San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-11-22
AN AWFUL PICTURE OF THE
DES0LATI0N THAT HAS 0V-
ERGAKEN THAT ISLAND.
MantaHzaS Is Almost A Graveyard,
Out Of $4,000 People Only 5000
Are Left And Of These 1000
Will Die BlancO'S Orders
Are Not Attended To.

New York, Nov. ga dispatch to
the World from Matanzas, Cuba, says:
The half of the history of suffering
in Cuba has not been told. In Hava-
ma and its suburbs the streets are dot
ted with beggars, the hospitals are
Overlooking with starving innocents
and the spare barracks are filed with
the destitute and dying. But from
Havana to this place, there are a sue
cession of small cities almost free from
sickness and hunger. Nobody is left
there. The once swarming population
is gone. They are cities of the dead.
Protecting forts overlook empty
houses. Paid and ragged Spanish
soldiers guard a few-a very few-hu-
man skeletons. Very soon they will
have only themselves to protect. They
need it. 1t is almost a question
whether Weylerism has not been as
awful for them as for the peaceable
Cubans.
The towns of Campo Florida, San
Miguel, Minar, Jaruco, Bainoa and
Buena Vista were tripled and quadrud-
led in population by Weyler's concen-
tration of the surrounding country peo-
pie under the rifles of their respective
sets of little forts.
The royal obedient farmers took their
furniture and babes in OK carts, their
cows and pigs, wives and children on
foot, and built long streets of palm pill
lard, raftered, matched and sided
houses. Today nothing remains but
the wood. The animals have been
eaten, all articles of value have been
changed, the people, everything, having
been used, are dead.
Our train stopped at each place men,
toned. We counted only twenty-five
women and children and three men in
the palm house lanes. There should
have been visible 5000. There were at
least from $1,000 to 20, 900 reconcentra-
does in those palm bark villages when
Weyler's victims first began to die and
we counted 2S survivors.
Even the senator from Spain can be
convinced of the determination of a
people on whom he assisted when he
supported Spain in supporting Weyler.
He needs but to take a train from
Havana to Matanzas, a three-hours
ride through a beautiful, but abandon
ed country. The squallid, abandoned
villages are proof enough.
Three hours ride would show him ex-
termination, even though he had never
heard of Cuba, or claimed there had
been no war. The facts, the awful
facts, the almost unbelievable facts,
are everywhere. They force them
selves on the sight, on the smell, the
hearing and the reason Matanzas, a
city of fifty thousand inhabitants, has
given its reconcentradoes much better
chances for dying gradually than has
any of the silent gillages first mention
ed. Much meat has come here from
Florida. The people are rich, the
sites for the palm bark villages of the
water is good; some organized charit-
able efforts have been made by the res
idents. The little hamlets mentioned
have had none of these ameliorations. |
Yet in Matanzas out of 10000 people, |
and children there is today not |
more than 5000 left, and they are bare
y alive. The streets are full of tOtter-
ng ones: the cafe doors frame squads
If begging women and children. The
public square has a living skeleton for
Zach of its beautiful suburbs and the
dad carts go to the cemeteries loaded
With bodies three deep.
The civil register of the city only
hints at the awful loss of life. 1t
shows about one-third of the deaths of
he reconcentradoes. The present
leath rate of forty starving ones daily
lad it been constant since the begin
ling of Weyler's rule would have WHIP
d out before now the entire 10000 pop
llation.
The total death rate varies from 65
o 20. One day 1913 died. Physicians
lain the daily average should be
lightly.
At this rate in little more than a year
Iatanzas will be a graveyard and in
hree months there will be no more
Although the condi-
ions may change for the citizens of
Iatanzas there is little hope for its en-
orced visitors. Gen. Blanco's relief .