Antonio Maceo Grajales - Legacy

Legacy

In addition to his role as a soldier and statesman in the Cuban movement for independence, Maceo was an influential political strategist and military planner, and José Martí is among Cuban leaders who were inspired by Maceo. Being a member of masonry, in his correspondence one can read more than once his credo base on "God, Reason and Virtue". He was quoted as having a strict motto: "My duties to country and to my own political convictions are above all human effort; with these I shall reach the pedestal of freedom or I shall perish fighting for my country's redemption." (November 3, 1890). Martí, speaking about him, said that "Maceo has as much strength in his mind as in his arm."

Of democratic political adherence, he expressed many times his sympathy for the republican form of government, but insisted on seeking for the formula of "liberty; equality and fraternity", recalling the well-known but almost never applied principles of the French Revolution and defining a policy on the search for social justice. Being in a dinner meeting in a very short visit made to Santiago de Cuba during the "Fruitful Truce", he was invited to make a toast and a phrase was said by a young man for a wish to annex Cuba to the United States and turn Cuba into "...another star into the constellation of the United States...". His answer was: I think, young man, that this would be the only occasion in which I would place my sword at the same side with the Spanish ones." And foreseeing the growth of North American expansionism, (he was absolutely convinced of the inevitable victory of Cuban Arms), he expressed in a letter to a friend of arms: "That (country) which attempts to seize Cuba, will gather the dust of its ground soaked in blood, if he does not perish in fight."