| Show CUBAS WOES new bork nov 22 A dispatch to the world from matanzas cube cuba says saya the half of the story of suffering buffering in cuba has not been told in havana and its suburbs the streets are dotted with beggars the hospitals are overflowing with starving innocents innocent and the spare barracks are filled with the he destitute and dying but from ravana havana to this place there is a succession of small cities almost tree free from frola sickness and hunger nobody Is left there the only swarming population is gone they are cities of the dead protecting forts overlook empty houses pallid ragged spanish sol diers guard a few a very few human humah skeletons very soon they will have only themselves to protect they need it it is almost a question whether Weyler ism has not been as awful tor for them as it has been tor for the peaceable cubans the towns of campo florida san miguel minas jaruco haruco bainoa bainor aguacate mocha and buena vista were trebled and quadrupled in population by wellers Wey lers concentration ot of the surrounding country people under the rifles of their respective sets of little forts the loyal obedient farmers took their f furniture urn iture and their babes in ox carte their cows and pigs wives and children on foot and built long streets att palm pillared raftered thatched aided houses today nothing rem but the wood the animals eaten all articles of value have been changed into bread and the people everything having been used up are dead our train stopped at each place mentioned we counted only 25 women and children and three men in the palm house lanes there are two trains a day they are the great events of each miserable 24 hours bours and we counted 28 spectators there should have been five thousand there were at least to in those palm houses when wellers Wey lers victims first began to die and we counted 28 29 survivors even the senator from spain can be convinced of the extermination of a people in which he assisted when be supported spain in supporting weyler he needs but to take the train from havana to matanzas a three houra ride through a beautiful but abandoned coun country tty the squalid abandoned til lages are proof enough three hours of silence and ruin would show him ex termination even though he never before had heard of cuba or claimed there had been no war the facts the awful facts the almost unbelievable facts are everywhere they force themselves upon the sight the smell the hearing and the reason matanzas a city of inhabitants has given its much better chances for dying gradually than has any of the silent villages first mentioned much meat has come here from florida the people are rich the sites for the palm bark villages of the hungry are elevated and healthy the water is good some organized charitable efforts have been made by the citizens the city government has filled in swamps and made boulevards to give work to the destitute the little hamlets mentioned have had none of these amell ameliorations orations yet in matanzas out of countrymen women and children there are today not more than left and these are barely alive the streets are full of tottering ones the cate cafe doors frame squads of begging women and children the public square has hafs a living skeleton for each of its beautiful shrubs and trees the dead carts go to the cemetery loaded with bodies three deep the civil register of the city only hints at the awful loss of life it Is does not record the many quiet burials in the fields to avoid the danger of waiting to secure the permit necessary for a poor mans body to be allowed its six feet of consecrated ground it shows 2849 deaths of or about one third the actual sad figures the present death rate of forty starving ones dally had it been constant since the beginning of weyler would have wiped out the entire before now the total daily death rate varies from sixty five to seventy on november ath died physicians claim the dally daily average should be eighty at this rate in little more than a year matanzas will be a graveyard and in less than three months there will be no more rados although the conditions may change for the citizens of matanzas there is little hope for its ita enforced visitors gen blancos blancas Blan cos relief measures although humane are wholly inadequate it carried out by the local authorities they come too late soldiers rations even with jerked beef and cornmeal added will kill more than they wll will cure the starved condition of the wretched bipeds here is such that expert medical tee dooms orve one halt of the rados left to death and if the rations issued are the same game as the spanish soldiers here n now exist on the same testimony n alares res that at least 2000 will de AV jn mIt starving arving are not likely to get edw e hat much one of the highest officials who would be entrusted with the issuing of rations has said within three days we are not going to pay any attention to blancos blancas Blan cos orders the money raised for feeding the starving has been mostly stolen the change of officials has let this out through the intense hatred of the SIant spanish sh reformist for the spanish conservative serva tive an income tax of 8 per cent was levied for the care of the hun hungry gry sad and collected the present officers charge the former officials wit with h putting most of it into their pockets the amount raised was considerable the work done was next to noth lall ibar six thousand dollars went in wages at 15 cents a day and downward for swamp samp filling two hundred men worked on a boulevard two weeks and paid most of their money back to the officials for the food they were compelled to buy in certain places within a week a leading spanish merchant slapped clapped the former mayors face after taxing him and the former governor with this and other lings another example is the barracks built for the rados which appears on the books to have cost the material was taken from dismantled buildings the labor was compulsory pul sory and the barracks could not have cost more than 2000 with such a record and i the he boas tWe are not going to pay any attention to blancos blancas Blan cos orders the spanish authorities of matanzas cannot be expected to give to the starving the care they require to show how cheaply the dead could have been kept alive but a glance is necessary at the books of the united states agent who is caring for destitute american citizens there have been persons of the class up to may many of them were in want since the american agent came on that date only half a dozen have died and it has cost but 19 cents a day for each person at war prices for food bought in matanzas Mat aneas city the dally daily ration is six ounces of potatoes rice caddish or jerked beef six ounces of cornmeal four ounces of sugar two ounces of lard and an ounce and a half of beans the cuban physicians prescribe gratis and the cuban druggists sell at cost such a ration and medical attendance would save 2500 souls in matanzas and tens and tens of thousands in western cuba the red cross society has a permit from weyler to go even into the rebel camps gen blanco doubtless would extend every facility for its work now as it must be done only in the fortified towns and only for obedient subjects ejects of spain fifteen cents a day and the red cross should save a life A few thousand dollars would save the remains of the rural population of western cuba |
