The news & observer., 1898-01-12
DISTRESS IN CUBA
Hon. Charles W. RusseIl's
interview
TWO WEEKS IN CUBA
A TRUE STORY OF THE SUFFER-
ING ON THE ISLAND.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE STARVING
Some Two Hundred Thousand Cubans Are
Daily Suffering and Dying from
Diseases Prodnc9d by Lack
ri Nouriehmpnt
OF NouriShment.

| Justice returned today from Cuba.
! where he has spent two weeks investi-
eating the conditions prevailing on the
| island.
To the Associated Press, Mr.. Russell
said:
Il am very glad TO be interviewed on
the subject of Cuba, because / feel it a
solemn duty to humanity to endeavor to
make the American people realize the
terrible distress which exists there.
Much has been written on the subject,
but judging others by myself, | feel
quite sure that because we do not com
nit, and have not in our history COM
mited such atrocities aus Spain is commit
ting on that island, the American read
ing public regards the reports as biased
by the preconceiYed opinions of newspa-
pers or grossly exaggerated.
Il spent just two weeks in Cuba, visit
ed Havana, went south to Jaruco, south
east to Guines, northeast to Matanzas,
eastwardly about two hundred miles
through the middle of the country to
San Domingo, Santa Clara and Sagua
La Grande. | visited MarianaO, short
distance west Of Havana, and saw along
the railroads 30 or 40 towns or stations.
In Havana | visited the Fossos, the
Hospital Prison Aldecoa, where l talk
ed with the father of Evangelina Cosio
Y. Cisneros, and a place called the Ja-
coba. | found reconcentradoes at all
three places, and begging everywhere
about the streets of Havana. The spec
tacle, at the Fossos and Jacoba houses,
of women and children emaciated to
skeletons and sufferings from diseases
produced by starvation, was sickening
In Sagua / saw some sick and emaciated
little girls in children's hospital, start
ed three days before by charitable Gu
bans, and saw a crowd of miserable
looking reconcentradoes with tin buckets
and other receptacles getting a small
allowance Of food doled out to them in
a yard. In the same city, in an old
sugar warehouse / saw stationed around
the inside walls the remnants of twenty
or thirty Cuban families. In one case
the remnant consisted of two little chill
.dren of seven or eight. In another case
where | talked to the people in broken
Spanish, there were four individuals,
mother, a girl of IA and two small girls
The smallest was then suffering from
malarial fever. The next had the signs
on her hands, with which / had become
familiar, of having had the beri-beri
These four were all that the order of
concentration had left alive of eleven.
At San Domingo, where two railroads
join, the depot was crowded with wo-
men and children, one of the latter, as
| remember, being swollen up with the
beri-beri, begging in the most earnest
way from the few passengers.
''San Domingo is little more than
railroad station in times of peace, but at
present it has a considerable population
living in cabins thatched with the tops
of royal palm trees, composed of the sur
viyors of the reconcentradoes. The
huts are arranged close together in
little clump and the concentration order
required and apparently still requires
these people to live within a circle of
small block houses commonly dignified
in the dispatches by the name of forts.
OF course, they had no work to do, no
soil to till, no seed to plant and only
begging to live on. l do not know the
exact measure of the dead line circle
drawn around them, but there was GER
tainly nothing within it upon which a
human being could subsist, and also GER
tainly, If any order had newly permitted
them to go a short distance further out,
they had not gone and were not going.
Practically they are prisoners. At every
one of the numerous stopping places
along the road a similar collection Of
huts conld be seen, and at most OF them
beggars, often nice looking women and
beautiful children, invaded the cars
Between the stations, although / trav-
eled always by daylight, as the trains do
not run at night, and was observing as
carefully as possible, / saw no signs of
the reconcentradOes going away from
the forts. If they had gone, it takes
seed, instruments, land and three orI
four months to raise the vegetable
which could be soonest produced, and
nowhere away from the block houses
was there any sign of vegetables grow
ing. Nearer the larger towns the circle
of concentration seemed to be somewhat
larger and some planting Of vegetables,
tobacco, etc, seemed to be going on. At
TINS a very few persons, possibly some
OF them reconcentradoes, found employ
ment.
"All along the railroad, as far as could
be seen, were stretches of most fertile
and beautiful country, with very few
trees, even on the low mountains, and
most of these the royal palms. l saw
many dozens of burned cane fields and
one evening, going from Guines to Ha-
vana, saw the sky lighted up all along
the road with fires, principally OF the
tall grass Of the country but partly Of
cane. The whole land was lying per-
fectly idle, except where l saw three
or four sugar mills where cane was
growing, but in all such instances the
mill and cane were surrounded by the
forts, manned by soldiers, who are paid
AS I was fold. nv the owners. Except in
the cities, saw no indication that any
relief whatever was being afforded toI
the e+orving people. Neither in Havana
nor elsewhere did any priest, religious
woman or other person seem to be pay
ing any attention to the. wants of the.
starving, except that at tne i, EoSs@s, Ss1 aI''
were nursing the sick. The church, be
ing a State institution was. SO fsr as
could see. leaving the victims without