ABSTRACT
The United States Occupation of 1899-1902 From a logical analysis of the conduct of the government of the United States of America in 1898, one would not deduce that it went to war with Spain with the conviction that Cubans ought to be independent (as stated in the Teller Amendment to the Joint Resolution of the US Congress of April 19, 1898). Most Cubans in the separatist movement, however, called the US government their liberator. Major General Calixto García had a dispute with US General Shafter after the surrender of the Spanish general defending Santiago de Cuba in July 1898, because the American general accepted the conditions requested by the surrendering Spanish general: specifically, that Cuban rebel forces not be allowed to enter Santiago. However, shortly thereafter, he made his peace with the American occupiers, and told a reporter that if the people of Cuba voted for the annexation of Cuba by the United States he would not oppose the will of the people.1 General Máximo Gómez, the most important military officer in the Cuban Liberation Army, cooperated with the American authorities in Cuba by disbanding this army after receiving a visit in February 1899 from Robert P. Porter, an envoy of President McKinley; Porter was accompanied by Gonzalo de Quesada, one of the two men left by José Martí in New York to direct the Cuban Revolutionary Party during his absence.2 During the first military occupation of Cuba by the United States some Cubans were incorporated by the two military governors that the island had in those years in their administrations. In 1899 General John Brooke had a cabinet of Cubans that included former Vice-President of the Cuban Republic in Arms, Dr. Domingo Méndez Capote, as Secretary of the Interior.3 From 1899 to 1902, General Leonard Wood had a cabinet of Cubans that included two Cuban Liberation Army generals (General José Ramón Villalón as Secretary of Public Works, and General Juan Rius Rivera as Secretary for Agriculture), and a Cuban scholar (Enrique José Varona, who had taken over the publication of José Martí’s newspaper Patria in New York after Martí’s death in May 1895) as Secretary of Finance.4 In August 1900, Dr. Carlos J. Finlay (1833-1915) was consulted by the medical commission sent to Cuba in that year to investigate the cause of yellow fever, and how to contain it, because this disease was afflicting many soldiers in the US occupation forces. Dr. Finlay, born in the Cuban city of Puerto Principe (present-day Camagüey), studied medicine at the University of Havana, in Europe, and in the United States.
