The Surrender Tree (8 page)

Other characters, such as
El Grillo
(The Cricket),
El Jóven
(The Young One),and
Las Hermanas de la Sombra

(The Sisters of Shade), are based on descriptions in the diaries of soldiers and war correspondents. The first modern, systematic use of concentration camps as a way of controlling rural civilian populations was ordered by Imperial Spain's Captain-General Weyler in Cuba in 1896.No provisions were made for shelter, food, medicine, or sanitation. Estimates of the number of Cuban
guajiros
(peasants) who died in Weyler's “reconcentration camps” range from 170,000 to half a million, or approximately 10 to 30 percent of the island's total population. In some areas, up to 96 percent of the farms were destroyed.

After Spain ceded Cuba to the United States, Captain-General Weyler was promoted to Minister of War.

Within a few years, the ruthless military use of concentration camps was repeated during South Africa's Boer Wars. Adolf Hitler carried the genocidal concept to its extreme during World War II, when millions of European Jews, Catholics, gypsies, pacifists, and other minority groups were killed in Nazi Germany's extermination camps. Since then, armed powers all over the world have herded huge numbers of civilians into prison camps on the basis of religion, race, national origin, ideology, sexual orientation, style of dress, listening to rock music (Cuba's
roqueros
),or simply to seize territory, preventing farmers from growing crops that might strengthen an opposing army.

Cuba's third War of Independence from Spain is known in the United States as the Spanish-American War, and in Spain as
El Desastre
(The Disaster). Historians generally regard it as the first jungle guerrilla war, the first modern trench warfare, and the first time women were formally recognized as military nurses, both in the Cuban Army of Liberation and in the U.S. Army.

It is also known as the “journalist's war,” because reporters working for American newspapers wrote stories promoting U.S. intervention. In 1897, when the renowned artist Frederic Remington requested permission to leave Cuba because he found the situation near
Havana reasonably quiet and unworthy of constant news coverage, his employer, William Randolph Hearst, owner of the
New York Morning Journal,
sent him an urgent telegram: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war.”

 

 

Chronology

EARLY INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS

1810.
Cuba's first separatist movement is suppressed by colonial Spain.

1812.
A slave rebellion is suppressed.

1823.
Soles y Rayos de Bolívar
(Suns and Rays of Bolívar) movement is suppressed, during a time when most other Spanish colonies have recently gained independence under the leadership of Simón Bolívar and other freedom fighters.

1836-55.
Various separatist movements are suppressed.

1858-59.
U.S.President James Buchanan makes offers to buy Cuba. Spain refuses.

1868.
On October 10, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and other landowners near the city of Bayamo in eastern Cuba burn their plantations and free their slaves, launching the first of three wars for independence from Spain.

1868-78.
Cuba engages in its Ten Years' War for independence from Spain.

1878-80.
Cuba fights its Little War for independence from Spain.

1880-86.
Gradual abolition of slavery occurs throughout Cuba.

CUBA'S FINAL WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM SPAIN

1895.
Rebellion in eastern Cuba begins. Poet José Martí is killed in his first battle.

1896.
War spreads. Captain-General Weyler announces the reconcentration camp order.

1897.
The Constitutional Assembly convenes.

1898.
U.S.battleship
Maine
explodes in Havana Harbor. The United States makes its final offer to buy Cuba. U.S.military intervenes and Spanish troops surrender to U.S.troops. Cuban generals are not permitted to attend the ceremonies.

POSTWAR EVENTS

1899.
Spain cedes rule of Cuba to the United States.

1902.
The United States grants autonomy to Cuba, on the condition that U.S.troops retain the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and that Cuba allows a portion of the eastern province of Guantánamo to become a U.S.Navy base.

 

 

Selected References

ALLEN, DOUGLAS.
Frederic Remington and the Spanish-American War.
New York:Crown, 1971.

BARBOUR, THOMAS.
A Naturalist in Cuba.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946.

CORZO, GABINO DE LA ROSA.
Runaway Slave Settlements in Cuba.
Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

GARCÍA, FAUSTINO.
La Mujer Cubana en la Revolución.
La Habana:Bohemia, February 24, 1950.

GARCÍA, LUIS NAVARRO.
La Independencia de Cuba.
Madrid:Editorial MAPFRE, 1992.

GOLDSTEIN, DONALD M., AND KATHERINE V. DILLON.
The Spanish-American War—The Story and Photographs.
Washington, D.C.,and London: Brassey's, 2000.

GÓMEZ, MÁXIMO.
Diario de Campaña del Mayor General Máximo Gómez.
La Habana:Comisión del Archivo de Máximo Gómez; Talleres del Centro Superior Tecnológico Ceiba del Agua, 1940.

MARTÍ, JOSÉ.
Poesía Completa.
La Habana:Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1993.

PRADOS-TERREIRA, TERESA. Mambisas:
Rebel Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba.
Gainesville:University Press of Florida, 2005.

ROIG, JUAN TOMÁS.
Plantas Medicinales, Aromáticas o Venenosas de Cuba.
La Habana:Editorial Científico-Técnica, 1988.

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE.
The Rough Riders.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899.

TONE, JOHN LAWRENCE.
War and Genocide in Cuba—
1895
–1898. Chapel Hill:The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

VILLAVERDE, CIRILO.
Diario del Rancheador.
La Habana:Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1982.

 

 

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to God and my family for the time and peace of mind to write.

For help with research, I am thankful to all the hardworking, anonymous interlibrary loan specialists from numerous libraries, including the Hispanic Reference Team at the Library of Congress.

A heartfelt thanks to my editor, Reka Simonsen, and to everyone else at Henry Holt and Company, especially Robin Tordini, Timothy Jones, my copy editor Marlene Tungseth and designer Lilian Rosenstreich.

For encouragement, I am grateful to Angelica Carpenter and Denise Sciandra at the Arne Nixon Center for Children's Literature, California State University, Fresno, and to Alma Flor Ada, Nancy Osa, Teresa Dovalpage, Juan Felipe Herrera, Anilú Bernardo, Cindy Wathen, Esmeralda Santiago, Midori Snyder, and Ellen Olinger.