Spanish and Cuban Consuls in Charleston, 1795–1959

Maritime traffic between Charleston and various ports in the Spanish-speaking Americas was once an important part of the local economy. Prohibited by British law for most of South Carolina’s colonial century, commerce with Cadiz, Havana, Vera Cruz, and other ports blossomed after the independence of the United States, but withered during the Cold War. The presence of a Spanish and later a Cuban consular office in Charleston between 1795 and 1959 provides a framework for tracking the rise and fall of forgotten trade routes that brought Latin flavors to the Lowcountry.

In anticipation of National Hispanic Heritage Month, I recently spent some time reviewing Charleston history in search of a suitable topic for today’s program. There are plenty of individuals and specific events in our shared history worth remembering, but I was also looking for themes that might help us see a broader picture of Hispanic influence in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. I was drawn to the present topic because it forms a continuum over nearly two centuries, includes dozens of interesting characters, and is ripe for expansion by future scholars. Consider this overview of Hispanic consuls in Charleston as a brief introduction to a much larger narrative that someone might easily expand into a dissertation or monograph.[1]

First, let’s tackle the obvious questions: What is a consul, and why is it significant? A consul is a kind of diplomat—an officially designated and recognized representative of a specific government who resides in a foreign country to act on behalf of his or her nation. While national governments normally send a single ambassador or minister to the capital of each of their various international counterparts, governments routinely deploy numerous consuls to establish local offices or consulates in various cities. Each consul, aided by a consular staff, acts as a liaison between the local municipal government and the citizens belonging to the foreign nation in question. They provide information and assistance to promote trade, facilitate migration, and protect the citizens of the nation they represent. In the days before airplanes and the Internet, consulates were found in every oceanic port to facilitate commercial shipping around the globe.

Consuls of various nations are present in modern Charleston, and have formed part of this community since the United States gained independence in the 1780s. Anyone perusing a newspaper, city directory, or almanac printed in nineteenth-century South Carolina will find references to consuls in the Palmetto City representing such nations as Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Spain. Like their modern counterparts around the world, the consuls residing in old Charleston were urbane, educated, multi-lingual people who cultivated relationships with local officials to lubricate the wheels of commerce between their respective nations. Some resided here as briefly as one year, shuttling from one far-flung consulate to another, while others remained for several years or even decades.

The establishment of Charleston’s first Spanish consulate in 1795 followed more than a century of strife between two neighboring colonies. As I described in Episode No. 215, the territory we call South Carolina was once part of the Spanish colony of La Florida. The establishment of Charleston within the English colony of Carolina in 1670 triggered decades of territorial disputes with Spanish Florida, which, as I described in Episode No. 216, were inflamed by official Anglo-American policies of discrimination against the Catholic religion.

At the conclusion of the Seven Years War in 1763, Spain ceded to Britain all of East Florida and West Florida (which included parts of the modern states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana). At the same time, Spain acquired from France the expansive Louisiana Territory (including the city of New Orleans). Fifteen years later, in 1778, the rebellious United States of America formed a military alliance with France that represented the first step in softening the traditional Anglo-American prejudice against Catholics. One year later, in 1779, Spain formed a strategic partnership with France against Britain, whereby the Spanish government indirectly supported the goals of American independence.

The British government settled a definitive peace treaty with the United States in 1783, and the following year made peace with France and Spain. Part of their 1784 settlement included Britain’s withdrawal from East and West Florida, which reverted to Spanish control. Americans of that era enjoyed limited access to the North American ports of St. Augustine, Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi, and New Orleans until the settlement of border differences with the Spanish Government in Madrid. In the autumn of 1794, the United States government transferred diplomat Thomas Pinckney (1750–1828) of South Carolina from London to Spain to negotiate. The trade agreement he brokered in October 1795, called the Treaty of San Lorenzo or simply Pinckney’s Treaty, opened New Orleans and other Spanish ports in North America to American goods.

Concurrent with Thomas Pinckney’s diplomatic mission to Spain, the Spanish government dispatched its first consul to the port of Charleston. Don Diego Morphy (aka James Murphy, 1755–1813), a native of Gibraltar whose parents were of Irish and Spanish descent, arrived in the Palmetto City in the spring of 1795 to establish a consulate that encompassed the states of North and South Carolina and Georgia.[2] Morphy’s rented office, along with satellite branches in Savannah and Wilmington, aided Spanish-American trade in a variety of ways. They provided Spanish-language certifications and bills of lading to American vessels sailing to Spanish ports like St. Augustine, Havana, San Juan, New Orleans, Vera Cruz, and Cadiz. They offered information and advice to Spanish-speaking immigrants seeking to settle in the United States. They assisted the crews of Spanish vessels visiting the Port of Charleston, including vessels bound to other ports but brought here in a state of distress.

Diego Morphy was present in Charleston when the United States government purchased the expansive Louisiana Territory, including the port of New Orleans, in 1803. The Spanish government’s decision to transfer Morphy to the Crescent City in 1809 triggered a series of promotions. Francis Philip Fatio (1760–1831), the vice-consul stationed at Savannah, became the new Spanish consul in Charleston. Señor Fatio was actually a native of Switzerland whose family had emigrated to British Florida before the American Revolution. When Fatio transferred to Charleston, another man with Irish roots, Charles Mulvey (died 1824), became vice-consul of Spain at Savannah.[3]

Details surrounding the tenure of Consul Fatio in Charleston are now sparse, but it appears that he remained in the city for approximately two years. By the spring of 1812, Vice-Consul Mulvey was in charge of the Spanish consulate in Charleston, and by 1815 he identified himself as “His Catholic Majesty’s Consul for the States of North and South Carolina and Georgia.”[4] Mulvey remained in Charleston through the summer of 1817, when he was replaced by Don Antonio Argote Villalobos.[5] This was a turbulent era for the Spanish colonies in the Americas, triggered by the French invasion of Spain in 1808. Napoleon Bonaparte’s imperial designs in the Iberian Peninsula sapped Spain’s ability to administer its colonies, a situation that led to unrest and revolution in Spanish America. While insurgents in Mexico clamored for independence, Spain in 1819 ceded to the United States all of East and West Florida, including the southernmost parts of modern Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Consul Villalobos transferred from Charleston to New Orleans the autumn of 1821.[6] His replacement, Don Juan Gualberto Ortega, served here for approximately three years before he resigned, moved northward, and in 1825 published a pamphlet encouraging the people of Cuba to rebel against Spanish rule.[7] For the next several years, another vice-consul, Joseph Mulvey (died 1828), represented the Spanish government in Charleston.[8] During the 1820s, a controversial South Carolina law required the Spanish consuls in Charleston to perform extra duties. The so-called “Negro Seamen Act” of 1822 obliged visiting mariners of African descent to reside within a local jail while their respective ships were anchored in Charleston Harbor. Free Hispanic sailors of African descent visiting the city faced incarceration and worse here during the 1820s and beyond, and each case required careful diplomatic handling to avoid unnecessary friction.

Vicente Antonio de Larranaga (1806–1860), who came to Charleston around 1830, held the title of Spanish consul for the port of Charleston until his death in August 1860. During that time, Señor Larranaga represented the Spanish government during an era of great change in the border between New Spain and the United States. Mexico had declared itself an independent republic in 1824 and had drawn legions of American immigrants from the Southern States. Those American citizens then clashed with Mexicans during the Texas Revolution of 1835–36. A decade later, in 1845, the United States annexed of the State of Texas. A border dispute then triggered the Mexican-American War of 1846–48, which, in turn, led to the Mexican Cession of the southwestern United States in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1854.

Consul Larranaga died of a heat stroke in Charleston in August 1860 and was buried at St. Lawrence Cemetery.[9] His successor, Francisco Muñoz Ramón de Moncada, arrived from Savannah in the autumn of 1860, just before the State of South Carolina formally seceded from the United States.[10] Señor Moncada remained in the city for the duration of the American Civil War, 1861–65, and upheld the Spanish government’s official policy of neutrality. During that dramatic four-year conflict, Moncada sent numerous reports to his superiors in Spain regarding activities and conditions in Charleston during Confederate occupation. Copies of his correspondence, now within an archival collection at Duke University, might shed new light on familiar topics if translated for modern American readers.[11]

The conclusion of the American Civil War ended slavery in the United States, but the ancient practice continued in the remaining Spanish colonies for several more years. Support for the abolition of slavery and greater independence from Spain in 1868 triggered the outbreak of Cuban unrest known as the “Ten Years’ War.” To help squash the rebellion, the Spanish Government commissioned naval vessels from New York shipyards in 1869. In December of that year, a squadron of seven gunboats built for the Spanish Navy sailed from New York to Charleston and arrived just after Christmas. Spanish Consul Moncado greeted the ships in the harbor and introduced the officers to local officials, after which they sailed for Cuba in January.[12]

Señor Moncada departed in the spring of 1871, after which James Salvo served as acting consul for two years.[13] In the spring of 1873, the Spanish government appointed Juan de Almiñana y San Martin to be vice-consul for Charleston.[14] Almiñana was transferred to Savannah in the autumn of 1877, at which time Luis de Zea Bermudez took charge of the Spanish consulate in Charleston.[15] Señor Bermudez died here in November 1878, and was buried at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Hasell Street.[16] His successor, José Alcalá-Galiano y Fernández de las Peñas, supervised the Charleston consulate between February 1879 and August 1882.[17] The vice-consul, Federico Janer y Macias, maintained the Charleston consulate until the spring of 1883, when Juan de Almiñana returned.[18] Nicanor Lopez y Chacon arrived in January 1885, succeeded by Alejandro Spagnolo in 1891.[19] Señor Spagnolo was superseded by Don Miguel Rubio Arroniz, who received his commission in Charleston in January 1895.[20]

Don Miguel’s first year in Charleston was colored by the outbreak of the Cuban War of Independence that convulsed the island. Legal commercial shipping to Cuba stagnated while the Spanish government tried to block illegal shipments of arms from sympathetic Americans. Several confiscated vessels from Charleston were tried in maritime court in the late 1890s for conspiracy to aid Cuban rebels.[21] Cuba’s internal military struggle crippled the island and led to the disintegration of Spanish-American relations in 1896. Señor Arroniz closed the Spanish consulate in Charleston in late 1896, but remained in town for several more years awaiting a resolution.[22]

At some point in 1897, a local businessman named William Alfred Merchant (1862–1932) began to serve as acting consul for the Spanish government in Charleston, but he resigned the post in mid-April 1898, immediately before the outbreak of the brief Spanish-American War.[23] In a treaty signed in Paris that December, the Spanish Crown renounced all claims to the island of Cuba and other colonial possessions. The United States gained control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, but then brokered a conditional independence with Cuba. The Platt Amendment, ratified by the U.S. Congress in 1901, stipulated conditions for the withdrawal of American forces from Cuba. The Cuban Constitution of 1902 satisfied most, but not all, of the U.S. demands, creating leverage that the United States government used to manipulate affairs in Cuba during subsequent decades.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1900, the Spanish government formally recognized a Charleston merchant of Spanish birth, Antonio Gastaver (1851–1929), as “honorary vice consul of Spain” for the Palmetto City. A native of Barcelona, Gastaver had arrived in Charleston in the 1880s, bought a house on Broad Street, and built a prosperous career as a cotton factor. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in May 1898, during the brief Spanish-American War.[24] Although Gastaver remained in Charleston until his death in 1929, he ceased to act as honorary consul in 1911, when the Spanish government conferred a similar honor on Charles Francis Middleton (1859–1939), the patriarch of a prominent cotton exporting business.[25] During Middleton’s tenure, the last vestiges of maritime trade between Charleston and Spain evaporated. Four centuries after the first Spaniards set foot on Carolina soil, the diplomatic ties to this state ended with the Great War in Europe.

The reach of the German Navy during the First World War curtailed ship traffic across the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The United States’ entry into the war in 1917 channeled massive amounts of American resources to Europe and contributed to the isolation of Cuba. To supply the island’s needs and build regional partnerships, the Cuban government reached out to South Carolina in the spring of 1918 to establish its first consulate in Charleston. A news report of this development published at the time described the situation in the following words:

“While the trade with Cuba will begin strictly as a war emergency trade, it will probably be vigorously pressed after the war by local interests. Before the acute shortage of shipping in the South Atlantic, Charleston had begun a small coal export trade to Cuba, but aside from this it had little or no direct trade with the island republic in recent years. At the same time, Charleston is the logical gateway to Cuba from those sections of the country which manufacture the things that Cuba chiefly imports, and it is believed locally that, with a good start again by war conditions, Charleston can build up a considerable Cuban business. The distance from Charleston to Habana [sic] is only 646 (nautical) miles, and to Cardenas, 616. Other distances to Habana are: from New Orleans, 603 miles; from New York, 1,186 miles.”[26]

Señor Leonardo Bravo, vice-consul to the State of South Carolina, came to Charleston in May 1918 to establish a consular office. One month later, the consul arrived— José Antonio Muñoz y Riera—and immediately began talking about the possibility of establishing a regular line of steamship traffic between Havana and Charleston.[27] Local businessman H. G. Leiding, representing the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, accompanied Señor Muñoz to Cuba in the spring of 1919 and returned with glowing reviews of the island republic. “If we could get two hundred business men from Charleston to spend a week in Havana,” said Leiding, “they would come home with a new inspiration and a new vision. . . . It strikes me that it would pay Charleston to make a special effort to go after the Cuban business.” Although the Lowcountry native admitted that the language barrier between the two countries complicated business prospects, Leiding opined that “Cuba will speak English some of these days.”[28]

Cuban Consul Muñoz left Charleston in the summer of 1919 and was succeeded by Mario Luque, a former member of the island’s National Congress.[29] Luque was replaced in 1920 by José Manuel González y Rodríguez del Rey. Next was Leopoldo Dolz y de Veze, who arrived in Charleston at the end of 1922 and continued the simmering conversation of establishing a regular shipping line from this port to Havana.[30] During the tenure of Señor Dolz, the President-elect of Cuba, General Gerardo Machado (1869–1939) visited Charleston briefly in mid-April 1925, on his way to Washington D.C.[31] President Machado was viewed favorably in the United States at the time, but his reputation as a benign leader did not endure. More about that topic momentarily.

Cuban Consul Leopoldo Dolz departed Charleston in the summer of 1928 for a new assignment in Europe. He was replaced by Arturo Loynaz del Castillo.[32] One year later, Señor Castillo was also sent to Europe and superseded in Charleston by Pablo Clavareza y Bassols, who announced that the Cuban government sought to increase American consumption of Cuban cigars and sugar products.[33] During the tenure of Consul Clavareza, civil unrest grew in Cuba under the despotic second term of President Machado, made worse by the deepening global economic depression. Ramiro Ortiz y Planos briefly served as Cuban consul in Charleston, but the office was officially closed in November 1932. A consular office opened in Savannah in May 1933, and a satellite of that branch briefly reappeared in Charleston under the direction of former vice-consul M. F. Hernandez.[34] Neither consular office survived long, however, owing to the continued political instability in Cuba. With the aid of U.S. intervention, President Machado’s regime collapsed in the summer of 1933, and was soon followed by the brief Cuban Revolution of September 1933.

Trade between Charleston and Cuba evaporated during the remainder of the depressed 1930s and during the entirety of the Second World War, while a series of ineffectual governments controlled the island republic. After World War II, during a period of relative political stability in Cuba, members of Charleston’s port community again sought to inaugurate a regular line of ship traffic to Havana. At least one cargo ship commenced a Charleston-to-Havana circuit in 1948. Other ships joined the route in 1950, providing semi-monthly service at each port. In general, they carried fertilizer and other regional products to Cuba and returned with sugar and cigars. Another freighter joined the circuit in the autumn of 1950, on one occasion carrying “automobiles for the use of the Cuban army.”[35]

Following a military coup d’état in the spring of 1952, Fulgencio Batista assumed the presidency of the Cuban Republic. One year later, in March 1953, the island nation opened a consulate in Charleston. The new consul, Justo Oscar Herrero (1894–1987), was a native of Las Villas who had worked in the U.S. for a sugar importing firm and had served as director of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce in New York. Welcoming Señor Herrero in the spring of 1953, the Charleston Evening Post reported that “Charleston at present enjoys an active two-way trade with Cuba, exporting such commodities as textiles, fertilizer, lumber, agricultural machinery and automobiles, and importing such products as sugar, tobacco, molasses, and canned pineapple.”[36]

A few months after the arrival of Señor Herrero in Charleston, another rebellion commenced in Cuba. Fidel Castro’s first forays into armed revolution began inauspiciously in July 1953, but the charismatic leader persisted in his efforts to topple the corrupt government of President Batista. Castro’s insurrection festered for several years, during which the volume of shipping between Charleston and Cuba increased dramatically. Herrero told local reporters that the amount of cargo leaving the port of Charleston for Havana had grown from twenty tons a week in 1948 to six hundred tons in 1955, and he hoped to see it climb exponentially higher.[37]

Despite the sanguine hopes of Consul Herrero, the rise of civil disorder in Cuba during late 1950s cut short the island’s blossoming links with Charleston. President Batista fled Cuba on the first of January 1959. Fidel Castro assumed control of the Cuban government the same day and commenced a belligerent stance towards the United States. Señor Herrero was actually in Havana at the time of Batista’s flight, but managed to return to Charleston days later. The local Cuban consulate, like others around the world, soon closed in the face of overwhelming political confusion. The United States imposed an embargo on the importation of Cuban goods in the autumn of 1960, although cargo ships continued to sail from Charleston to Havana for several more months. Consul Herrero made an “unannounced” departure from South Carolina at some point in 1960 and settled in Florida with many of his fellow countrymen. Centuries of maritime connections between Cuba and Charleston ended quietly at the dawn of the Castro regime.[38]

My goal in constructing this overview of Spanish and Cuban consuls in Charleston was not simply to provide a list of names or to draw attention to specific historical events. Rather, I wanted to establish a broad framework that might help us understand the continuous presence of Hispanic people in the Charleston area since the late eighteenth century. Although Spanish-speaking Catholics were viewed suspiciously by the provincial government of colonial South Carolina, local attitudes changed dramatically after the American Revolution. For more than two centuries, this community has welcomed a multitude of Spanish-speaking merchants, artisans, laborers, and mariners who contributed to the local economy and culture. The Spanish and Cuban consuls present in Charleston between 1795 and 1959 provided valuable assistance to Hispanic travelers and residents, and nurtured commercial ties between the Lowcountry and distant ports. Their forgotten presence here represents a long and durable thread in the colorful fabric of Charleston history.

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