, 1888-03-11
CUBAN HOME LIFE.
Graphic Description of Havan Slavery
That Does Not Gall.

ton. In topography it is glorious noun.
tain or tremendous reach Of savanna In
soil, it is marvellous richness or woeful
s%terility. In forestry and flora, it is indie
scribablc luxuriance or wrinkled, shriv-
eled, burned out poverty. In l~andhold-
ers, 1t is nabob or sert. AS in the cities,
there are but two classes. The planters
are princes; the lesser folk are infinitely
worse than peasants. There are no con-
ditions which may be compared with
American conditions for the readers com
prehension. France has a comfortable,
happy peasantry. The countrymen of
Germany have a certain stolid %independ-
ence and some simple pleasures. Even
the peasautrY OF old Spain are a people
from whom can come individual success,
while non are without possibilities. But
in Cubs government and wealth aristocra-
cy have SO Supplied and benumbed those
beneath that you cannot find hope OF am
bition, as we know them, between the
beatinGs Of the seas.
In these and during former journeyings
in Cuba, | have got as close to the real
life of those who live outside Cuban cities
as is in my power. All that can be found,
if one should for half a century journey
and delve, is this: Landed lords with a
worse thar actual African slavery about
them from which is wrung millions to be
in turn wrested from them by the most
barbarous government known to man;
and a horde of native Cubans l~istlessly
sucking sustenance from the glowing
breast of a nature so tender and bounti-
| tItl that II IL the only camhIanaa 10 a IaI
they ever can know. Five million Of rich
growing farmers would take the place of
these souls, who are cheated Of life's
honorable possibilities, within five years
from the time the United States, or any
measurably good government, shall give
Cuba James Russell Lowell's definition of
liberty in fact and experience.
But as he Is, and because he is. the
Cuban countryman is an entertaining
study. Ills generic name is Eel g~uajiro.
The guajiro to the city Cuban is any coun-
tryman, "or fellow from the country"
But when you come to know the interior
you will find he has three names. These
are guajiro, the montero and the %sitiero.
The g%uajiro, properly speaking, is the
Cuban country lout; the same fellow you
have seen lounging about remote country
cross road stores i'll our own land; the fcl-
low who is bumped and callow, shaggy of
hair, with spreading legs, swinging Jaws,
silent tongue and sodden eycs-the being
here not so bright as the negro of the
tropics, nor so sunny, nor even so little
aspiring. He is a sort of spiritless ami
NAL, never exactly harmful, never wholly
helpful, never contented. with a ragged
sombrero of any sort OF stuff, a pair of
leather breeches, a filthy shirt worn out
side these, any vile cigarette, like ourown
noble American youth, a cockade, and a
machete, or any other villainous knife,
though a tap from a riding whip would
drive him into a paralysis of fear. He is
not vicious, though he looks it desperate
ly. lie does some work. He does that
not wholly under protest. But he is, all
in all, only another one in summing up
population. If he be married he lives in
a palm thatched hut anywhere. His wife,
whose grade of intelligence is even be-
meath his own, is prolific Of children and
cxpedients. That is, she will give her
husband from a dozen to a score of heal
thy young guajiros, and knows how to
boil roots and mend the matches in their
cabin. These duties are about all their
condition imposes. Over there against
the mountain where | have been for a
lew days, are a number of these guajirO's
homes. i counted ninety-three chill.cn
in seven families. OF these one-half were
naked. There is no cabin where a half
dozen cooking and eating utensils can be
found. They live upon yucca root, the
yam and they gave me bread made of salt
and corn broken in n stone mortar, baked
upon heated stone. Sometimes they get
a bit of ~tassaio, or South American dried
beef. As a great treat a few times each
year q scrap of the filthicst American
pork is had. These occasions are very
close to heaven. And vet among the
youth and maidens of this listless brood
are those of noble frame and face, and a
pitiful look of eager longing would fit
into their splendid eyes as | told them
what their gaining might be in any land
of labor and reward. Abiect poverty sits
upon their world. Butts its grin and sting
are powerless to prod into action. The
luxuriance, bounteousness and p~rodigality
of nature are more than a match for pen.
ury here. This considered, there would
seem to be no hope for the g%uaiiro. So
long as he is a subject OF Spain, perhaps
he is better without it.
When the guaiiro becomes instead of a
squatter a regular tenant Of the land the
countryside name for him is changed to
Ell sitiero. These siteros usually occupy
a bit of land called a caballcria, compris-
ing thirty-three and one-third acres, but
frequently only a fraction of that amount
for which he pays an cxorbitant rental to
the proprietario, who lives in Havana in
opulence and dissipation. The proprietario
is as hard upon his Cuban brother as
Spain is upou the island. This landlord
lives bis little spendthrift life in the gay
capital, only to become overwhelmed with
debt, and in time be supplanted by other
land proprietors, who, in turn, d~issipate,
grind the ~tenautry and make way again
for Others. Thus the landed aristocracy
Of Cuba inconstantly passing from opu-
lence to beggary. A common expression
here illustrates the quick shifting OF for
tunes in as well as in lands:
Padre ~bodeguero, hiio caballero, nieto
pordio sero ~ (''The father a grocer, the
son a gentleman, the grandson n beg
garl''
But in all these changes the sitiero re-
mains the same luckless, sunny gatherer
of whatever the grand and cxubcrant cline
brings forth. He has neither motive nor
prompting, from an active need or a wise