In 1896 Cuban insurgents desperately sought to throw off the yoke of their mother country, Spain, and forge a new nation. Spanish officials had imprisoned eighteen-year-old Evangelina Cisneros at a women’s prison for harlots and other outcasts in Havana for what they believed was her role in an uprising against Spain.
In the US and Cuban revolutionary press, Evangelina was characterized as a lovely young POW, and her tormentor, José Bérriz, was portrayed as a Spanish brute, determined to have his way with her before he would consider better treatment for her revolutionary father, Agustín Cosío y Serrano. Cosío was a Cuban rebel held by the Spaniards for his insurgent activities.
After the US press discovered Evangelina, William Randolph Hearst began a letter-writing campaign for her freedom. Hearst, the publisher of the New York Journal, asked María Cristina, the queen regent in Spain, and Pope Leo XIII to intercede on Evangelina’s behalf. Hearst sent journalist Karl Decker to Havana to rescue Evangelina. After that, Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, battled it out in a circulation war. They capitalized on events surrounding the imprisonment and rescue to tell the story of Evangelina. In the end, she was freed.1
Press treatment of the escape of Evangelina Cisneros from a Havana jail reveals stark contrasts among newspapers in the United States, in Madrid, and in the Cuban émigré press. US newspapers, particularly Hearst’s and Pulitzer’s, saw their role as keeping readers abreast of what was happening in Cuba, just as a Spanish-American conflict loomed. Evangelina had escaped only twenty-three weeks before the sinking of the Maine in Havana harbor.2 The press in the United States also drew on perspectives of Cuban freedom fighters and the wishes of US policy makers to tell the story of Cuba.
Even the conservative New York Times was swayed by the romance of the Evangelina Cisneros story in its coverage:
Señorita Cisneros is without doubt a hot little rebel from the Spanish point of view, for at the outbreak of the present rebellion, she put herself at the head of her father’s band of rebels and started them to join the army of Gomez. This was after her father, Señor Cossio, had been arrested and sent to the Isle of Pines as a suspect. In July of last year she was betrayed by one of her band and sent to join her father as a political prisoner.3
Another conservative paper, the New York Sun, described the background in Cuba where Spain was aggressively trying to quell the rebellion. Once Evangelina was imprisoned in Havana, a Sun article said Lieutenant Colonel Bérriz, the Spanish overseer on the Isle of Pines, “is committing barbarous crimes against pacificos and Cuban prisoners” on the outskirts of Havana. Among prisoners killed was the son of Spanish General Don Diego Figueroa. That caused a sensation, the Sun reported.4 Meanwhile, many newspapers carried articles about the young woman who had become a patriot for Cuba in 1896. (Seventy-five years later, she was recognized and reclaimed as a Cuban heroine by the Fidel Castro regime when she died; she was laid to rest in Havana with full military honors.)
During the same few weeks that presses in the United States spread the story of Evangelina, the Madrid press discussed international policy issues in its pages and carefully monitored political affairs in the United States. The US press did not directly shape public policy. But the purple prose in Hearst’s Journal may have tipped public sentiment in the United States toward war with Spain. And the jingoes or hawks in Congress must have read newspapers during an era when newspaper readership was at one of its highest points in US history. In 1897, the circulations of the Journal and Pulitzer’s rival paper, the New York World, stood at 700,000 and 800,000, respectively.5
The Cuban press relied heavily on accounts of events in US newspapers to tell its readers what was going on in Cuba in the weeks leading up to the Spanish-American War. Many revolutionary publishers set up presses in New York rather than attempt to publish at home because of the hardships brought about by Spain’s occupation of the island.
On July 26, 1896, Cuban insurgents created an uprising on the Isle of Pines, a small island off Cuba’s southwestern coast, and Evangelina Cosío y Cisneros was captured and taken into custody.6 Spain later transferred her to the Casa de Recogidas in Havana. She had languished in jail for more than a year before US newspapers discovered her plight in August 1897.7
The political climate in Cuba, in the United States, and in Spain during the first Cuban Revolution, 1895–98, yields valuable perspectives to history. Evangelina’s adventures reveal information about early relations between Cuba and the United States, emerging Cuban nationalism, the Spanish government’s frustration in its dealings with the United States, and its wish to retain Cuba as its last colony in the Americas. It was a time when Cuba was especially dear to the Spanish government. It viewed the island as “an inherent part of Spain, much as Asturias or Andalusía.”8 Independence for Cuba came decades later than it did for other Caribbean nations that had been ruled by European powers. Haiti had achieved independence in 1804, Mexico in 1810, and the Dominican Republic in 1821.9
The articles about Evangelina Cisneros also yield information about a cultured young woman in Cuba in the late nineteenth century. She was the daughter of a sugar plantation weigh master, a widower who wandered from place to place after his wife died. He was rearing four daughters alone. He was not a member of the upper class and neither was his daughter.10 But Evangelina’s book, written shortly after her escape, and the content of interviews with her, would have readers believe that she was, despite her modest upbringing, educated and cultured. She also was not typical of Cuban women of her generation. Most did not follow their fathers to foment revolution. Most women of her era did not risk being sent to Ceuta, a penal colony in Africa used by the Spaniards.11 Evangelina was different.
Two New York publishers—from the yellow press perspective—seized on the story of Evangelina to enhance their circulations and to advertise their dedication to fighting for the underdog. The publishers, Hearst and Pulitzer, spent far more ink on Evangelina than other publications did. Hearst carried more than 250 items about Evangelina in his New York Journal.12 Pulitzer could not ignore his rival’s running scoop. The publisher of the New York World and Hearst had competed aggressively before the Evangelina story broke in the Journal, and she provided the fodder for more competition.13 Both publishers recognized the appeal of Evangelina’s story.
Two more conservative newspapers, the New York Times and the New York Sun, also published articles about the Cuban prisoner. Both newspapers added new details to the story and gave Evangelina prominent play in their news sections, with the Times publishing twenty-two articles and the Sun, sixteen. The Sun’s coverage included a September 1897 story based on a lengthy interview with Evangelina by Eduardo García Nattes, a Spanish journalist in its employ.14 According to García, Evangelina claimed that, during the Isle of Pines uprising, twelve Cubans, both conspirators and bystanders, were “shot without mercy.” She added that approximately two hundred Cubans were rounded up on July 28, 1896, chained together, and placed on a steamer bound for Batabano on the mainland. From there, the prisoners, including Evangelina, went by train to Havana. Some knew nothing about the Isle of Pines uprising, Evangelina told García.15
This chapter compares coverage in these four US newspapers, two Cuban revolutionary publications, a publication based in Cuba, and nine newspapers in Madrid. Passages appearing in the Spanish-language newspapers first were translated into English.16
Before the Isle of Pines uprising, Evangelina had followed her father to the penal colony, where he was in held in a type of house arrest. On the Isle of Pines, the new overseer of the compound, Lieutenant Colonel José Bérriz, had sought sexual favors from Evangelina in exchange for kinder treatment for her father. Hearst’s Journal portrayed Bérriz as a Spanish brute devoid of pity.17 The officer, who was captivated by Evangelina, claimed she lured him to her sleeping room, but at their rendezvous, her Cuban friends tied him up and might have killed him. They wanted to declare the Isle of Pines as free territory of Cuba. From that point on, Evangelina was suspected of plotting against the Spanish crown. The Spaniards thought she had led the uprising on the smaller island.18 After that, she was captured and taken to La Casa de Recogidas—literally, House of Vagrants or Scrappings—a women’s prison for harlots and other female dregs of society.19 It was a former nunnery.20
Hearst and Pulitzer made journalistic hay out of the five important Evangelina events: arrest and imprisonment, the mighty chorus of Americans who signed petitions pleading for Evangelina’s release, the escape, introduction to New York society, and meeting President William McKinley. Along the way, both newspapers pitted virtue and evil against each other. Evangelina was described as a woman of gentle birth;21 a motherless, frail person whose health was waning; and as “almost a child in years.”22 The Journal painted Evangelina as a niece of Salvador Cisneros, the president of the Cuban provisional government, but the World questioned her lineage.23
After Evangelina was transferred to Recogidas, both the Hearst and Pulitzer papers wrote about the horrors of Ceuta, the African penal colony, where they feared the Spaniards would incarcerate her next. Being a woman during this time would not have protected Evangelina Cisneros. She was in a great deal of danger after the Spaniards arrested and jailed her.24
Hundreds of Americans signed petitions to Pope Leo XIII,25 asking that he intercede for Evangelina, and Hearst published their names.26 Julia Ward Howe, author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in a letter to the Journal, described Evangelina as “a pure flower of maidenhood,” doomed to live “with felons and outcasts, without succor, without protection”27 at Ceuta. The Pulitzer newspaper described Evangelina as “a tenderly nurtured girl” and speculated about “a hideous fate hitherto unknown to any woman at the African prison.”28
Hearst cabled a letter from Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis’s widow, to María Cristina, at the palace at San Sebastián. The letter appealed to the queen’s “shining deeds as first lady of Spain” and asked for clemency for Evangelina and a chance for her to live in the United States.29
At last came an answer to the pleas of American readers from María Cristina, through Spain’s minister to the United States, who wrote to Mrs. Davis. The Journal, however, did not like what the Spanish minister reported, and, in another story, also on the front page, gave it a one-sided interpretation. The queen, according to the Journal’s point of view, had informed him that she had sent special orders to Spanish Troop Commander Valeriano Weyler “to bring the defenceless young relative of President Cisneros into court and to have some consideration for her.”30
Furthermore, the Spanish minister admitted that Bérriz, the Isle of Pines overseer, went to Evangelina’s room at the Isle of Pines compound, “believing her to be alone and at his mercy,” according to the Journal, and that her defenders—Cuban insurgents—seized and bound “the lustful brute.” But it is the next sentence that reveals the reporter’s disdain for the diplomat’s account. “Then he [Dupuy de Lôme] repeats the stale old story about a conspiracy of a handful of unarmed exiles in the midst of a strong Spanish garrison.”31
By October 1897, freedom for Evangelina was not far away. At midnight on October 6, Evangelina’s window bars gave way, and in the early hours of October 7, she escaped from the Havana jail. A Hearst newspaperman, Karl Decker, and two accomplices had cut through the bars and led her over the roof to the ground and a waiting carriage. Evangelina, just before rescuers came for her, had drugged her cellmates, and they slept while she made her escape.32
Evangelina hid in Havana for three days. Disguised as a young Cuban sailor, she slipped out of the harbor on a steamer for New York. Hearst ensconced her at the Waldorf Hotel and introduced her to society at a grand celebration in Madison Square Garden and a private dinner at Delmonico’s, an exclusive restaurant. After a few days, Evangelina was taken to Washington, DC, to meet with President McKinley.33
The escape, Evangelina’s daily activities, her clothing, her attempt to learn English, and her decision to become a US citizen all provided new opportunities for publicity, and Hearst exhausted them. For example, after it was discovered that Evangelina had disguised herself for the escape, the newspaper reproduced large drawings of the disguise: the long-sleeved shirt, the trousers, the round collar, the boots, the Navy blue flannel coat and vest, the dark blue silk necktie, and felt, slouch hat.34 Even the things Evangelina and the rescuers left behind at Recogidas—a revolver, paint, lime, a knotted rope, and hinged boards—became the stuff of other stories.35 More stories told about locking up the jailers and seeking comment about the escape from the Spanish consul-general in Havana, Arturo Balasano.36
Hearst’s Journal was not about to abandon the drama of Evangelina’s story after her rescue and safe passage to New York. The Journal reported on McKinley’s cabinet meeting on October 12, where “the rescue of Miss Cisneros was the first subject broached.” A sketch of the cabinet members accompanied the article. McKinley read from the Journal, which had quoted the secretary of state as saying, “While I cannot discuss Spain or Cuba, every one will sympathize with the Journal’s enterprise in releasing Miss Cisneros. She is a woman.”37
The paper followed its two rescue stories with another page-one story and banner headline: EVANGELINA CISNEROS REACHES THE LAND OF LIBERTY.38 The article said that she had slipped aboard the Seneca disguised as a young sailor and hid in a closed berth until the steamer was far out to sea. The ship’s captain indignantly informed those who asked that he had had no idea how Evangelina Cisneros happened to be on his vessel. “Now how did I know that he—I mean she—was a girl? It would look well, wouldn’t it, for me to go around and ask every passenger in male attire if he was quite sure he was of the masculine gender.”39
In New York at the Waldorf Hotel, while Evangelina was reviewing what she would wear and say during the celebration, another Journal story said that Spain, on the advice of Weyler’s successor Ramón Blanco y Erenas, would pardon 154 Cuban prisoners jailed in Spain and Africa.40 Still another story named two pretty Cuban girls who were arrested by the Spaniards for conspiracy against the Crown—just like Evangelina—and predicted that Decker could find “more work” in Cuba.41
The same day, on October 16, the Journal devoted nearly its entire front page and a portion of the third page to Evangelina. It published the invitation to Delmonico’s and a story about the “fairyland,” with “flashing electric lights everywhere” that it predicted would take place there that night;42 a story about the citizenship process;43 another article about how Decker hid Evangelina;44 and two sketches—one of Evangelina’s renouncing allegiance to Spain and the other about what Madison Square Garden would look like during the demonstration.45
On the day Evangelina was introduced to high society, just as the Journal had promised, bands played. Uniformed Cuban revolutionaries, armed with machetes and rifles, escorted Evangelina’s carriage, drawn by four horses. An honor guard awaited her, and naval cadets, ready to present arms, lined the staircase at the Twenty-Sixth Street entrance to Delmonico’s. Once inside, Evangelina waited in a small parlor on the second floor, before Decker escorted her to the long reception room. The grand parlor suite was the scene of the reception. “Many a young society bud has been launched on her social career in these rooms,” the Journal wrote.46
As each guest approached, the name was announced, and Evangelina bowed or shook hands.47 Across the front of the balcony was stretched a silk Cuban flag. Palms and ferns, some of them from Cuba, surrounded the guest of honor.48 Outside, “fireworks are bursting and hissing in the air, the band is playing the Cuban anthem, every man on the stand has doffed his hat, and the shouting of the crowd continues.”49
The Journal described how Evangelina looked in Delmonico’s ballroom: “with head erect and regal mien she walks slowly down the stair and treads that glittering aisle as proudly as a monarch receiving the homage that is her due….” The story continued, “The girl’s eyes are dancing with excitement; her bosom is heaving with untold, indescribable emotions; her color is constantly changing. It is all as unreal to her as the past year….”50 The tumultuous welcome she had just received was “Like the Triumph of a Roman Caesar,” the Journal wrote in a sidebar.51
While Evangelina was being elevated in society, the Yankee Schooner Silver Heels slipped from the East River to the sound to the Atlantic in a filibuster expedition destined to deliver supplies and munitions to the rebels. Spanish officials tried to stop the ship, but it was no use.52
In contrast to the Journal’s gushy coverage of Evangelina’s society debut, the World portrayed Evangelina as too upset by her incarceration and fatigued from her voyage on the Seneca to want “to see any strangers.” The newspaper lamented her “lack of gowns” and mentioned her “imperative need for a curling iron.” But the most striking difference in coverage was that the Pulitzer newspaper proclaimed that Spanish Troop Commander Weyler, rather than fuming over the escape as the Journal had claimed, “winked at the escape and purposely did nothing to prevent it.”53 That Weyler winked at the escape would be unlikely. Evangelina’s escape unveiled serious flaws in the Spaniards’ security system and would have been an embarrassment to them. Furthermore, Spain recalled Weyler two days after the escape.54
If Evangelina was overcome at her reception in New York, she must have been dazzled by what was in store for her in Washington. Two hours of nearly “delirious patriotism,” from the 75,000 people who lined the streets from the Arlington Hotel to Pennsylvania Avenue, awaited her. There was a parade, a band, carriages of veterans, Roman candles, and rockets, before Evangelina and Decker reached Convention Hall, the Journal said.55 Before continuing to the White House, the widow of Civil War General John A. Logan received Evangelina at her home and showed her his relics and treasures.56 At the White House, the two stood in an anteroom until the door opened. It was McKinley. “This, Mr. President, is Evangelina Cisneros,” said Mrs. Logan.57
Evangelina had rehearsed beforehand what she would say. “I come to speak to you for the women and children of Cuba, who are helpless. The men, they speak for themselves in the field—but the women—the children,” she had wanted to say. At that moment, her eyes filled with tears. Before her was the president, who held both her hands. “I stood face to face with the President of the United States. I, the prisoner of Recojidas [sic], and I could not say a word. My poor speech for Cuba was forgotten; but I looked into the kind face of the President and what I thought I saw there made me content.”58
Pulitzer’s World meanwhile, erroneously stated in a headline that Evangelina was in a convent and proceeded to give itself credit for her kinder treatment. The article itself said that she would be placed at the convent of Tetuán, “in fit surroundings for a woman of culture and refinement,” and there she would be “under the care of the Sisters.”59
Not surprisingly, rather than the heroic tone found in US publications, the tenor of many of the articles in Spanish newspapers was different. It was often mocking and sarcastic. One newspaper even called Evangelina “an exotic bug,” waiting to be displayed by sensational reporters. Her escape and voyage to the United States were widely known by newspaper readers in several countries. Yet Evangelina did not dominate the Madrid press in 1897. Instead, the Spanish newspapers railed against jingoistas,60 yellow journalism,61 and filibuster expeditions to deliver supplies to the rebels, and they criticized what they believed was the bellicose, misguided foreign policy of the United States.
In Spain, a writer for La Correspondencia de España, a leading newspaper in Madrid, cast doubt on the worthiness of Evangelina’s presence in New York and implied that the Journal’s representatives arranged for lodging in advance without telling the hotel owner the purpose of their visit—clearly discourteous and underhanded. The passage says, “The owner of the aristocratic hotel Walford [sic], where the criminal fugitive of the Cuban jails is lodged, became indignant when he found out the purpose of the rooms arranged for earlier through a stroke of audacity by the newspaper’s emissaries.”62
Not only were these bold activities kept secret from the hotel owner, so many people came and went from the hotel suite that the police became involved. The tone of the message makes the Cuban revolutionaries sound like law-breaking thugs. “As the mob invades the hotel at all hours, the owner frequently is obliged to resort to the police.”63
Furthermore, the Spaniards asked how Benjamin Butler, the infamous Union general of the Civil War in the United States, would have treated Evangelina. Would he have insulted her publicly as he had the respected women of New Orleans?
On November 6, 1897, the same Madrid daily, La Correspondencia de España, translated from the French and quoted from a letter, “En Defensa de España,” or “In Defense of Spain.” The Spanish royal court’s Brussels correspondent had asked what the US newspapers had not [emphasis supplied] said about Evangelina Cisneros. The letter argues that Benjamin Butler would have been harsher with Evangelina than the Spaniards:
during the war of secession, only because the women of New Orleans looked with scorn at Yankee officials, the American general [Benjamin Franklin] Butler ordered, through an edict, that any women, who by word or deed showed disrespect for the officials or soldiers of the United States, would be considered and treated like ladies of the night. What would a Butler have done with Evangelina Cisneros?64
Here is another revealing quote from a Madrid newspaper, El Estandarte:
The girl, who was astonished at all she saw, was lodged in one of the best hotels, and [they are] disposed to exhibit her like an exotic bug and to extract from this noisy episode of fin de siécle journalism, all the juice that could be squeezed, [and] that would not be just a little. We will have then, long lists of Spanish cruelties, in spite of the contrary statements made over and over by Consul general Mr. [Fitzhugh] Lee…. In the end, the dough is waiting, and the press and insurgents are ready to prepare little loaves of anti-Spanish bread….”65
The Madrid Correspondencia de España relayed the reaction of the US secretary of state after Evangelina’s successful escape. The passage says “Minister [John] Sherman, without entering into the crux of the question of the right of Spain and Cuba, [believes] that the whole world sympathizes with the enterprise realized by the Journal to free Miss Cisneros, who, after all, is a woman.” Because she’s a woman, the text says, she should get plenty of sympathy.
The Cuban insurgent press in New York, especially Patria and La Revista de Cayo Hueso, saw Evangelina quite differently. She was a symbol of the rebels’ fiery patriotism. Tidbits that appeared in some of the Cuban press had made Evangelina a helpless victim of the cruel Spaniards. Patria said, “The Spanish sultan fell in love with young Evangelina, and from that moment, he decided to satisfy his gorilla instincts….”66 In the next passage in Patria, Evangelina was a worthy martyr for the Cuban cause—independence from Spain at any cost:
Thanks to the efforts and the decision of the important newspaper—the New York Journal—the beautiful Senorita Evangelina Cossío Cisneros finds herself free of Spanish fury and far from the clutches of Weyler, the butcher…. We Cubans extend our cordial congratulations to our colleague. We also applaud the young martyr, who is now under the protection of the American flag.67
The Cuban rebels clearly were caught up in a frenzied, romantic, passionate nationalism. Through Patria, they even had asked themselves what Henry Wadsworth Longfellow might have written about Evangelina:
Would that Longfellow had lived [to write] another immortal poem like the one the world already has celebrated, to sing about the daringly carried out rescue of the prisoner of Recojidas [sic] that was effected by The Journal—the innocent Evangelina—victim of the insolent tyrant, who, for nearly two years, has controlled the destiny of unfortunate Cuba!68
La Revista de Cayo Hueso listed the names of young Cuban women who paid with their lives because of their association with revolutionary activities. The article also reported on the dates they died. They were taken before firing squads and executed.69 Their deaths lend credence to the idea that Evangelina was indeed in danger.
A 1954 story in the Cuban magazine Bohémia contained details of the story not found elsewhere:
Weyler, seized with fury, expelled [World reporter George] Bryson from Cuba and sent the Journal a twisted version of the facts, portraying Evangelina like a woman with a bad reputation and someone who had led a scandalous life. Reports of the same nature … were transmitted to Europe.70
The article also pointed out that political prisoners with whom Evangelina was imprisoned on the upper floor of the ancient jail probably would have escaped execution by the Spaniards essentially because they were important, and the story claimed they used their leverage to influence the Spaniards and secure better treatment. The article also told how Bérriz’s attempted assault on Evangelina cemented the prisoners’ resolve for justice:
The incident provoked quite a stir in the jail. The prisoners, too politically important to be executed, demanded not only the replacement of Bérriz, but also that he be put on trial for his failed rape attempt against the virtue of Miss Cosío….71
After Evangelina’s society debut in New York and meeting with President McKinley, she went on tour in the Midwest to raise money for the Cuban revolutionaries. She married one of her three rescuers in the United States, had three daughters, and returned to Cuba after the Spanish-American War. Evangelina was recognized and reclaimed as a Cuban heroine by the Fidel Castro regime and laid to rest in Havana with full military honors in 1970, nearly seventy-five years after she became a revolutionary.72
Evangelina had attracted the most attention from the press during her imprisonment in Havana, her escape, and her introduction to high society in New York. To sum up that part of her life, a brief look at the press coverage of Evangelina—from the perspectives of three countries—the United States, Spain, and Cuba—reveals striking contrasts. The Hearst newspaper in New York viewed Evangelina as an innocent young woman who needed saving from the terrible jail and the vile Spaniards. She was a maiden in distress par excellence. Hearst painted her as a poor, helpless damsel who needed men to speak for her and to break her out of jail. As far as Hearst was concerned, Evangelina, like other women of her era, was trapped by her gender. In his eyes, she would not have the savvy to save herself. She would need to place her trust in men to secure her freedom.
In Spain, however, she was portrayed as disloyal to the Spanish crown, an “exotic bug” on display by the Americans, and a “criminal fugitive,” who had plotted to kill a Spanish officer and deserved to be captured and punished. Losing Evangelina to the United States was a metaphor for Spain’s greater fear of losing Cuba, Spain’s last colony in the Americas. And losing one troublesome insurgent was of little consequence compared to forfeiting Cuba.
The sum thrust of the content of the Cuban publications, the two émigré newspapers in New York, and Bohémia, show how important the creation of a new nation was to the Cuban insurgents. The Cubans were unwilling to compromise. Annexation to the United States was unthinkable, and autonomy granted by Spain was unworkable. The Cuban mambises dedicated their lives to Cuba Libre. The publications reflect their passion for independence.
Evangelina was a player on the international stage. She was someone saved by a plan formulated in the United States. Before she fled from Cuba and after she arrived in the United States, she was welcome fodder for the yellow presses of Hearst and Pulitzer. But she was also Spain’s prisoner. And she was Cuba’s symbol of liberty.
It is likely that Evangelina’s remarkable escape provoked Weyler’s recall. Furthermore, 154 Cuban prisoners of war were freed within ten days of her October 7 escape.
Helpless young victim? No. Sophisticated beyond her years in the ways of insurgency? Yes. The US press influenced the agenda of President William McKinley and his cabinet. When the story of Evangelina Cisneros first came to light, and, as it was repeated and embellished and spread to other newspapers in the United States and abroad, the US government could not help but take notice. On October 12, 1897, McKinley’s cabinet discussed the Cisneros Affair. The event had raised the government’s consciousness about what was transpiring in Cuba four months before the sinking of the Maine on February 15, 1898.
1.Marcus Wilkerson maintained that the two papers grew rapidly in 1896 and 1897, and by early 1898, both claimed that they had passed the 800,000 mark, Public Opinion and the Spanish-American War: A Study in War Propaganda (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1932, 8.
2.The escape was October 7, 1897. The USS Maine sank in Havana harbor February 15, 1898.
3.“Senorita Cisneros,” New York Times, September 12, 1897.
4.New York Sun, September 27, 1897.
5.William D. Sloan, James D. Startt, eds., The Media in America. A History (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 1999), 230.
6.The island today is called the Isle of Youth.
7.George C. Musgrave, Under Three Flags in Cuba (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1899), 92–93.
8.John Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain over Cuba, 1895–1898 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 11.
9.John Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire. A Concise History of Latin America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 90, 100, 130. See also Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States. A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America (Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1999), 80.
10.Evangelina Cosío y Cisneros and Karl Decker, The Story of Evangelina Cisneros, Told by Herself (New York: Continental Publishing Company, 1897, 124. The birth order for Evangelina and her three sisters was Flor de María, Carmen, Clemencia, and Evangelina.
11.Marion Kendrick, “The Cuban Girl Martyr,” New York Journal, August 17, 1897. “No woman prisoner has ever been sent to this African hell. It is just across from Gibraltar, on the Morocco coast, with a desert scoured by wild Moors behind it and the Atlantic Ocean before it.”
12.Carol Wilcox Stiff, “Cuba’s ‘Gently Bred’ Revolutionary”: Perspectives of the Spanish–Language Press. A Study of U.S., Cuban, and Spanish Coverage of the 1897 Prison Escape of Evangelina Cosío y Cisneros” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 2003), 45–46.
13.Sloan and Startt, in The Media in America 231–234. See also Judith Robinson, The Hearsts: An American Dynasty (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 250–51. The author gives 900,000 as the figure the Journal prepared to order on the eve of William McKinley’s election in 1896, 256.
14.It was unusual for a journalist from Spain to work for a US newspaper while Spain was attempting to quash the rebellion against the mother country in Cuba. Like Evangelina, García was imprisoned by the Spaniards.
15.“Miss Cisneros’s Story,” New York Sun, early September 1897. The exact date was not provided.
16.Stiff, “Cuba’s ‘Gently Bred’ Revolutionary,’” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 2003), 87.
17.Kendrick, “The Cuban Girl Martyr,” New York Journal, August 17, 1897. And see, among others, Evangelina Cosío y Cisneros and Karl Decker, The Story of Evangelina Cisneros, (New York, NY: Continental Publishing Company, 1897), 170; Joyce Milton, The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism,. (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1989), 196; William Andrew Swanberg, Pulitzer (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 272; and Anne Fountain, “Questions of Race and Gender: Evangelina Cisneros and the Spanish-Cuban-American War,” Southeastern Latin Americanist (March 1999): 36. See also Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940 (New York, NY: MacMillan Co., 1941), 530.
18.Swanberg contended that Evangelina lured Bérriz to her cottage, “where he was set upon by several rebel sympathizers, beaten and tied,” before Spanish soldiers rescued him, Citizen Hearst, 120.
19.Musgrave, Under Three Flags in Cuba, 92–93.
20.Antonio Nuñez Jiménez, “La rebelión del 26 julio de 1896,” [The Rebellion of July 26, 1896], Bohémia 62 (July 21, 1967): 90.
21.“Better she Died than Reach Ceuta,” New York Journal, August 18, 1897.
22.Ibid.
23.“Weyler’s Victim. Miss Cisneros a Poor Man’s Child, but What of It?” New York World, September 1, 1897.
24.It should be noted that Recogidas, where Evangelina had been imprisoned, was a short walk from a Spanish garrison of hundreds of Spanish soldiers. Only a few years before, the Spaniards had brought young Cuban women suspected of being complicit in insurgent activities before firing squads and executed them. See Stiff, “Cuba’s Gently Bred Revolutionary,” Dedication, v. Historians disagree about the number of Spanish soldiers in Cuba just before the war.
25.Luigi Ferrari, “Pope Leo Will Bespeak the Queen’s Mercy. In Response to the Petition Cabled by the Journal to the Vatican, the August Pontiff Will Ask for the Release of Evangelina Cossio [sic] Cisneros,” New York Journal, August 25, 1897. See also “Pope to Aid Miss Cisneros. His Holiness Will Bespeak Mercy from Queen of Spain. The Petition Grows. Thousands Ask for Fair Treatment for the Beautiful Girl in the Vile Prison,” New York World, August 25, 1897.
26.“Signers of the Petition. Thousands of Sympathetic Men and Women in All Parts of the United States Appeal to the Queen Regent of Spain for the Relief of Miss Cisneros,” New York Journal, August 26, 1897. Petition signers included women from thirty states, from Connecticut to Florida, and North Carolina to Wyoming, and the District of Columbia. See also “American Women Who Sign the Petition for the Relief of Miss Cisneros,” New York Journal, August 23, 1897; “American Women Unite,” New York Journal, August 22, 1897; “American Women Speak as One,” New York Journal, August 23, 1897. And see “She Scorned a Spanish Brute,” New York World, August 20, 1897.
27.Julia Ward Howe, New York Journal, August 19, 1897.
28.“Hideous Fate of Cuban Girl. Indignities Heaped upon Senorita Cisneros, a Defenseless Woman. Ceuta Prison for Her. Thrust into a Cell with Vile Women, Outcasts of Society,” New York World, August 17, 1897.
29.Virginia Jefferson Davis, “Interceding with Maria Christain [sic],” New York Journal, August 19, 1897. It should be noted that Cristina in Spanish is spelled without an “h.”
30.“De Lome, Defending Spain, Defames Miss Cisneros. Spanish Minister Repeats General Weyler’s Lame Defence in a Letter to Mrs. Jefferson Davis. But the Havana Fiscal Acknowledged Yesterday that a Twenty Years’ Sentence Had Been Asked for,” New York Journal, August 26, 1897.
31.Ibid.
32.Reports vary about how the other prisoners were drugged. The Journal claimed Evangelina used candy, but she wrote later that it was laudanum, given to her by the prison doctor for a toothache, Cosío y Cisneros and Decker, 199. See also “Miss Cisneros’s Father Weeps for Joy at His Daughter’s Rescue,” New York Journal, October 14, 1897.
33.“Miss Cisneros Sees President McKinley,” New York Sun, October 23, 1897.
34.“Miss Cisneros in the Boy’s Disguise which Enabled Her to Pass the Detectives,” New York Journal, October 14, 1897.
35.“Evangelina Cisneros on Her Way to the United States,” New York Journal, October 9, 1897.
36.“Balasano too Busy. Spanish Consul-General Has No Time to Congratulate the Journal on Miss Cisneros’s Escape,” New York Journal, October 12, 1897.
37.“M’Kinley and His Cabinet Consider the Cisneros case. The President Declares that Sherman’s Epigrammatic Statement to the Journal ‘Correctly Voiced the Unofficial Sentiment of the Administration,’” New York Journal, October 13, 1897.
38.“Evangelina Cisneros Reaches the Land of Liberty,” New York Journal, October 14, 1897.
39.“Evangelina Cisneros Reaches the Land of Liberty,” New York Journal, October 14, 1897. The captain was a Mr. Stevens.
40.Frank M. White, “Details Asked of Weyler. The Government at Madrid Wants Further Information about the Escape of Miss Cisneros,” New York Journal, October 15, 1897.
41.“More Work for Decker. Two Pretty Cuban Girls Arrested in Havana Province for Conspiracy against the Government,” New York Journal, October 16, 1897. Still another story, New York Journal, October 15, 1897, tells readers that Decker, like Evangelina, had arrived in New York. A secondary headline in this article noted that the Queen Regent and the Pope had received word of the rescue, causing “much praise for The Journal” and “great satisfaction at the Vatican.” The story revealed little new information about Decker, except that he was a thirty-three-year-old Native American born in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Early on the day of the reception at Delmonico’s, Evangelina had received visitors, some bearing gifts, “How Miss Cisneros Spent Yesterday; What She Will Do To-morrow.”
42.Chambers, “To-Night Comes the Journal’s Great Reception to Miss Cisneros. Chance for All to See the Heroine. In Madison Square Karl Decker Will Introduce Her to the Public. Rescued and Rescuer. Great Men Will Be There to Speak, to Help Make the Occasion Historic,” New York Journal, October 16, 1897.
43.“Miss Cisneros Takes Out ‘First Papers.’ She Herself Suggested Becoming an American Citizen, and Could Hardly Wait to Go Through the Formality—Great Rush for the Pen with Which She Signed Her Name,” New York Journal, October 16, 1897.
44.Karl Decker, “How Decker Hid Evangelina. The Night Ride from Hated Recojidas [sic] and Subsequent Events Described for the First Time by the Intrepid Journal Commissioner,” New York Journal, October 16, 1897.
45.“More Work for Decker,” Journal, 16 October 1897. The Journal capitalized on the use of frequent sketches. “Evangelina Cisneros Rescued by the Journal,” Journal, 10 October 1897.
46.Decker, “How Decker Hid Evangelina,” New York Journal, October 16, 1897.
47.Ibid.
48.Hearst himself “looked in on the celebration at Delmonico’s and was introduced behind a hedge of potted palms to Miss Cisneros, who looked the picture of health,” according to Ferdinand Lundberg, Imperial Hearst (New York, NY: Equinox Cooperative Press, 1936), 71.
49.“The People Unite with The Journal to Welcome Miss Cisneros to Freedom,” New York Journal, October 17, 1897.
50.Ibid.
51.“Like the Triumph of a Roman Caesar. The Drive of Miss Cisneros and Her Heroic Rescuer from the Waldorf to Delmonico’s a Tremendous Ovation,” New York Journal, October 17, 1897.
52.“While Thousands Cheer Miss Cisneros a Cuban Expedition Slips Away. The Fleet Yankee Schooner, Silver Heels, Bearing Arms and Ammunition for the Struggling Patriots, Makes the Open Sea Despite the Frantic Efforts of Spain’s Representatives,” New York Journal, October 18, 1897.
53.“Big Reception to Cuban Maid,” New York World, October 14, 1897.
54.“Weyler Will Be Recalled To-Day. He Resigns at Last and the Cabinet Loses No Time in Naming General Planco [sic] as His Successor. Queen Regent Will Sign the Decree at Once. The ‘Butcher’ Explains that His Delay Was Due to the Fact that He Could Not Quite [sic] in the Face of the Enemy. Weyler Decides He Will Leave Cuba after All. Captain-General Sends in His Resignation and the Sagasta Cabinet Is Greatly Relieved,” New York Journal, October 9, 1897.
55.“President M’Kinley Receives Miss Evangelina Cisneros,” New York Journal, October 24, 1897. The site was about a mile from the White House.
56.Ibid.
57.No story about the meeting with McKinley was found in the World. And the Journal’s story was damaged along one edge. It was not possible to discover what else occurred at the White House from the microfilm. Researchers, however, may turn to the end of Evangelina’s book, Cosío y Cisneros and Decker, The Story of Evangelina Cisneros, 223. The World, however, did carry a brief item about Evangelina’s intention to become a US citizen, “Cuban Girl a Citizen. Miss Cisneros Formally Declares Her Intention of Becoming One of Us,” New York World, October 15, 1897.
58.Cosío y Cisneros and Decker, The Story of Evangelina Cisneros, 223.
59.“Miss Cisneros in a Convent. Queen Regent of Spain Takes Pity on Weyler’s Child Victim. She May Soon Go Free. The World’s Efforts to Free Her Crowned with Great Success,” New York World, August 30, 1897.
60.“Jingoistas,” are those who believe in jingoism. For definitions of jingoism, see “La Diplomacia De Dupuy De Lome [the Diplomacy of Dupuy De Lome],” Patria, October 20, 1897. Also see Nuevo Diccionario de la Lengua Española. Barcelona: Casa Editorial Sopena, 1957: 660, in which jingoism is defined as exalted patriotism that seeks aggression against another nation. An article in the New York Sun uses an entirely different definition of jingo. “The English word jingo, employed by the New York Herald to deride the friends of Cuba in the United States, has, among the Cubans, come to mean ‘friend.’ ‘Que harán los jingos?’ (‘What will the jingoes do?’) is the question with which one is confronted here from morning till night in ‘Exterminating a People.’ 63,000 Cubans Have Starved to Death in Two Months. These Are Spanish Official Figures—One-Half of Cuba’s 1,600,000 People Have Been Starved, Shot, or Driven from the Island—No Cubans Left unless War Ends Soon,” Sun, October 28, 1897.
61.Frank Luther Mott, one of the first journalism historians to define yellow journalism, outlined its “distinguishing techniques” in American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940 (New York, NY: MacMillan Co., 1962), 539. For a more contemporary analysis of the yellow press, see W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism. Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001).
62.“Evangelina en América,” Correspondencia de España, October 15, 1897. Stewart Woodford scrapbook clipping. The Madrid newspapers consistently misspelled “Waldorf.”
63.“Evangelina Y Sus Amigos,” La Correspondencia de España, October 17, 1897.
64.“En Defensa de España,” La Correspondencia de España, November 6, 1897. See also Ken Burns, “The Civil War,” Public Broadcasting System, September 29, 2002. The writer used a satirical twist here to make the point that Evangelina might have been in worse straits had Butler been her tormentor.
65.“Evangelina Cossío,” El Estandarte, October 28, 1897.
66.Patria, August 28, 1897. Patria was a Cuban revolutionary newspaper published in New York. It was founded by José Marti, Cuba’s great poet and revolutionary.
67.“La Senorita Cossío Cisneros,” Patria, October 16, 1897.
68.“Evangelina,” Patria, October 16, 1897.
69.“Hidalguía Castellana [Castilian Society],” La Revista de Cayo Hueso, September 26, 1897. See also The Story of Evangelina Cisneros, 1897, foreward, in which Julian Hawthorne remarked that “Evangelina is not the only woman whom Weyler, with the connivance of the Spanish Government, has outraged. On the contrary, she is the representative of them all,” 27.
70.“Un Yanqui en la Habana de 1897, El Asombroso Rescate de Evangelina Cosío de Cisneros” or “A Yankee in Havana in 1897, the Daring Rescue of Evangelina Cosío de Cisneros,” Bohémia, September 5, 1954.
71.Ibid.
72.Stiff points out that the Cuban magazine, Bohémia, linked two Cuban rebellions, the one associated with Evangelina on July 26, 1896, and Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement in Cuba in 1959, diss., 205.