Cuban Independence Movement

▪ Cuban history

      nationalist uprising in Cuba against Spanish rule. It began with the unsuccessful Ten Years' War (Guerra de los Diez Años; 1868–78) and culminated in the U.S. intervention that ended the Spanish colonial presence in the Americas (see Spanish-American War).

      Dissatisfied with the corrupt and inefficient Spanish administration, lack of political representation, and high taxes, Cubans in the eastern provinces united under the wealthy planter Carlos Manuel de Céspedes (Céspedes, Carlos Manuel de), whose declaration of independence in October 1868, the Grito de Yara (“Cry of Yara”), signaled the beginning of the Ten Years' War, in which 200,000 lives were lost. Céspedes had the support of some landowners, whose main interest was economic and political independence from Spain, whereas the farmers and labourers were more concerned with the immediate abolition of slavery and greater political power for the common man.

      In 1876 Spain sent General Arsenio Martínez Campos (Martínez Campos, Arsenio) to crush the revolution. Lacking organization and significant outside support, the rebels agreed to an armistice in February 1878 (Pact of Zanjón), the terms of which promised amnesty and political reform. A second uprising, La Guerra Chiquita (“The Little War”), engineered by Calixto García, began in August 1879 but was quelled by superior Spanish forces in autumn 1880. Spain gave Cuba representation in the Cortes (parliament) and abolished slavery in 1886. Other promised reforms, however, never materialized.

      In 1894 Spain canceled a trade pact between Cuba and the United States. The imposition of more taxes and trade restrictions prodded the economically distressed Cubans in 1895 to launch the Cuban War of Independence, a resumption of the earlier struggle. Inspired by José Martí—poet, journalist, and ideological spokesman of the revolution—and employing sophisticated guerrilla tactics under the leadership of Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo, the revolutionary army took control of the eastern region, declared the Republic of Cuba in September 1895, and sent Maceo's forces to invade the western provinces.

      By January 1896 rebel forces controlled most of the island, and the Spanish government replaced Martínez Campos with General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau (Weyler y Nicolau, Valeriano, Marqués De Tenerife), who soon became known as El Carnicero (“The Butcher”). In order to deprive the revolutionaries of the rural support on which they depended, Weyler instituted a brutal program of “reconcentration,” forcing hundreds of thousands of Cubans into camps in the towns and cities, where they died of starvation and disease by the tens of thousands.

      In 1897 Spain recalled Weyler, offered home rule to Cuba, and, the next year, ordered the end of reconcentration. All this failed to prevent the Spanish-American War. By the time of the American intervention in April 1898, Maceo had been killed and Spain had control of most of the urban areas, but the rebels still controlled about three-fourths of the island's area, and Cuban resistance to Spanish rule was virtually universal. The war was over by August 12, when the United States and Spain signed a preliminary peace treaty. By the Treaty of Paris of Dec. 10, 1898, Spain withdrew from Cuba. A U.S. occupation force remained for over three years, until the Republic of Cuba was effected on May 20, 1902.

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