Ana Maria de Quesada Loynaz

Ana de Quesada was the second wife of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, patriot and president of Cuba (1869-1873); and mother of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, provisional president of Cuba from August 12, 1933 to September 4, 1933. An important figure in the Cuban War of Independence.

She was born in the eastern province of Cuba, from a distinguished and wealthy family. Sister of Manuel de Quesada, another of the distinguished patriots in the first emancipatory endeavor.

She followed step by step all the activities of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, and with him lived intensely the preparations that preceded the epic of the Grito de Yara, lending her effective and valuable aid for the consummation of the heroic enterprise of October 10, 1868.

On November 4 of that same year, she married Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, some time after the death of María del Carmen de Céspedes, his first wife.

She participated in the Burning of Bayamo, encouraging the burning of the town that had seen the birth of her life's companion and which so greatly elevated the spirit of the mambí, she suffered with the ups and downs of that intense day, working tirelessly for the well-being of Cuba, feeling as if her own body and soul received the disappointments and sorrows of her illustrious husband, and with her heart lacerated by pain she learned of the end of his existence in the fertile lands that surround the Sierra Maestra.

When in October 1873, after difficulties that arose in the Chamber of the Republic in arms, the agreement was made to depose Manuel de Céspedes as President, he asked that he be granted a passport to reunite with his wife and children, to be able to continue serving the Revolution from abroad. The Chamber did not accede to this request and Céspedes withdrew to the Hacienda San Lorenzo, where as is known he found death, in a sorrowful episode.

Her departure from Cuba, accompanied by the martyred poet Juan Clemente Zenea, her giving birth in foreign land to the posthumous son of the illustrious patriot, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, were great sufferings that only a Spartan soul like that of that great woman could endure.

After such perilous moments she devoted herself entirely to a single thought: to prepare her son Carlos to serve the Fatherland, when the war would begin anew to achieve the redemption of Cuba.

She sent him to the Andes, where her brother Rafael possessed a beautiful hacienda, so that the young man, in contact with Nature, would be in conditions to face the dangers of the future revolution. And in 1895, coming from Paris, with a soul full of hopes, with the heroic legacy of his great father, with the patriotic spirit instilled by Ana de Quesada from his earliest years, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada comes to his homeland in a great expedition, to the homeland that materially he does not know, but which he carries engraved in his heart.

And the exemplary matron accompanied her beloved son, the fruit of her womb, to come herself also to help fight for the liberty of the beloved land where she had seen the light of day.

In the year 1909, with the independence of Cuba already achieved, Ana de Quesada ceased to exist, with the immense joy of knowing her native country free, where so many of her dear ones had lost their lives for the sake of the most beautiful of all ideals: Patriotism.