--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Joseph M. Tanner collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 7 number: 10 published: 1904-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Joseph M. Tanner, "A Trip to Cuba. II—Havana; III—Population of Cuba," *Improvement Era* 7, no. 10 (August 1904): 779–785.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0710unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0710unse start_page: 779 end_page: 785 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1904-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0710unse publication_year: 1904 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1904, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Trip to Cuba. II—Havana; III—Population of Cuba A TRIP TO CUBA. BY DR. JOSEPH M. TANNER, SUPERINTENDENT OF CHURCH SCHOOLS. II.— HAVANA. Havana is one of the oldest cities established by the Spaniards in the western hemisphere. Nearly a hundred years before our Atlantic seaboard was colonized, Havana was founded in the year 1519. The city lies in a low, flat district, and from the sea would be unattractive were it not for the bright and enlivening colors of its houses. To the west and south there are some small hills which in recent times are occupied by houses whose elevated position en- liven the general view of the city. There is a very general tendency throughout the island to congregate in cities, and one is surprised to find so few people lo- cated in the country. There are two reasons why the Cuban pop- ulation has swelled in the cities. In the first place, they are social by instinct, and naturally flock together, a custom that is encour- aged by the uniform and mild temperature of the climate. In the second place, they have found it necessary to protect themselves by fortresses during the many revolutions that have swept over the land. Poor government has often made them a prey to bandits who robbed and plundered without conscience. Within the city, almost every house is a sort of small fortress. Every block is completely walled in. The blocks are not large, and the streets are uncomfortably narrow. Most of them are, perhaps, not more than twenty or twenty- five feet wide. Where they are extremely narrow, carriage drivers have rules by which they may all go down one street and up another. Means of transportation about the city are very good. Lately electric car lines have been constructed through the principal streets. The service is good. The conductors are among the most affable and painstaking to be found in any great city of the world. Sometimes the streets are so narrow as not to permit of any vehicles on the streets where the cars run. If a buggy hap- pens to be caught, it turns into a side street and waits till the car goes by. The sidewalks cannot, as a rule, be more than two or three feet wide. Pedestrians must generally step down on to the road to pass an opposing pedestrian. One might easily in some streets shake hands from a street car window with a Cuban lady, sitting at her sewing machine in the front room. The people of Havana have one of the best cab services in the world. One may ride from any one part of the city to another for twenty cents. The cabs are of a high grade, and present a very excellent appearance. They may be occupied by two persons for the same charge of twenty cents. The cab tariff is regulated by city ordinance, and no trouble is experienced in getting about. They are frequently used, and are therefore numerous throughout all parts of the city. Two merchants may go to dinner together to a distant part of the city, for ten cents each. Besides the bet- ter class of cabs, cheap omnibuses run along special routes in the city for a very small fare. The houses come up full on the sidewalk, so the passer by has only the wall to separate him from the front, often the best, room in the house. The front of the buildings around a block constitute a sort of wall behind which the homes are established, the street wall constituting one of the walls of the house. In front of the windows are iron grates which give to the house from the outside something of the appearance of a prison. Sometimes the doors are small, especially in the poorer districts, and open directly into the front room of the house. In the well-to-do quarters, the houses have a large double door through which a carriage can be driven. This large door leads by an open passage into a square court which is often filled with palms and other tropical trees and plants. Often the court is a veritable garden, and its sweet per- fumes give fragrance to the atmosphere all about. From this open court, often without any roof, doors open into different apart- ments of the home. The carriage sometimes stands in one corner A TRIP TO CUBA. 781 of the court, while a little further to the back is the stables for the horses. The dining room, parlor, bedrooms, and kitchen, all open into the court which receives the sunlight for the entire home. It is about this court that the family gather in the even- ing and enjoy the outdoor life peculiar to tropical climates. The "building rock" of the houses in Havana is a sort of loose textured sea shell which is cut out with axes into square blocks, and used for the walls of the house. Its porous, rough sides make it suitable for receiving the plaster or stucco. The plaster is calcimined with various colors, chiefly yellow, white or drab. The houses are rarely more than one story high, and are built to resist the sun and the intruder. What seemed unusual was to see houses of the wealthier classes built side by side with homes of the poor. A home in Havana is separate and distinct from its neighboring home. There is no common dooryard, each home emptying its occupants directly into the street. The pover- ty, confusion, or filth of one home are not seen by the occupants of the one adjoining. The streets are so narrow that they do not afford a play ground, for the children, or a common meeting place for neighbors. About each home there is an atmosphere of the most perfect seclusion. It is a kind of a castle in which the inmates shut them- selves out from the world about them. One would often not sur- mise, from external appearances which are much alike in all, what elegance is to be found in the court and interior living rooms of the home. The wealthy thus shut out from the poorer classes all knowledge of the grandeur and display of wealth in the homes of the rich. It was the policy of the wealthy Spaniards to avoid the cupidity of the masses, and hide themselves and the gorgeous adornments of their homes from the Cuban people. It is quite natural that a city in a tropical climate would pro- vide itself with parks and promenades for the people who live so much out of door. Havana is no exception to the rule. Out-door life there is quite universd, winter as well as summer. Besides a number of parks, there is in the city the celebrated Prado street which extends from La Punta, on the bay, a mile and a half to the heart of the city. Almost every evening, all the year round, there may be seen the beautiful equipages of Havana's rich. The turn- , outs are certainly as elegant as may be seen in any great city of the world. The center of the Prado has been somewhat raised and provided with benches. Along each side of the walk here is a row of beautiful Spanish laurel trees that give abundant shade, and add to the tropical beauty of one of the finest promenades in the world. At the south end of the Prado is the Central park about which the principal hotels and beautiful structures of the city cluster. It extends north to La Punta, and leads to the beautiful walk along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Near the sea beach, at the north end of the famous street, there has been erected a nice band stand where two or three evenings a week open air concerts are given free to all the people. The life of Havana, especially in winter, is certainly "gay." People of the United States are every year mak- ing the city more and more a winter resort. There is an ever in- creasing effort to appeal to the wants and pleasures of the tourist class. Many who go there for winter are building homes in the suburbs, especially toward the west where the salubrious sea breezes give to the coast one of the most charming climates to be found anywhere. Havana is one of the cleanest cities in the world.The Amer- ican occupation had for one of its purposes the thorough renova- tion of the city, so that it might no longer breed disease to con- taminate the seaport towns along our Atlantic coast. Now that the Cubans manage their own affairs, they show great pride in keeping the pace set by the military government of the United States, during the time it was renovating the capital of Cuba. III.— THE POPULATION OF CUBA. During the military occupation of Cuba by the United States, census returns of the population of the island were made October 16, 1899. At that time the total population of the island was 1,572,798. Very great misconceptions prevailed in the United States respecting the character of Cuba's population. With res- pect to the black race, it was thought that conditions were very much the same in Cuba as in other West Indian islands. In Ja- maica the negroes outnumber the whites 40 to 1. In Cuba, however, A TRIP TO CUBA. 783 the negroes number only 234,638, and the mixed races of Cubans and whites, 270,805, so that the people of Cuba in whose veins flow African blood are only about one third of the population. For some reason, not satisfactorily explained, the negroes have never thrived in Cuba. When the early Spaniards took the island, they subjected the Indians to conditions of slavery, and practically thereby exterminated the whole Indian race in the island. Whatever In- dian blood is found in Cuba today is sparsely mixed with the Span- ish race. The Indian, therefore, is not taken into consideration as one of the races of the island. To take the place of the Indians, the Spaniards imported from Africa about one million negroes. Of that number, including mulattoes, not more than half a million re- mains, and the negroes are gradually being extinguished. For general purposes there are five classes: first, the white Cubans, the descendants of Spaniards and owners of the soil; sec- ond, the black Cubans, the pure negro; third, colored Cubans, a mixture of Spaniards and negroes; fourth, Spaniards including the officials and intransigents; fifth, foreigners other than Spaniards. As the great majority of Cuban people are either Spanish, or descendants of the Spaniards known as white Cubans, it is quite natural that Spanish customs, language, and religion should prevail there. The best element of the white Cubans is perhaps found in the eastern and central portions of the island. Those spoken most highly of are the Camagueynos. They have always belonged to the higher type, and have possessed a high standard of manli- ness and virtue of which they have been justly proud, it being their boast that never has one of their women become a prostitute. They are regarded by many as superior to the peoples of south- eastern Europe who come to the United States every year by the hundreds of thousands. These Cubans educate their sons abroad, and from them come a large number of men eminent in the various professions of life. The larger part of them who go abroad prefer France for an educational career; this, no doubt grows out of the natural kinship that is felt among the romance nations. In contrast with the white Cubans of the central and eastern portions of Cuba stands the inferior kind of the white Cubans^ in Havana and some of the larger cities of the island. At one time Volunteers, they were united under an organization known as the which consisted of Spanish porters, draymen and clerks of Havana, who constituted an organized mob, and who for years carried on a reign of terror. These Volunteers not infrequently fired their revolvers at innocent people in the dining rooms of the hotels, and sometimes into a crowd coming out of a theatre. The Volunteer movement reached the height of its domineering and blood-thirsty career when it demanded the execution of forty-three students, all under the age of twenty years, because one of their number was accused of scratching a glass plate on the vault of a Volunteer. Fifteen thousand of this organization witnessed this ignoble deed which Spanish officials were bound to carry out at the behest of a Spanish mob. The Cuban is rather small. In the city he is elegant in his make up, and somewhat fascinating. He has beautiful eyes and hair, and pearly teeth. In the matter of his morals, he is superior to other West Indians, in both the French and the English colonies, where illegitimate births are the rule and not the exception. In Cuba the different races are classified and distinctions made, but they are not so sharply drawn there as in the United States. Negroes and Cubans live side by side without any outward mani- festations of strong antagonism. The mixed negro and Spanish blood in the so-called colored races is more numerous than that of the pure negro. This would indicate that the mixture of these races in Cuba has been more easily accomplished than in the United States. It would be quite impossible to tell in all cases whether there was negro blood in those who profess to belong to the white Cubans. This circumstance has undoubtedly given rise to the contempt in which the Spaniards have held the Cubans. Among foreigners not classified with the Spaniards, the most numerous class is John Chinaman. According to statistics, four- teen thousand, eight hundred and fifty- seven of that race were in Cuba in 1899, practically aU males. It was believed at one time that the coolies and the Chinese would be an aid to the develop- ment of Cuban industries, by furnishing them with Chinese labor. However, most of the coolies brought to the island returned to their native land, so that it is not at all likely to be dominated by either the African or Chinese, as both races are constantly diminish- ing. A TRIP TO CUBA. 785 The statistics published by our government at Washington form some interesting comparisons. On the island, of a million and a half people, eight hundred and fifteen thousand are males, and seven hundred and fifty-seven thousand females. These statis- tics confirm what has frequently been asserted, that the revolu- tions in Cuba bore more heavily upon the women than upon the men. In Cuba there are married two hundred and forty- six thou- sand, three hundred and fifty-one; living together but unmarried, one hundred and thirty- one thousand, seven hundred and eighty- seven; widows, eighty- five thousand, one hundred and twelve. It is said that one-tenth of the entire population of Havana con- sists of widows. These statistics show that of all the women over twenty-one years of age, there is one widow out of every four and one-third women. There are one hundred and twenty-three thousand one hundred and seventy-five married women, there are sixty- five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-three women living with men to whom they are not married, so that for fewer than for every two women who are married, there is one woman living with a man to whom she is not married. The Cubans thus living together correspond with what is known in Germany as wild marriage, a condition that arises in countries where divorces are impossible, or extremely difficult to obtain. The statistics further show that there is a widow to every one and one-half married woman. Special attention is now paid to matters of education, and the schools are receiving the careful attention of the government. The statistics, however, of 1898, showed that there were six hun- dred and eighty-three thousand, five hundred and fifty-five who could neither read nor write. This great army of illiterates was undoubtedly due to the little interest that Spain had in the educa- tional welfare of her most valuable colony which it was estimated was reduced during the period of reconcentration to two hundred thousand. (to be continued).