The Fragile Republic 25factor in the change was the influx of foreign capital to
finance Cuba's postwar reconstruction and the expansion of
the sugar industry. In terms of national wealth, sugar (domi
nated by alien entrepreneurs and foreign capital) was king.
The cycle of the sugar business was tied to the season. The
cane grew in the wet season, was harvested in the dry. The
Cubans named these two periods for their impact on the
nation's life. The growing season was el tiempo muerto, the
time of unemployment and apathy. Harvest was la zafra, the
vibrant months of work, of wages, of buying, of merry-making.
The country lay at the feet of the sugar cycle: "We cannot
live without la zafra; its power is total and its tyranny intol
erable."^8 Since sugar was subject to violent price fluctuations
in the world market, the tyranny was double.
Foreign capital and entrepreneurship also dominated the
next largest crop, tobacco, at least in its marketing phase.
Aliens also financed and developed the railways, steamship
lines, manufacturing, banking, and commerce. The predomi
nant stake was, in 1906, Spanish, with American and British
investments close behind. American investment was variously
estimated between $100 and $160 million. The striking thing
about the alien business elite was its fear of competition and
financial insecurity and its sense of desperate risk as it tried
to capitalize on Cuba's wealth. The businessmen's special
fears were as great as those of the Cubans.^9
The institutions which might have eased the insecurity of
Cuba's economic life had been weakened in the nineteenth
century. The colonial government, for all its abuses, with the
Catholic Church, had been the strongest national unifying
force. Politically it was replaced by local and regional jefes.
The legal system the Spanish left behind was as dehumanized
and ambiguous in practice as ever. The rapacity of judges
and advocates provoked a wry joke: "No one can afford either
to win or to lose a lawsuit for the lawyers will take all you
have in either case."
(^10) The Church had been loyal to the
Crown during the insurrection; controlled by Spanish and
Italian clerics, it was suspect and impotent after independence.