given Martí a photograph of his son, José Francisco, taken on on a rocky Camagüey hilltop beside a rough tree branch hung with a Cuban flag. The picture showed Martí’s son flanked by Loynaz’s friends, standing “in a rough line, like a squadron of rebels.” Martí kept the photograph on his cluttered writing desk.
In March 1894, Loynaz sailed from New York with a smuggled cargo of two hundred Remington rifles and 48,000 bullets hidden under the seats of six trams in the ship’s hold. After landing at Nuevitas, he disembarked the gun-laden trams at the wharf. Proudly sporting a silver-plated revolver he had bought a month before at Tiffany’s, Loynaz then liaised with Emilio Luaces, a Ten Years’ War veteran who worked with Bernabé. In New York, Martí had urged caution on his brave if impetuous protégé. But in Cuba, Loynaz was flush with the early success of his mission. Feeling his blood rising, he told Luaces about the smuggled cache of arms, adding that he wanted to start a revolution “right there and then.” Luaces panicked at the thought that the revolutionary junta in New York was planning to start war in Camagüey and told Bernabé of Loynaz’s plans. Uncertain as to what to do, they handed over the munitions to the Spanish, having passed word to Loynaz, who fled at dawn in a small boat. “No well-established person in Camagüey wants to back any revolutionary plans,” Bernabé later said.
Landing at Key West, Loynaz wrote to the revolutionary junta’s military leaders about what had happened. Gómez hesitated when he read the report, and the uprising, originally planned for later that year, was delayed. “The main reason for the setback is that I haven’t received assurances from Camagüey, which I consider the central nerve of the Revolution,” Gómez told Martí. Martí also knew that Cuba wouldn’t respond to calls for an uprising so long as the Autonomists’ hopes of reform might become a reality. “Martí was very clear about that. . . . War will be impossible,” Gómez later wrote. “It was only afterwards, when the [Autonomists’] reforms collapsed and Cuban disenchantment grew, that revolution became a real possibility. And that’s what we did.”
The war of liberation, launched on April 11 the following year, had an uncertain start. Martí put in with a small group of men at a rocky beach on the far southeastern coast of Cuba to begin the offensive. They landed on the same stretch of coast as Castro would on the yacht Granma sixty-one years later, and their landfall was as equally haphazard. “The boat is lowered,” Martí wrote in his war diary:
Hard rain as we push off. Wrong direction. Opinions on boat varied and turbulent. More squalls. Lose rudder. We set course. I take the forward oar . . . We strap on revolvers. Making for the cove. A red moon peers out from under a cloud. . . .
Martí and his men trekked inland though bramble-covered hills, living off sour oranges, forest honey, and wild pig. It was sixteen years since Martí had last been in Cuba, and he reveled in the countryside and the delights of being on the march. “Climbing hills together makes men brothers,” he wrote. He met with his generals, Gómez and Maceo, at the sugar mill La Mejorana at the beginning of May, but the three leaders squabbled. Six pages torn from Martí’s diary that have never been recovered supposedly record a violent argument. Whatever happened, they parted afterward: Maceo for the mountains, Martí and Gómez inland to prod Camagüey into war.
Seeing what was coming, but believing that fighting was not the answer, Bernabé sailed for New York the following year. He left behind Antonio Aguilera, his son-in-law, charged with safeguarding the mill, a canny decision given the impeccable rebel credentials of Aguilera’s father. Francisco Vicente Aguilera, a fabulously wealthy eastern planter, had sold his vast estates to fund the Ten Years’ War and died penniless in New York
In March 1894, Loynaz sailed from New York with a smuggled cargo of two hundred Remington rifles and 48,000 bullets hidden under the seats of six trams in the ship’s hold. After landing at Nuevitas, he disembarked the gun-laden trams at the wharf. Proudly sporting a silver-plated revolver he had bought a month before at Tiffany’s, Loynaz then liaised with Emilio Luaces, a Ten Years’ War veteran who worked with Bernabé. In New York, Martí had urged caution on his brave if impetuous protégé. But in Cuba, Loynaz was flush with the early success of his mission. Feeling his blood rising, he told Luaces about the smuggled cache of arms, adding that he wanted to start a revolution “right there and then.” Luaces panicked at the thought that the revolutionary junta in New York was planning to start war in Camagüey and told Bernabé of Loynaz’s plans. Uncertain as to what to do, they handed over the munitions to the Spanish, having passed word to Loynaz, who fled at dawn in a small boat. “No well-established person in Camagüey wants to back any revolutionary plans,” Bernabé later said.
Landing at Key West, Loynaz wrote to the revolutionary junta’s military leaders about what had happened. Gómez hesitated when he read the report, and the uprising, originally planned for later that year, was delayed. “The main reason for the setback is that I haven’t received assurances from Camagüey, which I consider the central nerve of the Revolution,” Gómez told Martí. Martí also knew that Cuba wouldn’t respond to calls for an uprising so long as the Autonomists’ hopes of reform might become a reality. “Martí was very clear about that. . . . War will be impossible,” Gómez later wrote. “It was only afterwards, when the [Autonomists’] reforms collapsed and Cuban disenchantment grew, that revolution became a real possibility. And that’s what we did.”
The war of liberation, launched on April 11 the following year, had an uncertain start. Martí put in with a small group of men at a rocky beach on the far southeastern coast of Cuba to begin the offensive. They landed on the same stretch of coast as Castro would on the yacht Granma sixty-one years later, and their landfall was as equally haphazard. “The boat is lowered,” Martí wrote in his war diary:
Hard rain as we push off. Wrong direction. Opinions on boat varied and turbulent. More squalls. Lose rudder. We set course. I take the forward oar . . . We strap on revolvers. Making for the cove. A red moon peers out from under a cloud. . . .
Martí and his men trekked inland though bramble-covered hills, living off sour oranges, forest honey, and wild pig. It was sixteen years since Martí had last been in Cuba, and he reveled in the countryside and the delights of being on the march. “Climbing hills together makes men brothers,” he wrote. He met with his generals, Gómez and Maceo, at the sugar mill La Mejorana at the beginning of May, but the three leaders squabbled. Six pages torn from Martí’s diary that have never been recovered supposedly record a violent argument. Whatever happened, they parted afterward: Maceo for the mountains, Martí and Gómez inland to prod Camagüey into war.
Seeing what was coming, but believing that fighting was not the answer, Bernabé sailed for New York the following year. He left behind Antonio Aguilera, his son-in-law, charged with safeguarding the mill, a canny decision given the impeccable rebel credentials of Aguilera’s father. Francisco Vicente Aguilera, a fabulously wealthy eastern planter, had sold his vast estates to fund the Ten Years’ War and died penniless in New York
Similar Books
