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The island was at peace when Cepeda, Lopez de Brinas and Marquez Sterling, all journalists, were deported. The liberty of the press was and still is a myth. El Pais, the Autonomist organ, was criminally prosecuted in 1889 because it denounced the appointment of one of the sons of the president of the Havana Court of Appeals to a place which he could not lawfully hold.
He further stated that the inconditional party in Puerto Rico, guided by the patriotism which distinguished it, showed its complete conformity with the reforms proposed by the Government, and that the "autonomist" party, which, in the beginning, looked upon the proposed reforms with indifference, had also accepted and declared its conformity with them.
Fort Morro, Fort San Cristobal, and the United States revenue cutter Manning, lying in the harbor, fired twenty-one guns each. Senor Munoz Rivera, who was President of the recent autonomist council of secretaries, and other officials of the late insular government, were present at the proceedings.
When the war began the population of Cuba was a little more than one-third black; now the proportion is officially reckoned as 525,684 colored, against 1,631,600 white. In 1898 two Negroes were serving as secretaries in the Autonomist Cabinet.
"Nevertheless, although I can rely upon the absolute, unconditional support of the autonomist and constitutional parties, as well as upon public opinion, this would be insufficient without the confidence of the government, now more than ever necessary to me after the censure of which I have been made the object by the members and journals of the Liberal party and by public opinion in the United States, which latter is largely influenced by the former.
It had only one plank in its platform Cuba Libre y Independiente whatever the cost to the island and its people. "The Autonomist group," says Mr. Pepper, in his Tomorrow in Cuba, "became as much a political party as it could become under Spanish institutions." It grew in strength and influence, and continued its agitation persistently and stubbornly.
Hence it is not surprising that the intermediary, be he spiritualist, autonomist, palingenesist or what he will, should lose himself in those wild and troubled eddies and that the truth or message which he brings us, tossed and tumbled in every direction, should reach us broken, shattered and pulverized beyond recognition.
Before the outbreak of the Ten Years' War, the reform party in Cuba, which included all the most enlightened, wealthy and influential citizens of the island, had exhausted all the resources at their command to induce Spain to establish a more just and equitable administration of affairs, but all to no avail. It was proposed that Cuba receive an autonomist constitution.
Fort Morro, Fort San Cristobal and the United States revenue cutter Manning, lying in the harbor, fired twenty-one guns each. Senor Munoz Rivera, who was president of the recent autonomist council of secretaries, and other officials of the late insular government were present at the proceedings. Many American flags were displayed.
Later on, the Liberal party became the Autonomist party, but Spain's concession of the demands of that group came too late, forced, not by the Autonomists but by the party of the Revolution that swept the island with fire and sword from Oriente to Pinar del Rio. The Autonomists sought what their name indicates; the Revolutionists demanded and secured national independence.
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