Review Of The Social Conditions In Puerto Rico And The Political Events In Spain From


1765 TO 1820



After the conquest of Mexico and Peru with their apparently inexhaustible

mineral wealth, Spain attached very little importance to the archipelago

of the Antilles. The largest and finest only of these islands were

selected for colonization, the small and comparatively sterile ones were

neglected, and fell an easy prey to pirates and privateers.



Puerto Rico, notwithstanding its a
vantages of soil and situation, was

considered for the space of three centuries only as a fit place of

banishment (a presidio) for the malefactors of the mother country.

Agriculture did not emerge from primitive simplicity. The inhabitants

led a pastoral life, cultivating food barely sufficient for their

support, because there was no stimulus to exertion. They looked

passively upon the riches centered in their soil, and rocked

themselves to sleep in their hammocks. The commerce carried on

scarcely deserved that name. The few wants of the people were supplied

by a contraband trade with St. Thomas and Santa Cruz. In the island's

finances a system of fraud and peculation prevailed, and the amount of

public revenue was so inadequate to meet the expenses of maintaining

the garrison that the officers' and soldiers' pay was reduced to

one-fourth of its just amount, and they often received only a

miserable ration.



His Excellency Alexander O'Reilly, who came to the Antilles on a

commission from Charles IV, in his report on Puerto Rico (1765) gives

the following description of the condition of the inhabitants at that

time:



" ... To form an idea of how these natives have lived and still live,

it is enough to say that there are only two schools in the whole

island; that outside of the capital and San German few know how to

read; that they count time by changes in the Government, hurricanes,

visits from bishops, arrivals of 'situados,' etc. They do not know

what a league is. Each one reckons distance according to his own speed

in traveling. The principal ones among them, including those of the

capital, when they are in the country go barefooted and barelegged.

The whites show no reluctance at being mixed up with the colored

population. In the towns (the capital included) there are few

permanent inhabitants besides the curate; the others are always in the

country, except Sundays and feast-days, when those living near to

where there is a church come to hear mass. During these feast-days

they occupy houses that look like hen-coops. They consist of a couple

of rooms, most of them without doors or windows, and therefore open

day and night. Their furniture is so scant that they can move in an

instant. The country houses are of the same description. There is

little distinction among the people. The only difference between them

consists in the possession of a little more or less property, and,

perhaps, the rank of a subaltern officer in the militia."



Abbad makes some suggestions for increasing the population. He

proposes the distribution of the unoccupied lands among the

"agregados" or idle "hangers-on" of each family; among the convicts

who have served out their time and can not or will not return to the

Peninsula; among the freed slaves, who have purchased their own

freedom or have been manumitted by their masters; and, finally, among

the great number of individuals who, having deserted from ships or

being left behind, wandered about from place to place or became

contrabandists, pirates, or thieves.



"Their numbers are so small and the soil so fruitful they generally

have an abundance of bananas, maize, beans, and other food. Fish is

abundant, and few are without a cow or two. The only furniture they

have and need is a hammock and a cooking-pot. Plates, spoons, jugs,

and basins they make of the bark of the 'totumo,' a tree which is

found in every forest. A saber or a 'machete,' as they call it, is the

only agricultural implement they use. The construction of their houses

does not occupy them more than a day or two."



The good friar goes on to tell us that, through indolence, they have

not even learned from the Indians how to protect their plantations

from the fierce heat of the sun and avoid consequent failure of crops

in time of drought, by making the plantations in clearings in the

forest, so that the surrounding walls of verdure may give moisture

and shade to the plants. "Nor have they learned to build their bohios

(huts) to windward of swamps or clearings to avoid the fever-laden

emanations."



* * * * *



The stirring events in Europe that marked the end of the eighteenth

and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries did not find these

conditions much changed, though some advance had been made and was

being made in spite of the prohibitive measures of the Government,

which were well calculated to check all advance. To prevent the spread

of the ideas that had given birth to the French Revolution, absolute

powers were granted to the captains-general, odious restrictions were

placed upon all communication with the interior, sacrifices in men and

money were demanded on the plea of patriotism, and a policy of

suspicion and distrust adopted toward the colonies which in the end

fomented the very political aspirations it was intended to suppress.



From the outbreak of the French Revolution, Spain was entangled in a

maze of political difficulties. The natural sympathy of Charles IV for

the unfortunate King of France well-nigh provoked hostilities between

the two nations from the very beginning. The king gave public

expression to his opinion that to make war on France was as legitimate

as to make war on pirates and bandits; and the Directory, though it

took little notice at the time, remembered it when Godoy, the

favorite, in his endeavors to save the lives of Louis XVI and his

family entered into correspondence with the French emigres. Then war

was declared.



The war was popular. All classes contended to make the greatest

sacrifices to aid the Government. Men and money came in abundantly,

and before long three army corps crossed the Pyrenees into French

territory ... They had to recross the next year, followed by the

victorious soldiers of the Republic, who planted the tricolor on some

of the principal Spanish frontier fortresses. Then the peace of

Basilia was signed, and, as one of the conditions of that peace, Spain

ceded to France the part she still held of Santo Domingo.



From this period Charles, in the terror inspired by the excesses of

the Revolution and the probable fear for his own safety, forgot that

he was a Bourbon and began to seek an alliance with the executioners

of his family. As a result, the treaty of San Ildefonso was signed

(1796). Spain became the enemy of England, and the first effects

thereof which she experienced were the bombardment of Cadiz by an

English fleet, the loss of the island of Trinidad, and the siege of

Puerto Rico by Abercrombie.



Spain also became the willing vassal, rather than the ally, of the

military genius whom the French Revolution had revealed, and obeyed

his mandates without a murmur. In 1803 Napoleon demanded a subsidy of

6,000,000 francs per month as the price of Spain's neutrality, but in

the following year he insisted on the renewal of the alliance against

England (treaty of Paris, 1804). The total destruction of the Spanish

fleet at the battles of Saint Vincent and Trafalgar was the result.



Godoy, who in his ambitious dreams had seen a crown and a throne

somewhere in Portugal to be bestowed on him by the man to whose

triumphal car he had attached his king and his country, began to

suspect Napoleon's intentions.



Seeing the war-clouds gather in the north of Europe, he thought that

the coalition of the powers against the tyrant was the presage of his

downfall, and he now hastened to send an emissary to England.



The war-clouds burst, and from amid the thunder and smoke of battle at

Jena, Eylau, and Friedland, the victor's figure arose more imperious

than ever. All the crowned heads of Europe but one hastened to do

him homage, among them Charles IV of Spain and the Prince of Asturias,

his son.



The next step in the grand drama that was being enacted was the

occupation of Spanish territory by what Bonaparte was pleased to call

an army of observation. This time Godoy's suspicions became confirmed,

and to save the royal family he counsels the king to withdraw to

Andalusia. Ferdinand conspires to dethrone his father, the people

become excited, riots take place, Godoy's residence in Aranguez is

attacked by the mob, and the king abdicates in favor of his son.

Napoleon himself now lands at Bayona. Charles and his son hasten

thither to salute Europe's master, and, after declaring that his

abdication was imposed on him by violence, the king resumes his

crown and humbly lays it at the feet of the arbiter of the fate of

kings, who stoops to pick it up only to offer it to his brother Louis,

who refuses it. Then he places it on the head of his younger brother

Joseph.



Thus fared the crown of Spain, the erstwhile proud mistress of half

the world, and the degenerate successors of Charles V accept an asylum

in France from the hands of a soldier of fortune.



But if their rulers had lost all sense of dignity, all feeling of

national pride, the Spanish nation remained true to itself, and when

the doings at Bayona became known a cry of indignation went up from

the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean. On May 2, 1808, the people of Spain

commenced a six years' struggle full of heroic and terrible episodes.

At the end of that period the necessity of withdrawing the French

troops from Spain to confront the second coalition, and the assistance

of the English under Lord Wellesley cleared the Peninsula of French

soldiers. After the battle of Leipzig (1813) a treaty between

Ferdinand VII and Napoleon was signed in Valencia, and Spain's

independence was recognized and guaranteed by the allies.



* * * * *



From the beginning of the war many officers and privates, residents of

Puerto Rico, enlisted to serve against the French, and large sums of

money, considering the island's poverty, were subscribed among the

inhabitants to aid in the defense of the mother country.



Ferdinand VII reentered Madrid as king on March 24, 1814, accompanied

by a coterie of retrograde, revengeful priests, of whom his

confessor, Victor Saez, was the leader. He made this priest Minister

of State, and soon proved the truth of the saying that the Bourbons

forget nothing, forgive nothing, and learn nothing from experience.



He commenced by ignoring the regency and the Cortes. These had

preserved his kingdom for him while he was an exile. He refused to

recognize the constitution which they had framed, and at once

initiated an epoch of cruel persecution against such as had

distinguished themselves by their talents, love of liberty, and

progressive ideas. The public press was completely silenced, the

Inquisition reestablished, the convents reopened, provincial

deputations and municipalities abolished, distinguished men were

surprised in their beds at night and torn from the arms of their wives

and children, to be conducted by soldiers to the fortress of Ceuta - in

short, the Government was a civil dictatorship occupied in hanging the

most distinguished citizens, while the military authorities busied

themselves in shooting them.



In the colonies the king's lackeys repeated the same outrages. Puerto

Rico suffered like the rest, and many of the best families emigrated

to the neighboring English and French possessions.



The result of the royal turpitude was the revolution headed by Rafael

Diego, seconded by General O'Daly, a Puerto Rican by birth, who had

greatly distinguished himself in the war against the French. Other

generals and their troops followed, and when General Labisbal, sent by

Ferdinand to quell the insurrection, joined his comrades, the

trembling tyrant was only too glad to save his throne by swearing to

maintain the constitution of 1812. O'Daly's share in these events

raised him to the rank of field-marshal, and the people of Puerto Rico

elected him their deputy to Cortes by a large majority (1820).



The first constitutional regime in Puerto Rico was not abolished till

December 3, 1814. For the great majority of the inhabitants of the

island at that time the privileges of citizenship had neither meaning

nor value. They were still too profoundly ignorant, too desperately

poor, to take any interest in what was passing outside of their

island. Cock-fighting and horse-racing occupied most of their time.

Schools had not increased much since O'Reilly reported the existence

of two in 1765. There was an official periodical, the Gazette, in

which the Government offered spelling-books for sale to those who

wished to learn to read.



During the second constitutional period, Puerto Rico was divided by a

resolution in Cortes into 7 judicial districts, and tablets with the

constitutional prescriptions on them were ordered to be placed in the

plazas of the towns in the interior. Public spirit began to awaken,

several patriotic associations were formed, among them those of "the

Lovers of Science," "the Liberals, Lovers of their Country," and

others. But the dawn of progress was eclipsed again toward the end of

1823, when the news of the fall of the second constitutional regime

reached Puerto Rico a few months after the people had elected their

deputies to Cortes.



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