THE first tourist to the balmy island of Cuba, went ashore Oct. 28, 1492, sword in one hand, cross in the other, saying: "The most beautiful land human eyes have ever beheld." The gentle Siboney Indians left their hammocks and met Christopher Columbus, crying: "Peace, we are friends." A quarter of a century after Columbus' first voyage to the New World, Cuba's gold and precious woods adorned Madrid, and many Indians had died of overwork and by their own hands. Blackbirders slid into Havana harbor with Negro slaves, and on their wretched backs rose an elegant, sugar-based society of stately mansions.
The U.S. cast covetous eyes at the "Pearl of the Antilles"; Thomas Jefferson said: "We must have Cuba." But while other Spanish colonies rebelled, Cuba reveled in its reputation as Spain's "Ever Faithful Isle." Not until 1868 did revolution start. A planter named Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, crying "Freedom or Death," burned his hacienda near the town of Yara, freed his slaves and began a 30-year struggle. Máximo ("The Fox") Gómez and Antonio ("The Lion") Maceo rallied 26,000 Cubans to the "Grito de Yara [Cry of Yara]" and fought a hit-and-run war. In 1878 the Spaniards offered political reforms, then betrayed their promises. The Ten Year War cost 258,000 lives.
The Poet-Hero. In 1895 a frail, romantic poet renewed the call to freedom. He was José Martí, who had spent six months in ball and chain for such lines as:
Oh, how sweet it is when one dies Fighting audaciously for one's country*
Marti re-recruited the Lion and the Fox, and on April 11, 1895 landed in Oriente, the rebel lair. Six weeks later, at 42, he died sweetly in battle, and Cuba got its national hero. Spain vowed: "Cuba shall remain Spanish though it takes the last man and the last peseta." Rebel General Gómez vowed: "We will be free, though we have to raise a tomb in each home." New York Herald Correspondent Stephen Bonsai, father of the new U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, visited Havana's Laurel Ditch, the Spanish execution ground, and wrote: "Clots of dark human blood, as we slipped on it, clung to our feet like glue. In the wall, a thousand ghastly bullet holes." Spain's efficient, Prussian-descended General Valeriano ("The Butcher") Weyler, the elegant Marquis of Tenerife, decreed that the noncombatants be rounded up into huge concentration camps. In Havana province alone, 50,000 prisoners starved to death. After the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana harbor, the U.S. outcry brought a declaration of war, sent the Marines and Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders to free Cuba.
Major General Leonard Wood, original commander of the Rough Riders, moved up to govern Cuba, and in 90 days stamped out the Aëdes aegypti mosquito, freeing Havana of yellow fever for the first time in 140 years. Four years after the U.S. marched in, it marched out.