The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,104
by Washington. They believe war is imminent. Consul General Lee is returning home to Virginia, and I am to accompany him.”
“You’re leaving the country? You are needed here now more than ever.”
“I’ve done what I can. If we truly are facing a war between the United States and Spain, then the best thing I can do—the best thing we all can do—is align ourselves with the Americans.”
All along he was a coconspirator in this, and our past aside, he was an ally whose commitment mirrored mine. But this—this feels a lot like he’s abandoning a sinking ship in favor of firmer ground.
Am I a fool for staying? Am I a fool for believing we should continue to fight?
“I need you to do me a favor,” Carlos says.
“What sort of favor?”
Done are my days of blindly diving into whatever scheme he concocts. I risked so much for my part in helping Evangelina Cisneros escape from Recogidas, and Cuba gained little, and in the end, we saved only one woman out of the hundreds of thousands that have died with no one rushing to their rescue.
A gleam enters Carlos’s gaze. “I have proof that Spain blew up the Maine.”
* * *
—
I hurry through Havana, hoping no one will stop me, that the dark night will provide a measure of cover. Carlos gave me the papers, sealed letters he said proved the Spanish had orchestrated a plot to blow up the Maine, and asked me to deliver them to a restaurant where Karl Decker and some of the other Journal reporters are dining.
In their last few days in the city and with the threat of war looming, Carlos and the consulate staff have been under greater scrutiny in Havana, and he feared the odds of the letters being intercepted would be great.
I’m carrying them with another bundle of laundered clothes, a few blocks away from the restaurant, when a voice calls out:
“Stop. Who goes there?”
I turn slowly, hoping that I will somehow escape this, that they will let me go with only a couple questions.
My heart sinks.
A group of Spanish soldiers stands before me, pointing their guns at me.
Thirty-Six
Grace
In March, our answer as to what happened to the Maine comes in the form of the naval court’s investigation that is presented to Congress and their opinion that the Maine was destroyed by a submarine mine that exploded, a conclusion that in no way exonerates Spain. There have been rumors of damning evidence against the Spanish being held by the revolutionaries, but if it exists, none has materialized.
We’re in Brooklyn at a fundraiser for Maine survivors, and Hearst has even secured Evangelina Cisneros’s presence, but for once she is hardly the star attraction. The impending war is all anyone can speak of. War fever—and speculating—has ensnared the country, and Hearst could not be more in his element.
“Congress is calling for war. After everything, how can we ignore what the Spanish are doing? We look weak if we do not act,” Hearst says. “Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t wrong when he said that we need a war to bolster the country, to define who we are as a nation.”
“Is that a reason to wage war, though?” one of the other guests asks. “What should our national identity have to do with Cuban independence?”
“It gives people something to get behind. A cause to believe in.”
“And what, a distraction from the problems plaguing us at home?” I interject. “We don’t want to face our society’s ills, so instead, let’s direct their attention elsewhere?”
“Perhaps there’s a bit of that, too,” Hearst concedes. “Regardless, I imagine Senator Proctor’s speech in Congress last month has swayed them considerably. Our critics claim that we have invented the situation in Cuba, that we are swayed by the Junta, that we have sensationalized the news there, but the words of a man who has no such ties, no interest in exaggerating the truth, who has seen the conditions in which the Cuban people live with his own two eyes is powerful indeed. Proctor’s Cuba tour confirms the stories we’ve run. The situation is dire. McKinley’s attempts to pursue a diplomatic solution have been unsuccessful. We must act.”
I remember how my father spoke of war the few times he was willing to talk of his experiences, the ghosts that lived in him frequently plaguing him. I wonder if men like Hearst would be more reluctant to call for war if they saw the havoc it has wrought. There are no easy answers here, though.