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Rustic Men, Civilized Nation:Race, Culture, and Contention on theEve of Cuban IndependenceAda Ferrer

T h e year 1898 marked a mo men tous transformation: the collapse of a four-hundred-year-old Spanish empire and the formal emergence of a new and sig-nificantly more powerful American one. Seen from the perspectives of theme tropo les, this transform ation takes on the look of inevitability-of the for-ward and inexorable march of time and history. T h e old em pire, Spain, lost itslast two possessions in the A mericas long after the onset of its imperial declineand almost a century after the erosion of most of its emp ire in South and C en -tral America. Fro m the perspective of the new empire, the Un ited States, theacquisition of Spanish territories in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, andGuam (as well as the annexation of Hawaii in the same year) representedAmerica's historic and inevitable encounter with the world, when the UnitedStates deigned to share its political ideals with the rest of hum anity o r (depend-ing on one's perspective) scrambled to acquire new m arkets for ever-expandingindustries. But if in imperial eyes the transform ations of 1898 seemed unsurpris-ing-simply the manifestation of processes lon g in the making-from theperspective of individuals living these transform ations in the colonies, the eventsof 1898 looked like someth ing else entirely.

T h e author would like to acknowledge th e generous com men ts, questions, andsuggestions received from audiences at S W - S t o n y Brook, the University ofMichigan, New York University, the American Historical Association, and the ArchivoProvincial in Cienfuegos, Cuba. I also thank Alejandra Bronfm an, Alejandro de laFuente, James Fernindez, To mi s Fe rninde z Robaina, Orlando Garcia, Lillian Guerra,Martha Hodes, Jorge Ibarra, Walter Johnso n, R ichard Kagan, Blancamar Le6 n,Fernando Martinez, L ouis PCrez, Jeffrey Sammons, Christop her Schmidt-Nowara,Rebecca Scott, Sinclair Thomson, Gregg Van Ryzin, and Michael Zeuske, all ofwhom read at least one version of this paper and shared references, ideas, and suggestions.

Hispanic American Historical Review 78:4Copyright 1998 Duke University Press


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664 HAHR / November / Ferrer

Imagine the scene, for example, in Santiago de Cuba, the site of Spain'ssurrender, in July 1898. T he re , where society had been profoundly trans-formed by three decades of nationalist rebellion and conspiracy against colo-nial rule, Cu ban soldiers saw the Spanish army surrend er not to them , but t oan American force that had arrived only weeks earlier. And though Cubanrebels saw their Spanish enemies defeated after 30 years of anticolonial mobi-lization, they were forbidde n from e nte ring cities and towns to celebrate th eirostensible victory. American officers protected Spanish bureaucrats, guaran-teeing them t he a utho rity and the peace to rem ain in positions of power. Andthough it was Spain who lost the w ar, it was C uban soldiers who were forcedto relinquish the weapons with which they had fought. None of these localevents had the look of natural logic or historical inevitability, bu t rath er onlyof inconsistency and disjuncture: the victors could not celebrate their vic-tory, nor bear arms, nor exercise authority; the vanquished (for the m om ent)remained in positions of power. And the strange transition was supervised by aforeign governm ent, newly arrived and unable to speak the language of either.Perplexed and d espondent, C uban soldiers could hardly think that this was thevictory for which they had fough t.'

Yet despite all this, in 1898 a nationalist army, with rough ly 40 thousan dm en and a 30-year history of anticolonial activity, essentially stepped aside andallowed, sometimes even welcomed , American military interven tion. T h is factalone requires a rethinking of explanations for the imperial transitions of 1898tha t focus solely on Am erican causes-the pressure to expand markets forAm erican goods, the need to reun ify the co un try in the wake of civil war andsocial unrest, the im pact of a sensationalist press, and so on.2 Th a t a pow erfulnationalist army would tolerate American military intervention forces us toconsider the ways in which conditions in Cuba, and the internal history ofCuba's lon g nineteenth-cen tury revolution, made American occupation plausi-ble and palatable in the first place. T h e proper study of the imperial transitionstha t occurred in 1898-and of the 113-day war that sealed Spain's defeat and

I . T h e best discussion of this unusual transition is Louis A. Pt re z Jr., Cuba betweenEmpires, 1878-1902 (Pit tsbu rgh: Univ. of Pitt sbur gh Press, 1983), chaps. 10-13 O n the30-year history of anticolonial insurgency, see Ada F erre r, Ambivalen t Revolution:Race, Nation, and Anticolonial Insurgency in Cuba, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill: Univ. ofNorth Carolina Press, forthcoming).

2 . For a recent review of this literature, see Louis A. P tre z Jr., The War of 1898: TheUnited States and Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill: Univ. of No rth CarolinaPress, 1998); and C harles B ergquist, Labor and the Course ofAmen'can Democracy: US Historyin Latin American Perspective (Lo ndo n: Verso, 1996), chap. 2 .


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Rustic Men, Civil ized Nat ion 6 6 ~

heralded the beg inning of what wou ld later be called the American Cen tury-thus requires tha t historians b roaden their tem poral and geographical focus. Itcompels historians to examine the complex history of the nationalist revolu-tion that preceded American intervention.W he n we do this, we find a revolution that in many ways challenged theprincipal ideological and political currents of its age. As Europ e scrambled forcolonies in Africa and Asia, the Cuban revolution attacked Europe's oldestcolonial power. And as so-called scientists weighed skulls and as white Arneri-can mobs lynched blacks, the revolution's leaders denied the very existence ofraces and arm ed black and white m en toge ther to form the world's first race-less nation .

But this unusual revolution was one defined more by conflict than con-sensus. It was a revolution that contained its own antithesis and in whichnationalist goals were i n uneasy coexistence with multiple alternatives, includ-ing annexation to the U nite d States and ho m e rule under Spain. Finally, it wasa revolution consistently defined by the violent play of regional and class ten-sions and, especially, by long-stand ing and evolving conflicts over th e limits ofracial inclusion in the nationalist project. T hes e internal tensions clearly shapedthe course of the independ ence mov emen t, but they also conditioned the verypossibility of American intervention at a moment when a Cuban victoryseemed more likely than ever before. And so it is only by exploring these con-tradictions and tensions, which for 30 years had developed and evolved at theheart of the revolution , that we can fully understand the complicated imperialtransition of 1898.

At the outset of nationalist insurgency in 1868, no one could have pre-dicted the ex tent and character of black and m ulatto participation in the inde-pendence struggle or in th e republic tha t early white leaders sought to create.During this initial period, it was not at all clear that these leaders viewedpotential non-wh ite recruits as either "com patriots" or "Cubans." N o r was itclear that black and mulatto participants saw and identified themselves thatway. By the start of the final war in 1895, however, few rebel leaders couldopenly question the status of non-whites as Cuban; few would publicly chal-lenge the idea that soldiers of color had played an important role in makingthe nation. Do m inant nationalist discourse, in fact, celebrated and glorifiedtheir participation. Th u s by 1898, with th e n otion s of black participation inindependence and of a multiracial Cuban nationality in many ways secure,the nature and terrain of the conflict over racial inclusion shifted. W it h th enation imagined to include people (men) of all colors (transformed into race-less Cubans), the m ajor question was no longer who was Cu ban , but what kind


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666 HAHR / November / Ferrerof figure could successfully lead this new and heterogeneous republic, whatkind of leader was suited to a multiracial society that was simultaneously free-ing itself from the shackles of both slavery and colonialism.

At some point this question m ay have been an abstract philosophical oneabou t the nature of political leadership. But as the end of war neared, it becamea pressing and practical ma tter. It was as if w ith access to citizenship in the newnation relatively open , m ultiracial, and inclusive, the qualifications for politicalleadership had to be rethought. C learly the boundaries of military leadershiphad to be made more impermeable than the boundaries of nationality; and therequisites for political power and leadership had to be stricter even than thosefor military power. And so as the end of the war neared, the question of con-trolling the transition from military to political power became critical. In anarmy and in a war that had eroded rigid social distinctions, the prospect ofpeace turned qualifications for rule and autho rity into questions of the uun ostmagnitude and urgency. By closely examining the controversy surroundingone particular leader on the eve of independence and occupation, this paperilluminates some of the complex anxieties and concerns present amon g C uba nnationalists-anxieties and concerns tha t helped shape a relatively quiescentresponse to Am erican intervention.3

One Black LeaderIn July 1898, when the Am ericans arrived and th e Spanish surrendered inSantiago de Cuba, one witness to the strange turn of events was a Cubanrebel officer nam ed Q uintin Bandera. H e was perhaps the m ost famous blackrebel then living: he had participated in anti-Spanish conspiracies datingback to th e 185os, he ha d fo ugh t in thr ee full-fledged anticolonial rebellions,and he had risen through the ranks to become a general in the LiberationArmy. In 1895 he had acco mpan ied the revolution's two most famous g ener-als, Antonio M aceo and Mixim o Gb me z, during the daring insurgent inva-sion of the western half of the island. By 18 98, with almost all the oth erfamous non-white leaders having been killed over the course of the war,Bandera was am ong th e last in a line of highly prom inent black leaders who ,having served the cause for 30 years, had developed national rep utation s and

3 . A clear contrast here is the case of the Philippines, where nationalist forces in armsagainst Spanish colonial authority since 1896 rebelled against the Unite d States occupationin February 1899. See especially Reynaldo C lemena Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: PopularMovements in the Philippines, 1840-1910 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila Univ. Press, 1979).


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667u s t lc M e n , Civil ized Na t ionfollowings.4 Yet despite his prom inen ce, i n July 1898 Band era witnessed th eend of the war fro m the sidelines. H is position th ere, o n th e margins, is no taltogethe r surprising; after all, American interve ntion sidelined most C ub anleaders from th e negotiations and transitions of 1898. T h e fact that in thisprocess Am erican occupiers sho uld also exclude a black officer-no m att erhow prominent-seems to warrant n o further explanation.

Yet the basis fo r Bandera's exclusion stems less from A merica n a ctionsthan from the highly problematic posit ion he occupied even before theirarrival. In 1897, ab out a year befo re t he A mericans declared war, Bandera'sown arm y had court-martialed him , stripped h im of his com ma nd and hismen, and then sent him back east to Sant iago de Cuba to awai t fur therorders. In June 1898, after Am erican interven tion and w hile st i l l witho ut acommission and without soldiers, he peti t ioned rebel authorit ies for per-mission to leave the island. But his requ est was quickly denied . Spain's sur-render to American forces in July found him in that same uncer ta in posi-t ion: alone, rejected, and overlooked at the moment of rebel (and UnitedStates) victory. A few mo nth s later he peti t ioned Cu ba n authorit ies again,this t ime simply for a formal let ter of introduc tion t o officers of the Am eri-can occupation.5

To some extent the marginality imposed on Bandera prior to the arrival ofAmerican troops continued after their evacuation. Bandera did enjoy some-thin g of a political com eback after the end of the war, serving as president of apolitical party in Santiago and being feted in towns in th e provinces of Havanaand Santiago. Overall, however, his already precarious position w orsened afterthe inauguration of the republic in 1902. H e was denied full payment for hisarmy service and routinely de nied suitable e mploy ment. Hi s livelihood was, in

4. W he n historians refer-as they ofte n do-to the im port anc e of black militaryleaders in Cuba n independe nce, Bandera's nam e is always o n the list of examples. See,for example, Aline Helg, Ou r Rightjkl Share: Th e Afio-Cuban Strmgglefor Equality,1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 199j), 33, 56; PCrez, Cuba betweenEmpkes, 106; Philip S. Foner, Antonio Maceo: Th e "Bronze T itan" of Cuba's Stmg gle forIndependence (New York: Mo nthly Review Press, 1977), 2 59; and Rafael Fermoselle, Politicay color en Cuba: la guerr-tta de 1912 (Montevideo: Ediciones Gtminis, 1974), 2 5-26.

5. For a transcript of the court-martial, see "Expediente formad o para elesclarecimiento de hechos que se dicen cometidos por el brigadier Quintin Bandera,julio 1897," Archivo Nacional de C uba (hereafter ANC ), F ondo M6ximo G6 me z (hereafterMG ), leg. 16, exp, 2,157. For th e two requests, see Bandera to C onsejo de Gobie rno,24 June 1898, AN C, Fondo Revoluci6n de 189 (hereafter R ~ s ) ,eg. 5, exp. 540;and Quintin Bandera to President of the C uban Assembly, 28 Feb. 1899, AN C, R g j,leg. 53, e xp 7,426.


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668 HAHR / November / Ferrerfact, so insecure tha t he was compelled to send o ut form letters soliciting assis-tance and t o organize a fund-raiser fo r himself in Havana's ma jestic Pay ret the-ater. H e was said to have held a job for a time as a garbage collector and, at o nepoint, to have distributed soap samples to laundresses. T h e soap m anufactur-ers even printed his picture on an ad, and und er it t he words "I am a son of thepeople."6 In 1906, in the mids t of an armed rebellion against th e first pres iden tof the republic, he was ambu shed a nd killed by a white veteran of the Li bera -tion Army of 1895. W h e n a year later th e secret police alleged to have uncov -ered a black conspiracy, the signal for th e sta rt of the projected uprising was tobe the assassination of th e ma n wh o had assassinated Bandera.7

Even after his death , Bandera rem ained at the center of controversy. After1910, repeated efforts to c onstruct a mo nu me nt in his hon or m et with outrighthostility; ther e was even resistance to t he transfer of his remains to the n ationalcemetery. In 1916, ten years after Bandera's death, the mayor of Havana, awhite veteran of the independence effort, vehemently opposed any effort toho no r the black veteran, insisting th at he had done no thing for the revolution-ary cause. A mon um en t in Bandera's h on or was not erected un til 1948.8 Offi-cial ambivalence surr oun ding his place in public life was echoed m or e g ene r-ally in popular memory. T h u s Bandera boasts the d ubious distinction of beingperhaps the only independence hero who also serves as the target of racisthumor-a patrio t who was also a thief and a laggard, a lover with an insatiablesexual appetite, an uncultured ma n whose blackness ren dere d him incapable ofmaking sounds basic to the Spanish language.9 At the very least, his was acareer and a legacy unconven tional by patriotic standards.

6. T h e description of the ad appears in Abelardo P adr 6n ValdCs, General de tres guewas(Havana: Ed. Letras C ubana s, 1991), 7-8.

7. O n Bandera's postwar eco nom ic and political life, see especially Pa dr 6n ValdCs,General de tres guewas, chaps. I , 10; and Alejandro de la Fu ent e, '"With All and fo r All':Race, Inequality, and Politics in Cu ba, 1900-1930" (P h.D . diss., Univ. of Pitt sbur gh, 1996),chap. 4. T h e form letter soliciting assistance may be found in Biblioteca N acional Jos tMarti, Colecci6n M anuscrita Abreu, no. 18. For details on his m urder, see Manuel CuellarVizcaino, 12 muertes famosas (n.p., n.d), 30-53. O n the alleged black conspiracy in 1907, seeJosC Jerez Varona, Ch ief of S ecret Police, to M ajor F. Foltz, 3 Aug. 1907, in U nite d StatesNational Archives, Record Group 350, entry 5, Records of the Bureau of Insular Affairs,Ge ner al Classified Files, file 2499.

8. O n the controversies surrounding his m emorialization, see To m is Savignbn,Quintin Banderas: el mambisan-ificadoy escarnecido (Havana: Impr. P. Fernindez, 1948),61-62; and the following articles in Diario de la Marina (Havana): "Por Quintin Bandera"(26 Apr. 1910, morn ing) and "Los restos de Quin tin Banderas" (14 Ma y 1912, mor ning).

9. Bandera's speech was repeatedly ridiculed and Africanized in the press. See, forexample, the docum ents and anecdotes reproduced in P adr6n V aldts, General de tres


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669ustic Men, Civi l ized Nation

By focusing o n Bandera's 1897 court-martial-a m om en t of formal anddram atic exclusion fro m the inner circles of national leadership-we shedlight no t o nly on on e man's career, bu t also o n increasingly pressing strugglesover the kinds of political leadership that would be exercised in the new repub-lic. T h e court-martial, with its long, rich trail of charges and countercharges,reveals the shifting and always disputed bound aries of the p atriotic com mun ityand allows us to explore impo rtan t qu estions abo ut th e lim its and possibilitiesof racial inclusion in late colonial and early republican Cu ba. T h e case thusexposes some of the tensions of Cuban nationalism present before the arrivalof American forces-tensions that helped make intervention seem conceivableand tolerable. Second, the discussions during the court-martial foreshadowsome of the debates about leadership and self-rule that would dominate theperiod of American intervention tha t was about t o com menc e. And finally, th ecase allows us to reflect o n how Cu ba n nationalism, by treatin g race as some-thing that had been superceded (something unnecessary and im pruden t to talkabout), made the concept of cultu re a centra l consideration in defining patri-otic leadership-a concep tion of culture, it should imm ediately be added, thatwas always highly racialized a nd highly gendered.

The Events, Accusations, and DefenseIn 1897 Quintin Bandera, commanding an almost all-black expeditionaryforce, crossed the Spanish army's fortified line dividing eastern and westernCuba for the second time since the beginning of the war. When Banderaarrived in the west in late Mar ch 1997, MBximo G bme z, th e highest rankingofficer of th e Libe ration Army, received h im w ith "patriotic jubilance," believ-ing that th e arrival of Bandera's men , along with Bandera's nam e and re puta tion,-uewas, 8, 158-59, 356-59; and Cuella r Vizcaino, 12 muertesfamosas, 43. T h e way in w hich

his speech was Africanized may be part of the reason for the confusion over his name.Th ou gh his name is often spelled Banderas, the pr ope r spelling, according to his mostrecent biographer, is Bandera, without an s. Since lower-class C uba n Spanish tends t o dro pfinals's, and since Bandera's speech was always represented as low and uncultured, it is verypossible tha t though he said "Bandera" people assumed h e really mea nt "Banderas." Fo r adiscussion of the confusion over his n am e, see Pa dr 6n ValdCs, General de tres guelras, 14, 1 7 .

I spoke with academics and nonacademics in bo th C uba an d the Un ited States to ge t asense of how he was remem bered, talked ab out, and taug ht in eleme ntary schools. Am ongthe people interviewed were Herminio Fernindez (Havana, June 1996), Adelaida Ferrer(Miami, Mar. 1996), Victor Jo st Ram611 Cor dov ez (Miam i, Mar . 1996), JosC Abreu Ca rd et(Havana, May 199z), Fer nan do Martinez (Havana, Jun e 1994), Alejandro de la Fuente(Seattle, Jan. 1998), and B lancamar Le6 n (Cienfuegos, Mar. 1998).


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670 HAHR / November / Ferrerwould im pose a certain deg ree of respect and fear am ong S panish troops.10But the very reputation th at was to cow Spanish soldiers soon became cause fordisciplinary action and punish men t. Four mo nths after Bandera's triump hantmarch, the same general who had welcomed and comm ended him ordered hiscourt-ma rtial and approved th e military tribunal's sentence th at stripped Ban-dera of his command and sent him back east without his soldiers. W h a t hadhappen ed in th e intervening fo ur mon ths t o so drastically alter Bandera's posi-tion within the nationalist lead ership?

Bandera himself provided a simple answer to this question: it was theracism of local leaders in the central province of Las Villas th at a ccounted forhis troubles in 1897. As he explained to th e C ub an g eneral Calixto Garcia afterthe court-martial, "I foresaw what would happ en t o m e, for in Las Villas, t hejefes [leaders], in th eir majority, did no t wa nt to be comm anded by leaders ofcolor." And o n this basis he believed th at "the re could develop th e grea test ofintrigues in order t o do m e harm."" At first glance the re appears to be sometru th to Bandera's inter pre tatio n: most of his accusers in 1897 were white m en;and white men-some of them protag onists in th e events of 1897-suspectedof behavior similar to tha t of Bandera were never formally charged, never pub-licly humiliated, and never excluded from the center of rebel leadership.Though Bandera chose to explain his hardships by citing the racism of localofficers, it quickly becomes apparent that the charge of racism cannot fullyaccount for t he com plexity and power of the case against him. First, becausemany of th e gen eral accusations leveled against him in 1897 were also brou gh tagainst him a t ot he r poin ts in his career-no t only by wh ite villareEos, bu t alsoby oth er leaders of color from his ow n eastern reg ion , including officers suchas Antonio Ma ceo, JosC Ma ceo, G uillermo Mo ncada , and Dimas Zamora.12

10. "Expediente form ado para el esclarecimiento d e hechos que se dicen cometidospor el brigadier Quintin Bandera, julio 1897," A NC , M G , leg. 16, exp. 2157, fols. 14,401-2;and BernabC Boza, Mi diario de la guerva desde Baire basta la interuencihz americana, z vols.(Havana: Libreria Cervan tes, 1924), 2:53.

11. Fr om Quin tin Bandera, "Narraciones de la Guer ra del 1895 y notas biogrificas delGr al. Quintin Banderas," in Pa dr6 n ValdCs, General de tres guerras, 236.

12. Fo r Antonio M aceo's accusation, see Mac eo t o Bandera, 16 Aug. 1896, in Bandera,"Narraciones," in Padr6n ValdCs, General de tres guerms, 211-12. Fo r Jo st Ma ceo, see"Relaci6n de operaciones de Jo st Maceo," in "Libro registro general de corresp onden ciadel mayor general Jo st Mace o del EjCrcito Libertad or, Ia Divisibn, Ie r Cu erp o (3 junio a 30sept. 1895); A NC , Rg j, leg. 19, exp. 2,970 (old number). Fo r problems between Bandera,Jos t M aceo, and Guillermo M oncada, see Pad r6n ValdCs, General de tres guervas, chaps. jand 7. For accusations by Zamora , see the en tries for 19 Sept., 21 Oct., and 23 Oct. 1897 in"Diario de campafia de Fern ando Grave de Peralta," A N C, Fo ndo Donativos y Remisiones


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6 71ust ic M en , C iv i lized Nat ionMoreover, as evidence was collected against Bandera, and sometimes even as aresult of his own adm ission, it became clear that m any of the charges leveledagainst him were accurate-at least in general terms. But despite prior offensesand prior accusations, it was only at this particular point in his career and onlyat this stage of the independence effort that th e charges against him producedso dramatic a disempowerment.

At the court-martial Bandera faced four charges-charges tha t althou ghvague left no dou bt about the ir severity: "disobedience, insubordina tion, sedi-tion , and immorality."13 At the most basic level, his accusers charged him sim-ply with being a bad soldier and officer. Rather than fighting and sacrificingselflessly for the na tion , Bandera, they said, had interred himself and his menin the hills near Trinidad and the re lived comfortably and peacefully, avoidingall military encounters w ith the enemy. Bandera's critics identified two sourcesof his unwillingness to fight. One , they held , was Bandera's sense of regional-ism. His accusers claimed that Bandera repeatedly told his men that they hadcome to western Cuba for only three months, and that now that the threemo nths had passed, they no longer had to fight and could return to Or iente atthe first opportunity. W ith this accusation, Bandera's detrac tors challenged hisability to imagine the nation, to see and feel beyond the local to somethingthey identified as national. Bandera, they suggested, was too attached to theregion of O rien te to stay willingly and en thusiastically in the west, even whenthe nation demanded it. Thus Bandera's "regionalism" was constructed asgrounds for the charge of insubordination.

T h e second (and in m any ways more powerful) reason for his reluctanceto fight was, his accusers believed, the fact that he was living happily andopenly with his lover-usually referred to as a nam eless "concubine" (concu-bina) or "mistress" (querida) during the court-m artial. According to his accusers,this wom an had kept B andera from his duties as a soldier and officer. Becausehis attraction and devotion to the woman had rendered him inactive on themilitary front, he had failed to divert Sp anish forces from attacking the troopsof his superior, Miximo G6mez. Bandera had thus endangered the Cubancause and C uban ho no r by placing his lover over his patriotic obligations. H e(hereafter D R), leg. 359, exp. 7. Za mo ra, am ong th e lesser-known black officers of th e finalwar, had taken part in earlier insurrections. F or his file as a political prisone r after the endof the Guerra Chiquita in 1879-80, see Archivo ~i s t 6 r i c o acional, Madrid (hereafterAHN), Ultramar, leg. 4,804, pt. I, exp. 382.13.Jost Rogelio Castillo y Z G ig a , P a ~ aa historia: autobiogvafTa del gene~alJose'RogelioCastillo y Zdnliga (Havana: Rambla y Bouza , I~ IO ) ,99-200. See also th e official transcriptfrom Bandera's consejo de perra, in ANC,MG , leg. 16, exp. 2,157.


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had even stolen for her: he knocked down a lieutenant in G6mez's guard(escolta) in order to take the horse for his concubine.14 And at one p oin t, he hadevicted a widow and rebel sympathizer fro m h er h om e in orde r to install hismistress in com fortable surroundings. H e was th en said to have placed hisable-bodied soldiers to watch over the house and its treasured occupant rath erthan fight actively against Span ish soldiers.15

With these charges, his accusers did several things. First, they publiclyimpugned the most important and renowned black officer then active in therevolution. By the time of the court-m artial, Anton io Maceo was dead, as werethe m ost famous non-wh ite leaders active since 1868, when the T en Years'W ar had begun, including JosC Ma ceo, G uillermo M oncada, and F lor C rom -bet. In a movem ent tha t prided itself on allowing for the ascent of black sol-diers, white leaders assaulted the reputation and position of the most visibleand popular black soldier then alive-the man wh o in popular songs andpoems was acclaimed right alongside Anton io Maceo. But they did so in a waythat focused not only on Bandera's military actions (or inaction), but also onhis social behavior, cultural attainm ents, an d po litical style. In developing andsustaining the charges of immorality and insubordination, his accusers ques-tioned his stan ding not only as a military o fficer, bu t as a civilized o r cultured(culto) patr iot. By giving in to his sexual needs Bandera had rejected the no rmsof civilized manliness, which valued self-restraint and abnegation. H is detrac-tors cast him as an imm oral, degenerate man who defiled the nation's purity. Intheir eyes, he was not the kind of man suited to lead soldiers, much less citi-zens. T h e incapacity im pute d to B andera might have been overlooked in ear-lier stages of the war, when the need to m obilize took precedence over oth erquestions. But gradually, as leaders began to think about peace as well as war,the kinds of shortcomings they attributed to B andera acquired meanings tha twere increasingly perilous.

Over the course of the court-martial, however, it became evident thatBandera did n ot necessarily accept the particular meanings h s accusers assignedto his behavior. Thus his defense constituted a surprising blend of admissionand denial, in which he disputed the details while accepting th e broader out-lines of his alleged behavior. H e then explained this behavior in ways tha t sug-gest he did not share his accusers' definitions of leadership and manliness, orof the p roper relationship between leaders and followers.

14. Brigadier Juan Ma s6 Pa rra t o Mayor Gral. JosC Mayia Rodriguez, 26 M ay 1897,ANC, Rgg, leg. 2, exp. 169 (provisional number) .

15. Bravo to Gbm ez, 24 M ay 1897, in ANC,M G , l eg . 11, exp. 1,628.


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673u st ic Me n , C iv i li z ed Nat io n

Testifying in his own defense, Bandera rejected many details of the accu-sations. H e denied, for example, having stolen e ither the horse or the housefor his lover. He denied, as well, having told his men that they had come tofight in western Cuba for only three m onths, and insisted that this pledge hadfirst been made by his superior, Calixto Garcia, when he had addressed Ban-dera's forces before they began their westward march. Bandera asserted, to thecontrary, that he and his men were willing to march to the western tip of theisland and to stay there until the end of the war, should the nation requirethem to do so. Despite Bandera's protestations, however, the testimony ofmost of his subaltern officers suggests that Bandera did, in fact, repeat thepledge that their force was supposed to head back east after three months.16

While Bandera denied some of the specifics of the accusations, he leftmany of the more general charges unchallenged. He admitted, for example,that he had no t fought or marched as much as he could have. But he attributedhis relative inactivity to the b ehavior of others: he had foug ht little, he argued,because he never received any orders to march or fight from the area's com-manding officer, JosC M ayia Rodriguez. T o some extent, Bandera's defense isborne out by the evidence, for, in fact, Rodriguez at one point explicitlyordered him to remain in the hills and avoid military combat. And Banderadoes appear to have complained several times th at Rodriguez kept leaving himwithout orders." Moreover, no t only did local officers no t order him to fight,they also seem to have placed obstacles in the way of his fighting by igno ringor denying his requests for resources with which to engage the enem y. T h usBandera's appeals for ammunition apparently went unfulfilled. At one po int hefound himself complaining to MBximo G6mez that even simple requests forshoes for his soldiers were turned down by local insurgents, not because theshoes were unavailable, but because the insu rgen ts insisted that such requestscould be hono red only if they came from local officers-a symptom, said Ban-dera, of the "discord" tha t existed between him and th e area's leaders.18

In elaborating hls own defense, then, Bandera seemed to turn the chargesleveled against him back against his own accusers. Just as his d etracto rsclaimed tha t Bandera's provincial loyalties prevented him from acting for thenational good, so did Bandera direct the same charge against them . Local lead-

16. See the testim ony of S ecund ino Massabeau, JosC Po rtu ond o, JosC M orales, FelipeLins, Enrique Lins, Domingo Balbn, and Pedro Estable, all in "Expediente . . . julio 1897:'ANC, M G , l eg . 16, exp. 2,157, fols. 14,431-31~;14,437; 14,439; 14 ,44 0~ ; 4 ,44 5~ ; 4 ,446~ .17. See Rodriguez t o Bandera, 29 Apr. 1897, A i i C , M G , le g. 14, exp. 2,015; andBandera to Gbmez, 16 Apr. 1897, A N C , M G , l eg. 11, exp. 1,591.

18. Bandera t o G bmez, 19 May 1897, A i i C , M G , leg . 11, exp. 1,624.


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6 7 4 HAHR / November / Ferrerers in Santa Clara were, he implied, too ro oted in their own area to accept aleader from outside their region.

For Bandera the prob lem was no t only that he was an oriental (from th eregion of Oriente), but that he was a black oriental.Local leaders, he had toldCalixto Garcia, rejected him because he was black. Thi s statem ent was at onceabout race and region: rejection could be explained only with double referenceto the geographical origins of his adversaries and the color of his skin. Withthis observation, Bandera perfectly captured the interconnectedn ess of raceand region. To speak of region was undoub tedly to speak about geography andterritorial boundaries. But, as Michael Taussig has pointed out, "geography isalso a map of social histoIy"l9 Regions reflect more than natural, physicalboundaries; they also reflect the uneven distribution of institutions and pro-cesses such as racial slavery and racial mixture. And here , in the back-and-forthbetween Bandera and his accusers, regionalism also revealed ideas about race,identity, culture, and behavior.

White leaders in Las Villas may have expressed hostility toward leadersfrom Oriente because they were not local. But at the same time, they wereaware of certain features of local society in O rien te. In th e late 18gos, Orien tewas home to close to 30 percent of the island's total population of color.Moreover, the sub region from which Bandera came (the southea stern coastalareas between Santiago and Guantinamo) had perhaps the smallest whitepopulation w ithin O riente . H er e the popu lation classified as "white" (eitherforeign or native born) accounted for only 37.7 percent of the subregion'stotal population, compared to 68.7 percent in Las Villas.20 For local whiteleaders in Las Villas, however, regional difference was mo re than a que stionof demographics. N o t only did Orien te have a greater non-white po pulation,it was also linked in b oth colonial and nationalist discourse to black rebellion.Th us in evaluating the rebellion that began and took roo t in O riente in Feb-ruary 1895, even active, proindepe ndenc e white Cub ans could derisively saythat the up rising was "of no importanc e, a black thing, over near Santiago de

19. Quoted in Peter Wa de, Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identityin Colombia (Baltimore: John s Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993), 51-52.

zo. U.S. War Depa rtment, Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899 (Washington, D.C.:Government Printing Office, goo), 194-95, 198-99. I calculated the 37.7 percent figureby including only those 1899 districts that were part of the old ti m in o s municipales ofSantiago and Gua nti na m o in the prewar period. Th ese districts are Alto Songo, Caney,Cobre, Cristo, Guantinamo, Palma Soriano, Sagua de Tinamo, San Luis, and Santiago.See Pedro Imb ern6, Guia geogva'f;Cay administrativa de la isla de Cuba (Havana:Establecirniento Tipo grifico La Luch a, 1891).


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Rustic Men, Civi l ized Nation 6 7 ~Cuba."zl Though here clearly overdrawn, this alleged link between blackrebellion and t he island's eastern territories was no t with out som e foundation.All thre e anticolonial rebellions began in O rien te. T h e region was, in fact,hom e to m ost of the rebel movement's pro mine nt non-white leaders: men likeBandera, the Maceo brothers, Flor and Emiliano C rom bet, G uillermo M on-cada, Jeshs Rabi, Agustin C ebreco , and m any oth ers. Ori ent e was thereforeassociated with so me me asure of black political and m ilitary power; and mo rethan any other region in the colony it had a powerful claim to multiracialforms of nationalist insurgency. Th u s the app aren t rejection of Bandera's lead-ership in 1897 represented many com plex and connec ted form s of discrimina-tion: at once a rejection of his blackness and a repudiation of his nonlocalroots. At the sam e tim e this rejection could reflect a certain degree of trepida-tion tow ard a particular model of multiracial in surgency an d of black leader-ship, both of which had their origins in, and were best represented by, Oriente .

Th is interpretation was in som e ways suggested by Mixi m o Gbmez's sec-retary, Colone l Ferm in ValdCs Dom ing uez , who appeared t o have been as per-turbed by villareiio responses to Bandera as he was by Bandera's disobedience.Though horrified by Bandera's behavior and by the presence of his lover inrebel camps, ValdCs also condemned the way local white leaders dealt withBandera's infractions. JosC Mayia Rodriguez, the local leader under whomBandera was placed, was known to have offended Bandera's g uard , openly call-ing them "blacks and bandits who look after black women." Yet ValdCs con-demned Rodriguez less for his racist language and tone than for his failureto understand the multiracial and antiracist mission of the insurgency thatcame from the east. Th u s ValdCs censured R odriguez for t he way in which h eaddressed and offended "officers fro m O rien te who because of their valor andintegrity had com e to occupy a pro mine nt place am ong us, because they werepoor and humble, a nd because they were black."22 T h e sign ificance of black he ro-ism derived precisely from th e fact that this heroism came fro m me n wh o wereoppressed and th en rose above that oppression to embrace and cham pion th enation. ValdCs implied, then, that he and other white leaders from Orienteunderstood th e achievements and th e role of black soldiers and officers in th e

21. Fermin ValdCs Do mi ng ue z, D ia ~i o e soldado, 4 vols. (Havana: Un iv. de la Habana,197 2-7 j), ':g o- 91 . See also Agustin Bravo t o Antonio Maura, 8 Ju ne 1893, in Fundaci6nAntonio Maura (Ma drid ), eg. 3 8a, carpeta 9; and "La Discusibz e n Ori ente: del cam po deoperaciones:' i n La Discusiin (Hava na), 2 1 Mar. 1895.

2 2 . ValdCs Dom ingu ez, Diario de soldado, 4:4 6-47 (emphasis is mi ne ). O n th e incidentbet we en Rodrigu ez and Bandera's guard, see also Felipe Acea's tes tim on y i n A i i C , M G , l eg .20, exp. 2,772.


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676 HAHR / November / Ferrerstruggle for Cuban independence, while the western leaders did not. There-fore, when Valdks wrote in his war diary that he read of the misdeeds of Banderaand local w h t e leaders with "shame" @ena),he was writing of a double shame-shame, on the one hand, tha t local white leaders seemed to reject the idea ofa central role for black insurgents in the Cu ban m ovem ent an d, on the other,shame that this particular black leader seemed to be so lacking in the honorand discipline for which ValdCs extolled black oriental leaders. In his vision,black insurgents were poo r and humb le, but dedicated and disciplined in theirallegiance to Cuba, while white insurgents accepted and celebrated the patrio-tism and dedication of their black com patriots. In 1897, however, neither Ban-dera nor Rodriguez co nformed t o this vision.

Bandera failed to conform for several reasons. Broadly speaking, he didno t resemble the po rtrait of black abnegation , discipline, and hum ility paintedby ValdCs Dominguez in 1897 or previously by the proindep end ence writers ofthe early 189os.23 Even before 1897, Bandera faced frequent accusations ofindiscipline. His forces were said to be composed of either plateados, a localword for bandits, or majases (a local term for which the closest English equiva-lents are words like "dead-beats, skulkers, sneaks, stragglers, o r coffee coolers,"U.S. Civil War slang for m en who shirked the ir duties and avoided combat).24Such charges against Bandera and his men were leveled no t by the Spanish butby C uban insu rgents such as JosC M aceo, Cosme de la Torri ente, and others.25

H er e the contrast between B andera and ot he r im po rta nt leaders of colorproves revealing. An tonio M aceo was publicly portrayed as light-skinned andeducated, articulate and dedicated, even amidst privately expressed concernabou t the ex tent of his political ambitions. Flor C rom be t, a member of a slave-and land-ow ning family of mulatto refugees from Ha iti, was praised by fellowinsurgents for his elegance, his knowledge of French and English, and hisfamiliarity with European history and politics.26 Gu illermo M oncada, a man of

23. O n the imag e of the deferential and grateful black insurgen t popularized in t heprose of independe nce in th e early 18yos, see Ferrer, Ambivalent Revolution, chap. 5.

24. James M . McPherson, W ha t They Fought For, 1861-1861 (Baton Rouge: LouisianaState Univ. Press, 1yy4), 17.

25. Fo r examples of such charges, see Co sm e de la Tor rien te, "Memorias:' inFernando Gbmez, La insurrecci6n por dent7-o. . . con un prilogo escrito por el Exmo. SK tenientegeneral D. Valeriano W yl er y Nicolau, marquis de Tenerijie (Havana: n.p ., 1 897), 131 and t hecitations in n . 12 .

26. See Fermin Peraza Sarausa, Diccionario biogrd$co cubano (Havana: EdicionesAnuario Bibliogrifico Cub ano, 1951); and Eusebio Hern andez to A. Mace o, Tegucigalpa,3 Nov. 1882, in Antonio M aceo, Papeles de Maceo (Havana: Impr. El Siglo XX, 1948), 1:327.


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Rust ic Me n, C iv il ized Na t ion 67 7little formal edu cation, was generally described as very dark-skinned, and for along time he was represented as brutal and racist by Spanish authorities andtheir C uban allies. But by the late 188os, he was being held up by th e C ubansas "good and trustworthy" and as an example of what "strong allies" men ofcolor could be "if nurtured from an early agei'27 By contrast, Quintin Bandera,later described as "a man as black as coal," was a man poor and unschooled,whom Spaniards and Cubans alike often represented as savage and foreign.His speech was ridiculed and "africanized" in the press. And as he made hisway westward during the invasion of 1895-96, it was his troops (and no t thoseof Maceo or Gomez) that were said to come with rings in their noses, andsometimes in loincloths and bare feet.28 Cu lturally and socially, he was p or-trayed in a way that sharply contrasted with the portrait of a virtuous blackinsurgent that had been created by independence activists before the war. AndValdCs, very much schooled in these writings, could no t but have been awareof the contrast.29 Black leaders were acceptab le-indeed desirable-but theyhad to be black leaders of a particular kind. If race was no longer a rigid stan-dard for inclusion-culture, perform ance, and civility now appeared to bequite critical.

Nowh ere did Bandera m ore reveal to his superiors and his peers his inca-pacity for the kind of leadership they valued than in the way he chose not tofight-and here we get to the em otional crux of the accusations against him .For w hile his alleged military inactivity provoked the ire of his accusers, theyseemed mu ch m ore offended by the fact that while he was not fighting he wasliving with a woman and allowing his subordinate officers and soldiers to dothe same. H e had succumbed to his sexual desires and thus rejected th e norm sof civilization and m anly honor.

Before, during, and after the court-martial, Bandera openly admitted toliving with his lover in the hills near T rinidad . In the mo st striking defense of

27. Album de El Criollo: semblanzas (Havana: Establecimiento Tipogrifico O'Reilly,1888), 200-4. Fo r a discussion of the racist representation s of Mon cada before the late188os, see Ada Ferre r, "Social Aspects of C ub an Na tionalism : Race, Slavery, and theGuer ra C hiquita, 1879-1880'' Cuban Studies/Ertudios Cubanos 21 (1991).

28. Migu el Barnet, ed., Biografia de un cimaw6n (Havana: E d. d e Ciencias Sociales,1986), 170-71; JOSC sabel Herrera, Impresiones de la Guerra de Independencia (Havana: Ed.Nuevos Rumbos, 1948), 20; Padr6n ValdCs, General de tres guerras, 158-59, 336-39; JeanBaron Antomarchi, Life with the Cubans (New York: Brooklyn Daily Eag le, 189 8), chap. y;and Boza, M i diario, 1:8o.

29. ValdCs Dominguez, D ia ~ io e soldado, 1:yo-91. See also Fer rer, AmbivalentRevolution, chap. j.


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6 7 8 HAHR / November / Ferrerhis behavior, he admitted it, in fact, unabashedly. H e wro te to M ixim oG6mez: "W he n this revolution began, my comm anding officers brou ght theirconcubines along with their forces to the war-so much so, in fact, tha t dur-ing the western invasion even the assistants [the lowest position in the rebelarmy] brought their concubines with the m . . . . All this is done publicly; onemigh t even say tha t it is par t of the habits and customs-of the way of being-of our armyi'30 Why, he concluded, should he be the only one punished forsomething that everyone did?3' Besides, Bandera suggested, his lover had inno way diminished his capacity to rou t th e enem y; in fact, she was even knownto have taken up a machete to aid him in his battles against the Spanish.32

O n o ne level, at least, Bandera had a point. H is lover was ce rtainly no tthe only wom an to find herself in the m idst of a rebel camp. G 6m ez himself,as well as his secretary, ValdCs Dom inguez, frequently po inted ou t that othersalso kept lovers at o r near the ir camps.33 Like Bandera, certain w hite officers,such as Rodriguez, Francisco C arrillo, Jua n M as6 P arra , and Jua n Bravo, werecriticized for not fighting; and Miximo G6mez even claimed that Bandera,thou gh encuevado (literally, "encaved") with his concu bine , was still in a bet terposition than Rodriguez to do damage to the enemy. Several officers werealso accused of shortcomings similar to those of Bandera. Carrillo, for exam-ple, was said to be "living happily in h is hammo ck, surr ounded by all the plea-sures of life: good cigars, delicious and abundant food, and, not too far fromhis camp, two mistresses-one wh ite and the o th er mulatica."34 I n addition ,many forces had camp followers, including women, children, the elderly, and

30. Bandera to Major Gen eral G6m ez, n.d. (in response t o Gbmez's letter of 8 June[1897]),ANC, DR , leg. 2 57 , exp. 59. Bandera later claimed that he had signed this letterwitho ut having read it.

31. An analysis of other court-martials in the same period lends power to Bandera'squestion. I found n o case of an officer charged for living with a wom an. Ln fact, casesinvolving wom en tended above all to be accusations against insurge nt soldiers for rape, andI found n o such case against anyone near Bandera in statu re. Cases against military leadersof Bandera's prominen ce a nd rank generally involved accusations of either n egotiating w iththe ene my or engaging in illegal comm erce. Collection s of court-m artial cases for thisperiod can be found in ANC, Ryg, legs. 24, 2 j , and 42 ; and ANC, M G , l eg . 16.

32. Bandera to G6m ez, 28 M ay 1897,ANC, M G , l eg . 11, exp. 1,633. Fo r shockedreactions t o his line of defense, see Valdts Dom inguez, D i a ~ i o e soldado, 4:128-29; andPad r6n ValdCs, General de tres guerras, 225 - 26.

33. See, for example, Valdts Dom inguez, Dian'o de soldado, 4:87, 282-83 , 314; andMiximo G6mez, D ia ~i o e campa%a, 1868-1899 (Hava na: Biblioteca Nacion al JosC Ma ru ,1986), 332.34. Valdts Dom inguez, Dian'o de soldado, 4 2 8 2 .


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679ustic Men, Civi l ized Nationthe sick; and there is no reason to assume that the soldiers and the womennecessarily kept their distance. There are even the occasional references tomambisas-women who foug ht with the men in battles against the Spanish.35W hy then all the fuss about Bandera's unna med m istress?Fro m the perspective of his accusers, Bandera's behavior was reprehensi-ble for thr ee reasons, all of which bear on debates-implicit and explicit-about the meanings of nation and manhood and the kind of leadership to beexercised in th e new republic. First, Bandera's behavior defiled the m oral andmale purity of the rebel cause. For M ixim o G bm ez, who o rdered the court-martial, Bandera's op en sexual relationsh ip in a rebel camp was a transgressionof military honor. By keeping a concub ine at his side while serving the nationand leading C uban soldiers, Bandera "d isregarded his sacred obligations." H edemo nstrated that he had n ot come to Occidente "inspired by patriotic ideasand aspirations of hono r and glory1'36 And his "in cor rect behavior as a militaryman" translated into "antipatriotic behavior as a Cuban."37 Since the begin-nin g of the independ ence effort in 1868, leaders had cast their strug gle in mas-culine term s: they were taking to fields of battles with weapons in their handsto "reconquer [their] rights as men," Carlos Manuel de CCspedes had saidupon declaring war on Spain.38 T h e presence of wom en-as residents orworkers in civilian prefectures, as nurses tending to sick soldiers, as supportersin cities and towns, occasionally as fighters and more regularly as lovers inrebel camps-had no t changed the masculine discourse of insurgen cy andnationalism. But this masculinity was of a particular sort: not too aggressive orsexualized, bu t ascetic and austere-a self-sacrificing ma nhoo d th at served asexample to o thers. F or instance, in the writings of pat riot leader JosC Ma rti, asanalyzed by literary critic Arcadio D iaz, the nation alist hero derived his politi-cal and spiritual authority by resisting the tem ptation of women , by renou nc-ing temporal pleasure that might detract from his redemptive political mis-

35. Segundo Corvis6n, En la guerra y en la paz . . . par el teniente coronel SepndoCorvis6n, ayudante del general en jefe del ~ e ' r c i to ibertador, mayor general Mi x im o G6mez(Havana: Cultural, 1939), 41-42. See also K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: TheCuban W oman's Movement for Legal Refom, 1898-1940 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, I ~ Y I ) ,chap. I .

36 . G6mez to Lieutenant Colonel Armando Sinche z, 8 July 1897, ANC, M G, leg . 16 ,exp. 2,157.

37. G6mez to Bandera, 8 July [1897], ANC , DR , leg . 283, exp. 6.38 . Carlos Manu el de Ckspedes, "Manifiesto de la Junta Revolucionaria d e la Isla deCuba:' 10Oct. 1868, in Documentospara la historia de Cuba, 4th rev. ed., 4 vols., ed.

Hortensia P ichardo (Havana: Ed. de Ciencias Sociales, 1977)~ :3 58-62,


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680 HAHR / November / Ferrersion.39 Bandera, who publicly admitted to keeping his lover in his camp andwho refused to concede tha t she detracted from the fulfillment of his patrioticduties, clearly failed to m easure up to this abstract conception of the h ero. Fo rGbmez, more a soldier than Marti, Bandera's offenses struck at the heart of therebel cause: the ho nor of the revolutionary army. Fo r G 6m ez the cen tral insti-tution of this army was the military camp, which was for "all worthy men atemplel'40 T h e camp was a site for honorable and civilized men-for selflessmen who exercised the moral restraint that qualified them to serve as rolemodels and leaders. T h e presence of wom en-and particularly of a concubineand "dirty wom an," in the words of G6m ez's secretary-tarnished the manli-ness and sanctity of the place and the cause.41 T h e hono r of the wo me n, blacklike Bandera, was of little concern ; it was the honor of the arm y that needed tobe preserved and revered.

Second, though Bandera's accusers assumed the moral high ground intheir dispute with the black general, it is also clear that in addition to theirmoral objections his accusers were equally upset by his effrontery. It wasn'tonly the fact that B andera had a concubine, but the way he had a concubinethat offended their sensibilities. T h e relationship was op en; B andera publiclyadmitted it to superiors and subaltern s alike. In this way his behavior differedfrom that of JosC G onzilez , the black officer who was chosen to p reside overBandera's court-m artial and w ho had recently begun living with a young womanof color. O ne observer noted that n o on e "knew whether Gon zilez's m arriage

39. Arcadio Diaz Quiiiones, "Marti: las guerras del alma:' Apuntespostmodernos/Postmodern notes j , no. 2 (1995). For a general discussion of the themes of masculinity andself-sacrifice in the discourse of insurgency, see Joh n C . C hasteen, "Fighting W ords: T h eDiscourse of Insurge ncy in Latin A merican History:' in Latin America n Research Review 28,"0. 3 (1993).40. G6mez to Lieutenant Colonel Jo st Lbpez, 8 June 1897, in Valdes Dominguez,Diario de soldado,4:129-30. G6 m ez refers to the rebel camp as a temple in his campaigndiary as well. See Gbm ez, Diario, 324.

41. T h e reference t o Bandera's lover as a "dirty wom an" appears in ValdesDominguez, Diario de soldado,4:128-29. Fo r an interes ting discussion of the links betweenthe discourses of manliness and civilization in another context, see Gail L. Bederman,Manliness and C ivilization:A Cultura l History of Gender and Race in the United States, I 880-I ~ I(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995). According to Bederman, the cult of manlyself-restraint developed among middle-class white men in the United States as a way ofasserting their authority over women and non-white men (American and foreign alike). It isinteresting to consider the possible rise of parallel discourses in colonial (or neocolonial)settings, where local leaders may have countered colonial discourses about uncivilized andunmanly colonized men by asserting their own manliness and civilization, in opposition towhat they saw as the more primitive masculinity of local nonelite men.


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6 8 1ust ic Men, C iv i l ized Nat ionwas legal, but at least [the couple] kept u p th e appearance tha t it was, and this"the observer concluded, "was the most we can require of certain elements" ofCuban society.42 If Bandera had behaved as had Gonzilez, everyone mighthave turned a blind eye to the o ffense. Instead , by admitting it openly, Banderaimplicitly demanded that military and civilian leaders publicly condone hisbehavior and his mo del of leadersh ip-som ething they were unwilling to do.Nevertheless, it m ight well have been p recisely his op en behavior and willing-ness to condone the same behavior am ong his subalterns that guaranteed Ban-dera the loyalty and respect of his troops.

T h e differences between the behavior of Bandera, the accused, and G on -zilez, the handpicked black president of the court-martial, can be taken evenfurther, for in other instances, under comparable circumstances, the menchose to act in ways tha t contrasted dramatically. At a pa rty at a rebel camp in1896, for example, Quintin Bandera asked a white wom an t o dance. W h en shepolitely declined, Bandera became perceptibly annoyed. H e improvised a longspeech on valor and patriotism and condem ned the w hite woman's refusal todance with a black patriot as unpatriotic and anti-Cuban. For better or forworse, he drew attention to himself and the woman, to his desire and herrefusal.43 Years later and after the war, at another social gathering, a youngwhite woman had a white m ale friend introd uce her to the black officer andveteran JosC Gon zilez. Thr ou gh the form er she sent word t o G onz ilez thatshe would be honored to have a dance with him. Politely, quietly, modestly,Gonzilez-a man known to love to dance-dem urred, saying that he wasflattered bu t tha t he had never learned to dance.44 Even when a white wom antook th e initiative, Gonzilez refused to transgress social boundaries, refused touse the prestige he had acqu ired in war to remake o r manipulate social distinc-tions. As with his mistress du ring the war, Go nz ile z acted quietly, inconspicu-ously. Bandera, meanwhile, d rew all eyes to his purpo rted transgression. Andas with his own mistress during the war, he refused to keep up appearances,and then an nounced his refusal to his superiors.

An other reason Bandera's behavior caused so severe a reaction in 1897 wasthat his superiors believed that it produced a deplorable example for the me nunder his command. In the eyes of his superiors, Bandera's misconduct was

4 2 De la Torrie nte, "Memorias:' zo Apr. 1896, in F. Gbmez, La insurrecci6nn, 17-18.43. Savignbn, Quintin Banderas, 10-11.44 . Lino d'O u y Ayllbn, Papeles del Zn iente Coronel Lino d'Ou , prologue by N icolis

Gu illtn (Havana: Un i6n de Escritores y Artistas de C uba, 1977), 88-89. I am grateful toRebecca Scott for calling my attent ion to this story.


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even mo re reprehensible because of the character of his troops. G6 mez wrotetha t because Bandera's subord inates were themselves "lacking in moral recti-tude," his behavior had resulted in the total disarray of his division.45 HereG6mez's accusation contrasts markedly with Bandera's defense. For whereasBandera had attem pted t o justify his actions by pointing t o the character-the"way of beingn-of the rebel army, G6m ez invoked this same charac ter indemanding greater moral rectitude from the army's leaders.

This contrast is critical. Bandera, in his defense, stressed that he was a"rustic man," uneducated and incapable of artifice.46 H e was simply, as thelaundry soap ad would later assert, "a son of the people." He drew little cul-tural distinction between himself and his soldiers, o r between himself and theCuban public. G6 m ez, on the other hand, implied that in a society "lacking inmoral rectitude," strict and civilized leadership was indispensable. Discussingthe poor moral examples set by different army officers, he predicted that "ifthose m en who are called upo n either by virtue of their rank in this improvisedarmy or by virtue of their social background do no t, with their example andtheir abnegation, support the labor of true redemption of this unfortunatesociety, the n I see the fou ndation s of this republic in serious troublel'47 Giventhe character of Cu ban society and of the rebel army's ran k and file, G6 m ezinsisted o n a ce rtain cu ltural, social, and political distance between leaders andsoldiers. Leaders were to provide moral examples tha t would elevate the char-acter of the soldiers and th e arm y, which i n tu rn wou ld serve as a solid founda-tion for the new republic.

The problem, then, with Bandera's offenses was that they were eagerlyinterpreted as demonstrations of his incapacity for this kind of moral author-ity. Bandera's detractors questioned his standing as a patriot and rejected hisclaim to leadership because he allegedly failed to display the qualities of manlyself-restraint and self-sacrifice. T h is was eviden t in the fact that he placed hisdesire to return to his home in O riente above the needs of the army and, m oregenerally, of the Cu ban cause; in so doing, he was perceived as having encour-aged disobedience among his men. His incapacity for leadership was further,and perhaps forem ost, suggested by his apparen t willingness to place his ownsexual and personal desires above the arm y and th e nation , in the process sul-lying the privileged and pu re world of male insurgency. T h a t Bandera chose to

45. G6m ez to Armando S inchez , 8 July 1897,ANC,M G , leg . 16 , exp. 2,157 See alsoG6mez, Diario, 332.

46. Bandera to G6mez, n o date, ANC, DR, leg. 257, e x p 59.47. G6mez, Diario, 3 32.


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Rustic Men, Civi l ized Nation G83

admit t o man y of the accusations, and th at in so do ing he em phasized his affin-ity with common soldiers and their weaknesses, further angered his accusers.For if independence was to succeed, its leaders had to quell, not reflect, theinclinations of poor and uneducated soldiers. Leaders had to have the socialand cultural characteristics tha t Bandera boasted of n ot having.

ConclusionT h e court-martial against Quintin Bandera, then , revealed impo rtant assump-tions about leadership and its prerequisites. Nowhere, however, did the lan-guage with which Bandera's opponents expressed their concerns about theseprerequisites ever suggest that racial identity could be considered an explicitcriterion for leadership; and n ow her e did th e recor d nam e Bandera as a blackm an o r black officer. But if qualifications for a uth ority w ere n ot explicitly o rprimarily racial, ne ither were they exclusively military. Fo r th e langu age of th eaccusations, alongside a co ncern w ith Bandera's behavior as a soldier, displayeda marked preoccupation with his lack of sexual, social, and moral restraint as aman . At issue, then, w ere n ot onl y matters of military discipline, but also ques-tions of dec orum , civility, and refinement-qualities with clear racial, gender,and class content. Note, for example, the slippage between race and civiliza-tion in the exchange about Bandera that occurred in January 1898 between therebel army's two highest ranking military men: Calixto Garcia and MiximoG6mez. Wro te Garcia:

Regard ing you r sensible observations abo ut Q uintin Bandera'scontingent, and regarding, in general, the need to refrain fro mpromoting so many rough and ignorant men, allow me t o remindyou that I was never a supporter of Bandera's contingent. . . . Bandera,Zamora [another non-white officer], etc. etc., are no t m y work,nor yours. I have always attempted t o elevate only those m en w hoare truly worthy, hon orab le, and civilized.48

Clearly the qualifications for leadership far exceeded the realm of military skilland prowess; top- ran king officers such as G 6m ez and G arcia saw worthines s,honor, and civilization as prerequ isites for th e exercise of leade rship .

W ith independence a t hand, however, their preferences w ere n o longer anabstract proposition. T h e highest officers found themselves, in fact, at a com -plicated and difficult crossroads. For the duration of the war, and over the

48. Garcia to Gbmez, 14Jan. 1898,ANC, MG, leg. 1 2 , exp. 1,710;emphasis mine.


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684 HAHR / November / Ferrerwhole 30-year period of nationalist agitation, they had extolled a rebel armytha t eroded social distinctions and allowed for the ascent of "rustic m en" suchas Quintin Bandera. As independence app roached, however, they became con -vinced of the need to mitigate the rebel army's leveling effects, and to directand supervise the transition from military to political power. An arm y of rusticmen defending a just cause was one thing; quite another was the exercise ofpower, authority, and responsibility by these sam e men in times of peace.

And so as peace and victory began to seem attainable, perhaps even immi-nent, highly gendered and racialized concerns ab out th e exercise of power byunqualified men translated into day-to-day anxiety over promo tions and rankswithin the rebel army. As 1898 unfolded, the leading figures of the rebel arm yand civilian gov ernm ent began to th ink about the end of war, and abo ut whichofficers would finish the war in positions of power. Thus in February 1898,confidence in a Cuban victory led G6 mez to w rite to comm anding officers acrossthe island asking for nom inations for promotions to commissioned ranks. H easked the officers to m ake the ir choices "with special care and scrupulousness. . . so as not to find ourselves surroun ded later by officers with w hom we wouldhave no idea what to do."49 Across the island, ranking officers made their recom -mendations. Pedro Betancourt, the highest ranking officer in Matanzas prov-ince, for example, responded by stripping Martin Duen of his command asleader of the Betances Regiment, a post he had held since the regiment hadbeen formed. Betancourt replaced Duen, "a man as dark as ebony," with Gui-llermo Schweyer, a white officer and a member of one of the region's mostprominent families. Duen, meanwhile, was transfened to another regiment,where he ended the war as one of only six comm anders under a white colonel.50 Alocal black soldier charac terized this transfer of power as fairly typical of whatwas happening as peace approached and as more and more "sons of distin-guished families" assumed positions of prom inence and power.51 T h e same pat-tern repeated itself elsewhere on the island. In Cienfuegos, not too far fromwhere Bandera ran in to so much trouble in 1897, oth er prominent white citi-zens joined the rebel cause late, climbed rapidly th rou gh the ranks, and finishedthe war with au tho rity over m ore experienced black officers and soldiers.52

49. See, for example, G 6m ez to P edro Betancourt, Feb. 1898, A N C, D R, leg. 250,exp. so .

50. "Diario de operaciones del Ca pit ln Martin Du en y Richard:' A N C , D R , leg. 278,exp. I; and kc a rd o Batrell Oviedo, Para la historia: apuntes autobiogrdfios de la vida deRicardo Batrell Oviedo (Havana: Seoane y Alvarez , I~IZ) ,70-71.

51. Batrell Oveido, Para la historia, 171.52. See Or lan do Garcia Martine z, "La Brigada de C ienfuegos: un anllisis social de su


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Rus t ic M e n , C iv il ize d Na t ion 681i

The se additional cases, in which the leadership of black men in Matanzasor Cienfuegos was frustrated, did not exactly parallel the case of Bandera,where a nationally prom inent black figure was court-m artialed, pun ished, andstripped of his forces. But the concerns expressed and revealed during theprosecution of Bandera-the preoccupa tion with civilization and manliness,with a leadership that would m aintain strict political, social, and c ultural dis-tinctions between itself and the mass of people it com manded-foreshadowedemerging and urgen t struggles over the m eaning and boundaries of militaryand political power during the transition to peace. C onflicts over the leader-ship qualities of Bandera, o r Duen, centered less on th e military m erits of indi-vidual leaders than on broader battles over contending models of republicanleadership and over who would occupy th e cu ltural and political center of thenew polity.

How the civilian and military leadership of the Cuban movement-divided and fractured but conscious of the antiracist promise of their revolu-tion-would have resolved the issue we cannot know; for over their own lead-ership would come that of a foreign government and army. With Americanofficers and bureaucrats o n th e scene, the issue then changed: the question wasno longer who am ong th e C uban insurgents and civilians was capable of lead-ing an independent republic, but rather w hether the Cuban people as a wholewere prepared for independence at all. For the Am ericans, the answer to thatquestion came easily, and it loudly echoed the allegations that Spain had madefor most of the nineteenth century. T h e rebels, said one Un ited States officer,were "a lot of degenerates . . . no more capable of self-government than thesavages of Africa." General William Shafter made the same poin t w ith a differ-ent, more explosive analogy: "Self-government! Why, these people are nomore fit for self-government than gunpow der is for helll'53

And here emerges one of the central ironies of the story: tha t those sameleaders who had so worried about the requisites for leadership-about culturalattainm ents, hono r, worthiness, and civilization-would find themselves sud-formaci6n:' paper presented at the Taller de Histor ia, Archivo Provincial de Cienfueg os,Cuba, 4-6 Mar. 1998. O n the postwar period in Cienfuegos, see also imch ael Zeuske,"Movilizaci6n afrocubana y clientelas en un hinterland cubano: C ienfuegos en tre colonia yrepublics (1895-1912):' pape r presented at the same conference ; an d Rebecca J. Scott,"Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Cuba : A View from the Sugar District of Cienfuegos,1886-1909," in this volum e.

53. Both quoted in Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American W ar and the Birth o fAmerican Imperialism, 18 9~ -1 go z, z vols. (New York: Mo nth ly Review Press, 197z),2:394-95.


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6 8 6 HAHR / November / Ferrerdenly subordinated to a gove rnm ent of occupation that declared them all gen-erally incapable of leadership and self-rule. S o in 1898, Quin tin Bandera w it-nessed the end of the war in Santiago de Cuba from the margins, withoutauthority, without soldiers, and without sanctioned political voice. This mar-ginality, like tha t of most m em bers of th e nationalist army, was imposed by theexclusionary contem pt of a foreign army recently arrived. But Bandera's ambigu-ous position a t the m argins was imposed, as well, from within, by m ilitary andcivilian leaders who looked forward to peace with some measure of anxiety,who saw in the mass of rebel soldiers a potential "obstacle to peace and pros-perity," and w ho defined leadership always as a refined check o n th e mass of"rustic men" with w hom Bandera so clearly chose to identify.54

54. T h e quote about the rebel army appears in Joaquin Llaverias y Martinez, ed.,Actas de las asa?nbleas de representantesy del Consejo de Guerra durante la guerra deindependencia,vol. j: 1898-1899 (Havana: Impr. "El Siglo XX,"A. M G i z y H er m an o s,' 9 3 2 ) , 2 7 .

ferrer, rustic men, civilized nation

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