The History of Puerto Rico by R.A. Van Middeldyk
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R.A. Van Middeldyk >> The History of Puerto Rico
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 41: He was decapitated February 9, 1649.]
[Footnote 42: So says Abbad. No mention is made of this episode in
Senor Acosta's notes, nor is the name of Earl Estren to be found among
those of the British commanders of that period.]
[Footnote 43: Manila was taken in October, 1762.]
[Footnote 44: An Account of Puerto Rico. London, 1834,]
CHAPTER XXII
BRITISH ATTACKS ON PUERTO RICO _(continued)_--INVASIONS BY COLOMBIAN
INSURGENTS
1797-1829
The raising of the siege of San Juan by Abercrombie did not raise at
the same time the blockade of the island. Communications with the
metropolis were cut off, and the remittances from Mexico which, under
the appellation of "situados," constituted the only means of carrying
on the Government, were suspended.[45] In San Juan the garrison was
kept on half pay, provisions were scarce, and the influx of immigrants
from la Espanola, where a bloody civil war raged at the time,
increased the consumption and the price. The militia corps was
disbanded to prevent serious injury to the island's agricultural
interests, although English attacks on different points of the coast
continued, and kept the inhabitants in a state of constant fear and
alarm.
In December, 1797, an English three-decker and a frigate menaced
Aguadilla, but an attempt at landing was repulsed. Another attempt to
land was made at Guayanilla with the same result, and in June, 1801,
Guayanilla was again attacked. This time an English frigate sent
several launches full of men ashore, but they were beaten off by the
people, who, armed only with lances and machetes, pursued them into
the water, "swimming or wading up to their necks," says Mr. Neuman.[46]
From 1801 to 1808 England's navy and English privateers pursued both
French and Spanish ships with dogged pertinacity. In August, 1803,
British privateers boarded and captured a French frigate in the port
of Salinas in this island. Four Spanish homeward-bound frigates fell
into their hands about the same time. Another English frigate captured
a French privateer in what is now the port of Ponce (November 12,
1804) and rescued a British craft which the privateer had captured.
Even the negroes of Haiti armed seven privateers under British
auspices and preyed upon the French and Spanish merchant ships in
these Antilles.
Governor Castro, during the whole of his period of service, had vainly
importuned the home Government for money and arms and ships to defend
this island against the ceaseless attacks of the English. When he
handed over the command to his successor, Field-Marshal Toribio
Montes, in 1804, the treasury was empty. He himself had long ceased to
draw his salary, and the money necessary to attend to the most
pressing needs for the defense was obtained by contributions from the
inhabitants.
While the people of Puerto Rico were thus giving proofs of their
loyalty to Spain, and sacrificing their lives and property to preserve
their poverty-stricken island to the Spanish crown, the other
colonies, rich and important, were breaking the bonds that united them
to the mother country.
The example of the English colonies had long since awakened among the
more enlightened class of creoles on the continent a desire for
emancipation, which the events in France on the one hand, and the
ill-advised, often cruel measures adopted by the Spanish authorities
to quench that aspiration, on the other hand, had only served to make
irresistible. But Puerto Rico did not aspire to emancipation. It never
had been a colony, there was no creole class, and the only indigenous
population--the "jibaros," the mixed descendants of Indians, negroes,
and Spaniards--were too poor, too illiterate, too ignorant of
everything concerning the outside world to look with anything but
suspicion upon the invitations of the insurgents of Colombia and
Venezuela to join them or imitate their example. They, nor the great
majority of the masses whom Bolivar, San Martin, Hidalgo, and others
liberated from an oppressive yoke, cared little for the rights of man.
When the Colombian insurgents landed on the coast of Puerto Rico, to
encourage and assist the people to shake off a yoke which did not gall
them, they were looked upon by the natives as freebooters of another
class who came to plunder them.
On the 20th of December, 1819, an insurgent brigantine and a sloop
attempted a landing at Aguadilla. They were beaten back by a Spanish
sergeant at the head of a detachment of twenty men, while a Mr.
Domeneck with his servants attended to the artillery in Fort San
Carlos, constructed during Castro's administration. In February, 1825,
some insurgent ships landed fifty marines at night near Point
Boriquen, where the lighthouse now is. They captured the fort by
surprise and dismounted the guns, but the people of Aguadilla replaced
them on their carriages the next day and offered such energetic
resistance to the landing parties that they had to retreat.
Another landing was effected at Patillas in November, 1829. This port
was opened to commerce by royal decree December 30, 1821. There were
several small trading craft in the port at the time of the attack.
They fell a prey to the invaders; but when they landed they were met
by the armed inhabitants, and after a sharp fight, in which the
Colombians had 8 men killed, they reembarked.
* * * * *
The beginning of the nineteenth century found Spain deprived of all
that beautiful island world which Columbus had laid at the foot of the
throne of Ferdinand and Isabel four centuries ago, of all but a part
of the "Espanola," since called Santo Domingo, and of the two
Antilles. Before the first quarter of the century had passed all the
continental colonies had broken the bonds that united them to the
mother country, and before the twentieth century the last vestiges of
the most extensive and the richest colonial empire ever possessed by
any nation refused further allegiance, as the logical result of four
centuries of political, religious, and financial myopia.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 45: They ceased altogether in 1810, as a result of the
revolution in Mexico.]
[Footnote 46: Benefactores and Hombres Illustres de Puerto Rico, p.
289.]
CHAPTER XXIII
REVIEW OF THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN PUERTO RICO AND THE POLITICAL
EVENTS IN SPAIN FROM
1765 TO 1820
After the conquest of Mexico and Peru with their apparently inexhaustible
mineral wealth, Spain attached very little importance to the archipelago
of the Antilles. The largest and finest only of these islands were
selected for colonization, the small and comparatively sterile ones were
neglected, and fell an easy prey to pirates and privateers.
Puerto Rico, notwithstanding its advantages of soil and situation, was
considered for the space of three centuries only as a fit place of
banishment (a _presidio_) for the malefactors of the mother country.
Agriculture did not emerge from primitive simplicity. The inhabitants
led a pastoral life, cultivating food barely sufficient for their
support, because there was no stimulus to exertion. They looked
passively upon the riches centered in their soil, and rocked
themselves to sleep in their hammocks. The commerce carried on
scarcely deserved that name. The few wants of the people were supplied
by a contraband trade with St. Thomas and Santa Cruz. In the island's
finances a system of fraud and peculation prevailed, and the amount of
public revenue was so inadequate to meet the expenses of maintaining
the garrison that the officers' and soldiers' pay was reduced to
one-fourth of its just amount, and they often received only a
miserable ration.
His Excellency Alexander O'Reilly, who came to the Antilles on a
commission from Charles IV, in his report on Puerto Rico (1765) gives
the following description of the condition of the inhabitants at that
time:
" ... To form an idea of how these natives have lived and still live,
it is enough to say that there are only two schools in the whole
island; that outside of the capital and San German few know how to
read; that they count time by changes in the Government, hurricanes,
visits from bishops, arrivals of 'situados,' etc. They do not know
what a league is. Each one reckons distance according to his own speed
in traveling. The principal ones among them, including those of the
capital, when they are in the country go barefooted and barelegged.
The whites show no reluctance at being mixed up with the colored
population. In the towns (the capital included) there are few
permanent inhabitants besides the curate; the others are always in the
country, except Sundays and feast-days, when those living near to
where there is a church come to hear mass. During these feast-days
they occupy houses that look like hen-coops. They consist of a couple
of rooms, most of them without doors or windows, and therefore open
day and night. Their furniture is so scant that they can move in an
instant. The country houses are of the same description. There is
little distinction among the people. The only difference between them
consists in the possession of a little more or less property, and,
perhaps, the rank of a subaltern officer in the militia."
Abbad makes some suggestions for increasing the population. He
proposes the distribution of the unoccupied lands among the
"agregados" or idle "hangers-on" of each family; among the convicts
who have served out their time and can not or will not return to the
Peninsula; among the freed slaves, who have purchased their own
freedom or have been manumitted by their masters; and, finally, among
the great number of individuals who, having deserted from ships or
being left behind, wandered about from place to place or became
contrabandists, pirates, or thieves.
"Their numbers are so small and the soil so fruitful they generally
have an abundance of bananas, maize, beans, and other food. Fish is
abundant, and few are without a cow or two. The only furniture they
have and need is a hammock and a cooking-pot. Plates, spoons, jugs,
and basins they make of the bark of the 'totumo,' a tree which is
found in every forest. A saber or a 'machete,' as they call it, is the
only agricultural implement they use. The construction of their houses
does not occupy them more than a day or two."
The good friar goes on to tell us that, through indolence, they have
not even learned from the Indians how to protect their plantations
from the fierce heat of the sun and avoid consequent failure of crops
in time of drought, by making the plantations in clearings in the
forest, so that the surrounding walls of verdure may give moisture
and shade to the plants. "Nor have they learned to build their bohios
(huts) to windward of swamps or clearings to avoid the fever-laden
emanations."
* * * * *
The stirring events in Europe that marked the end of the eighteenth
and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries did not find these
conditions much changed, though _some_ advance had been made and was
being made in spite of the prohibitive measures of the Government,
which were well calculated to check all advance. To prevent the spread
of the ideas that had given birth to the French Revolution, absolute
powers were granted to the captains-general, odious restrictions were
placed upon all communication with the interior, sacrifices in men and
money were demanded on the plea of patriotism, and a policy of
suspicion and distrust adopted toward the colonies which in the end
fomented the very political aspirations it was intended to suppress.
From the outbreak of the French Revolution, Spain was entangled in a
maze of political difficulties. The natural sympathy of Charles IV for
the unfortunate King of France well-nigh provoked hostilities between
the two nations from the very beginning. The king gave public
expression to his opinion that to make war on France was as legitimate
as to make war on pirates and bandits; and the Directory, though it
took little notice at the time, remembered it when Godoy, the
favorite, in his endeavors to save the lives of Louis XVI and his
family entered into correspondence with the French emigres. Then war
was declared.
The war was popular. All classes contended to make the greatest
sacrifices to aid the Government. Men and money came in abundantly,
and before long three army corps crossed the Pyrenees into French
territory ... They had to recross the next year, followed by the
victorious soldiers of the Republic, who planted the tricolor on some
of the principal Spanish frontier fortresses. Then the peace of
Basilia was signed, and, as one of the conditions of that peace, Spain
ceded to France the part she still held of Santo Domingo.
From this period Charles, in the terror inspired by the excesses of
the Revolution and the probable fear for his own safety, forgot that
he was a Bourbon and began to seek an alliance with the executioners
of his family. As a result, the treaty of San Ildefonso was signed
(1796). Spain became the enemy of England, and the first effects
thereof which she experienced were the bombardment of Cadiz by an
English fleet, the loss of the island of Trinidad, and the siege of
Puerto Rico by Abercrombie.
Spain also became the willing vassal, rather than the ally, of the
military genius whom the French Revolution had revealed, and obeyed
his mandates without a murmur. In 1803 Napoleon demanded a subsidy of
6,000,000 francs per month as the price of Spain's neutrality, but in
the following year he insisted on the renewal of the alliance against
England (treaty of Paris, 1804). The total destruction of the Spanish
fleet at the battles of Saint Vincent and Trafalgar was the result.
Godoy, who in his ambitious dreams had seen a crown and a throne
somewhere in Portugal to be bestowed on him by the man to whose
triumphal car he had attached his king and his country, began to
suspect Napoleon's intentions.
Seeing the war-clouds gather in the north of Europe, he thought that
the coalition of the powers against the tyrant was the presage of his
downfall, and he now hastened to send an emissary to England.
The war-clouds burst, and from amid the thunder and smoke of battle at
Jena, Eylau, and Friedland, the victor's figure arose more imperious
than ever. All the crowned heads of Europe but one[47] hastened to do
him homage, among them Charles IV of Spain and the Prince of Asturias,
his son.
The next step in the grand drama that was being enacted was the
occupation of Spanish territory by what Bonaparte was pleased to call
an army of observation. This time Godoy's suspicions became confirmed,
and to save the royal family he counsels the king to withdraw to
Andalusia. Ferdinand conspires to dethrone his father, the people
become excited, riots take place, Godoy's residence in Aranguez is
attacked by the mob, and the king abdicates in favor of his son.
Napoleon himself now lands at Bayona. Charles and his son hasten
thither to salute Europe's master, and, after declaring that his
abdication was imposed on him by violence, the king resumes his
crown and humbly lays it at the feet of the arbiter of the fate of
kings, who stoops to pick it up only to offer it to his brother Louis,
who refuses it. Then he places it on the head of his younger brother
Joseph.
Thus fared the crown of Spain, the erstwhile proud mistress of half
the world, and the degenerate successors of Charles V accept an asylum
in France from the hands of a soldier of fortune.
But if their rulers had lost all sense of dignity, all feeling of
national pride, the Spanish nation remained true to itself, and when
the doings at Bayona became known a cry of indignation went up from
the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean. On May 2, 1808, the people of Spain
commenced a six years' struggle full of heroic and terrible episodes.
At the end of that period the necessity of withdrawing the French
troops from Spain to confront the second coalition, and the assistance
of the English under Lord Wellesley cleared the Peninsula of French
soldiers. After the battle of Leipzig (1813) a treaty between
Ferdinand VII and Napoleon was signed in Valencia, and Spain's
independence was recognized and guaranteed by the allies.
* * * * *
From the beginning of the war many officers and privates, residents of
Puerto Rico, enlisted to serve against the French, and large sums of
money, considering the island's poverty, were subscribed among the
inhabitants to aid in the defense of the mother country.
Ferdinand VII reentered Madrid as king on March 24, 1814, accompanied
by a coterie of retrograde, revengeful priests, of whom his
confessor, Victor Saez, was the leader. He made this priest Minister
of State, and soon proved the truth of the saying that the Bourbons
forget nothing, forgive nothing, and learn nothing from experience.
He commenced by ignoring the regency and the Cortes. These had
preserved his kingdom for him while he was an exile. He refused to
recognize the constitution which they had framed, and at once
initiated an epoch of cruel persecution against such as had
distinguished themselves by their talents, love of liberty, and
progressive ideas. The public press was completely silenced, the
Inquisition reestablished, the convents reopened, provincial
deputations and municipalities abolished, distinguished men were
surprised in their beds at night and torn from the arms of their wives
and children, to be conducted by soldiers to the fortress of Ceuta--in
short, the Government was a civil dictatorship occupied in hanging the
most distinguished citizens, while the military authorities busied
themselves in shooting them.
In the colonies the king's lackeys repeated the same outrages. Puerto
Rico suffered like the rest, and many of the best families emigrated
to the neighboring English and French possessions.
The result of the royal turpitude was the revolution headed by Rafael
Diego, seconded by General O'Daly, a Puerto Rican by birth, who had
greatly distinguished himself in the war against the French. Other
generals and their troops followed, and when General Labisbal, sent by
Ferdinand to quell the insurrection, joined his comrades, the
trembling tyrant was only too glad to save his throne by swearing to
maintain the constitution of 1812. O'Daly's share in these events
raised him to the rank of field-marshal, and the people of Puerto Rico
elected him their deputy to Cortes by a large majority (1820).
The first constitutional regime in Puerto Rico was not abolished till
December 3, 1814. For the great majority of the inhabitants of the
island at that time the privileges of citizenship had neither meaning
nor value. They were still too profoundly ignorant, too desperately
poor, to take any interest in what was passing outside of their
island. Cock-fighting and horse-racing occupied most of their time.
Schools had not increased much since O'Reilly reported the existence
of two in 1765. There was an official periodical, the Gazette, in
which the Government offered spelling-books _for sale_ to those who
wished to learn to read.[48]
During the second constitutional period, Puerto Rico was divided by a
resolution in Cortes into 7 judicial districts, and tablets with the
constitutional prescriptions on them were ordered to be placed in the
plazas of the towns in the interior. Public spirit began to awaken,
several patriotic associations were formed, among them those of "the
Lovers of Science," "the Liberals, Lovers of their Country," and
others. But the dawn of progress was eclipsed again toward the end of
1823, when the news of the fall of the second constitutional regime
reached Puerto Rico a few months after the people had elected their
deputies to Cortes.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 47: The King of England.]
[Footnote 48: Neuman, p. 354.]
CHAPTER XXIV
GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ISLAND
FROM 1815 TO 1833
That Ferdinand should, while engaged in cruel persecution of his best
subjects in the Peninsula, think of dictating liberal laws for this
island is an anomaly which can be explained only by its small
political importance.
In August, 1815, there appeared a decree entitled "Regulations for
promoting the population, commerce, industry, and agriculture of
Puerto Rico." It embraced every object, and provided for all the
various incidents that could instil life and vigor into an infant
colony. It held out the most flattering prospects to industrious and
enterprising foreigners. It conferred the rights and privileges of
Spaniards on them and their children. Lands were granted to them
gratis, and no expenses attended the issue of titles and legal
documents constituting it private property. The quantity of land
allotted was in proportion to the number of slaves introduced by each
new settler. The new colonists were not to be subject to taxes or
export duty on their produce, or import duties on their agricultural
implements. If war should be declared between Spain and their native
country, their persons and properties were to be respected, and if
they wished to leave the island they were permitted to realize on
their property and carry its value along with them, paying 10 per cent
on the surplus of the capital they had brought. They were exempted
from the capitation tax or personal tribute. Each slave was to pay a
tax of one dollar yearly after having been ten years in the island.
During the first five years the colonists had liberty to return to
their former places of residence, and in this case could carry with
them all that they had brought without being obliged to pay export
duty. Those who should die in the island without heirs might leave
their property to their friends and relations in other countries. The
heirs had the privilege of remaining on the same conditions as the
testators, or if they preferred to take away their inheritance they
might do so on paying a duty of 15 per cent.
The colonists were likewise exonerated from the payment of tithes for
fifteen years, and at the end of that period they were to pay only 2
12 per cent. They were equally free, for the same period, from the
payment of alcabala,[49] and at the expiration of the specified term
they were to pay 2 12 per cent, but if they shipped their produce to
Spain, nothing. The introduction of negroes into the island was to be
perpetually free. Direct commerce with Spain and the other Spanish
possessions was to be free for fifteen years, and after that period
Puerto Rico was to be placed on the same footing with the other
Spanish colonies. These concessions and exemptions were contained in
thirty-three articles, and though, at the present day, they may seem
but the abolition of unwarrantable abuses, at the time the concessions
were made they were real and important and produced salutary effects.
They brought foreigners possessing capital and agricultural knowledge
into the country, whose habits of industry and skill in cultivation
soon began to be imitated and acquired by the natives.
The effects of the revolution of 1820 were felt in Puerto Rico as well
as in Spain. The concentration of civil and military power in the
hands of the captains-general ceased, but party spirit began to show
its disturbing influence. The press, hitherto muffled by political and
ecclesiastical censors, often went to the extremes of abuse and
personalities. Mechanics and artisans began to neglect their workshops
to listen to the harangues of politicians on the nature of governments
and laws. Agriculture and commerce diminished. Great but ineffectual
efforts were made to induce the people of Puerto Rico to follow the
example of the colonies on the continent and proclaim their
independence.
This state of affairs lasted till 1823, when, through French
intervention, the constitutional Government in Spain was overthrown,
and a second reactionary period set in even worse in its
manifestations of odium to progress and liberty than the one of 1814.
The leading men of the fallen government, to escape death or
imprisonment, emigrated. Among them was O'Daly, who, after living some
time in London, settled in Saint Thomas, where he earned a precarious
living as teacher of languages.[50]
* * * * *
In 1825 the island's governor was Lieutenant-General Miguel de la
Torre, Count de Torrepando, who was invested by the king with
viceregal powers, which he used in the first place to put a stop to
the organized system of defalcation that existed. The proof of the
efficacy of the timely and vigorous proceedings which he employed was
the immediate increase of the public revenue, which from that day
continued rapidly to advance. The troops in garrison and all persons
employed in the public service were regularly paid, nearly half the
arrears of back pay were gradually paid off, confidence was restored,
and "more was accomplished for the island during the last seven years
of Governor La Torre's administration (from 1827 to 1834), and more
money arising from its revenues was expended on works of public
utility, than the total amounts furnished for the same object during
the preceding 300 years." [51]
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