Ana Betancourt: I prefer to be the widow of a man of honor than to be the wife of a man without dignity and dishonored

February 7, 2021

Bound beneath a ceiba tree, Ana Betancourt looks at her hands and barely recognizes the image of the refined lady who dazzled Camagüey years ago. Her nails are dirty and worn, her fingers gnarled, her dress torn. At times she tries to bend her legs, but rheumatism keeps her knees inflamed. She also suffers from typhus and chills run through her body. The fever sometimes clouds her vision.

She has been by the tree for three months. She is the bait to capture her husband, the bargaining chip to subdue Colonel of the Liberating Army Ignacio Mora and force him to lay down the machete of the mambi. Ana knows that will not happen. When he left to join the insurgent troops, she herself made him swear: "For you and for me —she told him—, fight for freedom". Both keep their word.

Born 38 years earlier, on Friday, December 14, 1832, Ana is the sixth daughter of Diego Betancourt and Ángela Agramonte y Aróstegui, one of the illustrious marriages of Puerto Príncipe. The girl receives an education befitting the young women of her time and learns to cook, knows how to embroider, weave, sing, and play the piano. She is beautiful and refined, but knows little of the ferment of a country.

The Marquis of Santa Lucía, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, leaves one of the first portraits of her. According to him, she is "one of the most elegant and cultured women, called in the land of the Agüeros and Agramontes to figure in high society, not only because of the qualities with which nature adorns her, but because of her fine and amiable social manner". Accustomed to the honors of the families of Camagüey, the landowner is not without reason.

Young Ignacio Mora also noticed her virtues and courted her. She was 21 years old when they married on August 17, 1854 and from then on her life was different. Contrary to the formalities of his time, her husband encouraged her to expand her knowledge and did not relegate her to domestic life. Ana took an active part in the tertulias organized in their home while she taught herself English and French. She was ahead of her time.

Little by little in those gatherings the idea of Cuban independence takes shape. In other houses in the area, as well as in Masonic lodges and estates in eastern Cuba, the powder of freedom likewise ignites. On October 10, 1868 Carlos Manuel de Céspedes rises up at La Demajagua and calls for war; on November 4 following, Ignacio Mora is one of the Camagüeyans who rise up at Las Clavellinas.

After 14 years of marriage the couple must separate for the first time. The night before the uprising Ignacio looks at Ana as if it were the last time. "What I have in prospect —he confesses to her— is, either a bullet on the field, or the gallows in the city". Then the conversation becomes darker: "Farewell forever. Consider yourself a widow from today, and thus the news of my death will be less painful for you".

The wife neither saddens nor lowers her gaze. "And if you are dead —she reproaches him—, what will I do alone in the world?" Her question is not a lament, but a demand. "Unite me to your destiny —she insists—, use me for something. I desire, like you, to consecrate my life to the Homeland". Her voice is that of a woman strong and sure of herself, but for now she must wait. Ignacio goes to the wilderness and she remains in Puerto Príncipe.

From that moment on her house is a refuge for the persecuted, a warehouse of food and weapons and from there information is gathered and transmitted. From Ana's hands emerged several of the proclamations that began to circulate in the city and among the mambises. Suddenly that woman with very black hair becomes a danger to Spain and the government decrees her capture.

Only a month has passed exactly since Las Clavellinas and Ana must also abandon her home. She is about to turn 36 and the mountain awaits her. In the wilderness she finally embraces Ignacio again.

Life is not easy in the mambi camps. Sometimes there is little to eat, other times the enemy forces a hurried march to avoid an unequal combat. Like her, other women also remain in the insurgency and contribute to the cause. Finally in March 1869 the married couple settles in Guáimaro. Without knowing it they go to the most important setting of the first months of the war.

A month later Carlos Manuel de Céspedes arrives from the East, while other patriots arrive from Las Villas. Like an eruption of light, Ignacio Agramonte rises up on the plains of Camagüey itself as the principal figure of the Revolution in the zone. Everyone understands the need to organize the struggle, although it does not mean an easy task. It is April 10 and the first Constituent Assembly of the Republic of Cuba in Arms is about to begin.

From the meeting Céspedes emerges invested as President. Despite internal disputes that will later be fatal, the country has a Constitution and a Government.

There is celebration in the town. Ana does not waste time and presents to the newly elected Chamber of Representatives a petition asking that, once the Republic is established, women be granted greater rights.

On the night of April 14 she climbs onto an improvised platform and speaks in the middle of the crowd. She looks at everyone and takes a breath, just before uttering a resounding "citizens". The applause and cheers barely let her catch her own words, but she continues. "Woman in the dark and quiet corner of the home —she tells them— waited patiently and resignedly for this beautiful hour, in which a new revolution breaks her yoke and unfurls her wings". She speaks for herself and for all.

As if to reaffirm the new status just acquired by free Cubans, she again calls citizens to those who listen to her. Then she almost rises on her toes: "Here all was enslaved: birth, color, sex. You want to destroy the slavery of birth by fighting to the death. You have destroyed the slavery of color by emancipating the slave. The moment has come to liberate woman".

A few meters away, Céspedes himself listens to her attentively. When she finishes her brief speech he approaches to congratulate her and announces that the historians of the future will speak of her as one ahead of her century. Years later José Martí does not overlook this moment in one of his chronicles about the days of Guáimaro.

"And as night falls, when enthusiasm cannot fit in the houses, in the plaza is the gathering place, and a table the platform. Everything is love and force in speech. They aspire to the greatest, and feel the vigor to assure it. Eloquence is exhortation, and in the noble tumult, a woman of vibrant oratory, Ana Betancourt, announces that the fire of freedom and the longing for martyrdom do not warm the soul of man with more vivacity than that of the Cuban woman".

Less than a month later Ignacio Mora creates the newspaper El Mambí, one of many loose sheets that served the insurgents to explain the reasons for the struggle. Ana corrects texts and drafts manifestos, but only three days later they must set the town on fire before the advance of Spanish troops. "With their hands they lit the crown of bonfires to the holy city —Martí would say years later—, and when night fell, the sacrifice was reflected in the sky". Once again the mountain became home.

Thus they remain until July 9, 1871 when Spanish troops discover one of the mambi hideouts in the area known as Rosalía del Chorrillo, belonging to the region of Camagüey.

Ana can barely walk and asks her husband to escape. Now she is a prisoner and will face 90 terrible days.

She lives each day tied beneath a ceiba and suffers hardships everywhere. The enemy chief besieges her again and again to convince her to persuade her husband to surrender. Before each assault she always has the same answer: "They can shoot me; but I will not write to Ignacio Mora to have him present himself before the colonial authorities. I prefer to be the widow of a man of honor than the wife of a man without dignity and dishonored".

One of those early mornings a sentry wakes her at four in the morning and informs her that she will be shot. It is a stratagem to test her resolve, but she is certainly determined to die and the ruse does not achieve its purpose. After several skirmishes they return her to her corner.

Ana does not know what they will do with her; nor does she know about her husband's condition, but there she is. She is the living example of resistance. A Spanish officer wants to help her and offers her the opportunity to contact a relative. "I told him yes, and I wrote to my sister Cruz describing my situation and asking her for money to see if I could manage to escape the camp. Since I had nothing to lose, I was bold and fortune favored me".

Two weeks later the unexpected ally delivers her six Spanish ounces and another letter. In the paper her sister advises her to flee and leaves her the address of a family that could take her in in Havana. Everything is ready. She takes advantage of the darkness of night and manages to escape.

After three years in the insurgency, she is tired, sick and aching, but even so a few days later she manages to reach her destination. She is a political fugitive and in the capital a commissioner informs her that she has 72 hours to leave the country. Mexico is the new destination.

"I Will Never Ask Anything of the Murderers of My Brothers"

The mausoleum erected in Guáimaro to Ana Betancourt. Photo: Radio Guáimaro.

Like many Cubans in exile, Ana Betancourt tries to subsist in various nations. She arrives in the Aztec country, and later lives in the United States, Jamaica and El Salvador, but does not stop looking at that piece of land where her husband still fights for freedom. In 1872 she visits American president Ulises Grant to intercede on behalf of the medical students arrested a year before.

Sometimes she earns her salary as a worker in a factory, other times as a teacher of Cuban girls. "Never —she writes to Ignacio— will I ask anything of the murderers of my brothers".

The correspondence between them is a jewel. "My only hope, my only comfort —he writes in his diary— is the arrival of mail: with it comes to me the intimate thought of my Anita; and her letters are the balm for my natural sadness". But on October 5, 1875 the Spanish capture Mora.

Nine days later, with feet full of ulcers and after refusing to give up his ideas, they stage an apparent execution and definitively assassinate him with machete blows at El Chorrillo de Najasa, south of Camagüey. The wife learns the news a month later in Jamaica and cannot contain her grief. After the peace of Zanjón she returns to Cuba, but is never the same again.

During the Fertile Truce Ana Betancourt returned to Cuba for a few years. This is one of the least known images of her. Photo: Archive.

There is an image of her from 1884 that says it all. She is no longer the well-fleshed lady with abundant hair from the beginning of the war, but an extremely thin and sad woman. She barely has luxuries and a stole covers her head and torso, she is as if absorbed in herself. However, she does not stop conspiring and encouraging the Revolution. "Infinite love for the cause because they died! —she writes to her nephew Gonzalo de Quesada— This is the mission you have imposed on yourselves".

In the United States she meets the Apostle and is impressed: "Martí has the gift of moving hearts with his enthusiasm and his faith". She knows she has before her an extraordinary being who "combines a soul tempered in the fire of great ideals with vigorous and cultivated intelligence". Of his word she says it is capable of transmitting his feelings to the soul of listeners. She sums up the meeting with four words: "Martí is a character".

Precisely for these and other activities Spain deports her again. In 1889 she bids Cuba farewell definitively and a sister takes her in in Madrid, but she neither forgets nor finds peace with her own history. With a Spanish officer she manages to recover Ignacio's diary and dedicates herself to transcribing it. In the blank spaces it leaves, she herself leaves her own ideas. It is like the conversation they failed to realize.

"These daily notes of my unfortunate husband —she will say later—, resemble cries of anguish: moans of passionate pain that escaped from his heart and were stamped on paper for lack of a beloved being to communicate his sorrows and his fears to. A written conversation so that one day it might reach my hands; to the hands of the being who was most dear to him, in whose soul he knew his sorrows would find an echo".

Even with an ocean between them she keeps abreast of Cuba. She collects funds and contributes what little she has, writes profiles of the mambises and reports the departure of soldiers from the peninsula.

Since 1968 the remains of the patriot rest in Cuba. Photo: Archive.

When in 1895 the La Fernandina expedition fails, she still encourages and convokes: "Bad luck pursues us and those Yankee dogs do us all the harm they can, but we must not be discouraged by it. The blood of the heroes that has soaked our land, the land of our fields, will fertilize it".

On the Island events succeed one another and news crosses borders. As an emigrant, Ana Betancourt celebrates the Grito de Baire and the success of military campaigns, but she will also mourn deaths like those of Martí and Maceo. Each event takes her back more than two decades, when she herself walked those fields alongside her husband in pursuit of the same objectives.

In 1898 the United States snatches victory from the Cubans and a year later begins military occupation. In Madrid she prepares her return, but a fulminant bronchopneumonia causes her death on February 7, 1901. She was 68 years old and in Spain she receives a modest burial. On September 26, 1968 Cuba repatriated her remains and since April 1982 they rest in a mausoleum erected for her in Guáimaro.

As in a symbol of life, her niche has a high relief that represents a mambi charge. On both sides, in large bronze letters, the words she spoke in Guáimaro to demand the emancipation of woman. She is that and more, because Ana Betancourt embodies that example of dedication and daily heroism that marked the life of her generation.