If you are a regular passerby or an observant traveler, when passing through Finlay Avenue, you will wonder to whom the monument located near the railway line, made of marble and topped with the figure of an angel, is dedicated to, while in low relief it has the inscription: With the spilled blood of these heroes, the independence of Cuba was forged. Let us glorify their memory.

And suddenly the answers may surprise you, it is not dedicated to a person, but to patriots executed during the Ten Years’ War – and not precisely in that place but in the back of the old military hospital, now the Manuel Ramón Silva Nursing Home. -, including Amado Oscar Céspedes Céspedes, son of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.

The word monument comes from the Latin monumentum, which means to remember. Purpose of Colonel of the Liberation Army Ángel Castillo Quesada, of the Territorial Council of Veterans and of the people of Camagüey who finances by popular subscription the work inaugurated on the symbolic date of February 24th, 1929 to perpetuate the memory of her children.

From history

The national historiography recognizes the years 1870 and 1871 as terrible years for the Cuban Revolution, the difficulties for the arrival of expeditions with military logistics and other items necessary for the insurgents, hunger, diseases in the battlefield, lack of food, medicines and weapons joined the strong Spanish offensive that was merciless with the Mambisa families and the captured prisoners.

In 1870, Amado Oscar Céspedes Céspedes was taken prisoner, who before being tried by the Spanish military authorities, cruelty and frequent procedures of hatred had dictated his sentence for the patriotism shown in the Liberation Army and the condition of son of the President of the Republic in Arms.

The letter of June 1st, 1870 sent to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes is preserved where Captain General Antonio Caballero y Fernández de Rodas informs him that his son is a prisoner and if he step down his life would be respected, a stratagem that in itself carried dishonor and felony, since Oscar Céspedes had been shot on May 29th, days before the dated letter was signed.

Despite this, without knowing such an event, the answer is immediate, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, alleges that Oscar is not his only son, but that all those Cubans who fought for the independence of Cuba are, it would be born with his performance one of the most beautiful epithets dedicated to the hero that exist in the nation, the Father of the Nation.

Today, 152 years after that event, with the certainty that researchers and historians can confirm his death through the Second Book of the General Cemetery of Camagüey corresponding to the year 1870 and despite the fact that his grave has not been identified, we Cubans pay him eternal homage in the monument to the Executed during the Ten Years’ War.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García