On February 15, 1898 at 9:40 p.m., an unexpected explosion disturbed the nightlife of Havana. An explosion on the US battleship Maine it irremediably sank it... two officers and 266 sailors lost their lives.
After 115 years, that episode is still the subject of controversy and mystery, since it is not yet known for sure what or who caused the explosion. The only sure thing is that it changed the course of history and that the US used it as an excuse to intervene in Cuba, something that it was already planning in its career to become the first military power of the 20th century. The US plans were favored by the Spanish economic instability, the weakness of the liberal government Práxedes Mateo Sagasta and the winds of independence that were blowing with increasing intensity in Cuba.
USS Maine
Faced with the instability of the island and seeing the possibility that the Cuban independence fighters could finally overthrow the Spanish army, and thus lose the possibility of controlling the island, the US government decided to intervene. With the excuse of ensuring the interests of US residents, on January 25, 1898, the US sent the battleship Maine to Havana, without prior notice and in breach of normal diplomatic practices. To reciprocate with that gesture of «friendship «, the Spanish government sent the cruiser Vizcaya to New York Harbor. In spite of everything, the Spanish authorities in Cuba received the sailors commanded by Charles Segbee correctly. and they were even invited to official events, dances, bullfights, etc. But the explosion of the Maine radically changed that panorama... The American yellow press, especially the New York Journal by Randolph Hearst and the New York World by Joseph Pulitzer , They had been using the excesses committed by the Spaniards on the island for years -as in the case of Evangelina Cisneros – to turn American public opinion against the Spanish… the Maine started the paper war .
Two days after the explosion of the battleship, the New York Journal carried a full-page headline “The destruction of the battleship Maine was the work of the enemy «, «Navy officials think the Maine was destroyed by a Spanish mine «. It was accompanied by a drawing of the ship exploding on some mines connected by cable to the fortresses of Havana. Four days later he called for military intervention on the island and called "pigs" those who gave more importance to the fall in their actions than to the " murder of (266) American sailors ”. The warlike enthusiasm of the New York Journal led to the conflict being baptized as “The Hearst War ” (Hearst's war) and situations as hypocritical as the fact that cartoonist Frederick Remington was sent to Havana in March as a war correspondent. After several days, Remington telegraphed that all was calm and that he wished to return because there was to be no war there. Hearst replied:
stay there. You send the drawings, I put the war.
Although the Spanish press knew that Spain could not respond militarily to the provocations of the Americans, they decided to respond with their own means. The Herald of Madrid he argued that American soldiers would desert at the first shots. Meanwhile, the magazine Black and White published:
It is unfair to pigs
to compare Yankees
because the pig is beneficial
and the Yankee is harmful.
The Republican Francesc Pi i Margall he branded these media as “infamous press ”, But this affirmation, added to his requests for peace and the invocation of the right of Cubans to their independence, would end up costing him his seat for Girona in the 1898 elections.
Hearst and Pulitzer
The tension reached such a point in the US that the media and radical political circles harshly criticized the Secretary of State, John D. Long , for ruling out Spanish responsibility in the Maine incident. Theodore Roosevelt , Undersecretary of State for the Navy, who wanted to send his ships to Cuba immediately, stated that the president had “as much character as a chocolate cake ”When McKinley announced to the press that he was not willing to declare war on Spain. Concerned about the growing criticism of being "a soft «, President McKinley asked Congress - "in the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in the name of America's endangered interests «- the authorization to expel the Spanish forces from Cuba… the rest of the story is well known.
Collaboration of Edmundo Pérez .
Sources and images:The United States Becomes an Imperial Power, Remember Maine,The Spanish-American War, 1896-98 – Chidsey, Donald B.