Justice is due and it will always be owed to that distinguished warrior and enlightened patriot: we Cubans do it full and fulfilled. Gómez is a significant figure in the history for the independence of our country.  During the Ten Years’ War, as well as the War of 1895 prepared by José Martí, Máximo Gómez occupied without any doubt the highest post in the Liberation Army.  The most famous events during the War of ’68 were conceived and executed by him, and he was the one able to sustain, for a decade, a conflict in which most of the advantages were on Spain’s side.

When, in April 1895, General Gómez disembarked along with the ideologist of the Necessary War, José Martí, in the far east of the country;  an electric shudder ran through our entire social body, because everyone immediately realized that from that memorable day on the course of the war was going to change, as it did.  With the arrival of an old soldier, the vacillations ended and the Grito de Baire became a powerful revolutionary movement.  His arrival in Camagüey in June 1895, after the fateful fall in combat of José Martí on May 19, was what convinced the Camagüeyans to embark once and for all in the fight; with dismayed Spain and its high command in the Island, as much as it rejoiced Cuba and the patriots.

When the United States of America intervened in our independence war in 1898, the country ignored the undeniable triumph of the liberating forces.  In the search for a solution to the precarious situation in which the Liberation Army was with its more than thirty thousand men in estimated calculation, it was decided by the representatives of the Cerro Assembly, to license it.  This force of men, many veterans of the last war, was seen by the US government as a danger to their interests.  For this reason, President McKinley proposed to the envoys of the commission, led by Major General Calixto Garcia who would die on American territory, the required amount of $ 3 million as a donation: which was not accepted.  The refusal of the old General to accept the loan that would guarantee the licensing, brought in 1899 the animosity of the Assembly; who ended up dismissing him as General in Chief of the Liberation Army and accused him of being a foreigner.

In 1902 he gives his support to Tomás Estrada Palma to occupy the first magistracy of the new Republic.  Presidency to which he had already refused, aware that his participation as a candidate in the elections would be a resounding triumph.  The distancing from the president was immediate.  Estrada Palma, jealous of his authority, could not allow that the applause and the greatest praise on the rostrum was directed to the distinguished warrior. The light that radiated from the mere presence of Máximo Gómez overshadowed the image of those around him, including the President’s.

Over time the visits to the palace decreased and the meetings he had with Estrada Palma stopped being carried out.  The approach of the president to the Moderate Party in order to be re-elected and the support given by Gómez to General Emilio Núñez, took him further away from Tomasito, as he had called him during their times in the war.

In April 1905, trying to carry out his political duties and private life, he went to Santiago de Cuba to stay at his son Urbano’s house.  The people went to the railway station to say goodbye to him, this event was remarkable because of the number of people who wanted to see the old General.  Gómez was visibly ecstatic: he shook hands, poured hope and promised to be back by May 20.  In each station the people cheered him on.

It was undeniable that the footprint that the man had left in the Cubans all along the Island.  One night the General complains of a pain in his right hand, which so many have insisted on shaking.  A pain that manifests itself just days before a small wound had been made.  There is an infection and a fever.  He had fallen ill to not get up.  He arranges his return to Havana on a train specially made for him and all the people that accompany him: his wife Manana, his children, Doctors Pareda, Guimerá and Martínez Ferrer; a nurse and the Brave Generals of the Liberation Army.

In Matanzas the members of Estrada Palma’s cabinet Generals Freyre de Andrade, Rius Rivera and Montalvo alongside with Domingo Méndez Capote board the train.  General Emilio Núñez also joins them.  In Havana a thick crowd awaits him at the Villanueva station.

It gets worse every hour, the fever rises, and fades, the chills are unbearable; the general weakness persists, and a liver abscess is detected on the verge of suppurating. On June 11, his state was extremely serious and the Generalissimo was aware of the irremediable end.

On June 17, 1905, the man who had defied death in more than 200 combats, in which he had only received two non-gravity wounds, ceased to exist.  The event, as private as the death of a man, transcended the walls of the house to become a public event.

The days 18, 19 and 20 of June were declared national mourning days and it was arranged that the armed bodies kept Official Duel for nine days, it was also arranged that the funeral honors took place throughout the country.  The corpse was put in the Red Room of the old Palace of the General Captains were they kept a vigil on and every half hour during three days, the cannon of La Cabaña was fired;  also every hour the bells of the churches tolled.  The theaters were closed and the offices, the establishments and other public places wore black hangings and mourning flags.  Not one of the many phonographs that were in Havana, was heard.

At three in the afternoon of the Tuesday, June 20, the funeral procession left for the Necropolis of Columbus.  It was the largest burial that had been seen in Cuba so far: twenty carriages and two long lines of people were required to move the floral offerings.  The Generals Bernabé Bouza, Emilio Núñez, Pedro Díaz and Javier de la Vega remove the coffin from the carriage and put it in the pit.

Like that disappeared one of the pillars of our homeland, which was not a useless trunk in peace, but quite the opposite.  The main opponent of the re-election of Tomás Estrada Palma had left and the only one who could have dissipated or prosecuted a new insurrectionary movement. Unconquerable was his ancestry, so much that it cost the death itself an enormous effort to reduce him and to dominate him.

Translated into English by Ashley Rodríguez Pérez