The Martínez Campos Government of 1879: Spam’s Last Chance in Cuba

Abstract

~ T HE Peace of Zanjon, wrote Antonio Maria Fabie, l offered us the one occasion which contemporary history presented to leave America with glory and honor, but the directing classes and public opinion turned their backs on it because of ignorance, indolence, and bad faith, committing the gravest and most transcendental error of the nineteenth century.' In these words Fabie characterized the tragic year of 1879 when Spain might conceivably have followed the leadership of General Arsenio Martinez Campos to initiate the comprehensive reform policies required to hold the allegiance of Cuba. For a brief nine months Martinez Campos headed a Spanish ministry usually counted as merely an interim one sponsored for his own purposes by the great architect of Restoration Spain, Antonio Canovas del Castillo. It was, however, a watershed in Spanish history. The controversies which it engendered broke the monopoly of politics by Canovas' Liberal Conservative Party. Martinez Campos led the way to the pacific integration of the military into Restoration politics. But this brief government also witnessed the failure of Cuban hopes for fundamental change. The resultant disillusionment added strength to the independence movement. The trauma of 1898 was foreshadowed in the painful events of 1879. As always in history, the question arises, Could things have gone otherwise? Why did Spain lose this last chance to maintain herself in Cuba? Most fundamental in the explanation of the course of events is the personal rivalry of Martinez Campos and Cainovas. It had begun at the very outset of the Restoration period. Martinez Campos' pronunciamiento at Sagunto, by which the restoration of Alfonso XII to