The Politics of Intervention

28 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

Behind the American army in 1898 came a new generation
of carpetbaggers to risk all in land development schemes,
fruit farms, mines, and agricultural colonies. Though not
numerous, these Americans saw themselves as the advance
agents of civilization and prosperity. Yet they did little to
help Cuban-American relations. As Havana resident Irene
Wright observed:

There is no person so perfectly calculated to "rub" a Latin "the

wrong way" as the self-seeking, aggressive, unmannerly scouts we send

to Cuba, among other frontiers, of whose faults, peculiarly enough, our

national virtues and especially our strength are constituted.^16

American relations with Cuba also had one myopic trait:
Americans looked at Cuba and saw Havana. The nation's
capital in government and vice, largest city, commercial and
financial center, and port to the outside world, Havana had
a hypnotic impact on foreign statesmen and capitalists. They
gauged affairs in Cuba by events in Havana or at least the
flow of news from the capital. Sometimes Havana was the
only source of information, but the troubled rumors in Havana
also distorted the outsider's understanding of the island's woes.
Who was the political Cuban? Lieutenant Colonel Robert L.
Bullard thought he knew, and his description, whatever its
flaws, has a timeless North American quality to it:

The Cuban is intolerant of tyranny, but let him once obtain power
and authority, and he is autocratic, dictatorial, inconsiderate, and with­
out any quality of toleration or compromise.... Every Cuban under­
stands these qualities have been the cause of official failure and down­
fall, yet when his term of power comes he seems unable to resist the
temptation to become a despot.
In all politics and public affairs he is a child. He is always able to
satisfactorily excuse himself from all blame by shifting it to some one
else. If not given his own way he will 'pick up his dolls' and refuse to
play longer. The principle of the 'greatest good to the greatest number'
means nothing to him and he views a majority vote against him with
a deep sense of personal injustice...
The Cuban puts dependence upon a strong central government....
He looks upon a strong central government to right all his wrongs, no
matter how trivial....