GOVERNOR TACON. 
The name of Tacon is of frequent occurrence in these pages, as it must 
be in any book on Havana, for Miguel Tacon, who came to Cuba as 
Governor-General in 1834, left an indelible impress upon the character and 
development of the city. Under his predecessors there had been a reign 
of lawlessness and crime. The streets of Havana and the country roads 
were infested with highwaymen by day and by night. Merchants who 
had money to transfer from one town to another were compelled to pay 
for a military escort. People feared to venture into the streets at night; 
and when the citizens appealed to Governor Vivas, that worthy replied, 
“Do as I do; never go out after dark.” Tacon was of different fibre. He 
came with absolute power conferred by royal decree, giving him the 
authority of a commander of a city in a state of siege; and he adopted the 
most arbitrary and summary measures to stamp out crime. He appre¬ 
hended a few of the robbers and displayed their heads in parrot cages on 
the Punta walk for an example to all their kind; arrested vagrants and 
bearers of deadly weapons, getting together a chain-gang of 2,000 such 
convicts, and set them to work breaking stone for roads, sweeping the 
streets, and building highroads, paseos, prisons and aqueducts. To “Tacon’s 
lapidarians” Havana owes many of its finest streets and public buildings. 
He put an end to frauds, robberies and murders; shut up the gambling 
houses, abolished the national card game of monte, forbidding it even in 
private houses; prohibited all gambling except betting at cock fights, 
which were licensed and taxed for the benefit of the State; and made 
travel safe in town and country alike, so that one might go where he 
pleased and keep his purse and his life. He held the captains of partidos 
(country magistrates) responsible for robberies committed in their dis¬ 
tricts by decreeing that the robber must be sent to Havana or the captain 
must make good the loss. Tacon was a despot and exercised a despot’s 
power unrestrained by law or constitution. He seized men and without 
trial sent them into exile or immured them in the loathsome dungeons of 
Morro or Cabana, leaving their families and friends in absolute ignorance 
of their fate. 
Numerous stories have been told of him which seem to show that with 
all its harshness Tacon justice sometimes had a fine flavor of grim humor. 
His compelling way with delinquent debtors on complaint of their creditors 
was to pay the debt out of his own pocket and so make himself the creditor. 
An instance of this is related by Jonathan S. Jenkins, an American minia¬ 
ture painter, whose reminiscences of the Havana of that day have been 
printed in the Century Magazine. A feeble old man had walked from a 
distance in the country to complain to Tacon that a wealthy planter 
neighbor owed him money and would not pay it. The debtor, being then 
in Havana, Tacon sent the guard to bring him, and confronted him with 
the accuser. The planter admitted the claim and promised to pay as soon 
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