The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1898-05-26
NO FOOD THERE.
Reconcentrados Nearly All Dead-Pft
full State Of Affairs.

full State Of Affairs.
Key West, May 1.-THE conditions
in Havana, resulting from the block
ade, are being gradually brought out
by information obtained from fishing
smacks and other small vessels cap
tured off the coast. Affairs at Havana
now appear to be worse than at any
time since the Weyler regime.
The fishermen who at first braved
the blockade for the high price which
fish brought in Havana. now run the
risk, not for money, but for food. A
number of these have been captured by
the vessels of the blockading fleet,
nearly all of them being released after
having been questioned by our officers.
They all unite in picturing the state
of things at Havana as being pitiful in
the extreme.
The press dispatch boat Kate Spencer
has accumulated all the facts obtainable
along the blockading line, the last news
being obtained through two captures
made by the gunboat Machias, which
has just returned here for the first time
since the blockade opened, making the
longest single service of any blockading
vessel off Cuba.
The Machias caught two fishing boats
off Havana just before her return here.
The Americans offered the fishermen
money for part of their catch, as the
fish we're needed on board, but the
fishermen demuled at taking money,
preferring to have bread, and adding
that they were desperately hungry.
When questioned as to the preva
lence of yellow fever at Havana, the
fishermen said there was little sickness
at the Cuban capital, but they added
there was much starvation: The re-
concentrates, they said, are nearly all
dead, or have been expelled from the
city to die in the suburbs. This agrees
with other reports from Havana and
Matanzas to the effect that the Spanish
authorities, on the departure Of the
consul, seized all the supplies and ap-
piled them to the use of the army
The Spaniards then drove the reconcen-
trados into the desolated sections of the
country, between the coast towns and
the insurgent lines, the regions de-
scribed by Senator Proctor and others
as being too barren and desolate to sup
port grasshoppers.
The insurgents themselves have been
chary of receiving the reconcentrados,
and hundreds of the latter, who had no
personal friends in the insurgent
camps. have been left to starve be-
tween the lines, which they did.
About Havana, the situation is even
worse. Hundreds of reconcentrados
from Los Foses, the big reconcentrado
barracks in Havana, were too weak to
walk out of town and fell in the streets
or died in the suburbs, where focks of
vultures, "Weyler's chickens" as they
are now termed in Havana, have Toasted
on the remains.
In Matanzas, this feature of the stu
alton is equally distressing.
The fishermen who have been brought
here are soon reconciled to capture,
which here means food and decent
treatment. They say that if the block
ade continues much longer, bread riots
must follow in all the large towns, as
food Is reserved exclusively for the
army, thus forcing many people to en-
list who would not otherwise do 80.
Finally, the fishermen say that GER
tain of the most desperate Of the Span
iards threaten to burn Havana or blow
the city up in the event of the author
tiles deciding to capitulate to the
American forces.