54 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION
resident in Cuba and a serious student of its culture. Atkins was an
influential sugar planter, owner of several large estates in Santa Clara
province.- The best-documented, incisive history of Cuba for the war of
liberation is Hermino Portell Vila, Historia de Cuba en sus relaciones
con los Estados Unidos y Espana (4 vols.; Havana, 1938-1941). Cf.
Philip Foner, A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United
States (2 vols.; New York, 1962, 1964). On the role of the Negro in
the revolutionary movement see also Lawrence F. Nichols, "The Bronze
Titan: the Mulatto Hero of Cuban Independence, Antonio Maceo"
(unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Duke University, 1954). - Portell Vila claims that the tragedy of the United States inter
vention in 1898 and the occupation that followed was that it polarized
Cuban politics around the question of economic and political ties to the
United States. The reactionaries and the demagogues that the United
States had to deal with in 1906 were creatures of its own making.
Portell Vila, Historia de Cuba, IV, 499.
For a moving fictional account of Cuban Me from 1868 to 1920, see
Carlos Loveira, Generates y doctores, ed. Shasta M. Bryant and J. Riis
Owre (New York, 1965). - Lowry Nelson, Rural Cuba, pp. 139-61.
- The statistics are from Office of the Director, Census of Cuba, U.S.
War Department, Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899 (Washington,
1900); and Henry Gannett and Victor H. Olmstead (eds.), Cuba:
Population, History, and Resources, 1907 (Washington, 1909). The
latter work is based on the 1907 census conducted by the Provisional
Government. For a summary, see Henry Gannett, "Conditions in Cuba
Revealed by the Census," National Geographic Magazine, XX (Febru
ary, 1909), 200-202. See also Alvarez Diaz, Estudio sobre Cuba, pp.
373-96. - Wright, Cuba, p. 88.
- MacGaffey and Barnett, Cuba, chap, iii; Nelson, Rural Cuba,
pp. 79-138; Wright, Cuba, pp. 134-35, 164, 235, Alvarez Diaz, Estudio
sobre Cuba, pp. 471-88. For the relation of poverty to rural violence,
see Alberto Arredondo, Cuba: tierra indefensa (Havana, 1945), pp.
173-205. For a description of the sugar industry, see Willis Fletcher
Johnson, The History of Cuba (New York, 1920), V, 15, 160-82. - Manuel Marquez Sterling, Alrededor de nuestra psicologia (Ha
vana, 1906), p. 14. Alrededor is a vivid description of the social and
psychological upheaval which independence and industrialized agri
culture brought to Cuba; the author was a noted Cuban patriot, jour
nalist, author, and diplomat. Another striking account of the impact of
sugar and tobacco on Cuban Me is Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint,
trans, by Harriet de Onis (New York, 1947). - Atkins, Sixty Years in Cuba, passim, and Walter Vaughan, The
Life and Work of Sir William Van Home (New York, 1920), pp. 267 - Van Home, builder of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, was the
moving spirit behind the construction of the Cuban Railroad, which
linked Oriente Province with western Cuba.