Calixto García and Henry Reeve: twinned by History.

The honorable convictions of García and Reeve and their still palpable contributions to the achievement of Cuba’s independence are more than enough factors for the memory of this duo of heroes to reverberate in our hearts every August 4th.

The date of August 4th holds an enormous significance for the largest of the Antilles, because the Cuban people treasure with respect and admiration the historic Mambi actions of two of the most outstanding exponents of the heroic deeds begun in 1968 and who, despite the different and distant cultural contexts and eras from which they both came, found in the struggle for freedom a common cause to which to offer the deepest part of their existence.

In 1839, Calixto García Íñiguez was born, an embodiment of the unwavering fierceness and determination of a country willing to undermine the colonial yoke that oppressed it, whose ability as a leader and military strategist, his skill in the use of artillery and notorious cartographic knowledge during the three armed conflicts, as well as the supreme dignity he demonstrated in the heat of the «Spanish-American War» and which he showed until his death, earned him a well-deserved place on the podium of the immortals of the Antillean Revolution.

For his part, in 1876, Henry Reeve Carroll died in Yaguaramas, a young New Yorker who, imbued with a voracious emancipation ideal, joined the northern anti-slavery flank that, during the Civil War, aspired to undermine the hegemonic intentions of the American South and, once aware of the reality of his compatriots on the island, made it his greatest enterprise to enervate this misfortune.

The «Lion of Holguin» was the protagonist of the Mambi struggle in the east of the country, occupying important positions in the manigua, organizing later the Chiquita War from abroad, fighting, both in the previous battle and during the one orchestrated by the Apostle, an endless number of combative actions in the area and vilifying the American forces, when they denied the Creoles the entrance to Santiago de Cuba, once the victory against Spain was consummated in the middle of 1898.

To «El Inglesito» Cuba also owes that enormous internationalism that led him to participate in more than 400 battles, among which stand out the rescue of Brigadier Julio Sanguily together with Major Ignacio Agramonte and the crucial support to the invading contingent of Máximo Gómez in the trail from Júcaro to Morón, as well as the many wounds he received in El Carmen and Santa Cruz del Sur that did not prevent him from continuing to fight until the end.

Although we know them as offspring of different generations and environments, the honorable convictions of Garcia and Reeve and their still palpable contributions to the achievement of Cuba’s independence are more than enough factors for the memory of this duo of heroes twinned by freedom, patriotism and history to reverberate in our hearts every August 4th.

Written by Yadiel Barbón Salgado.