The Story of Cuba

“The Story of Cuba is a tragedy.” Murat Halstead wrote it while the insurrection was still burning — four centuries of Spanish rule, the sugar and slave economy, Weyler’s camps, and an America deciding whether to intervene.

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Statistical and Documentary: Spanish

Another measure adopted at the beginning of the revolution, and now accepted by us, is that permitting the burning of buildings used by the enemy as forts. It is false that we are inspired in this by personal feelings of revenge, as the Spanish government says we are. It is only a war measure. We are uniformly humane. We set Spanish prisoners free, and despite the sanguinary conduct of the enemy toward peaceful people and Cuban prisoners, we shall not retaliate. Nor do we accept bandits in our ranks. Those bands which were in existence before the revolution began, and came to us volunteering to fight for Cuban liberty, we have accepted, and will permit to remain with us as long as their conduct is honorable. Others, who intended to dishonor the name of Cuba's soldiery, were promptly punished. There are no bandits to-day in the Cuban camps, as there were in Cuba in the days of Spanish rule. To be known, therefore, to all Cubans, to the enemy, and to the world at large, that a few sugar estates are grinding their crop at present, because we respect their contracts with our military chiefs, and because they pay us high taxes. Thus we prove our strength, and if unhappily, our forces, to-day victorious, should ultimately be vanquished, we shall have the courage to destroy all sugar estates rather than permit the continuance of Spanish tyranny in Cuba. Let Cuba perish if she cannot obtain her independence. SALVADOR CISNEROS, President of the Republic Ciego de Najasa, January, 1896. LETTER FROM GOMEZ. (Received by the Cuban Delegate in New York.) SAGUA, March 19, 1896.

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