238 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION
subvert the Rural Guard, but if the Guard could remain
intact, the army would be no political threat.^47
The importance of the settlement to the Provisional
Government was clearly recognized by the Grupo Cubano de
Investigaciones Economicas, when, writing some fifty years
after the fact, they stated: "After having organized the Cuban
Army under the command of General Pino Guerra, Magoon
held elections.... "^48 The Provisional Government had prag
matically solved the Cuban army "problem" through the time-
tested devices of compromise and public discussion. Cuba now
had a force adequate to crush insurrection, a force which
filled the military void of 1906 so annoying to Roosevelt.
In developments that reached beyond 1909, however, the
American officers in Cuba more clearly saw the future than
did Washington. The Cuban army, despite its few American
advisers, became the fiscally rapacious and politically potent
institution the American officers predicted. Jose Miguel
Gomez first removed General Rodriguez from the command
of the Rural Guard, replacing him with his old crony, Jose
de Jesus Monteagudo. Gomez then coerced Pino Guerra from
his post (with the help of a would-be assassin's wounding
bullet) and merged the Permanent Army with the Rural
Guard under Monteagudo. Gomez also purged the Rural
Guard officers he considered politically unreliable. To the
dismay of his generals, Gomez broke up the Army's camps
and ordered the troops to garrison Cuba's major cities. Like
Topsy, the Army continued to grow; it was joined by a navy
and by a Department of War and Navy. Militarily the Army
performed well in the Race War of 1912, but it could hardly
be called apolitical. Despite the efforts of the officers of the
United States Army, the Cuban armed forces were once
again Cubanized.
The reconstruction of the Cuban armed forces created
another perplexing political morass for the Roosevelt admin
istration because American policy remained the captive of its
political assumptions. At a loss as to who represented the
Cuban people, Washington found itself again dealing almost
entirely with the Liberal Committee. On the other hand, the