What stories from history have inspired you in life?
I grew up during Cuba's Second Republic (1940-1958), in an idealistic society that enjoyed the post-war prosperity that existed there as well as here in the U.S.
Thanks to Dr. Clavijo of Trelles School I developed an appreciation of history; although never attracted to events before The Renaissance, I did admire the victories and loyalty of Cid Campeador (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar) as well of the incredible daring of The Conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, Hernán Cortés , Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Diego Velázquez, Sebastián de Ocampo, Francisco Orellano and others
In more recent times, the history of Cuban Independence is full of great examples of heroism and sacrifice. History always hinges on circumstance and to begin to understand it, is necessary to contemplate contemporary events.
The French and Indian War (Seven Year War as it is known in Europe) (1756-1763) gained territories for England, but was very costly. When Spain joined the French in that war, England Occupied Havana; the occupation lasted eleven months and did not extend to the rest of the country; at the end of The French and Indian War, Havana was exchanged for Florida.
To try to recoup the financial cost of The French and Indian War, England imposed various taxes to the 13 colonies, notably the Stamp Act of 1765, The Townshend Act of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773.
The result was The Boston Massacre of 1770, where 5 colonists died, The Boston Tea Party of 1773, after which in reprisal, Britain passed the Coertive Acts.
The First Continental Congress of September 1774, where Washington of Virginia, John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and John Jay of New York met to decide what to do, but before they met for the second time, hostilities broke out; on 18 April 1775 British troops marched from Boston to Concord to seize a cache of arms, Paul Revere and others galloped ahead to give the alarm and they clashed on the following day, firing the shot heard around the world that started the Revolutionary War.
The Second Continental Congress, now with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson as additional delegates, voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June 17, in the first major battle, the colonial army inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed’s Hill in Boston. The engagement, known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, ended in British victory, but was the baptism of fire for colonial forces.
Washington kept the British in Boston; later, after capturing artillery pieces at Fort Ticonderoga, he was able to rout them out of Boston. The British evacuated the city in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada.
To crush the rebellion, Britain sent a large fleet and 34,000 troops; in August the attacked Long Island, in September Washington was forced to retreat across the Delaware river, but with a brilliant move, he counterattacked at Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas Night, later on he attacked Princeton; both victories greatly elevated the morale of his troops, before retreating to winter quarters at Morristown.
General John Burgoyne's army marched south from Canada, meeting with Howe's forces on the Hudson River. Burgoyne retook Fort Ticonderoga; Howe went south to fight Washington near Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington attacked Germantown before retreating to winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Francisco de Miranda, born in Venezuela, graduate of the French Military Academy, admired by Napoleon, lover of Catherine the Great of Russia (of German origin), with access to all the European Courts, popular, good looking and withe gift of gab, was in Havana at this time and convinced Cuban ladies --who at the time had no access to cash or other assets-- to donate jewelry to the cause of the American Revolution. He and others raised about 1.2 million Pound Sterling, delivered to George Washington at Yorktown, where his troops were in dire need:
https://medium.com/illumination/the-ladies-of-havana-dcfbc6e6badb
General Horatio Gates defeated Burgoyne at Freeman's Farm in the first Battle of Saratoga. After suffering another defeat on 7 October 1777 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on 17 October 1777
France had been covertly helping the Colonials since 1776, but after the Battle of Saratoga, when it was evident the tide had turned, they overtly proclaimed their aid and in June 1778 declared war on Britain, the revolution turned into an international war.
While at Valley Forge, besides the financial support of The Ladies of Havana, Washington's troops benefitted from training by Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian sent by the French and by the presence of French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette.
Henry Clinton had replaced Howe and when he left Philadelphia on 28 June 1778, Washington attacked near Monmouth, New Jersey, after that, there was a relative stalemate in the north.
Benedict Arnold's defection and a mutiny in the Continental Army were serious setbacks; British troops occupied Georgia by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. Lord Charles Cornwallis won a battle against General Gates at Camden in August, Colonial forces defeated loyalists in October at King Mountain, Nathaniel Green took over from Gates in December. General Daniel Morgan won a battle against British Colonel Banister Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17 1781; by the fall of that year the British had withdrawn to the Yorktown peninsula, where the York River ended near Chesapeake Bay. With the support of French General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on 19 October 1781.
The forces of General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau and his fleet of 36 ships blocking Yorktown were again in dire need of funds, troops had not been paid, so Francisco de Miranda and others once more raised much needed funds in Cuba and Haiti, which helped keep them there while General Washington's 14,000 troops attacked the Yorktown peninsula, what was in effect the last major battle of the war.
On 3 September 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris. Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain, which had entered the conflict in 1779, bringing the American Revolution to a close.
The American Revolution inspired the French Revolution, which began on 14 July 1789 when rebels took the Bastille Fort, after which the profitable French Colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti) revolted in 1791, inspired by the Declaration of the Rights of Man of the French Revolution. Again, Britain and Spain joined, albeit on different sides; Toussaint Louverture and Andre Riguard are to be admired; read more about at:
https://historyincharts.com/timeline-of-the-haitian-revolution/
In 1795 Spain became a French ally, which provoked Britain naval forces to greatly reduce Spain's maritime control of the American Colonies, fomented trade, hitherto prohibited, between the colonies and other nations, notable the United States. In 1797 Spanish King Carlos IV granted passage to Napoleon's forces to invade Portugal, which resulted in the Peninsular War (1807-1814) which began when the First French Empire, with Spain as allied, occupied Portugal, later the French turned against and occupied Spain as well, thus it became a war between the French on one side and Spain, Portugal and Britain on the other. Civilians in Madrid rebelled on 2 May 1808, were crushed by the French and many public executions ensued, Read more about at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peninsular_War
Carlos IV and his son Fernando VII were detained by Napoleon in Bayonne France after the Tumult of Aranjuez of 1807, who then named his brother Jose Bonaparte as Jose I King of Spain, so beginning in 1808 discontent abounded, Madrid rebelled on 2 May 1808 and dreams of autonomy began in the Spanish colonies of America; in 1810 delegates to Corte in Spain (Parliament) met in Cadiz, including Venerable Father Felix Varela, Cuban delegate to the Corte of Spain, who proclaimed the Cadiz Constitution of 1812, granting autonomy to the colonies, in paper if not in reality, which came to an abrupt end when Fernando VII regained the throne, restored Absolute Monarchy in Spain and members of the Cortes that had promulgated the Constitution of Cadiz of 1812 had to flee to Gibraltar; Father Felix Varela was among them, went to Paris and later to New York, where he was Vicar of the new Diocese of New York and helped extensively with the Irish immigrants of the first half of the XIX Century, much the same as Father Michael McGivney would do in Connecticut half-a-century later.
Between 1810 and 1826, all Spanish colonies in America gained independence from Spain, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Cuba was henceforth known as "La Siempre Fiel" or "Always Faithful" (Semper Fidelis); The Venezuelans Sebastian Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) and Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) signed the Declaration of Independence in Venezuela on 5 July 1811, the also Venezuelan Antonio José de Sucre Alcalá (1795-1830) who liberated Ecuador, the Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins (1778-1842), the Mexican Miguel Hidalgo (1753-1811), the Argentinian José de San Martín (1778-1850) and others are notorious in the liberation of Mexico and Central and South America.
When Fernando VII died in 1833, Queen María Luisa became Regent on behalf of her 2-year-old daughter Isabel II, giving rise to the First Carlist War (1833-1840), later the Second Carlist War (1846-1849) and finally Isabel II was deposed in 1868 by a conspiracy of generals led by General Juan Prim, which installed Amadeo I, second son of Victor Emannuelle II, King of Italy, as a Parliamentary Monarch. Meanwhile, on 10 October 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Castillo, a wealthy Cuban who had studied law in Spain, owner of the sugar mill La Demajagua in Yara, free his slaves and revolted against Spanish Rule in what was known as "Grito de Yara" (Shout of Yara), which is near the city of Bayamo, starting the Ten-Year War, during which Spain sent 100,000 troops to Cuba, to greatly increase the forces of the loyalists against the rag-tag rebels known as The Mambises. Many Cuban heroes shone during those ten years, the most famous of which was Antonio Maceo Grajales, a mulatto son of Marcos Maceo, a white Venezuelan and Mariana Grajales a black Cuban woman, symbol of Cuban patriotism, who lost her husband and several sons to the rebellion. Although Maceo was very famous due to his military successes, he was never mentioned by the New York times when they recounted the war at its end, probably due to his race, although that did not keep his fame from reaching the Southern United States, where the name Antonio became common in the black male population. The war ended in 1878 with the Pact of Zanjón, negotiated by Spanish General Arsenio Martínez Campos, the same one who installed Alfonso XII as King of Spain at the end of the First Republic on December 1874, making promises of greater autonomy that were never kept. General Maceo fought one final battle after the Zanjón Pact, known as the Protesta de Baraguá, before going into exile to Costa Rica.
You may learn more about the Ten-Year War at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Years%27_War
The Carlist pretender, Carlos VII, initiated the Third Carlist War (1872-1876) during which Amadeo I was overthrown and the First Spanish Republic established on 11 February 1873, of short duration and which did not grant Cuba the desired autonomy, ending in December 1874 when Isabel II's son Alfonso XII was installed as King of Spain.
James G. Blaine, Secretary of State of the U.S. wanted to annex Cuba. "That rich island", Blaine wrote on 1 December 1881, "the key to the Gulf of Mexico, is, though in the hands of Spain, a part of the American commercial system ... If ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American and not fall under any other European domination".
José Martí Pérez was exiled from Cuba to Spain for the second time on 1878, he later moved to New York on 1881, lived in the rooming house of the Mantilla couple; while living there, they had a daughter named María whom he loved as a daughter; María grew up and married a Spaniard named Romero and had a son, the famous actor César Romero, who used to say he was Martí's grandson.
Martí did not want autonomy for Cuba, nor annexation to the U.S., was worried for the efforts to annex Hawaii and fear the same for Cuba before they could win independence. He worked hard and raised money, mostly in New York, Ybor City (Tampa) and Key West, to obtain weapons and supplies for the rebellion. Far from getting help from the U.S., under the pretext of neutrality, his efforts were hindered. On December 25, 1894, three ships, the Lagonda, the Almadis and the Baracoa set sail for Cuba from Fernandina Beach (Jacksonville), Florida, loaded with soldiers and weapons. Two of the ships were seized by US authorities in early January, but the rebellion went ahead. Not dissuaded, on March 25, Martí, while visiting Máximo Gómez en Montecristi, República Dominicana, wrote the Manifesto of Montecristi, which outlined the policy for Cuba's war of independence:
The war was to be waged by blacks and whites alike;
Participation of all blacks was crucial for victory;
Spaniards who did not object to the war effort should be spared,
Private rural properties should not be damaged; and
The revolution should bring new economic life to Cuba.
Miriam's grand uncles Saturnino Lora and his brother Mariano rebelled against Spanish Rule again on 24 February 1895 at Jiguaní (Baire), Oriente, in what is known as "Grito de Baire" (Shout of Baire), as others also rebelled throughout the island, beginning the Cuban War of Independence, during which ill-equipped rebels called the Mambises Army, totaling 53,774 at its peak, fought against well-equipped Spanish regulars and Loyalists forces in Cuba, suffering 5,480 deaths while inflicting 9,413 death to the Spaniards. The cruelty of Valeriano Weyler Nicolau, Captain General of Cuba, who instituted a policy of razed-earth, consisting of burning crops and farm buildings, killing cattle and other animals, forcing farmers and ranchers into big cities, put them into wire enclosures without providing shelter, food or medical care, leaving them at the mercy of the charity of the civilian population. The called this policy "Reconcentrados" (Reconcentrated), which made Valeriano Weyler the inventor of concentration camps, later imitated by the US in the island of Luzon, Philippines and even later, more cruelly by the Nazi's regime.
Maceo landed on 1 April 1895 with 22 men near Baracoa, José Martí y Máximo Gómez and four other men at Playitas on 11 April 1895. Martí was killed in battle on 19 May of the same year at Dos Ríos, while he led a cavalry charge. Spaniard troops, 20,000 regulars and 60,000 volunteers at the beginning were augmented so that by the end of 1897, there were 240,000 regulars and 60,000 volunteers in total. The Mambises were far outnumbered.
They acquired most of their weapons and ammunition in raids on the Spaniards. Between June 11, 1895, and November 30, 1897, of 60 attempts to bring weapons and supplies to the rebels from outside the country, only one succeeded. Twenty-eight ships were intercepted within U.S. territory; five were intercepted at sea by the U.S. Navy, and four by the Spanish Navy; two were wrecked; one was driven back to port by storm; the fate of another is unknown.
The successes in battle of the Mambises were legendary. The principal general under General Arsenio Martínez Campos was killed at the Battle of Paralejo by General Antonio Maceo's Troops. Maceo fought from east to west, attacking and retreating, all the way to Pinar del Río, in what was called "La Invasión" with many victories, so much so that General Arsenio Martínez Campos was recalled and replaced by General Valeriano Weyler Nicolau, who implanted terror, burning homes and crops, killing cattle and forcing people into certain cities compounds, causing an estimated 175,000 to 200,000 civilian deaths, about a tenth of the population. The United States tried again to buy Cuba from Spain on 1896, but they refused to sell. Neither the U.S. nor other nations helped the Cuban Mambises. Winston Churchill, then a young journalist went to Cuba to report about the war, was received warmly by the Spaniards, convinced by them that the rebels were mostly blacks and unimportant, opinion reflected in his reports as correspondent.
Alfonso XII died on 25 November 1895 and his son Alfonso XIII was born on 17 May 1896, King since birth, his mother María Cristina of Austria, became Regent Queen of Spain, with Práxedes Mateo Sagasta as Prime Minister until shortly after the rebellion in Cuba broke out on 24 February 1895, was replaced by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo on 23 March 1895 until he was assassinated on 8 August 1897. The rebellion in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Philippines were huge expenses for Spain at a time when the Monarchy was in dire straits.
Antonio Maceo died in combat at El Cacahual, in the Province of Habana, on 7 December 1896, as was his aide, Francisco Gómez Toro, son of Generalísimo Máximo Gómez. Captain General Ramón Blanco replaced Valeriano Weyler on 31 October 1897, Spain granted limited autonomy on 1 January 1898, but it was too little too late.
This was the time not much after the advent of printed newspapers begin to print photographs, so that both Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal printed horrible pictures of atrocities at these reconcentration camps. It so happened that both Pulitzer and Hearst yachts were anchored at Havana Harbor on 15 February 1898, when the battleship USS Maine mysteriously exploded nearby. A Naval Inquiry determined the cause as underwater mines of unknown origin, which became the catalyst for the Spanish-American War, but the explosion was actually from inside out, as proven when the USS Maine was refloated on 1910, towed out to the Gulf Current and sunk again. Reade more at:
https://www.spanamwar.com/mainsalv.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhIFX8xgiM4
President William McKinley was reluctant to enter the war, not so Navy Sub-Secretary Theodore Roosevelt, who after strengthening the Pacific Fleet and ordering Admiral Dewey to prepare to attack Manila, being an excellent horseman since the days of his ranch in Montana, was commissioned as Lieutenant Colonel to join the calvary regiment under General Leonard Wood known as the "Rough Riders."
An eloquent speech in the Senate by Redfield Proctor on 17 March 1898, the printing by the New York Journal of a private letter from the Spanish Ambassador Enrique Dupuy de Lôme to Madrid belittling President McKinley and the slogan "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain" culminated with President McKinley asking Congress for war powers on 11 April 1898, which was granted by ample majority on 19 April 1898 and included the Teller Amendment, named after Colorado Senator Henry Moore Teller, which passed unanimously, stipulating that "the island of Cuba is, and by right should be, free and independent". President McKinley then decided to contact General Calixto García to lern more about the situation in Cuba and find out the needs of the rebels; to that end, he sent Lt. Andrew S. Rowan on a mission that became famous as "A Message to Garcia" about which you can read here:
https://humberto.info/mg
Congress declared war formally on 25 April 1898, days after Admiral William Sampson had already blockaded several Cuban ports. Between June 22 and 24, 1898, the Americans landed under General William R. Shafter at Daiquirí and Siboney, east of Santiago, and established a base; major battles between Spaniards and Americans took place at Las Guasimas on June 24, El Caney and San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898, outside Santiago, where they halted while Spaniards defended mainly in Fort Canosa. The American and Cuban troops under General Calixto García began a siege of Santiago and the Spanish Captain General from Habana issued the futile order to Almirante Pascual Cervera to leave the protection of the bay, which he obeyed and resulted in the anihilation of his fleet (Armada de Ultramar) at the hand of the much superior Admiral William Sampson's fleet. The remains of the cruisers Infanta María Teresa and Cristóbal Colón are still in the shallow water outside the bay. Spanish troops surrendered on 16 July 1898, but General Nelson A. Miles, alleging fears of clashes between Mambises and Spaniards, did not allow the troops of General Calixto García to enter the City of Santiago, which the latter accepted, but protested with a famous letter to General Shafter.
Meanwhile Admiral Dewey had succeeded in taking Manila, General Miles had occupied Puerto Rico, and confronted with the loss of its colonies, Spain surrendered on 17 July 1898. The peace was signed in the Treaty of Paris of 10 December 1898, from which Cubans were also excluded.
Other commanders and heroes of the Cuban struggle for independence, in addition to those mentioned above, include Perucho Figueredo, Manuel de Quesada, Ignacio Agramonte, Francisco V. Aguilera,
Donato Mármol and Luis Marcano.
Comparing the struggle for independence of the Thirteen Colonies of the U.S. with those of the Mambises in Cuba, it becomes evident that the effort of the U.S. Colonials, albeit heroic, was against British troops less formidable than the Spaniard troops that opposed the Mambises; while the U.S. Colonials received help from France and the Ladies of Havana, the Mambises, far from receiving help from abroad, were the subject of nothing but hostility.
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