Antonio Maceo Grajales - Cuban War of Independence

Cuban War of Independence

In 1895, together with Flor Crombet and other lesser officers, Maceo disembarked in the vicinity of Baracoa (close to the eastern tip of Cuba) and after repelling a Spanish attempt at capturing or killing him, he got into the mountains of that region. After many difficulties, he managed to gather a small contingent of armed men, which rapidly grew with other rebel groups of the Santiago de Cuba region. In the farm of "La Mejorana", Maceo had a historic, but unfortunate, meeting with Gómez and Martí, because of the disagreements between him and Martí, regarding the question of the relationship between the military movements and the civilian government, against which constitution was Maceo, but Martí, knowing both sides of the problem, stood on his formula. Several days later, Martí, treated as a non-military “Doctor” by Maceo, would fall in battle in Dos Ríos (confluence between the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto).

After Gómez was designated General in Chief of the Cuban Liberation Army, Maceo was named Lieutenant General (second in command after the General in Chief). Starting from Mangos de Baraguá (place of the historical protest in front of Martínez-Campos), Maceo and Gómez, on command of two long mambises columns, took brilliantly the task of invading the west of Cuba, riding or walking more than 1000 miles in 96 days. After several months bleeding the Spanish forces in Havana and Pinar del Río Maceo arrived at Mantua, in the western extreme of Cuba, on October, 1896, after defeating for many times the technically and numerically superior forces of the Spaniards (five times the Cuban forces on occasions).

Using alternately the tactics of guerrilla and open warfare, they exhausted the Spanish Army of more than a quarter million soldiers and traversed all the island, even through the military trails, walls and fences built by the Spanish Army with the purpose of stopping them and dealing with an overwhelming technical and numerical superiority of the Spaniards. The level of coordination and cohesiveness of Cuban forces was driven by the fact that Máximo Gómez had clearly established a chain of command that subordinated all Major Generals to Maceo, his executive officer.

The invasion of Western Cuba had been previously attempted by Brigadier General Henry Reeve during the Ten Years' War but faltered (and collapsed) between the easternmost section of the province of Matanzas and the westernmost section of the province of Havana and Reeve perished. At the time Maceo had collaborated with Reeve under the direction of Máximo Gómez.

The eagerness for independence and the cruelty of the Spanish high officers made rural inhabitants of the western half of the island eager to give support in men and logistics to the Liberation Army. This was the cause of the institution, by Valeriano Weyler, of the reconcentration. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were forcibly carried to the cities, mainly Havana, Pinar del Río and Matanzas, besides several minor cities in these three provinces. In the concentration camps created for them, very similar to those later built in Europe by the Nazis, almost a third part of the Cuban rural population lost their lives.

Contrary to the expectations of Weyler, the cruel reconcentration encouraged many people to join to the Liberation army, preferring to die in battle than in starvation. In 1896, after meeting Gómez in Havana (crossing once more the trail from Mariel to Majana via Mariel Bay), he returned to the fields of Pinar del Río, where he faced bloody clashes with outnumbering forces, led by Spanish generals famous for their victories in Africa and the Philippines, and provided with artillery and the most modern weapons for infantry including the Mauser bolt-action rifle. After decimating Spanish forces in the westernmost mountains of Cuba, Maceo turned eastward again, crossing the mentioned trail in order to travel to Las Villas or Camagüey. There he was planning to meet Gómez to plan the ulterior course of war, and with the Government in Arms, to establish an agreement between it and the forces in action, in relation with two main subjects: the raisings of medium and high officers in the Liberation Army and the recognition of belligerence by foreign countries and acceptation of direct military aid. His position was, at that time, acquiescent with accepting economic aid and packages with weapons and ammunitions from Europe or even from the United States, but was strongly opposed to acceptance by Cubans in the independence movement for a direct military intervention by the US in Cuba.