists of a semi-circular iron band or collar, which fits the front part of the victim's neck; and has in the back of it a screw, which, working on the principle of the screw of a letter-copying press, presses against the first vertebra near the junction of the skull. A sudden turn of the screw crushes the bone and spinal cord, and death is instantaneous. While the garrote is held in universal infamy, largely for the reason that so many martyrs of the Cuban cause were executed by it, it is nevertheless a merciful instrument of death. Garroting is pronounced by physicians to be more humane than hanging. Executions formerly were public spectacles. To turn to lighter things, it may be recalled that in the old days in Havana malefactors were scourged in public, the victim being paraded through the

streets, mounted backwards on a mule, and whipped at various designated points in the city until his full complement of lashes had been received. When Tacon chose this site for his prison, the spot was far outside the city wall, and near-by, where the Students' Memorial now stands, was the place of public execution. But however remote from the life of Havana the Carcel may have been when it was established, the growth of the town and the extension of the park systems have given it a conspicuousness and nearness to the city's pleasure grounds which are seriously deprecated. It thrusts itself upon the notice of the throngs of the Prado and the Malecón, and is out of harmony with the surroundings. The American government of intervention entertained a pian to remove the jail prisoners to the Hospital Militar, at the head of the harbor, and the penitentiary convicts to the Cabaña, and thus to make the splendid building available for public offices; but the scheme was abandoned. A more recent proposition is a plan to utilize the magnificent site for a hotel. The Carcel was listed in a city schedule in 1900 at $464,000. (For changed conditions see "Carcel" in index.)

Just beyond the northern end of the Carcel, where an armed guard keeps watch by day and by night, is the Students' Memorial. The simple panel is

set in a fragment of the wall of the old Commissary Building, which stood here in the days when Havana was full of Spanish troops. When the building was demolished by the Americans, in the general rearrangement and parking of the land around the Punta, this bit was preserved as a fitting memorial of one of the tragic incidents in Havana's history. The ground in front of the wall was a place of public execution; it was here that certain students of the University of Havana were sacrificed to the animosity of the Spanish Volunteers.

It was the rule in Cuba that all offices-civil, military and ecclesiasticwere filled by Spaniards born in Spain. Even the Cuban-born sons of Spanish parents were disqualified from holding office. The children of the first generation were counted Cubans, not Spaniards; the old saying ran, "A Spaniard can do anything in Cuba except raise a Spaniard son.” The natives of Spain were called Peninsulars; the natives of Cuba Insulars, and the feeling between the two was bitter. The Peninsulars organized themselves into a militia corps of volunteers (Instituto de los Volunterios de Cuba) commonly known as "Spanish Volunteers," answering to the National Guard of the United States. In 1872 the Corps numbered 80,000 men. Their duties were to guard towns and public property, suppress disorder, and when occasion demanded to fight Cuban insurgents. In 1871, when the Ten Years' War (1868-78) was in progress, there was printed in Havana a paper called "La Voz de Cuba," the "Voice of Cuba." Its editor, Gonzalo Castañon, a Colonel of the Volunteers, published some derogatory remarks concerning Cuban women. The calumny aroused intense indignation among the outraged Cubans. Castañon was challenged to fight a duel, and in an encounter with a Cuban was killed, and was buried in one of the dove-cote like tombs of the Espada Cemetery. A party of students of the Medical School of the University of Havana were one day visiting the cemetery, and while near the tomb of Castañon, one of them said something which reflected upon the dead Colonel of Volunteers. A Spanish soldier overheard the remark, and repeated it to a Spanish judge, with a further accusation that the students had defaced the glass which closed the Castañon tomb. Forty-three of the students were arrested, charged with the offense, and brought to trial before a court martial. They were defended by a Spanish officer, Capdevilla, and by his eloquence and the clear evidence of their innocence, were acquitted. The result of the trial enraged the Volunteers, and they obtained from the Captain-General an order for the assembling of a second court mai dial, two-thirds of the members of which should be Volunteers. The boys were a second time arrested and a second time put in jeopardy of their lives. After a trial which was a farce, all the accused were declared guilty. Eight of them, mere boys, the oldest sixteen years, were chosen by lot to be shot. The rest were sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor. The father of one of the boys condemned to death, who possessed an immense fortune, in

vain offered all his wealth as a ransom for his son's life. On November 27, 1871, in the presence of 15,000 Spanish Volunteers under arms, the boys were executed on this spot. The panel records the event and the names of the victims:

On the 27th of November, 1871, there were sacrificed in front of this place, by the Spanish Volunteers of Havana, the eight young Cuban students of the First Year of Medicine:

Alonso Alvarez de la Campa,
Carlos Augusto de Latorre,

Pascual Rodriguez Perez,

Angel Laborde,

José de Marcos Medina,
Eladio Gonzalez Toledo,
Anacleto Bermudez,
Carlos Verdugo.

To their eternal memory, this tablet is dedicated, the 27th of November, 1899.

In the bronze wreath beneath is inscribed "Inocentes." Sus compañeros. 20 de Mayo, 1902-"Innocent." Their Comrades. May 20, 1902.

The affair created intense indignation everywhere; the Spanish Cortes investigated the case and formally pronounced the students guiltless. Some years after a scn of Castañon came to Cuba from Spain for his father's remains. He was attended at the tomb by a notary public, before whom he made declaration, as the result of his examination then, that the tomb had never been disturbed. In 1888 the Students' Monument in memory of the martyred boys was provided by popular subscription, and is now one of the chief adornments of the Colón Cemetery.