What were the sources that nourished Cuban reformism? It was informed by the best of Spanish liberal thought (Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and Francisco Pi y Margall); Latin America thought that inspired the wars of independence in South America; liberal-bourgeois ideas from the United States had an ever greater influence in Cuba; and, finally, the European bourgeois liberalism that led to the French revolution of 1789. Cuban bourgeois liberalism (or reformism) was never an imitation of trends elsewhere but rather amalgamated and adapted those ideas to Cuba’s situation.
Francisco de Arango y Parreño was the main representative of bourgeois reformism in Cuba in the first half of the 19th century. A profound scholar and champion of the European enlightenment, he was a slaveholder who was typical of the growing dissent on the sugarcane plantations. He was proud of being Cuban, although he confused the Spanish homeland with Cuba. For him, Cuba meant a nation of whites, whom he believed embodied the nascent sense of nationality, and he saw the slave trade and plantation system as fundamental to the economic development of the island. He rejected the idea of independence because he thought Cuba could exist under Spanish rule without separating itself from the monarchy. His efforts in Madrid allowed him to obtain significant benefits for the slave-owning sector he represented.
Arango’s reformism, therefore, produced very good results up to the time when independence movements developed in South America. The liberation of South America and the end of Spanish enlightened rule with the reign of Ferdinand VII changed Spain’s relations with Cuba. Spain now sought to obtain from Cuba the riches lost with the independence of its other South American colonies. Therefore, Madrid granted the captain-general exceptional, all-encompassing powers in 1825 and expelled the Cubans who had been elected deputies to the Cortes in 1837. In the 1830s, Cuba was no longer considered to be an integral part of the Spanish kingdom and was simply viewed as a valuable sugar colony to be exploited. This, along with the maturing of nationalist sentiment among new and broader social sectors in Cuba, meant that the bourgeois reformism of the large slaveholders was replaced by the reformism of other social groups.
The social scientist José Antonio Saco was the best representative of this new wave of reformism. A tenacious champion of Cuban nationalism and daring critic of the flaws of colonialism, Saco was prominent among young intellectuals, such as the educator and philosopher José de la Luz y Caballero. Their ideas were very different from the interests of the large slaveholders and based on the preaching of Bishop Juan José Díaz de Espada, which reflected the burgeoning middle classes in Cuba. The abolition of the slave trade presupposed the eventual end of slavery itself. Criticism of the Spanish government’s plantation system helped enormously to awaken various sectors to the evils of colonialism. But Saco left the country in 1834 and Luz y Caballero’s health declined, undermining the possible effectiveness of this reformist current in the 1830s.
In the 1870s, bourgeois reformist ideas were revived under Captain-General Francisco Serrano, Duke de la Torre, whose wife came from an important Cuban family. The plantation system was already showing clear symptoms of crisis, and production was increasingly focused on the US market. Thus, the language of the new reformists was more moderate than in earlier eras. Now headed by José Morales Lemus, this group advocated economic and political reforms and the abolition of slavery with compensation for the slaveholders. They presented their views to an Information Council in Madrid in 1866-67; but far from considering their demands, the monarchy imposed a new tax without abolishing the earlier ones. Ignored by the mother country, these Cuban reformists achieved nothing and were superseded in the political arena by those advocating independence.
At one time, within the reformist current, there existed a significant group in favor of Cuba’s incorporation into the United States. Annexationism, as it was called, should be considered in the historical context of its time. The level of socioeconomic development attained by the United States, the existence of a strong system of slavery in the southern part of that country and the republican ideology that imbued life in the United States are among the factors that explain why an annexationist movement arose in Cuba (mainly in the western part of the island) between 1840 and 1854.
Narciso López, a Venezuelan who had been a general in the Spanish army and lived in Trinidad (central Cuba), placed himself at the service of the Havana Club to try to block the abolition of slavery. In 1850 and 1851 he led expeditions financed by US Southerners who wanted to influence the balance between slave and non-slave states in the Union in their favor. The only result of these expeditions, tainted as they were by the sordidness of the slave system they espoused, was the creation of a Cuban national flag. López was captured and garroted, and Britain promised Spain it would not demand the abolition of slavery in Cuba; as a result, the annexationist movement went into decline.
Annexationism was a diverse movement. The main group of annexationists were slaveholders in western Cuba who fought tooth and nail to block abolition. In other regions, especially Trinidad and Camagüey, annexationism was motivated by a desire to share in the development and freedoms of the US North, which implied radical abolition. The most important representative of this group of annexationists was the Camagüeyan plantation owner, Joaquín de Agüero, who was executed by the colonial authorities.
Although it was not the predominant trend, a strong independence movement developed during the plantation era. Linked from its beginnings to the emergence of a distinct Cuban national identity, the independence movement was expressed in literature by the poet José María Heredia, who had a lasting influence on Cuban culture and thought.
Social sectors other than those represented by the slaveholders were committed to the creation of a free and independent country. One of their most important actions to achieve this was the conspiracy led by the freed slave José Antonio Aponte in 1812. Inspired by the Haitian revolution, this conspiracy was discovered and ruthlessly crushed. The middle classes organized the Soles y Rayos de Bolívar conspiracy in 1822 and the Gran Legión del Aguila Negra conspiracy in 1829-30, both of which were repressed by the colonial authorities. Nevertheless, these events made it clear that Cuba was no longer immune to the revolutionary movements that had arisen elsewhere in the Americas. These conspiracies also showed the growing strength of the urban middle class, especially in Havana, a city whose population was already more than 120,000 by 1817.
Father Félix Varela y Morales, a professor in Havana, was the main exponent of the independence movement in the first half of the 19th century. Professor of constitutional law at the San Carlos Seminary, a deputy to the Cortes in 1822 and a radical abolitionist, he was persecuted by the king and forced to go into exile in the United States, where he published a pro-independence newspaper, El Habanero, between 1824 and 1826. Varela’s ethics, his sense of patriotic duty, his support for the independence of South America and the brilliance of his students Saco and Luz made him the most outstanding intellectual of his time.
During the plantation period, a distinctive Cuban culture began to emerge. With Spain as its main influence, this nascent Cuban culture was also open to the best universal achievements from Europe, the Americas and Africa, assimilating what it needed and transforming it into something new and unique. History, pedagogy, literature, music, journalism, economics, demography, architecture, the natural sciences, medicine and philosophy all flourished in Cuba. Prestigious schools trained several generations of future patriots, although it should be noted there were very few schools for black children. In the colonial era, Cuba’s national culture reflected the emerging society.
“Cuba wants to be a great, civilized nation, to lend a friendly hand and a fraternal heart to all other peoples.”
—Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, 1868