[January 7th
marks the 60th
anniversary of Fidel Castro entering Havana to take over as Cuba’s prime
minister—one begrudgingly recognized
by a U.S. government that had opposed his revolution and would continue to
oppose his rule. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Cuban histories in
relationship to the U.S.—leading up to a weekend post on literary works that
can help us understand the island nation and ourselves!]
On what happens
when the pen and the sword work together.
For obvious reasons, folks in my
profession are big fans of the cliché that the pen is mightier than the sword.
Or, more exactly, of the reading of that phrase in which the pen and the sword
are opposed, and thus the narrative in which words and writing can, in one way
or another, triumph over or at least outlast weapons and war. None of us are
naïve enough to think that the pen can win in a direct confrontation, but in
this reading of the phrase, the words and writing are the slower but steadier
and ultimately stronger influences, the ones that can revise and reshape and
remake histories and stories (even those of war at its worst). I don’t disagree
with that perspective—I wouldn’t do what I do if I didn’t put that kind of
faith in the power of words—but there’s another possible reading of the phrase,
one that is much less attractive for us fans of the pen: in this reading, the
pen and the sword are both trying to achieve the same objectives, are both
weapons of war, and the phrase simply suggests that the pen is ultimately a more
powerful such weapon.
One of the best and most
troubling proofs for that reading comes from the late 1890s and the build-up to
the Spanish American War. I’ve written frequently here about the US’s
imperialistic endeavors that partly coincided with and definitely expanded
as a result of this war, especially the bloody and tragic
mess in the Philippines; but the Spanish American War itself likewise was,
if not particularly bloody (from an American perspective, anyway), almost
certainly tragically unnecessary. Although the war represented in many ways the
culmination of decades-long trends on multiple levels—from Cuba’s efforts for
independence from Spain to those aforementioned growing American imperialistic
goals—its most proximate cause was the February 1898 sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, a warship that had
been sent to Havana to monitor ongoing social unrest there. At the time, the
narratives of that incident, as advanced for example in the hugely popular
newspapers of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer (both vocal advocates
of imperialistic expansion and thus of war with Spain), emphasized the strong
likelihood that the ship’s powder magazines had exploded due to an external
attack (from the Spanish forces, was the constant implication), and the
subsequent “Remember
the Maine” battle-cry greatly
pushed public opinion in support of the war. (Later
investigations, which will never be much more than speculative, have made
clear that the explosion could have been internally triggered, and at least
that there was no specific evidence for any particular cause.)
The pens of Hearst and Pulitzer
and their employees thus certainly helped make the war palatable and so perhaps
possible. The most troubling such pen was that of a man who had long since used
it to make an iron-clad reputation as one of the most talented and nuanced
artists and illustrators of his era: Frederic Remington. Remington
had been producing his drawings and paintings of the West and the frontier for
almost fifteen years by this time; those works did partly contribute to the
origins and extensions of a Wild West mythos, but in his renderings of Native
American subjects (for example) Remington displayed a cultural awareness
and sensitivity that far exceeded many of his Wild West mythmaking peers (such
as Buffalo Bill). But in early 1897 Remington was sent to Cuba by his friend
and sometime employer Hearst to witness and capture Spanish abuses and
atrocities there; Hearst’s famous
instruction to him, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war” may
well be apocryphal (as per the article linked below), but there’s no question
that Remington’s assignment was to illustrate the sensationalist coverage of
the situation and help push the US closer to war, and Remington did not leave
Cuba until he had what he believed was sufficient material to illustrate those
stories. That he would, a year later, portray
Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders during their over-glorified charge up Cuba’s
San Juan Hill, the event that cemented both the narratives of the US’s war
effort and Roosevelt’s national reputation, only highlights how much
Remington’s pen became in these years a direct corollary to the sword.
The Spanish-American War might
well have happened even if Remington—or any of these journalists—had never
raised a pen; history is rarely if ever reducible to single influences or
causes. But on the other hand, it’s difficult to overstate the importance of
public opinion when it comes to the US’s war policies in this era—it was less
than two decades later, after all, that Woodrow Wilson would win reelection on
the campaign slogan “He
kept us out of war.” And while the war’s influences and trajectory will,
like what happened to the Maine,
remain open to historical interpretation and analysis, there is no disputing
that in this case, many of our most prominent pens were drafted into combat. Next
history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Cuban histories you’d highlight?
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