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Lt. General Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales (June 14, 1845—December 7, 1896) was second-in-command of the Cuban Army of Independence. Given the sobriquet of the "Bronze Titan" (Spanish: El Titan de Bronce) by Cubans even when he was alive - a reference to his skin color, stature and status - and by Spaniards during his life of the "Greater Lion" (El Leon mayor), Maceo was one of the outstanding guerrilla leaders in 19th century Latin America, easily comparable to José Antonio Páez of Venezuela in military skills, if not comparable in political vision and virtue, much greater in Antonio Maceo.
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Early years
Maceo was the son of a Venezuelan farmer and dealer in agricultural products, Marcos Maceo and an Afro-Cuban woman, Mariana Grajales y Coello. His father moved from Caracas, Venezuela to Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, in 1823, after some of his comrades were exiled from South America. José Antonio Maceo y Grajales (full name) was born in June, 14, 1845, in a rural farm not far from Santiago de Cuba. Although his father taught him skills in the use of arms and management of their small properties, (besides educating him in a bowless code of honour) it was his mother, Mariana Grajales, who inculcated him in a straight and hard discipline, so strong that it provoked him a babbling problem which he overcame in his teenage years. This iron discipline would be very important in the forge of his character and would be reflected much later in his acts as military leader. At the age of sixteen, Maceo went to work for his father, delivering products and supplies by mule. He was a successful entrepreneur and farmer. As the oldest of the children, he inherited his father's leadership qualities and later would become an outstanding general. Maceo developed an active interest in the political issues of his time and was initiated in the mysteries of Freemasonry, which in Cuba was strongly influenced by the principles of the French Revolution: "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity", as well as the Masons' main guidelines: God, Reason and Virtue.
Ten Years' War (1868-1878)
Approximately two weeks after the October 10, 1868 revolt lead by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes against Spain known as "The cry of Yará" ("El grito de Yará"), Maceo, together with his father and brothers joined the war. Mariana Grajales, before the home altar bound his husband and six sons, “in front of Christ, who was the first revolutionary” to fight for Cuban independence or die in the attempt, also throwing herself into the “manigua” (the woods and most thick countryside) in order to support the mambises (as Cuban rebels were known in the XIX century) from the rear lines. Almost all of her sons, besides her husband, would fall in the war for Cuban Independence. The Maceo were enlisted as a Private when the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) began. Within five months, Antonio Maceo was promoted to Commander (or Major), and within a matter of weeks after that he was again promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Later, a promotion to Colonel followed, and five years later he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General because of his bravery and ability to outmanoeuvre the Spanish Army. Maceo participated in more than 500 battles. However, the humble origin of Maceo and the colour of his skin, delayed his raising to the Major General degree, due principally to the racist and class exclusiveness tendencies of several other patriots of an aristocratic or bourgeois origin. In short, men under his command started to name him “The Bronze Titan”, because of his exceptional physical strength and resistance to bullet or blade injuries. He recovered from more than 25 war injuries and none of them seemed to affect his health or bravery when involved in battle. He had special recognition and admiration, as chief and war teacher, of the great Dominican strategist Máximo Gómez, who would become, in the years to come, the General in Chief of the Cuban Liberator Army. The use of the machete as a war weapon by Gómez, as a more comfortable substitute for the Spanish sword (and due to scarcity of fire weapons and ammunitions in the Cuban side) was rapidly adopted by Maceo and his troops, in which he charged among the cavalry as one more soldier. He received more than 20 wounds in action during the more than 500 encounters with Spanish troops in the total time of the war, from 1868 to 1878. Antonio Maceo strongly rejected the military seditions of Lagunas de Varona and Santa Rita, which undermined the independent troops' unity and favoured a regionalism in Las Villas (central region of Cuba), to which fields Vicente García (known as “The Lion of Las Tunas” for his bravery, but politically short sighted and one of the men of the mentioned plots) never went, an action which later impeded the invasion of the western third of the country. Divisionism and the imprecise designs of Vicente García were plainly rejected by Maceo when the former asked for support to constitute a “New Revolutionary Government”. Divisions, regionalism, and indiscipline were the main contributions for decay of the Revolution, of which the Spanish General Arsenio Martínez Campos y Antón then already named Captain General of Cuba, took a great profit. An officer of honour, he offered peace guarantees, amnesty for revolutionary men and legal reforms, in exchange for a cease of hostilities, which had already lasted 10 years (in 1878). At the same time, the Spanish Government continued the concentration of more forces to enclose the diminishing Cuban rebel forces. Antonio Maceo was one of the officers who rejected the signature of the Pact of Zanjón, which ended the Ten Years War. He and other mambises (independence soldiers) had a meeting with the General Arsenio Martínez Campos on March 15, 1878, to discuss the peace terms, but Maceo argued that no peace could be achieved if none of the objectives of the war had been accomplished i.e. abolition of slavery in Cuba and Cuban independence. The only immediate benefit was amnesty for those involved in the conflict and liberty for the black men who had fought in the "Liberator Army". Maceo did not recognize the treaty as valid and did not adhere to the amnesty. This meeting, known as the Protest of Baraguá ("Protesta de Baraguá"), is one of the most proud events of Cuban history. As an anecdotic detail, it is known that a messenger was sent to Maceo from another Cuban high officer, shyly and carefully proposing an ambush against the Spanish General, but were so fiercely repelled that the messengers sent almost ran away from Maceo’s camp. Some days later, in a letter to that officer, he posted, among many other things: “I don’t want victory if it goes accompanied with dishonour.” After respecting the truce time for the interview (a few days), Maceo resumed hostilities. In order to save his life, the Government of the Republic of Cuba in Arms, gave him the task of gathering money, arms and men for an expedition from the exterior, but his movements were useless, due to the dismay of the exiled sympathizers because of the Zanjón pact. Later, in 1879, Maceo and Major General Calixto García Íñiguez, planned in New York a new invasion to Cuba, which initiated the promptly failed Little War, in which battles he did not fight, for he had sent Calixto García as highest commander, avoiding exacerbation of racist prejudices in Cuban forces and officers, mainly due to Spanish propaganda, which had settled that he was trying to start a racial war against white people altogether (Spanish and Cuban), a false accusation that was responded with clear principles for several times.
The fruitful truce (1879-1895)
After a short stay in Haiti (where he was chased and attempts were made three or four times by the Spanish consulates to assassinate him) and later in Jamaica, he finally settled in Costa Rica, in the province of Guanacaste, where the President of that nation assigned him military organization labours and a small farm to live on. There, he was contacted by José Martí (known as the Cuban Apostle or National Hero), to start the Guerra del 95 (War of 1895), called by Martí as the “necessary war”. Maceo, with a bitter learned lesson, posted the inadequacy of civilian impediments to military actions in wartime in a brief but intense epistolary exchange with Martí, warning about the causes of the partial defeat in the War of the 10 years (1868-78). Martí responded with his formula of “the army, free; but the country, as a country with all its dignity represented…” and convinced him of the high probabilities of success if the war was to be prepared carefully and the timing of all raisings were made with accuracy. As a condition he demanded that highest command would be in the hands of Gómez, which was approved without reservation by the Delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Martí). In Costa Rica, he faced, gun in hand, another attempt of assassination at the exit of a theatre, with fatal result for one of the aggressors.
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 Martinez 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 createdfor 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 and fascist-like 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, lead by Spanish generals famous for their victories in Africa and Filipinas, and provided with artillery and the most modern weapons for infantry. After decimating them in the westernmost mountains of Cuba, he 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 economical aid and packages with weapons and ammunitions from Europe or even from the United States, but was strongly opposed to the acceptance of a military intervention by the US in Cuba.
Death
His plans for meeting with Gómez and the Government in Arms never took place. In the vicinity of Punta Brava, Maceo was advancing into the farm of San Pedro, only accompanied by his personal escort (two or three men), the physician of his Headquarters, the Brigade General José Miró Argenter and a small troop of no more than twenty men. When they attempted to cut a fence for facilitating the march of horses through those lands, they were detected by a strong Spanish column, which opened an intense fire. When they achieved cutting a part of the fence and he said “This is going well”, Maceo was reached by two shots, one in the chest, not very dangerous, and another that after breaking his inferior jaw penetrated his skull. His companions could not carry him because of the fire intensity and his height and weight (well above 6 feet tall and above 200 pounds). The only one who stayed by him was the Lieutenant Francisco Gómez (known as Panchito), son of Máximo Gómez, who volunteered in facing the Spanish column for protecting the body of his general. After being shot several times, the Spaniards slaughtered him with strikes of machetes, leaving both bodies abandoned, not knowing the identity of the fallen. The corpses of Maceo and Panchito were picked up the next days by Colonel Aranguren, from Havana, who ran immediately to the place after hearing the news. They were later buried in secret in the farm of two brothers who swore to keep the burial place in secrecy until Cuba would be free and independent and the correspondent military honours could be given to the hero. Nowadays, the remains of Antonio Maceo and Grajales and Francisco Gómez Toro lie in the monument of the Cacahual, close to the limits of the former farm of San Pedro, and it is a site of pilgrimage for Cuban people. It is already a tradition that all students from military academies celebrate their graduation in the Cacahual.
Legacy
Antonio Maceo Grajales wasn’t only a warrior and a key person in the Cuban movement for Independence in the XIX century, as well as a genial military strategist. His liberating thinking, based on honour and virtue, marked the thinking of the subsequent generation, together with the vast and deep thinking of José Martí and it can be said that it lives among the best in Cuban youth. 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 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 who attempts to seize Cuba, will gather the dust of its ground soaked in blood, if he does not perish in fight."
External links
| Cuba Portal |
- Excerpt about Antonio Maceo from History of Negro soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and other items of interest. published 1899, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
