Miguel Figueroa y Miranda’s study of the second Bishop of Havana, Don Juan José de Espada, convinces one of the uniqueness and exceptional force of personality of the prelate. Unfortunately the author failed to translate the story of this fascinating figure into a compelling book.
Figueroa focuses on Espada’s personality rather than on the import of his liberalism, Jansenism and support of leading proponents of Cuban independence during a period of intense political, military and ideological conflict in Spain and America. This is, in part, the result of the almost exclusive use of documentation from two sources —the Archivo de la Embajada de España cerca de la Santa Sede and the Archivo Secreto Vaticano. Named Third Secretary of the Cuban Legation in Italy in 1937 and three years later posted to the Vatican, the author, when he realized he would probably have to take refuge in the papal city as a result of the Second World War, surveyed these archives for a topic with which to occupy himself during the enforced inactivity. In examining the materials he discovered a wealth of data concerning Espada, a result of the bishop’s repeated difficulties with Rome.
Such documentation is rich in detail which adds texture to the narrative, but failure to place events in context makes almost incidental the fact that the prelate was Bishop of Havana during a period when Cuba was caught up in the turmoil caused by the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the Latin American independence movements and their consequences. Charges levelled against Espada in Cuba, Madrid, and Rome reflected the pressures of the period and included allegations of disloyalty to the Crown and Pope, Jansenism, constitutionalism, masonic sympathies and neglect of the spiritual needs of his diocese. The bishop appears “guilty” of all of these save the latter. Imbued with the writings of the Encyclopedists and liberal intellectual currents of the time, the prelate was committed to the spiritual and political modernization of Cuba. As a consequence he restructured his diocese closing some convents in the process and distributing part of their goods to poor parishes. This aroused the ire of the regular orders, who also objected to his appointment of individuals who were more loyal to secular authority than to Rome. The prelate also diverted diocesan funds to support progressive intellectual and cultural institutions, some of which were regarded as centers of liberal, even anti-monarchical agitation. The prelate strongly supported the 1812 Cádiz Constitution and provided some of the funds for liberal Cuban delegates, including Félix Varela, to attend the Cortes which drafted it.
The author reveals clearly Espada’s political pragmatism after the failure of liberal initiatives and the restoration of absolutism in Spain. Espada was hard-pressed to re-establish his credibility with the monarchy and his efforts in this direction caused him to appear outrageously regalistic to Rome. The author’s description of this struggle establishes that Havana, Madrid and Rome were certainly cities of rumor and intrigue, but the relation of the issues involved to the fragmentation of royal authority in Spain and growth of nationalism in Cuba is never explored. There is little sense that anything more than a clash of personalities was involved. Yet the author insists that the Vatican and Crown both regarded Espada as a dangerous individual who could precipitate a movement for the political and religious emancipation of the island. This judgment we are expected to take on faith, for Figueroa never establishes the sources of Espada’s support nor its actual potential.
The author piques the reader’s interest with allusions to Espada’s protégés, Don Bernardo O’Gavan y Guerra, who together with his nephew, Don Bernardo de Hechevarría y O’Gavan, exemplified the emergence of a new political and economic elite in nineteenth-century Cuba with close ties to the haute bourgeoisie that challenged the old aristocracy in Spain. Such individuals dominated Cuba in the second half of the nineteenth century and maintained ties to the pragmatic, elite reformers who inherited substantial power in Spain after the loss of Cuba and the other remnants of empire in 1898. Espada’s contribution to this evolution is unfortunately ignored as a result of Figueroa’s failure to investigate sources in Cuba and Spain, and because of his dependence on the presentation of a welter of detail, occasionally interrupted by homiletic comments, rather than on analysis. At times the author writes with grace providing some glimmers of light amid a generally very dense narrative. But there are almost no stylistic peaks or analytical insights that provide some sense of Espada’s importance in nineteenth-century Cuban history.
The thorny question of how to respond to Rome’s repeated attempts to dislodge Espada from the Havana bishopric was resolved by the monarchy in the traditional fashion of trusting in bureaucratic delays until death removed the prelate. Unfortunately for the reader, Figueroa’s book does not succeed in bringing either the prelate or the era back to life.
