Félix Figueredo Díaz

Cuban doctor who participated in several revolutionary activities, where he practiced his profession. He always had a good attitude, responsibility, and character to carry out any assigned mission. He participated in the Ten Years' War, and had the opportunity to serve as physician to General Antonio Maceo.

He was born in Bayamo, Cuba and in 1859 he established his residence in Jiguaní. He studied medicine at the Universities of Barcelona, Madrid, and Cádiz.

He became involved in the activities of Masonic lodges and was, together with Donato Mármol, the representative of his region at the so-called Tirsan Convention—the first general preparatory meeting for the war—at the San Miguel del Rompe estate in Las Tunas.

He was an active participant in the independence conspiracy of 1868, and rose up in his native Jiguaní. He received the rank of brigadier in the initial days of the revolution for his participation in the taking of towns in the Cauto basin. In 1875 he joined the forces that carried out the invasion of Las Villas and upon returning to Oriente he had the merit of treating and saving the life of Antonio Maceo, seriously wounded in August of 1877.

He did not accept the agreement of the Pact of Zanjón and participated in the Protest of Baraguá. For a long time he was chief of military health services in the east, with an interval in which, as under-secretary of war in the government of Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, he acted as secretary due to the absence of the titular secretary Vicente García.

He also held the position of chief of health services in the provisional government, constituted in Baraguá, in March of 1878. In addition to being Maceo's physician, he was his counselor and great friend. He disagreed with the indiscipline in the insurgent camp and accompanied Cisneros Betancourt in June of 1875 to his meeting with Vicente García to try to find a solution to the sedition of Lagunas de Varona; he was equally at Maceo's side in 1877 when he tried to put a brake on the expansion among eastern forces of the new sedition in Santa Rita of the Tunero leader.

According to some historians, Félix Figueredo never forgave Carlos Manuel de Céspedes for having anticipated other groups of conspirators in the uprising of October 10. From this stems his attitude when he was removed as President of the Republic in Arms by not giving him adequate protection. He informed him that his aides, escort, and convoys were being withdrawn; then through unpleasant communications and demands, he was kept in the government camp for about two months.

He died in Havana, at the age of seventy-three, on June 6, 1892.