The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,48
an undercover stint as a maid at one of the hotels on Fifth Avenue, my stunt reporting days never behind me. I’m hunched over a typewriter putting the finishing touches on the story—and detailing the moment when one of the odious male guests got a little friendlier than appropriate—when a shout emerges from Hearst’s office, sounding through the newsroom.
“We have Spain, now!” Hearst exclaims, drawing the notice of all the staff.
I rise from my desk and edge closer toward his office door.
“Get me Chamberlain,” he says, calling for one of his editors. “Send a telegraph to our correspondent in Havana. Have him wire every detail he has about this case. Notify our correspondents all over the United States that it’s their job to get signatures from the women of America. We want the important ones to sign first. Then send the signed petition along with the names of the signatories to the queen regent demanding this girl’s pardon. Alert our minister in Madrid. The Spanish minister wants to go after our correspondents? Let’s see how he does when faced with the women of America. We must bring as much attention to this as we can. This is how we open the country’s eyes to what’s really happening in Cuba. Much more effective than editorials and political speeches. We’ll save this girl no matter what it takes.”
“What’s going on?” I ask Michael, one of Pulitzer’s former reporters who has since jumped ship for the Journal, as he emerges from Hearst’s office. “I haven’t seen Hearst this excited since the Journal solved the East River murder mystery last month.”
Michael grins. “Hearst just received a cable from Havana. There’s a girl being imprisoned in the Casa de Recogidas. George Eugene Bryson and George Clarke Musgrave went down to the prison themselves to investigate. She’s Cuban. She’s a lady, and she has no business being in Recogidas. She’s been there over a year awaiting trial. She’s only nineteen years old. Bryson’s been sitting on this story, afraid international scrutiny will make her situation more precarious. But he’s finally decided to file it under the byline of Marion Kendrick. Hopefully, that’ll leave his name out of it and keep him from being expelled from the country while still raising the attention we need for the situation.”
That this woman has reached Hearst’s notice seems a bit unusual given how many women are likely in the prison down there. For a while, I thought Hearst’s attention was diverted to the troubles in Greece, but now it seems he’s back with his original instincts that the revolution coverage will set the Journal’s future.
“Who is she?”
“Evangelina Cisneros,” Michael replies. “She’s reportedly the niece of the former president of the Cuban Republic. Bryson says she’s beautiful. Like no woman he’s ever seen. He’s half in love with her already. They’re referring to her as a Cuban Joan of Arc.”
With each fact he dispenses about her, his voice rises in triumph, a crescendo building until his cheeks are reddened with excitement.
“So that’s the story?” I ask. “A beautiful woman is imprisoned in Cuba?”
What about all the other women imprisoned there who don’t have the benefit of fine eyes?
“Hearst thinks she’s the perfect person to compel the American people to push for intervention.”
It’s a page right out of Pulitzer’s own newspaper, a similar tactic that Pulitzer used when he rallied support for Sylvester Scovel’s imprisonment. Still, the public isn’t the one Hearst needs to worry about swaying. Despite his party’s aggressive stance toward armed conflict, President McKinley is reluctant to thrust us into war with Spain.
“How has she ended up in such a notoriously foul place?” I ask.
Michael grins, the near glee on his face at odds with the predicament of a young girl in prison.
“That’s where the story gets even more interesting,” Michael answers. “She was living on a penal colony on the Isle of Pines with her father, who was exiled for his role in the Cuban insurrection.”
“They imprisoned her along with her father?”
“No, she and her sister volunteered to accompany him. Readers are going to love that fact. Her father was originally sentenced to death for raising a rebel cavalry unit. Reportedly, she negotiated with Captain-General Arsenio Martínez Campos and later General Weyler to have his sentence reduced to life imprisonment.”
“I didn’t think Weyler was so easy to persuade.”
General Valeriano Weyler, the Spanish crown’s military governor in Cuba aptly known as a butcher, has a nasty reputation that precedes him.
“He’s not. But then again, everyone who comes in contact