Cuban War of Independence
| date | 1895 to 1898 |
|---|---|
| place | Cuba |
| output | Autonomy for Cuba |
| consequences | American intervention and loss of Cuba to Spain |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
|
|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| around 20,500 men | up to 175,000 men |
| losses | |
|
at least 11,488 soldiers |
at least 44,389 soldiers |
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The (third) Cuban War of Independence or War of '95 is the last of the three Cuban Wars of Independence against the Kingdom of Spain . It began in 1895 with the " war cry of Baire " and ended with the surrender of the Spanish troops in the face of the United States' entry into the war in 1898 in the Spanish-American War that followed .
prehistory
The 19th century saw the loss of most of its colonies for Spain . Among the colonies that were still under Spanish rule at the end of that century were Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines . In Cuba, at the latest with the end of the Restoration War in the Dominican Republic , after which the royal Spanish troops were driven from the Caribbean island, as well as the Cuban Ten Years War there were latent efforts for independence . However, at the same time there were other tendencies towards political emancipation , but these were not particularly well defined. Among those currents which, led by José Martí , sought the secession from Spain, were among others the autonomists ("autonomistas"), represented by Rafael Montoro , and the reformers ("reformistas"), represented by José Antonio Saco . The conditions did not promise success for an uprising against the Spanish colonial power. The germ of freedom and general dissatisfaction among the population, as it was also valid in all other independence movements in Latin America and had its origin in the Ten Years' War , continued to mature. And, although slavery has since been officially abolished, living conditions for blacks and mulattos remained precarious. Nevertheless, a few years passed during which José Martí prepared the general uprising. The charismatic leader managed to create unity by jointly persuading the two most important military leaders of the independence movement, Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo , to resume the war of independence.
The role of José Martí
The place that José Martí ultimately occupied in American history , especially that of Cuba as one of the heroes and defenders of freedom and independence, began to develop in his youth. At that time, he was sent to prison for writing a letter to a classmate in which he reprimanded him for joining the "Volunteer Corps" ( Cuerpo de Voluntarios ), which represented Spanish interests.
After the prison, Martí was deported to Spain, where he studied. His return to Cuba was accompanied by constant surveillance by Spanish security forces, which forced him to detour through other American states such as Guatemala , Mexico , Venezuela or the United States .
In the USA he founded the Partido Revolucionario Cubano ( Cuban Revolutionary Party ) with the support of exiled Cubans and the Cuban communities in Tampa and New York . Later on, Puerto Rican patriots joined the Cuban Independence Forces on the condition that the Cubans do the same in reverse for Puerto Rico .
Knowing the reasons for the failure of the Ten Years War , Martí worked out conditions so that the mistakes made at the time would not be repeated. He gave the military forces unlimited freedom in terms of strategy and tactics . Civil power should concentrate solely on tasks such as maintaining diplomatic connections, financing and legalizing the war, and governing the liberated areas.
Martí traveled to Costa Rica , where Antonio Maceo lived, to convince him of the need for the struggle for independence. He did the same with Máximo Gómez , who lived in the Dominican Republic . There he also signed the Manifiesto de Montecristi ( Manifesto of Montecristi ), in which the need for Cuba's independence was expressed.
From Haiti he set sail and landed at the Playitas Cajobabo , where only small military units were stationed, at the same time as the Grito de Baire and the uprising in numerous areas of the Orient in Cuba.
The war
The Ten Years' War had led to a politicization and greater sympathy and willingness to support large parts of the Cuban population for the freedom fighters, who planned and carried out an invasion in the west from their bases in eastern Cuba .
In order to prevent them from separating the Cuban guerrilla troops from the civilian population and denying them access to weapons, food, medicine, clothing and military information, the new Governor General Valeriano Weyler ordered the following on October 21, 1896:
“All residents of the rural areas and all residents outside the fortified military lines [of the province of Pinar del Río ] must report to troop-occupied villages within eight days. Anyone who is picked up away from the fortifications after this period is considered an insurgent and will be punished as such. "
While this order for the forced resettlement of the population, known in the official terminology as reconcentración , initially only applied to the province in the west of the island, this measure to combat guerrillas was gradually transferred to all provinces by the end of May 1897. In the course of time, over 80 fortified towns and villages emerged, in which at least 400,000 people were interned, who led a miserable existence in improvised huts, barracks and old warehouses. Since the Spanish colonial administration could neither provide the necessary hygienic measures nor - not least because of the blockade of the fortified places by the rebels - ensure adequate supplies, tens of thousands of internees died of malnutrition and epidemics.
Another measure of the Spanish army was the trocha , a locking bar from Júcaro to Morón in what is now the central Cuban province of Ciego de Ávila , through which the advance of the liberation army into the western regions of Cuba should be prevented. Although José Martí was killed at the beginning of the war on May 19, 1895 and Maceo was also killed in battle west of Havana on December 7, 1896 , these successes did not bring the Spanish army any decisive advantages. The more the war dragged on, the more the Spanish army appeared in the eyes of the foreign public as incapable of mastering the situation, and the more the situation in Cuba there became an object of public interest.
In particular, the brutal war of the Spanish army against the Cuban civilian population in the USA was registered, whose population felt strong sympathy for the rebels and whose press continuously reported on the Spanish atrocities in Cuba. Aside from the humanitarian commitment to which Americans felt pressured, economic reasons also played a role for the American interest in Cuba, since US companies already held a not inconsiderable share of the Cuban economy at this point.
US President Grover Cleveland declared in December 1896 that the US would not show unlimited patience with Spain, and President William McKinley finally stated in his Annual Message 1897 that the US could be forced to intervene in the face of ongoing Spanish repression. In March 1898, several politicians and advisers, including Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. , informed McKinley that many US businessmen were pushing for a quick solution to the Cuban question because of their economic interests. On March 27, 1898 McKinley issued an ultimatum to Spain demanding an armistice.
Spain tried to counteract US and domestic pressure with the recall of Weylers and the project of autonomy for the island. The autonomy for Cuba, for which Maura , Abarzuza and Cánovas del Castillo stood up in Spain , was finally achieved by the government of Práxedes Mateo Sagasta and overseas minister Segismundo Moret . A constitution was drawn up for Cuba, which promised the country extensive autonomy from September 25, 1897, with the only proviso that the governor-general should ensure compliance with the royal decrees, which guarantee the political equality of those living on the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico Spaniards determined with the local population and guaranteed universal suffrage for November 25, 1897. The first autonomous government was established on January 1, 1898, chaired by José María Gálvez Alonso . However, despite the clear progress made, none of the central government's initiatives were ultimately successful. The independence fighters and parts of the Creole oligarchy that supported them rejected the autonomy as too little, and certain US interventionists were also a thorn in the side of a possible continued Spanish presence.
The American intervention
→ Main article Spanish-American War
On January 25, the US battleship USS Maine anchored in the Bay of Havana ( Bahía de La Habana ) in order to put pressure on the Spaniards through its presence (" gunboat policy "). On February 15, 1898, the ship exploded. On April 24, Spain declared war on the United States. The next day, the US Congress declared that the United States had been at war with Spain since April 21. On July 3rd, 1898, the entire Spanish Atlantic fleet was destroyed by the numerically superior and technically more advanced US Navy (→ Naval Battle of Santiago de Cuba ). Santiago de Cuba capitulated on July 15th; Puerto Rico on July 25th (that day General Nelson A. Miles landed there with 3,300 men), Manila (Philippines) on August 14th. On July 17, 1898, the Spaniards asked for an armistice for the Cuban theater of war. The preliminary peace was signed in Washington on August 12, and the cessation of fighting was agreed. With the Peace of Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain's supremacy in Cuba , Puerto Rico , Guam and the Philippines ended ; these islands were occupied by US troops. The occupation of Cuba lasted until 1902.
Victim
Although the figures are controversial among historians to this day, it is certain that the reconcentración fell victim to between 155,000 and 170,000 people, which corresponded to around 10 percent of the island's population. The abolition of the inhumane internment, however, did little to improve the situation of most of the Reconcentrados at first, since the Spanish army had pursued a scorched earth strategy in the previously depopulated areas . Given the total destruction of the infrastructure and of everything that could have served the rebels in any way in the eyes of the army, there were no places to which the Reconcentrados could return.
The Spanish army, on the other hand, suffered most of the casualties from diseases, against which the local guerrillas were far better protected than the soldiers from the European mainland.
Democratic transition
The freedom fighters' dissatisfaction with the current situation in their respective countries became apparent very quickly. Although Puerto Rico and the Philippines remained colonies for decades, this time not Spain, but the United States, a corresponding pressure within Cuba to create their own country created the early clearance of this country by the USA.
At the same time, they left open the possibility of further intervention in the form of “securing independence”. These were in a draft constitution , enmienda de Plat , called committed. This was approved on June 12, 1901 by the Constituent Assembly of Cuba.
On May 20, 1902, the Republic of Cuba was born with the inauguration of its first President Tomás Estrada Palma . However, it was not until the presidency of José Miguel Gómez (Liberal Party) from 1909 that the so-called intervention government ("Gobierno de Intervención") of the USA ended. During this time, among other things, the lease agreement for the Guantanamo base was concluded on July 2, 1903 , which continues to this day.
However, independence did little to change the situation of the poorest part of the Cuban population. It became clear again that the independence movement mainly represented the interests of the dominant rural oligarchy . As a result, there was an uprising among the black population in 1912, which prompted the USA to intervene again.
The crisis in Spain in 1898
The loss of its colonies, especially Cuba, triggered a deep identity crisis in Spain that also drew wide social, political and cultural circles. It got its cultural expression in the so-called generation of '98 or in " regenerationism ".
Contemporary artists were influenced by the crisis and its historical context and dealt with topics such as the “loss of historical personality” (“Pérdida de personalidad histórica”) of Spain, among others.
literature
- Andreas Stucki: uprising and forced relocation. The Cuban Wars of Independence 1868–1898 (= studies on the history of violence in the 20th century ). Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-86854-252-3 .
- Michael Zeuske : A Brief History of Cuba. 4th, revised and updated edition. CH Beck, Munich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69699-2 .
- Michael Zeuske, Max Zeuske: Cuba 1492–1902. Colonial history, wars of independence and first occupation by the USA . Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-931922-83-9 .
Web links
- Agustín Sánchez Andrés: Entre la espada y la pared: el régimen autonomico cubano, 1897–1898. ( Memento of October 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Mexicana del Caribe. July 1, 2003 (magazine, Spanish)
- Marta Bizcarrondo: Cuba: La autonomía olvidada . In: El País . December 2, 1997. (Spanish)
References and comments
- ↑ Stucki (2012), p. 86f.
- ↑ Stucki (2012), p. 186.
- ↑ a b Stucki (2012), p. 185. - The numbers are to be viewed as lower limit values, but the actual number of victims should not be significantly higher.
- ↑ Quoted from Stucki (2012), p. 7.
- ↑ United States, Department of State (Ed.): Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States transmitted to Congress with the annual message of the President. Born in 1901 (= United States Congressional serial set , Volume 3743). US Government Printing Office, Washington DC 1901, pp. 824-830.
- ↑ Stucki (2012), pp. 8 and 268f.
- ↑ See Stucki (2012), pp. 201–206 and 369f.