104 CUBA AND PORTO RICO 



stood in this country as has boon the ereole, especially by 

 those who have alleged that in ease Cuba should gain her 

 freedom the island would become a second Haiti. The 

 black and colored people of the island, while low as a class, 

 are more independent and manly in their bearing, if not as 

 literate, as their brethren of the United States, having 

 possessed, even before slavery was abolished on the island, 

 the four rights of free marriage, of seeking a new master 

 at their option, of purchasing their freedom by labor, and 

 of acquiring property. While the negro shares with the 

 Creole the few local rights possessed by any of the inhabi- 

 tants, his social privileges are greater than here, although 

 a strong caste feeling exists. Miscegenation has also pro- 

 duced many mulattos, but race mixture is no more com- 

 mon than in this country. 



The colored people of Cuba belong to several distinct 

 classes. The majority of them are descendants of slaves 

 imported during the present century, but a large number, 

 like the negroes of Colombia and the maroons of Jamaica, 

 come from a stock which accompanied the earliest Spanish 

 settlers, such as Estevan, the negro, who, with the two 

 white companions of Cabeza de Vaca, first crossed the 

 United States from the Gulf of Mexico to California in 

 1528-36. The amalgamation of this class in the past cen- 

 tury with the Spanish stock produced a superior class of 

 free mulattos of the Antonio Maceo type, unlike any people 

 in this country with which they can be compared. The 

 current expressions of fear concerning the future relations 

 of this race in Cuba seem inexplicable. The slaves of the 

 South were never subjected to a more abject servitude than 

 the free-born whites of Cuba, for they at least were pro- 

 tected from arbitrary capital punishment, imprisonment 

 and deportation without form of trial, such as all white 

 Cubans are still liable to. 



Another virtue of the Cuban negro is that he will work. 

 We italicize the masculine pronoun, because, as we will 

 later show, the male negro of the other West Indies, ex- 



