THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE CUBANS.

BY THOMAS W. STEEP.

When the recognition of belligerency was argued for the Cubans by the friends of Cuba in Congress, it became a question of pivotal importance as to whether the Cubans had a government to recognize as dual to that of Spain; whether the government, if any, was merely nominal or chimerical; whether, if existing and operating, it had the potency to receive recognition and thus justify such action by the United States.

The first thing that attracted my interest on arriving at the war field of Cuba, in the Province of Santiago, early one sunny morning in January, was the obsequious ceremony of the government prefecto who received me and gave me my first roasted boniato, upon which I afterwards so often appeased hunger. I had come out on the field by crawling beneath the barbed-wire military line around Santiago one night and marching by stealth in the early dawn to the mountains and over them to the interior. A body of Cubans escorted me. Fatigued and hungry, the prefecto’s attention in serving coffee and boniatos seemed over-due kindness. I offered to pay him, but he raised his hands and said, “No! No!” He was a government officer. From that time on my interest was enlisted in the study of the civil organization of the Cubans.

When ex-President Cleveland intimated that the civil government provisional of the Cuban insurgents was puerile and immature, and said it was, for the most part, a government on paper, he was more correct than otherwise. In the first place, however, let me say that the Cubans have a government, that it is not an impractical one, that the people are loyal to it. To this loyalty, which is so striking for its widespread prevalence, and so sympathy-eliciting because of the sacrifices which are made for it by the Cubans, I shall refer later.

The statement made by the ex-President, while for the most part correct, is superficial, because it does not substantiate its assertiveness. It is one that any intelligent observer of the anterior conditions of Cuba last December might have correctly though vaguely made.

The Cuban government is immature. To say that most of it exists on paper is not sinistrous to an ambitious civil organization which has been in existence but two years. Schemed exactly like that of the States, the unfavorable condition under which it labors makes many of its functions of mere nominal existence. For instance, the Secretary of State just at this time has no duty to perform other than, perhaps, to doff his figurative robes of state and get out and fight. The Secretary of War has no routine office, because the Cubans have no diplomatic corps and the rebellion is conducted by aggressive generals who have the munitions of war in their own hands.

Yet the Cuban insurgents have established a civil organization in the interior over which they hold sway, the strength and qualities of endurance and prominence of which defy the government of Spain itself. The remoteness of the Cuban headquarters, and the control which Spain has had over the regular news channels that lead from Cuba, have kept the world largely in ignorance of the real condition of the Cuban insurgents.

Fundamentally and upon which the plans of the government are drawn, the Republic of Cuba now comprehends all the area of the island of Cuba. The disposition taken by the head civil officers is that the entire island is under dominion of the Cuban Republic, but that because some powerful foreign enemy has landed on certain parts and taken possession—as, for instance, Havana and its harbor, and Santiago and other cities—the civil rule cannot be extended into these quarters until by strategy the enemy can be driven from the shores of Cuba. In the national organization the power of government was transferred by the popular assembly to a Council of Government. Then departments were formed, with secretaries at the head—state, war, foreign affairs, interior, and finances. At the head of the government were placed a provisional President and Vice-President. In the Council of Government is vested the legislative power.

Politically the island is divided into four States, Oriente, Camaguey, Las Villas, and Occidente. Each State is divided into districts, and each district into as many prefecturas and sub-prefecturas as are deemed necessary. A district has from seven to fifteen prefecturas. The State is presided over by a Governor, who reports to the Secretary of Interior. The Lieutenant-Governor is under the Governor, and has jurisdiction over a district. His corps consists of one secretary and one assistant clerk. The prefectura is the smallest political subdivision but one—the sub-prefectura. The prefectura has a secretary and assistants. Then follow the sub-prefecturas, of which there are generally from four to eight in each prefectura.

The Lieutenant-Governor is the intermediary between the Governor and the prefectura. Besides his executive functions the prefecto has judicial power. He records all contracts between citizens, including marriages. He has the power to form a jury and to try all cases, from the simplest intrigues to those of spies guilty of treason, whenever the cases cannot be submitted to court-martial.

Every portion of territory possessed by the Cubans is subject to civil order. The minutest detail is so accurately and delicately balanced that, though the thoroughness for which the civil officers are even now adroitly working has not yet been attained, the whole governmental machinery is in harmonic operation.

The facts which I have set down relative to the geographic distribution of the government I have myself seen. I spent much time in the saddle on the march with Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, who, as Governor of Oriente, conducts the affairs of state in the saddle. With him I visited the prefectural workshops and many well-managed prefecturas. I saw much rearranging and readjusting of these functions by the Governor.

Almost the first thing the Governor said to me at our first meeting at Baire Arriba, was: “I have been wishing for months that I could get hold of an American newspaper man to show him the inside of the revolution. The American people don’t know how strong we are. They have no way of finding out. Now I will show you our civil government as it is in operation.” We visited the medical posts—“drug-stores” as the Cubans call them—the tanneries, workshops, and the various officials, including the tax-collector.

Supplementary to the regular lines of civic routine are other branches of organization necessitated by the war. The most important of these is that of the tax-collector. The State tax-collector has as many subordinate officers as the Governor. Taxes are levied on those engaged in commercial pursuits. This commerce is, of course, only internal. The levying of taxes and the subsequent shipment of Spanish money to the United States for use by the Junta has created great scarcity of money among the insurgents. The schedule in effect when I was with chief tax-collector Tomas Pedro Grinan, in February, was as follows:

Coffee and cocoa4 pesos per 100 pounds.

Timber8 ” ” 1000 feet.

Hemp4 ” ” 100 pounds.

Wax4 ” ” 100 pounds.

Honey1 peso per 100 pounds.

Cattle3 pesos per head.

Cheese2 ” ” 100 pounds.

Bananas.03 peso per bunch.

Tobacco (leaf)5 pesos per 100 pounds.

The commerce consists of the exchange of the products of one part of the island with those of another. I once saw Cespedes stop a coffee merchant, and, upon his inability to produce a receipt for the tax on the coffee he was transporting, take into custody him and twelve little pack-mules. The man pleaded that there was no tax-collector in the vicinity when he started on his journey, paid his fine, which I think was thirty pesos, and continued his march with a receipt for taxes.

Four important branches of the government of the Republic of Cuba are the territorial guard, the coast inspection, the postal service, and the workshop system. Each prefectura has under its supervision ten armed territorial guards, who serve also as police. These guards scout the Spanish columns when they venture from their blockhouses.

Every district with a seacoast has a civil coast inspector, who ranks as a captain in the army. He is assisted by a sub-inspector, who acts as his secretary. The inspectors have established along the coast line and in every bay and inlet watch posts, commanded each by a vigilant, who has under him eight or ten coast-guards. In this way, when a Spanish man-of-war sets out from a port, the news is signalled along the coast, and the Cubans, if she be in sight of the land, watch every movement of the ship. The coast-guards have captured many small Spanish sailing vessels.

Saltmaking is carried on under the direction of an inspector. All the salt consumed by the Cubans is made from distilled sea water. A hundred men are continually boiling sea water in Santiago de Cuba province. These saltmakers are ready at all times to take up arms.

The postal system is under the direct care of the Governor of each State. Along the rough roads at intervals of ten or fifteen miles are established the Cuban postmasters, each supplied with from four to eight couriers. In this way official as well as private communications are carried to any part of the island. Each post office is supplied with a registering stamp, so that the time of the coming or going of every parcel is registered upon it. There is a dead-letter office, and the lists are published monthly at the presses of El Cubano Libre.

The workshops are under charge of foremen. These shops turn out all kinds of roughly made but substantial leather goods, such as shoes, boots, bags, saddles, straps, and belts. Gun shops, powder factories, and cartridge factories are said to exist on the island, but I never saw them. The making of other metal articles, such as cooking utensils, is in its infancy.

The Cubans are struggling hard to form some sort of a school system. The “little press in the woods” was just printing a little primer, written on the fields, to be distributed among families for the tutoring of children when I left the printing establishment last January.

The medical posts and stations are under military order, and are purely provisional. The post of El Mate, in Jiguani, I found in charge of Dr. Farrel, a graduate of a medical institute in Spain, and Dr. Rafael de Lorie of New York. This post is tolerably well stocked. It contains about one hundred pounds of antiseptic plasters, tablets and gauzes, 10,000 quinine pills and powders, thirty pounds of drugs, ten pounds of narcotics, and fifty quarts of tonics.

Like the whole military system of the Cubans, this post has an objectionable management, subject only to the orders of a few officials, so that it does little practical good, and many persons are dying for want of proper medical attention.

I have told in this article what I have seen during four months of constant travel among the insurgents.

When it is remembered that the Cubans have spread the rebellion over more than two-thirds of the area of the island, and have carried into effect, for their purposes, a provisional form of government successfully in the time of war, it is reasonable to suppose that they are capable of rearranging their government and maintaining it in time of peace.