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From the History of Cuba - Carlos Manuel de Céspedes


From the History of Cuba - Carlos Manuel de Céspedes
From the History of Cuba - Carlos Manuel de Céspedes

The father of all Cubans


When the island's captain general, Caballero de Rodas, sent him a message that his youngest son Oscar had been captured and sentenced to death. He offered to save his son's life through a personal arrangement. Cespedes' response was direct: "Oscar is not my only son, I am the father of all Cubans who died for the Revolution."


"Gentlemen: The hour is solemn and decisive. The power of Spain has expired and been eroded. If it still seems strong and voluminous to us, it is because we have been contemplating it on our knees for more than three centuries. Let us rise then!"


These were the words that Carlos Manuel de Céspedes spoke during the first general assembly of the plot of the Cuban War of Independence, in the so-called Convention of Tirsán held at the San Miguel farm, in the Las Tunas region, on August 4, 1868.


On October 10 of that same year, he would have reduced his small sugar cane mill La Demajagua to ruins, given his slaves their freedom and, before a small group of patriots and freed slaves, would have risen up in arms against Spanish colonialism. Thus began the Ten Years' War.


Céspedes was born in Bayamo on Sunday, April 18, 1819. His childhood was spent in the countryside, on the properties of his wealthy family: Limones Abajo, Los Mangos, San Rafael de la Junta and San Joaquín.

After graduating from high school in Havana, he returned to Bayamo and married in 1839 his first sister, María del Carmen Céspedes y del Castillo, with whom he had three children. In 1840 he left for Spain and settled in the city of Barcelona. There he entered the University where he obtained his law degree two years later. Then he visited France, England, Germany, Italy and even Constantinople, before returning to Cuba.


He opened his law office in Bayamo in 1844. But because he did not hide his ideas for independence, he was imprisoned and banished several times.

The day after his uprising at his mill in La Demajagua, he took advantage of the night to sneakily attack the Spanish garrison stationed in the town of Yara with his small army.

But the results were not as expected. The attackers were unaware that the Spaniards had received considerable reinforcements. They had to disperse in different directions.


Céspedes managed to gather some fighters. In the midst of this difficult situation, someone exclaimed with discouragement; "All is lost", to which he replied with energy and certainty: "We still have twelve men; they are enough to make Cuba independent."

The revolution advances. They rise up in arms in Camagüey and Las Villas. The representatives of these two territories and that of the East, meet in the city of Guáimaro, where the Constituent Assembly elects him President of the Republic in arms.


He could not ignore that from that moment on, his hands were tied to rule. On the administrative level, the House of Representatives could decide and approve what it deemed appropriate.


In the Assembly, Céspedes opposed the approval of governments in which, being extremely democratic and republican, they limited the powers of the executive and the general in chief to direct the war, since he firmly maintained that to have a Republic, first the war had to be waged and it required a central power that would facilitate the unity of command.


His government was weighed down by incompatibility with the members of the House of Representatives and by intrigues, caudillismo and regionalism, among other disastrous manifestations.


He learned of the plot that was hatched to replace him as president and as a man of honor, he sacrificed his ideas to maintain the unity that the moment demanded.


On October 27, 1873, in the Bijagual camp, he was dismissed as president by the representatives of the Chamber. He followed the decision with discipline. To oppose it would have caused a division among Cubans capable of destroying the revolution.

They then forced him to accompany the new government and the Chamber for two months. They refused him his exit abroad. They sent him back to the farm of San Lorenzo, in the Sierra Maestra, and the government even refused him an escort.

They wanted to break the worthy and uncompromising patriot who declared a traitor to anyone who entered into negotiations with the Spanish. And they did not succeed.


This exemplary patriot, who by his attitude the Cubans proclaimed him Father of the Fatherland, died in San Lorenzo fighting against a Spanish column on February 27, 1874. Abandoned, alone and in absolute poverty.

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