From Hero to Legend: The Lion of the East and Cuba.
The largest of the Antilles lost, 128 years ago today, one of its most heroic heroes, whom history honorably and opportunely immortalized as the «Lion of the East».
As an icon of the anti-colonial resistance in Cuba and possessor of a prominent political-military action, a stubborn commitment to the independence of the nation and a huge courage in the battlefield, Jose Marcelino Maceo Grajales has become one of the most recognized standards of the Antillean revolutionary cause.
The second son of Marcos Maceo and Mariana Grajales, born on February 2nd, 1849, in Las Delicias farm, near Majaguabo village, San Luis municipality, displayed the honesty, honesty and love for freedom that his parents instilled in him and that, together with his skill with the rifle and the machete, his expertise as a horseman and his unbridled audacity, turned him into a fearsome warrior in the manigua.
The young Maceo joined the heroic deed initiated by Céspedes in 1868, having his baptism of fire in Ti Arriba on October 12th and during the following years areas such as El Salado, La Sidonia, Maniabón, La Gloria, El Ermitaño, among others, witnessed his bravery, while in 1871 he joined the invading forces of Máximo Gómez in the region of Guantánamo.
Likewise, he stood out for his leading role in the combative actions of El Rayo, El Zarzal, Mandinga and La Sabana, as well as in Montecristo, Cantillo, Gran Tierra and Mesa Grande, among others; he was a firm opponent to the seditious mobs of Santa Rita and Lagunas de Varona and, together with his brother Antonio, he stood out for his supreme patriotism in the glorious Protest of Baraguá on March 15th, 1878.
His shout of «Viva Cuba Libre» together with Guillermon Moncada and Quintin Bandera on August 26th, 1879 started the Chiquita War in the southern part of Oriente, period in which he was promoted to Brigadier General for his notorious insurrectionary actions and, although he stayed some time later in countries like France, United States and Jamaica, he traveled to Panama to meet with his brother, with whom he returned to the Island in the Honor schooner on April 1st, 1895.
On July 5th, 1896, after a meritorious revolutionary struggle in the previous years, he was seriously wounded in the middle of what would be his last combat, which took place in Loma del Gato and from which he succumbed hours later in the enclave known as La Soledad de Ti Arriba.
The largest of the Antilles lost, 128 years ago today, one of its most heroic heroes, whom in a letter dated 1894 the Apostle called «friend and brother» and whom history honorably and opportunely immortalized as «The Lion of the East».
Written by Yadiel Barbón Salgado.
