Theodore Roosevelt and World Order by James R Holmes

Author:James R Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Published: 2006-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Leonard Wood on Administering Cuba

Leonard Wood, who governed the island from December 1899 until the U.S. withdrawal, echoed many of the same themes sounded by William Howard Taft in the Philippine Islands. Because his views were in substantial accord with those of Taft, much of Wood’s commentary need not be repeated here. The striking point about General Wood’s account of the pacification of Cuba, like Taft’s recollections on the Philippines, is that the bulk of the task that fell to the military government was nonmilitary in nature. That was doubly true in Cuba, where troublesome guerrilla warfare did not impede U.S. efforts to impose the police power. U.S. Army forces, operating in concert with a hastily organized Cuban constabulary, suppressed anarchy in the countryside and the cities while concurrently fighting disease, restoring vital services, and laying the groundwork for republican self-rule. In short, the Cuban occupation reinforced the legal conception of the police power as having a dual nature: law enforcement combined with a variety of activities connected to self-rule and the public welfare.

The plight of war-torn Cuba represented a challenge of considerable magnitude for the United States. The island had been a Spanish military colony for centuries, some 70 percent of the population was illiterate, democratic elections were unknown, and the nation, riddled with poor sanitary conditions, was racked by disease. Claimed Wood, in Santiago, capital of the first province transferred to American jurisdiction, conditions were “as unfavorable as can be imagined. Yellow fever, pernicious malaria and intestinal fevers were all prevalent to an alarming extent. The city and surrounding country were full of sick Spanish soldiers, starving Cubans and the sick of their own army. The sanitary conditions were indescribably bad. There was little or no water available and the conditions were such as can be imagined to exist in a tropical city following siege and capture in the most unhealthy season of the year.”110

How did General Wood and his staff come to grips with this dispiriting situation? By following the formula that was becoming more or less standard in the aftermath of the war with Spain. A regiment of army regulars and several regiments of U.S. Volunteers were stationed in the province to maintain order and to perform the multitude of tasks catalogued by Wood. In Santiago “the first work undertaken” by these troops “was feeding the starving, taking care of the sick, cleaning up and removing the dangerous material in the city. In addition to correcting these local conditions, it was necessary to send food and medicine throughout the province, maintain order, re-establish municipal government, reorganize the courts, and do the thousand and one things incident to re-establishing the semblance of government in a stricken and demoralized community.” Compounding these difficulties were the language barrier and a high rate of illness among the occupation force.

Once the military government had fended off the immediate threats of starvation and disease, it set about installing local governments—largely by edict of the U.S. governor.111 “There was no time to write an electoral law and put it in force,” contended Wood.

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