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In 1895 circumstances were more permissive, and creole elites, hoping to map out
their own solutions to their stubborn economic misery, came to accept the necessity of
liberation from Spain. However, the brief life of the Cuban Autonomy movement reveals
that planters still had concerns about the volatility of lower-class political mobilization.
These fears weren’t misplaced. Jose Martí’s Cuban Revolutionary Party brought a new
framework for resistance to Spain, emphasizing new roles for peasants and working
people (Perez, Jr. 1999). Moving beyond securing liberation from Spain, the War of
Independence took shape as a struggle to alter the social structure of society, to bring
membership in the social project to hundreds of thousands of common people. Rather
than risk the social instability that a fight for independence might breed, some creole
elites chose to embrace a play for a greater political voice in a reengineered Spanish
commonwealth (Perez, Jr. 1991; Perez, Jr. 1995). When this project failed, due mainly to
Spain's unwillingness to institutionalize such an arrangement, planters had little choice
but to throw their weight behind the struggle for independence (Perez, Jr. 1991).
Early and greater success by the rebel army in this new war of independence
brought a sense of inevitability to the prospect of Cuban independence. Some planters
came to support the war in order to hurry toward a quick conclusion, a peace that would
bring agricultural laborers back to work in the fields and bring hope for a return to
profitable enterprise (Ferrer 1999). The success of the rebels’ western offense brought
into the midst of those least likely to support the rebellion an insurrectionary army
committed to destroying the estates of those judged to be enemies of the fight for Cuban
independence. Planters who raised the flag of the Spanish cause faced sanctions, and the
rebel army was in a position to enforce these sanctions. This was fundamentally different
Convention