José Martí had the patriots from Camagüey who had entered the Ten Years’ War under the command of El Mayor Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz. With the “threads of the conspiracy” in his hands, he sent his agents to the Liceo Principeño where the Marquis Salvador Cisneros, owner of the building and the family home on Mayor Street No. 22, and to whom the Master would have warned to be suspicious of the tycoon and former volunteer of the ‘68 Bernabé Sánchez Adán residing on that same street, in which he had offered his home to house the General Command and General Staff of the Military Department of the Center in the last war.
To the house of Captain of the ‘68 Alejandro Rodríguez y Velasco in Mayor no. 37 Martí directed first his commissioner Porfirio Batista and then Gerardo Castellanos Lleonart to call him up, a matter that he already knew from another messenger. To the house of San Francisco no. 8 of Colonel Emilio L. Luaces and Iraola was also Castellanos, although with precautions for being close to that of Carmen Zayas-Bazán, Martí’s wife and his son Pepito.
The agents went to hand in some errands to the house in Contaduría no. 50 of the constituent from Guáimaro Francisco Sánchez. In San Pablo, in the house of the former Colonels Elpidio and Enrique Loret de Mola y Boza, the commissioner may also have arrived to then go to the Aruca alley to the very humble house of the prestigious patriot Esteban Borrero y Echevarría. And by summons transmitted to him by Martí, Salvador Cisneros knocked on the door of Lope Recio Loynaz, who did not hesitate to throw himself into the battlefield. Furthermore, before the house of former Commander Mauricio Montejo y Jústiz, the agent from Camagüey had to make a stop due to the request of the Delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party.
Taking care not to be detected by the Spanish soldiers stationed in the Artillery Barracks where the Audiencia was located on Mayor Street; in the City Hall in the Plaza de Armas and in other dependencies of the colonial government, Porfirio Batista left the city embarking in Nuevitas for New York to meet Martí.
Another of the agents who exudes will and courage, Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, comes and goes to Camagüey. Manuel de la Cruz Delgado and Arturo Malberti fulfilled the same objective to raise Camagüey in arms. We visited the house of Dr. Oscar Primelles y Cisneros, who was facing the Quesada Loynaz sisters and the patriot Modesto Corvisón. By Gerardo Castellanos Lleonart learned in San Francisco no. 9 Pepito Martí and Zayas Bazán from his father to see him participating when the war broke out. The proof of his fatherly love was a fob.
Marti’s summons arrived on time for each conspirator to resume the war for independence. Some in their homes and others in the Lyceum, in the Plaza de Armas, in the Xiques Pharmacy and in other places in the city gathered to respond in a positive way to the Delegate, who was already heading to the Greater Antilles to, once in the East, coming to Camagüey to the constituent assembly at the same place of the fall in combat of El Mayor Ignacio Agramonte. Everything about Camagüey was carried by Martí very deeply in his thoughts.
Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García
