OUTRAGES IN CUBA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 475, 28 May 1890, Page 4

OUTRAGES IN CUBA.

NEGRO BANDITS GET RANSOM FROM PLANTERS. After several months of comparative tranquillity as to bandits, kidnappers, and blackmailers, people have just been startled by the unexpected announcement of the sudden appearance in the eastern part of Cuba of a party of about thirty or more coloured men, well armed and mounted, under command of Calixto Maceo, one of the black chiefs in the past insurrection, who won for himself great fame as an astute and gallant leader. This party, at times in a band and at others divided into groups of five to eight men, have attacked and plundered all the establishments on the roads, and in smaller towns, and ransomed heavily the owners of all sugar and coffee plantations they could get hold of, wounding and murdering several persons who refused to yield to their pretensions. All trains that have lately arrived at St. Jago do Cuba came in crowded with country people, hastily seeking tor refuge in town against the exactions and cruelties committed by men belonging to this band, whose number is said to be daily increasing in such proportions that a Havana paper has already insinuated that instead of a party of bandits, with the object of plundering the country, it might be the recommencement of a war of races begun by Cuban negroes.