The Politics of Intervention

CHAPTER SEVE N

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

AND CUBAN STABILITY

Wi

PHEN Charles E. Magoon replaced Taft as
Provisional Governor in October, 1906, the
general guidelines for his administration had been well estab­
lished by the Secretary of War. In his proclamation of
September 29, Taft assured the "people of Cuba" that the
Provisional Government, though temporary and under the
authority of the United States, would be "a Cuban Govern­
ment conforming ... to the Constitution. All the executive
departments and the provincial and municipal governments,
including that of the City of Havana, will continue to be
administered as under the Cuban Republic." The courts would
function normally and the laws remain in effect. As soon
as peace and stability returned (which presumably meant
when violence was reduced to non-political proportions) and
a representative Cuban government elected, the Americans
would withdraw.^1
However "Cuban" the Provisional Government was supposed
to be, it was, at the level of administrative policy-making,
distinctly American-conservative. It was not a businessmen's
government in the sense that the requirements of the large
sugar and tobacco planters and the banking and commercial
institutions in Cuba received highest priority. Rather it was
a government of lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, and soldiers
ruling, largely, by balancing what they conceived to be in
the national interest of Cuba with the demands of American
foreign policy. Between these two there was a division caused,
on the one hand, by Cuba's need for revolutionary changes
in its economic and social structure and, on the other, by the