On the 146th anniversary of the death in battle of Major Ignacio Agramonte, his imprint beats strong in the Cubans hearts.

Barely, a bullet was enough to break the Mayor’s right temple.  After so much glory come to die at the mercy of a single projectile!  What an affront to his manly and angelic face!, that minutes before he vigorously leaned from side to side on the sorrel that seemed to fly to shorten the space between life and death. He, with a gaze in the distant American friend who letting himself being provoked, had entered in the circle of fire of the adversary’s cautious advance, which tried to ambush him at the mouths of the Remington to shoot him and smash the cavalry.

Opened the hole in the other side of the head, wet by the warm blood that suddenly flowed as a result of the exit of the projectile, his vital energy began to escape but letting him see its uneven depth, although it would still be latent his obsessive thinking to take him to be confused among the thickness of the weeds of the paddock radiant with sun.  It was Sunday morning, May 11, 1873.

From Camagüey, Ignacio Agramonte, with more shame that arms and ammunitions, and more courage than war academy, disillusioned of the absolutist and clumsy colony, had gone to the mountain with a group of brave ones a November 11, leaving hanging in the old town the  toga and the bonnet in the hall stand of the law firm of the house of San Juan Street, the trophies that he won in the Capital´s University by to study a lot;  and in the corner of the wedding room the riding leggings, which later claimed to his beloved Amalia, make them arrive at the insurgent camp in the mountain.

Barely 31 years, 4 months and 18 days had the General when he rose in the stirrups of Ballestilla that relieved Matiabo, the colt that he mounted until his arrival to the camp in Jimaguayú, which had been presented to him by the Congolese cubilanga cubilangué, and already in front of  the reinforced peninsular column commanded by Colonel José Rodríguez de León, cast his gaze of Mayor on the field of the final cast, naive unfamiliar that from that center of space between the paddock and the zenith, just after eight o’clock in the morning,  would enter triumphant in the History of the Cuban Struggles.

That fatal day…

He wore a uniform of clean hunter dril, his silky brown hair tied by the hat that darkened his face, surely somewhat sweaty, perhaps haggard from the previous bad night he dedicated to the vigil for his soldiers, with no more perfume than that of the  love that he sprinkled when he had time to go see his idolized for the last time to the Idyll in Cubitas, only smelling of the rainy mountain, perhaps the calloused left hand holding the energies of the steed that rode and the right on the Colt 36 revolver  that his brother Enrique sent him earlier from the United States;  He went without fear of dying, confident of a new victory, sure of his men who would fight like beasts, hopeful that Spain would end up defeated.

He seemed to have no thoughts other than those of triumph.  His courage was already excessive.  Amalia had told the General in a letter, she hardly knew that detail of her conversation with the other secretary and assemblyman in Guáimaro, Antonio Zambrana, who let him know before April 30, 1873, the date of his last letter from her to her husband, but the one that did not touch him in his hands.

Indeed, he fought desperately and marched with too much recklessness to the vanguard of his fearsome cavalry in each haul in front of the Spanish dragons and the open field.  He seemed not to think about his “two angels,” who barely knew his father.

 Amalia’s orders to her beloved

“Your audacity is beyond the limits of courage; and it should not be so, the Homeland needs your life not to be endangered so that its future will not be endangered (…); your too daring [is] what worries me the most “, as Brigadier Julio Sanguily pointed out before, on August 22, 1872.

He had to “think more about Cuba”, “that needs your arm so much”, not to fight with so much desperation, because she needed it so much.  Thinking in his Amalia saddened in a distant nation.  Otherwise, he would not see the end of the Revolution.

It was the Simoni’s last recommendations, that she did not explain how she had not lost his reason, for the anguish of knowing those details of the last moment, so distant from him, in the bosom of patriotic emigration.

Everything was useless…

The Major rushed at full speed to try to thwart the attack of the enemy troops desiring to destroy the cavalry that Reeve the American commanded, as if with that fleeting career he tried to divert in other directions the bullets of the peninsular infantry that buzzed above the herb of the paddock, that waited for its body to leave it hidden from its killers.

Already filled the stage by the smoke of gunpowder as soon as his escort gave scope to his thin figure that was lost in the undergrowth.  One of them, Sergeant Lorenzo Varona, affirmed minutes later that “the General had been killed by his side by an enemy bullet”, that “when the General fell dead from the horse [which was too categorical], I tried to help him, but I could not deal with it, and I left it abandoned, “thus, his version ended.

Unforgivable! Certainly, the version was impugnable, among other reasons, because Varona did not finish the “half hour” battle to specify the site of the hecatomb.

Up to this point what happened and narrated to the Sancti Spiritus captain and head of the Villareñas forces, Serafin Sanchez, did not agree with what had certainly happened to the Major; hence, what certainly happened that morning and the version offered by the mulatto Varona preserved doubts until now.  Rather, it all seemed an apocryphal version of the facts.

Irreparable loss

Historical rigor aside, Cuba had lost the Major of its leaders, Amalia to her idolized husband, the mambisito to his dad who just kept on his cheek the warmth of his lips in his last kisses given in the ranch hidden in the thicket of the mountain, and his soldiers to the human and righteous leader.

After his death, the president of the Republic in Arms Carlos Manuel de Céspedes appointed Major General Máximo Gómez to occupy the military headquarters left by the death of the Major in Camagüey.  A month later, when he stepped on the land of Camagüey, the experienced Dominican leader was surprised to see how much General Agramonte had done for the Revolution in Cuba.  At that moment when he had to say a few words to the duly formed troop before him, he was impressed and could barely coordinate the ideas, as he wrote in his Diary of Operations.

Hours later in the moment of meditation, Gómez reflected: “Ah!  How Destiny did not join us on the battlefield!  How we would have completed maybe and who knows if I would have made him live for the Fatherland before dying for Glory. ”

Cespedes in his letter of condolence to the long-suffering mother of Agramonte, Mrs. Filomena Loynaz, stressed that he had never been an enemy of his son, rather he loved him.  That’s how it went.  A proof: the designation by Céspedes of the military leadership of the Camagüey Division after accepting the request to abandon the chamber and the secretariat of that body, on April 26, 1869. The Bayamo leader after penetrating deeply into his character and in his thoughts he recognized the abundant manliness and intelligence of Agramonte to be at the head of the Revolution in Camagüey.

Agramonte multiplied in each fighter.  At every moment of life in the countryside he was reminded again and again.  His name cited permanently attracted his memory making him alive, eternal, invincible.

The Revolution with him through continued to give the Cubans new victories.  Death was not true…

Photo: Heriberto Valdivia Jiménez

Translated into English by José Carlos García Cruz