He was one of the protagonists of the Spanish colonial crisis at the end of the 19th century and the architect of the creation of the first concentration camps, which resulted in a forced “reconcentration” of the civilian population so that they could no longer support membises. , the guerrillas who fought for Cuban independence and whose success depended largely on the support of the working classes. Thanks to this imposed method, thousands of people died, decimated by hunger and epidemics – the American Stephen Bonsal puts this figure at 400,000, although this figure is disputed. The American press came to call him “the Nero of the 19th century” and “the most sinister character” of that century, although many consider him the most skilled Spanish general of the era, a widely decorated soldier who never wanted to exterminate anyone. but would end up devoured by the black legend.
More than a hundred years later, on September 14, the mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez (PP), unveiled a plaque to commemorate the exploits of Mallorcan Valeriano Weyler. “For General Weyler, belonging to the Army and service to his country have become the benchmarks of a life path which, in addition to being fruitful, has been extraordinarily long,” underlined the first mayor during of the tribute ceremony. The descendants of the man who was also Minister of War and the Navy praised his figure and his “77 years of service to the Fatherland”, in addition to his “fidelity and his strict fulfillment of duty”. “In this, the Majorcan veteran constitutes a unique case in the history of Spain,” they greeted in the presence of the municipal authorities.
Weyler, born in the capital of the Balearic Islands on September 17, 1838, was appointed, by the Council of Ministers, governor general and captain general of Cuba, replacing Arsenio Martínez-Campos. The year 1896 passed, the insurrection had spread to the entire island and Cánovas del Castillo wanted the war to be fought “to the last man and to the last peseta”. Weyler arrived in Cuba on February 10 of that year with an army of more than 200,000 men. Added to the volunteers and warriors of the island in the service of Spain, the contingent reached more than 300,000 armed men, as documented by Raúl Izquierdo Canosa, former president of the Institute of History of Cuba, in his work Valeriano Weyler and the reconcentration 1896-1897.
Farmers, isolated from their natural environment
After Weyler’s landing, his measures were immediate: in order to militarily appease the Cuban independence uprising, embodied in the Mambí movement, the Spanish army began to confine the peasants to the cities in order to isolate them from their natural environment and of their environment. the mambis have lost strength. Measures which, over time, would be reproduced by the United Kingdom, led by Horatio Kitchener, during the Boer War; by the United States Army in its Indian Wars, as well as by Generals Sheridan and Hunter in completely devastating the Shenandoah Valley or by Sherman in devastating Georgia and South Carolina.
General Weyler’s proclamation decrees that “all inhabitants of rural areas or areas outside the line of fortified towns will be concentrated in the towns occupied by the troops within eight days” and that “anyone who disobeys this order or is found outside the prescribed areas will be considered a rebel and judged as such. And he added: “It is absolutely forbidden, without the authorization of the military authority of the point of departure, to take food products out of cities and transfer them to others, by sea or land. Violators of these norms will be tried and sentenced as collaborators of the rebels. Livestock owners have been ordered to drive them to towns or surrounding areas, where they can benefit from adequate protection.
“Real hells of overpopulation”
As historian Eduardo Montagut explains, although initially the containment zones offered reasonable living conditions and even land to cultivate nearby, these spaces ended up becoming “veritable hells of overpopulation.” The measure meant that, due to the lack of food supply and the unsanitary conditions of these “concentration camps”, the confined population died of famine and epidemics, in addition to being seriously affected by the dysentery and gastrointestinal infections, which made it a very unpopular country. solution. Added to this is the division of Cuba through “trochas” or walls equipped with surveillance posts to isolate the mambis.
Cuban media, such as Radio Rebelde, criticize that “with this character – in reference to Weyler – came a new policy that implied a war of extermination, genocidal” and emphasize that “the image of the ‘Butcher Weyler’ remained a representation of the cruel and genocidal politics of the metropolis”, terms with which the historian John Lawrence Tone, author of War and genocide in Cuba. “Weyler has remained in our history as a symbol of the worst of the colonial policy applied to Cuba,” he says. Some books, like that of the anti-imperialist Cuban historian Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, are vehement in their title: Weyler in Cuba: a precursor of fascist barbarism.
“Weyler did not want to commit genocide”
However, other voices exclude that the Majorcan’s intention was strictly to implement a policy of extermination in Cuba. “Weyler did not want to commit genocide or be the “inventor” of concentration camps. What he wanted was to control the civilian population because he knew they provided food, horses and aid to the separatists. And that was their policy. Although it is a policy that is always dangerous, because if a large population is concentrated in an area, this population can suffer from food shortages and diseases can also spread further,” says, in statements to elDiario. es, the professor of contemporary history at the University of the Illes Balears (UIB) Antoni Marimon, whose main areas of research are the history of the contemporary press, migratory processes, colonial conflicts and political debates. Restoration to Transition.
Civilian victims are still debated today, even if Marimon believes that the figures are “very far from what would be a genocide”. The American Stephen Bonsal, cited by the Cuban historian José Manuel Cabrera, estimates that there were 400,000 reconcentrated non-combatant Cubans, although his data is difficult to quantify due to a lack of reliable sources. For his part, the Cuban historian Carlos M. Trelles y Govín emphasizes that the reconcentration caused the death of “no less than 300,000 people”, while more recent studies such as those of Andreas Stucki start from around 170,000 civilian victims, or 10% of the total population -1.8 million inhabitants according to censuses-. “In any case, these would be figures for deaths due to hunger and disease, and not to executions,” adds Marimon, author of numerous studies on the figure of Weyler.
The facts were also “exaggerated” by the American press as part of the relentless campaign it promoted to obtain American intervention in the conflict, explains the historian, who recalls that the newspapers of the time spoke of “barbarism”. Spanish” among its pages. Some sources consider Weyler to have been on the receiving end of the first journalistic campaign in history. In Spain and especially in Mallorca, however, he was considered a hero, among other things because, Marimon continues, “he caused the death of one of the main independence leaders, Antonio Maceo”. “It was a huge success that ended up being played in the arenas of Palma and in pages and pages of the press,” he adds.
Weyler, liberal and progressive
The UIB historian says that the image of Weyler offered by the United States was very far from reality, although he recognizes that he was a “tough, very strict and efficient” soldier. “In fact, the Spanish government sent him to Cuba when his predecessors had failed to eliminate the 1895 uprising promoted by José Martí, the great independence leader. For a year, the Spanish government of Cánovas del Castillo does not know what to do and has been trying to negotiate. He tries to send a politician, a rather pacifist soldier, but it doesn’t really work. And on the pro-independence side there was Antonio Máximo Gómez, a supporter of extreme war and the burning of everything that was necessary,” he says.
Finally, Weyler was relieved in 1897 and replaced by General Ramón Blanco. Marimon emphasizes that the Majorcan general was a “liberal, progressive and open-minded” person who, during the last decades of his life, opposed the banker Joan March, financier of Franco’s putschist plot, and maintained contacts with the socialist Indalecio Prieto. And, under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, he severely criticized military dictatorships: “For him, the military cannot access political power and, if they did, they would lead Spain to disaster. This didn’t happen with Primo de Rivera, but it did happen with Franco, although fortunately Weyler was already dead. The Franco dictatorship never glorified it.”
