I find this quite a beautiful photograph and also quite a resonant one. At the bottom left corner is handwritten in ink: "San Juan Hill charged by Americans." And indeed, here is San Juan Hill in Cuba, documented I'd guess just a few years after the battle that took place there: a decisive, bloody engagement in the Spanish-American War where U.S. forces, including the famous Rough Riders led by Theodore Roosevelt, stormed the San Juan Heights, overcoming Spanish defenders to secure a crucial victory leading to the capture of Santiago and the end of Spanish rule in Cuba. One could make the argument that the engagement that took place on this site, resulting in the U.S. acquiring the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, establishing a protectorate over Cuba, and annexing Hawaii, was as significant as anything else in transforming the United States into a global power (while also spurring intense domestic debate over imperialism.) And yet what a quiet and tender feeling photograph, with this lone Cuban man in his white shirt and hat, and with what looks to be a work hatchet at his hip, standing and gesturing toward the hill, an almost delicate looking fence ambling across it behind him, and a dotting of wispy trees along the top. Intimate scale, global consequence.
6 3/4" x 5". Good condition , c. 1900 I believe.
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