In 1869, two towns would become symbols of the Cuban people's determination in the first independence movement to turn them into ashes rather than hand them back over to colonial rule.
The wealthy town of Bayamo, built during more than 300 years of colonial exploitation and the first capital of the Republic in Arms, was consumed by fire on January 12, 1869, followed on May 10 of that same year by Guáimaro, where the patriots drafted the first Constitution of the Republic in Arms.
The name Guáimaro comes from an aboriginal word describing an indigenous tree from the area where an Indian village destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors once existed, and which over the centuries would become a prosperous town dedicated to livestock and agriculture, thanks to the rich plains that surround it.
Its strategic location for transit and trade between Camagüey and the neighboring eastern department, belonging today to the province of Las Tunas, and the libertarian vocation of its children would influence its prominent role during the independence wars, as it became the eye of the revolutionary hurricane that began in Yara and raised the eastern zone, Camagüey and Las Villas.
The uprising at the Demajagua farm led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was followed in Camagüey, shortly after, by Ignacio Agramonte on November 4, 1868, but soon two different ways of conceiving the Revolution became evident between these two figures, the most prominent at that historical moment.
Céspedes advocated for the option of a centralized government with a single command, while Agramonte supported creating a republican government with separation between military and civil powers, but with civil power predominating.
To resolve these differences, in April 1869, both leaders and representatives of the independents who had taken up arms in Las Villas, Camagüey, and Oriente met in Guáimaro to form a national government that would rule equally throughout the liberated territory.
Under these principles, the Guáimaro Assembly convened, which drafted the first Cuban constitution, voted on the 10th of that month, establishing the division of executive, legislative, and judicial powers, the functioning of a House of Representatives for directing actions, recognized Carlos Manuel de Céspedes as president of the Republic, and adopted the current national flag as the emblem and the anthem composed by Perucho Figueredo.
While the Cubans were giving a superior organization to the independentist uprising, Spanish troops advanced on the town of Guáimaro to destroy the capital of the Revolution, which during those days was based in the region, and on May 10—with colonialist forces at the gates of the city—the mambí troops and the inhabitants of the town repeated the heroic legacy of Bayamo and, before it fell into the hands of the invader, set the town on fire.
Ana Betancourt, who raised her voice to advocate for the rights of the woman doubly enslaved in the colonial system because of her sex and being Cuban, when remembering those events wrote: "My whole being is moved by the memory of that night, a terrible night when everywhere could be heard the murmur of flames and the noise produced by roofs and doors falling to be consumed by the flames."
José Martí also wrote about the feat of the patriots of Guáimaro: "(...) neither the mothers, nor the men hesitated, nor did the weak heart stand by watching as cedars and caobas fell. With their hands they set the crown of fire to the holy city, and when night fell, the sacrifice was reflected in the sky."
The burning of Guáimaro is part of the legacy of intransigence and unity of the people in defense of their Homeland, an integral part of the Cuban revolutionary tradition that for all time was evidenced in those flames that consumed the heroic city 157 years ago by the will of its inhabitants.
Those old privileges will have their echo in the present.
