DEEVBELOPMENT-CUBA: Spanish Tourists Ignore Genocide Debate

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 8 1998 (IPS) - Cuba’s planned monument to honour “victims of the genocide of Spanish colonialism” has sparked debate between Havana and Madrid although existing sites marking the end of colonialism here is already a big hit with Spanish tourists.

The flock to see “1898-1998, A Hundred Years of History” and learn about the sites of the Hispanic-Cuban-North American wars in the past century. The project, directed principally by historians and students, seeks to show tourists the events that brought about the end of nearly four centuries of Spanish domination.

The United States initiated its intervention in Cuba on February 15, 1898, and the war ended in December of that year. This year marks the centenary anniversary of those events.

But the never really warm relations between Spain and Havana have been chilled by the official announcement from the government that it was building a monument to the victims of colonization.

“I will not applaud this decision,” said Spanish chancellor Abel Matutes, who recognized that in Spanish colonialism, like in all colonial processes, abuses were committed. “But the overall result is so positive that I do not believe this monument is appropriate.”

The Cuban minister of Defense, Raul Castro, announced on Jan 28 that the government would establish the monument to the victims “of the genocide of Spanish colonialism,” which he compared to the Holocaust in Europe duriong the 1930s-1940s.

President Fidel Castro ratified the decision and compared the 300,000 Cuban victims who suffered at the end of last century with the Jews persecuted by the Nazis and the concentration of the Vietnamese into camps by U.S. troops in the 1970s.

The Cuban genocide experience dates back to 1896 and 1897 whe the Spanish commander of the island, Gen. Valeriano Weyler, forced “all the inhabitants into camps or outside the fortification line” in order to cut off any kind of assistance with liberation forces.

In his book, “The Reconcentration,” Cuban Colonel Raul Izquierdo explains that in a few days, small towns with military outposts were converted into giant prisons for the elderly, women and children in which living conditions were deplorable.

“Spanish troops had the power to wipe out everything, to burn homes, destroy crops and sacrifice the animals they could not take with them in order to eliminate the material base of the Liberation Army,” he said.

According to the military official, a Red Cross report dated in Havana on October 1898 described “a monstrous picture” with tens of thousands of people walking in the streets “looking for scraps of food in garbage cans.”

The 1899 census carried out by the occupying U.S. government reported 300,000 victims of this policy.

However, Izquierdo considers that this census is limited, and it is “a shame that a century later the number of people who died cannot be clearly established.”

This policy did not assure victory for Spain, and converted it into the “largest genocide committed in this hemisphere,” said the researcher. “Its only triumph was to submit the defenseless population to extermination due to hunger and illness, which cost many human lives.”

Despite the significance of this monument, Castro, in an attempt to ameliorate a negative reaction from Spain, said it did not have an anti-Spanish character, and indicated that it was a work “against crime” and “against genocide.”

According to the results of the most recent International Tourism Fair in Madrid, Spanish tourists have ignored this debate and an increase in the number of Spanish tourists to the island is expected this year.

Spain is the third country in terms of the number of tourists traveling to Cuba. It has been a pioneer of foreign investment in Cuba, and it is the country with the most number of mixed associations with Havana.