all speaking the same odd, birdlike language.
I can’t understand
why dark northern soldiers
and light ones
are separated
into different brigades.
The dead are all buried together
in hasty mass graves,
bones touching.
José
I serve as a guide for the Rough Riders,
some of them Cherokee and Chippewa,
others old bear hunters and gold miners,
cattlemen, gamblers, college students,
and doctors.
Rosa will not allow the foreign doctors
to leech blood from feverish men
who are already weak,
or to cover their wounds with a paste
of poisonous mercury and chlorine,
so most of the Rough Riders
are taken away
to their own hospital ships,
where they can be treated
without the help
of my stubborn wife,
even though
she is right….
Rosa
Gómez is truly a clever Fox.
He writes in his diary,
keeping track of every battle,
every movement, every Cuban guide
hired to help the Americans
find their way in our jungle,
as they chase bands of desperate
Spanish soldiers.
I am pleased to see the Fox
writing columns of numbers.
He records each debt, no matter how small.
He promises that every Pacífico,
every Peaceful One,
every hardworking farmer will be paid
for each grain of corn, each pig, each hen.
I thank God that some peasants
did not move to the camps.
We survive with food raised
by those who stayed hidden
in remote valleys,
planting by the moon,
and harvesting in sunlight.
Silvia
I watch as foreign soldiers
write letters home
to their families.
Cricket is fascinated too—
he has never been to school.
He can barely write.
One of the Rough Riders tells us
that he is writing to his wife
about us,
and about Rosa,
the way she treats everyone the same,
without taking payment,
or choosing favorites.
Rosa
I travel down to the remnants of camps,
where skeletal people now come and go freely,
walking like ghosts, wandering, grieving.
American nurses hand out food
to those who line up early,
while there is enough.
The nurses wear white-winged hats, like angels.
I meet Clara Barton, with her angel-wing hat.
The famous Red Cross nurse
tells me she is sorry she could not help sooner,
when there was no food
in the camps, and no medicine.
Now she can help,
but for so many, help comes too late.
She gives me a hat
with white wings, a blood-red cross,
the colors of jasmine
and roses.
Silvia
Some of the U.S.Army nurses
are young Lakota Sioux nuns
who have come here to help us
even though their own tribe in the north
has suffered so much, for so long,
starving and dying
in their own distant wars.
One of the nuns
is called Josefina Two Bears.
She promises to take care
of all the orphans
from the camps.
Rosa
In the caves, our pillows were stones
and our beds were moss.
Water trickled from crystal ceilings
with a sound like quiet music.
It was easy to imagine
a peaceful future,
a peaceful past….
Now I sleep in a real bed, dreaming
that I am seated on a green, sunny roadside,
selling flowers—cup-of-gold vine, orange trumpet,
coral vine, flame tree, ghost orchid, roses….
I dream that I am able to sell all these flowers
because it is peacetime,
and blossoms are treasured
for beauty and fragrance,
not potions, not cures….
José
How will I deliver such strange news
to my wife, who has labored so hard
for so long, that even her sleep is not sleep,
but just dreams….
How can I tell her that suddenly
this third war has ended?
If only I could tell her
that we won.
Instead, I must whisper a truth
that seems impossible—
Spain has been defeated,
but Cuba is not victorious.
The Americans have seized power.
Once again, we are the subjects
Rosa
We helped them win
their strange victory
against Spain.
We imagined they were here
to help us gain the freedom
we’ve craved for so long.
We were inspired by their wars
for freedom from England
and freedom for slaves.
We helped them win
this strange victory
over us.
José
They choose a majestic tree,
a ceiba, the kapok tree
revered by Cubans,
a sturdy tree with powerful roots.
They choose the shade of spreading branches.
We have to watch from far away.
Even General Gómez,
after thirty years of leading our rebels,
even he is not invited
to the ceremonial surrender.
Spain cedes power before our eyes.
We can only watch from far away
as the Spanish flag is lowered
and the American flag glides upward.
Our Cuban flag
is still forbidden.
Rosa
Silvia has decided
to help the Sioux nuns
build an orphanage
for children
from the camps.
José and I must continue
doing what we can
to heal the wounded
and cure the sick.
Peace will not be paradise,
but at least we can hope
that children like Silvia
and the other orphans
will have their chance
to dream
of new ways
to feel free….
Silvia
I feel like a child again.
I don’t know how to behave.
The war is over—
should I dance,
am I free to sing out loud,
free to grow up,
fall in love?
I am free to smile
while the orphans sleep.
I admit that I feel impatient,
so eager to write in a journal,
like the Fox,
writing a record
of all that I have seen….
Peace is not the paradise
I imagined, but it is a chance
to dream….
Author’s Note
My grandmother used to speak of a time when her parents had to leave their farm in central Cuba and “go to another place.” I had no idea what she meant, u
ntil I grew up and read historical accounts of Weyler’s reconcentration camps.
My grandmother was born on a farm in central Cuba in 1902. She described Cuba’s countryside as so barren from the destruction of war that once, when her whole family was hungry, her father rode off into the wilderness and came back with a river turtle. That one turtle was cause for celebration, enough meat to keep a family alive and hopeful.
One of my grandmother’s uncles was a Pacífico (a Peaceful One), who kept farming in order to feed his little brother. Another uncle was a blond man of primarily Spanish descent who married the daughter of a Congolese slave. My mother remembers seeing this couple coming into town with wild mountain flowers to sell. She says they were two of the happiest people she had ever seen. I like to picture them in love with each other, and with the beauty of their homeland, free of hatred, and free of war—free, in every sense of that short, powerful word. During a recent trip to Cuba, I met my mother’s cousin Milagros, one of their descendants, whose name means “Miracles.”
I feel privileged to have known my grandmother, who pressed wet sage leaves against her forehead whenever she had a headache, and my great-grandmother, who was young during Cuba’s wars for independence from Spain, and Milagros, whose children are young and hopeful now.
Historical Note
In this story, Silvia and the oxcart driver are the only completely fictional characters. Their experiences are based on composites of accounts by various survivors of Weyler’s reconcentration camps.
All the other characters are historical figures, including Rosario Castellanos Castellanos, known in Cuba as Rosa la Bayamesa, and her husband, José Francisco Varona, who helped establish and protect Rosa’s hospitals. Some of the hospitals were mobile units, moving with the rebel mambí army. Others were thatched huts, hidden in the forest. Some were caves.
So little is known about the daily routines of Rosa and José that I have taken great liberties in imagining their actions, feelings, and thoughts.
Like many traditional Latin American healers, Rosa regarded healing as a gift from God and never accepted payment for her work as a nurse. Her medicines were made from wild plants. Many of these herbal remedies are still used in Cuba, where they are called la medicina verde (the green medicine).
Various accounts show Rosa’s birth year as either 1834 or 1840. When she died on September 25, 1907, she was buried with full military honors. Her funeral was attended by a colonel of the U.S. Infantry’s 17th Regiment.
There really was a slavehunter known as Lieutenant Death, but there is no evidence that he was the key figure in Spanish military operations designed to pursue and kill Rosa.
Other characters, such as El Grillo (The Cricket), El Jóven (The Young One),and Las Hermanas de la Sombra
(The Sisters of Shade), are based on descriptions in the diaries of soldiers and war correspondents. The first modern, systematic use of concentration camps as a way of controlling rural civilian populations was ordered by Imperial Spain’s Captain-General Weyler in Cuba in 1896.No provisions were made for shelter, food, medicine, or sanitation. Estimates of the number of Cuban guajiros (peasants) who died in Weyler’s “reconcentration camps” range from 170,000 to half a million, or approximately 10 to 30 percent of the island’s total population. In some areas, up to 96 percent of the farms were destroyed.
After Spain ceded Cuba to the United States, Captain-General Weyler was promoted to Minister of War.
Within a few years, the ruthless military use of concentration camps was repeated during South Africa’s Boer Wars. Adolf Hitler carried the genocidal concept to its extreme during World War II, when millions of European Jews, Catholics, gypsies, pacifists, and other minority groups were killed in Nazi Germany’s extermination camps. Since then, armed powers all over the world have herded huge numbers of civilians into prison camps on the basis of religion, race, national origin, ideology, sexual orientation, style of dress, listening to rock music (Cuba’s roqueros),or simply to seize territory, preventing farmers from growing crops that might strengthen an opposing army.
Cuba’s third War of Independence from Spain is known in the United States as the Spanish-American War, and in Spain as El Desastre (The Disaster). Historians generally regard it as the first jungle guerrilla war, the first modern trench warfare, and the first time women were formally recognized as military nurses, both in the Cuban Army of Liberation and in the U.S. Army.
It is also known as the “journalist’s war,” because reporters working for American newspapers wrote stories promoting U.S. intervention. In 1897, when the renowned artist Frederic Remington requested permission to leave Cuba because he found the situation near Havana reasonably quiet and unworthy of constant news coverage, his employer, William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Morning Journal, sent him an urgent telegram: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.”
Chronology
EARLY INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS
1810. Cuba’s first separatist movement is suppressed by colonial Spain.
1812. A slave rebellion is suppressed.
1823. Soles y Rayos de Bolívar (Suns and Rays of Bolívar) movement is suppressed, during a time when most other Spanish colonies have recently gained independence under the leadership of Simón Bolívar and other freedom fighters.
1836-55. Various separatist movements are suppressed.
1858-59. U.S.President James Buchanan makes offers to buy Cuba. Spain refuses.
1868. On October 10, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and other landowners near the city of Bayamo in eastern Cuba burn their plantations and free their slaves, launching the first of three wars for independence from Spain.
1868-78. Cuba engages in its Ten Years’ War for independence from Spain.
1878-80. Cuba fights its Little War for independence from Spain.
1880-86. Gradual abolition of slavery occurs throughout Cuba.
CUBA’S FINAL WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM SPAIN
1895. Rebellion in eastern Cuba begins. Poet José Martí is killed in his first battle.
1896. War spreads. Captain-General Weyler announces the reconcentration camp order.
1897. The Constitutional Assembly convenes.
1898. U.S.battleship Maine explodes in Havana Harbor. The United States makes its final offer to buy Cuba. U.S.military intervenes and Spanish troops surrender to U.S.troops. Cuban generals are not permitted to attend the ceremonies.
POSTWAR EVENTS
1899. Spain cedes rule of Cuba to the United States.
1902. The United States grants autonomy to Cuba, on the condition that U.S.troops retain the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and that Cuba allows a portion of the eastern province of Guantánamo to become a U.S.Navy base.
Selected References
ALLEN, DOUGLAS. Frederic Remington and the Spanish-American War. New York:Crown, 1971.
BARBOUR, THOMAS. A Naturalist in Cuba. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946.
CORZO, GABINO DE LA ROSA. Runaway Slave Settlements in Cuba. Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
GARCÍA, FAUSTINO. La Mujer Cubana en la Revolución. La Habana:Bohemia, February 24, 1950.
GARCÍA, LUIS NAVARRO. La Independencia de Cuba. Madrid:Editorial MAPFRE, 1992.
GOLDSTEIN, DONALD M., AND KATHERINE V. DILLON. The Spanish-American War—The Story and Photographs. Washington, D.C.,and London: Brassey’s, 2000.
GÓMEZ, MÁXIMO. Diario de Campaña del Mayor General Máximo Gómez. La Habana:Comisión del Archivo de Máximo Gómez; Talleres del Centro Superior Tecnológico Ceiba del Agua, 1940.
MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Poesía Completa. La Habana:Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1993.
PRADOS-TERREIRA, TERESA. Mambisas: Rebel Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba.Gainesville:University Press of Florida, 2005.
ROIG, JUAN TOMÁS. Plantas Medicinales, Aromáticas o Venenosas de Cuba. La Habana:Editorial Científico-Técnica, 1988.
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. The Rough Riders. New Yo
rk: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899.
TONE, JOHN LAWRENCE. War and Genocide in Cuba—1895 –1898. Chapel Hill:The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
VILLAVERDE, CIRILO. Diario del Rancheador. La Habana:Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1982.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to God and my family for the time and peace of mind to write.
For help with research, I am thankful to all the hardworking, anonymous interlibrary loan specialists from numerous libraries, including the Hispanic Reference Team at the Library of Congress.
A heartfelt thanks to my editor, Reka Simonsen, and to everyone else at Henry Holt and Company, especially Robin Tordini, Timothy Jones, my copy editor Marlene Tungseth and designer Lilian Rosenstreich.
For encouragement, I am grateful to Angelica Carpenter and Denise Sciandra at the Arne Nixon Center for Children’s Literature, California State University, Fresno, and to Alma Flor Ada, Nancy Osa, Teresa Dovalpage, Juan Felipe Herrera, Anilú Bernardo, Cindy Wathen, Esmeralda Santiago, Midori Snyder, and Ellen Olinger.