1898: Arcadio Daz-Quiones

Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 577-581
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2518419
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1898
Arcadio Diaz-Quinones

The road that leads from I898 to our national and postnational I998 is long
and winding. An emblematicyear, I898 appearslike an undisputedhistorical
marker,a crucialturning point; but its meaning is quite elusive. It is still surrounded with obscurities and with elaborate deceptions centering on questions of empire,nationality,race, and religion. Undoubtedly,the warsin Cuba
(1895-98) and in the Philippines (I896-1902),
as well as other United States
interventionsin the Dominican Republic,Haiti, and Panama,generateda new
cartographyfor business and militarypurposes, as well as an impressivearray
of institutionsin the fields of health and education.There was no aspectof life
in Spain,Cuba,the Philippines,Puerto Rico, or the United Statesthat was not
markedby the geopolitical and culturalconsequencesof '98, from the history
of a new displacementand mobility of workersto the developmentof nationalist historiographiesin the former Spanishcolonies and of "LatinAmerican"
studiesin the United States.
Eighteen ninety-eight is also the story of a complex bilingual, cultural
experience.A significantliteraryand journalisticproductionwas stimulatedby
United States hegemony and by the astonishingturn of events: from chronicles to travel books and business and tourist guides to orient the eyes of the
United Statesviewer,from militarymemoirs and extensivemissionaryreports
to majorscientific studies. A new photographicvisibility and iconographyof
Spain'sformercolonies became availablein the press and in books such as Our
New Possessions
or OurIslandsand TheirPeople,which allow us to study a range
of attitudes,values, and racialbiasesimplicit and explicitin the United States.
Equally important, the humiliating defeat of Spain in the Philippines and
Cuba,the "virile"avant-gardeof Theodore Roosevelt and his "roughriders,"
andthe fear of what seemed to be an all-powerful,all-pervasive"Americanization" encourageda long debate in Latin Americain which writers like EugeOriginally published in PLAS Boletin(Winter I998), Program in Latin American Studies,
Princeton University.
HispanicAmericanHistoricalReview 78:4
Copyright I998 Duke University Press

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578

HAHR/ November / Diaz-Quiiiones

nio Maria de Hostos, Ruben Dario, andJose Enrique Rodo-to name but a
few-participated. These are far-reachingissues.
Nevertheless,it is revealingthat both in Spainand in the United Statesthe
term "Spanish-American
War"took hold in the officialvocabulary,putfing a
reassuringdistance between the two powers and Cubans and Filipinos, as if
only imperialmasterswere historicalsubjects.It is certainlyno accidentthat this
languagehas shapedhistoricalunderstandingever since. These were largelythe
terms set by the United States and Spain in the negotiationsthat culminated,
under the guns of the victors, in the Treatyof Paris (I898). Cubans,Filipinos,
andPuertoRicanswere not even entitledto sit at the negotiatingtable.
Nationalist narrativesseriouslylimit the field, blocking the view of other
historicaland perhapsdiscordantactors.This is not to deny the importanceof
nationalisthistoriographiesor to claim that we cannot learn from them. But
linear, continuous narrativestend to erase the political and cultural interactions with both the old and new empires. They also exclude connections and
interactionsbetween the islands and neighboring territoriesin the Caribbean
or with the processin the Pacific.
Perhapsit might be profitableto begin with a history of how I898 and its
consequences has been written and rewritten in the countries involved. It
would be, in some measure,the history of certainkey words and silences revelatoryof how I898 was experiencedand communicated.In Spain,for example,
it rapidlybecame the year of the "Disaster,"the waste and sadnessof the wars
and the devastating destruction of the Spanish fleet in the Philippines and
Cubathat energizedthe literatureof the "Generationof '98.' In that literature
the old colonies were only a diffuse landscape behind the Spanish national
debates.The proof is that significantinterlocutors-a true varietyof voices
seem hardlyto be noticed in Spain and the United States, despite the fact that
committedintellectualssuch as Puerto RicansRamon Emeterio Betances,Salvador Brau, Luis Llorens Torres, Pedro Albizu Campos, and Antonio S.
Pedreira, or the Cubans Fernando Ortiz and EnriqueJose Varona,reflected
on the ruins of the Spanishempire.Jose Marti, who as a very young man had
been deeply markedby the experienceof prison during the first Cubanwar of
independence(i868-78), elaboratedin an enthrallingnarrativehis harrowing
testimony of "The Political Prison in Cuba."Taken together, the writings and
the political practicesof these figures represent an enormous project, but for
the most part either they remainunknownin Spain and in the United States,
or they do not enjoy sufficientauthorityto be referencesin the debates.
The silencing of the former colonies in the Spanish debate blocked an

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579

1898

understandingof how the militaryand colonial culture, along with the war in
Cuba and the Philippines,had transformedSpanishsociety itself, with consequencesvisible until the Civil War of 1936. In Spain, I898 did not generatealthoughthere are exceptions- a criticalexaminationof Spain'sown imperial
history,nor a knowledge of the great militaryleaders of the Cuban war, like
MaiximoGomez, Antonio Maceo, and Calixto Garcia,or of the Filipino patriots Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, and Emilio Aguinaldo.Also, very little was
said aboutthe consequencesof the terrorof the concentrationcampsin Cuba.
Thousands of Cubans were rounded up in such camps, a policy carried out
with enthusiasmby the SpanishgeneralValerianoWeyler.
From anotherangle, relentlessnegation-always with strong racistshadings-normally silences the Philippine-AmericanWar and Filipino voices.
The Caribbeanis also excludedfrom the United States'nationalhistory,despite
massive immigrationsof Haitians, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans;
decisivecolonial interventionsof the United Statesin the region; and the considerablebody of scholarshipcreatedby "native,"European,and North American scholars.Suffice it to rememberthatJose Marti, who lived in New York
from i88o on, saw the city as a powerful emblem of modernity, became an
observerof its politics and culture,andwrote fundamentalessayson Emerson,
Grant,and Whitman. Admirationfor the United Stateswas mixedwith reservations:Marti, like the Puerto Rican Betances, saw the power of the United
States as profoundlythreatening to the Caribbeanand Latin America.But it
was in United States territory that Marti founded the Cuban Revolutionary
Party in 1892, preparingfor war in activities carried out all along the East
Coast, as well as in Tampaand Key West in western Florida.
On the other hand, these internationalconnections also tend to disappear
from Cuban and Puerto Rican nationalisthistoriographies,which have their
own insiders and outsiders. Here again the crux is language. In Puerto Rico,
for example,the "autonomy"conceded by Spain in 1897 has been intensely
mythologized. But, paradoxically,the cruel war in Cuba is seldom recalled,
despitethe fact that the Autonomic Chartergrantedto Puerto Rico cannot be
dissociatedfrom that context. In parallel,the exclusion of Puerto Rico from
Cuban historiographyis especially noteworthy.Very often, Cuban historical
discourselimits itself to the use of Puerto Rico to underline a triumphantdistinction in a simple story that allows little concentrationon internal conflicts:
Cuba,convertedinto the norm of a heroic struggle towarda fully decolonized
national culture;Puerto Rico, the colony that never made it to nation-state
status,remainingunfulfilledand "incomplete."

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580

HAHR/ November / Diaz-Quiiiones

Nor has it been easy to study the contradictory Spanish legacy still
binding the former colonies to their Hispanic origins. This has been seen
from two positions that entail strong emotional and political reactions. The
Puerto Rican debate is a case in point. On the one hand, there is a rhetorical
hispanidad,similarin some ways to that of the Franco regime in Spain:Spanish Catholic culture and language extolled as a form both of opposing the
"Yankees"and of culturalpreservation.This archetypaland white hispanidad,
intended to emphasize the ongoing link with the "Mother Country,"has
simultaneouslyserved to silence the centrality of the Afro-Caribbeanworld
and the importance of freedom of religion that was allowed after I898. On
the other hand, there is a kind of antipathy regarding all that is Spanish,
generated betweenempiresby the desire felt by many to identify themselves
without reservations with a "modern" and "progressive"North American
culture.
These two different perceptionshave indeed forestalled a full consideration of the cultural,ethnic, and political complexityof Spanishlegacy as well
as of the intensity of Africancultures-and of racism-in Cuba and Puerto
Rico. There is yet another complex irony: this polarizationhas made it difficult to see that the commercial, political, and culturallinks with the United
Stateswere establishedlong before I898. This story is anythingbut simple:it
is rather a process unfolding within the histories of the United States and
Spain during the nineteenth century. Things slowly changed as the century
progressed,and the changes have a lot to do with trade and the history of
sugar,coffee, and tobacco in the islands, as well as with liberal, anticolonial,
and abolitionisttraditions.
How to return to I898 from our own i998? There is no perfect road.
Instead, the centennial incites us to ponder anew a labyrinth of segmented
images, a puzzle and a set of paradoxeswhose significance cannot be penetrated completely: it depends in some measure on the present and on new
projects.It is the story of differentpoints of view, positions and evasionsthat
do not necessarilycoincide with the space of the "nation."As Edward Said
suggests in Cultureand Imperialism,there are ways in which we can "reconceive the imperial experience in other than compartmentalizedterms."Perhaps it might be possible to rethink the contested space betweenempires,the
new political and culturalfrontiers stimulatedby the events of I898. Participantsin those events were in a position of having to navigateinstitutions that
were not equippedto handle the range of problems hurled into their arenas.
The enduringimpact of the old and new empires on consciousnessand insti-

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1898

58I

tutions deservesmore attention. In these years, in which the nation-state has

lost its political and utopian monopoly, the difficult and challenging alternative is to open another interpretativehorizon that would go far beyond the
necessary but insufficient national histories, and to propose new points of
departuretowardanothermemory.

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