Antonio Maceo in Matanzas, courage, ingenuity and strategy (+Audio).
The victorious military campaign executed by Antonio Maceo Grajales and Máximo Gómez Báez to extend the independence movement from East to West in the Island, constitutes one of the most glorious passages of our history.
And we Matanzas are proud to know that we are part of the epic journey led by the insurrectionists whose culmination was experienced in Mantua and which was immortalized by the Generalissimo as «…the great military movement that ensured the final triumph of the revolution».
In the second volume of his volume Cuba – Chronicles of the War (The Campaign of the West), the scholar Jose Miro Argenter, recognizes that, in spite of the fury with which the invading host crossed to the territory of Matanzas, the popular masses did not manifest with so much force the libertarian germ of their compatriots and, those who risked to do it, lived limited to the clandestinity, under the risk of possible denunciations and the imminent repression of the colonial yoke.
In addition, according to Miró Argenter, it was not enough for the peninsular forces, once the Athens of Cuba was crossed by the Mambises, to reestablish the railway network and the strategic triangles that made up its central region, highlighting the areas of Limonar, Corral Falso, Cimarrones, Bolondrón, Guareyras, Calimete, Amarillas and Jagüey for their guerrilla squads and the tenacity with which they defended Spain in the heat of the Necessary War.
On February 23rd, 1896, a little more than a month after the end of the invasion and after having entered the areas of Pinar del Río and Havana, the Titan of Bronze appeared again in the center of the Yumurino terroir to, according to the author Emeterio Santovenia y Echaide in his text Un Día como Hoy, of the Editorial Trópico (1946) to examine the area previously devastated by the libertarian soldiers and to attract with his presence the attention of the enemy towards the north of the province, as he had previously agreed with the Dominican Mambi chief.
Santovenia y Echaide also recognizes how satisfactory the day was, since in spite of the skirmish that the insurrectionist column sustained in the line of Sabanilla, just between Navajas and Güira de Macurijes when Colonel Eduardo García fought for hindering the passage of a train, the trick of both heroes was materialized, when the Titan successfully marched towards the district of Corral Falso to camp inside the most intricate and strongest lines of the then bewildered Iberian adversary.
This was undoubtedly another memorable testimony of Antonio Maceo’s courage and the astuteness he shared with Máximo Gómez in his tireless efforts to put an end to colonial oppression and make the dreams of emancipation promoted by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes come true on October 10th, 1868.
…ONLINE AUDIO
Written by Yadiel Barbón Salgado.
