The Politics of Intervention

182 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

plans gave the whole episode an unreal quality. Magoon was
undecided whether the Masso Parra affair constituted a
dangerous threat to peace. In his first report to Taft after the
arrests, he described the plotters as the agents of persons who
wished to provoke annexation and discredit the Roosevelt
administration. Masso Parra's acts had been enigmatic: "the
pure cussedness of the traditional bad man explains his con­
duct but does not account for money he spent."^57
A week later Magoon wired that all the evidence pointed
to an alliance-of-convenience between the annexationists and
some Cuban radicals, that the plot might have been backed by
Roosevelt's enemies in the United States who had sizable
business interests in Cuba. On the island itself, Magoon said,
Masso Parra had no backing except from criminals: "I am
entirely satisfied that this conspiracy found no favor with the
inhabitants of Cuba."^58 By the time he submitted his annual
report two months later, Magoon was ready to believe that
the "attempted conspiracy was brought about solely by the
instrumentality of Masso Parra, whose life has been devoted
to rebellion."^59 Masso Parra and his fellow plotters, abandoned
by all but their families, were subsequently sentenced to three
year prison terms and forgotten. More importantly Magoon
found himself flooded by expressions of loyalty from the
politicos and the Cuban press.
However fantastic in conception and execution, the Masso
Parra conspiracy was something more than the fanciful postur­
ing of a handful of radicals. The contemporary evidence (and
subsequent Cuban history) suggests that it was the only
threat, however small, to Roosevelt's plan to restore the Cuban
government. Though the plotting ended on September 26,
the anti-American feelings and unrest on which the conspir­
ators hoped to capitalize did not.^60 In Havana, for example,
although most Cubans viewed the whole affair as an annex­
ationist plot, the secret service agents who revealed the con­
spiracy were called traitors. Captain Furlong also found that
the radical "Constitutional Militia" was still active after the
abortive revolt, and arms continued to arrive in Cuba.

(^61) Among