Invasions By Colombian Insurgents


1797-1829



The raising of the siege of San Juan by Abercrombie did not raise at

the same time the blockade of the island. Communications with the

metropolis were cut off, and the remittances from Mexico which, under

the appellation of "situados," constituted the only means of carrying

on the Government, were suspended. In San Juan the garrison was

kept on half pay, provisions were scarce, and the influx of
immigrants

from la Espanola, where a bloody civil war raged at the time,

increased the consumption and the price. The militia corps was

disbanded to prevent serious injury to the island's agricultural

interests, although English attacks on different points of the coast

continued, and kept the inhabitants in a state of constant fear and

alarm.



In December, 1797, an English three-decker and a frigate menaced

Aguadilla, but an attempt at landing was repulsed. Another attempt to

land was made at Guayanilla with the same result, and in June, 1801,

Guayanilla was again attacked. This time an English frigate sent

several launches full of men ashore, but they were beaten off by the

people, who, armed only with lances and machetes, pursued them into

the water, "swimming or wading up to their necks," says Mr. Neuman.



From 1801 to 1808 England's navy and English privateers pursued both

French and Spanish ships with dogged pertinacity. In August, 1803,

British privateers boarded and captured a French frigate in the port

of Salinas in this island. Four Spanish homeward-bound frigates fell

into their hands about the same time. Another English frigate captured

a French privateer in what is now the port of Ponce (November 12,

1804) and rescued a British craft which the privateer had captured.

Even the negroes of Haiti armed seven privateers under British

auspices and preyed upon the French and Spanish merchant ships in

these Antilles.



Governor Castro, during the whole of his period of service, had vainly

importuned the home Government for money and arms and ships to defend

this island against the ceaseless attacks of the English. When he

handed over the command to his successor, Field-Marshal Toribio

Montes, in 1804, the treasury was empty. He himself had long ceased to

draw his salary, and the money necessary to attend to the most

pressing needs for the defense was obtained by contributions from the

inhabitants.



While the people of Puerto Rico were thus giving proofs of their

loyalty to Spain, and sacrificing their lives and property to preserve

their poverty-stricken island to the Spanish crown, the other

colonies, rich and important, were breaking the bonds that united them

to the mother country.



The example of the English colonies had long since awakened among the

more enlightened class of creoles on the continent a desire for

emancipation, which the events in France on the one hand, and the

ill-advised, often cruel measures adopted by the Spanish authorities

to quench that aspiration, on the other hand, had only served to make

irresistible. But Puerto Rico did not aspire to emancipation. It never

had been a colony, there was no creole class, and the only indigenous

population - the "jibaros," the mixed descendants of Indians, negroes,

and Spaniards - were too poor, too illiterate, too ignorant of

everything concerning the outside world to look with anything but

suspicion upon the invitations of the insurgents of Colombia and

Venezuela to join them or imitate their example. They, nor the great

majority of the masses whom Bolivar, San Martin, Hidalgo, and others

liberated from an oppressive yoke, cared little for the rights of man.

When the Colombian insurgents landed on the coast of Puerto Rico, to

encourage and assist the people to shake off a yoke which did not gall

them, they were looked upon by the natives as freebooters of another

class who came to plunder them.



On the 20th of December, 1819, an insurgent brigantine and a sloop

attempted a landing at Aguadilla. They were beaten back by a Spanish

sergeant at the head of a detachment of twenty men, while a Mr.

Domeneck with his servants attended to the artillery in Fort San

Carlos, constructed during Castro's administration. In February, 1825,

some insurgent ships landed fifty marines at night near Point

Boriquen, where the lighthouse now is. They captured the fort by

surprise and dismounted the guns, but the people of Aguadilla replaced

them on their carriages the next day and offered such energetic

resistance to the landing parties that they had to retreat.



Another landing was effected at Patillas in November, 1829. This port

was opened to commerce by royal decree December 30, 1821. There were

several small trading craft in the port at the time of the attack.

They fell a prey to the invaders; but when they landed they were met

by the armed inhabitants, and after a sharp fight, in which the

Colombians had 8 men killed, they reembarked.



* * * * *



The beginning of the nineteenth century found Spain deprived of all

that beautiful island world which Columbus had laid at the foot of the

throne of Ferdinand and Isabel four centuries ago, of all but a part

of the "Espanola," since called Santo Domingo, and of the two

Antilles. Before the first quarter of the century had passed all the

continental colonies had broken the bonds that united them to the

mother country, and before the twentieth century the last vestiges of

the most extensive and the richest colonial empire ever possessed by

any nation refused further allegiance, as the logical result of four

centuries of political, religious, and financial myopia.



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