The Provisional Government and Cuban Stability 209On the other hand, typhoid, malaria, cholera, and tubercu
losis posed continuing, major threats to the population. In
1907 in Havana deaths from diarrhea and enteritis among
children (610) outnumbered the total deaths for all other
age groups from all other infectious diseases, except tubercu
losis.^65 Only Havana, with lavish appropriations from the
national government, had attempted to maintain the standards
set by the Military Government, and it had concentrated on
yellow fever control. Conditions elsewhere in Cuba can be
imagined from this report from Matanzas by one of Kean's
special inspectors:
Of the occupied houses only two were found to have water closets... the others had outhouses with earth pits, the conditions of which
was nasty and foul smelling in the extreme. The patios of the bodegas
[stores] also contained pig pens, chicken yards and stable, and there
were wet areas extending under the houses, from all of which very foul
odors and swarms of flies arose. The patio of Sr. Pages contained a
chicken yard and a small pig tied by its leg, in the vicinity of the
latter was a very foul spot from which a swarm of flies arose. A
leak in a hydrant keeps part of this patio very wet in the region of the
chicken yard.... The keeper of one of these bodegas and a lady who
had been living for two months near the home of Sr. Pages says the
number of flies is about what it has always been in this neighborhood.^66
Whatever Cuba's health problems in general, the Provisional
Government concentrated on stamping out yellow fever. This
disease had reappeared in Havana in 1905 and 1906, and the
Roosevelt administration became concerned lest the Army
become infected, trade and credit in Cuba be hurt by an
epidemic, and the disease spread to the southern United
States. (As a matter of fact, the infection came to Havana
from New Orleans.) Kean admitted that yellow fever did
pose a threat, principally because the Cuban municipalities
had neither the will nor the funds to sanitize themselves.^67
Although the Provisional Government went to work on the
problem, another epidemic broke out in August, 1907, lasting
until November. The concern in Washington is amply docu
mented: the American minister in Havana submitted "sanitary
reports" from Cuba every ten days, and these reports gave