Fernando Figueredo Socarrás

Outstanding Cuban intellectual and revolutionary fighter of the nineteenth century. He participated in the Ten Years' War. He was personal secretary to important revolutionary leaders; among them, Antonio Maceo. An exceptional witness to the famous Protest of Baraguá, he left a book with an original account of that event.

He was born in Puerto Príncipe, today the city of Camagüey. However, he was educated in his parents' native city, Bayamo. Later he pursued university studies, graduating as an engineer. He was one of the initial conspirators who from the city of Bayamo, in eastern Cuba, actively participated in the genesis of the Revolution of 1868, also known as the War of 1868 or the Ten Years' War.

He rose up in the first days of the revolutionary outbreak, on October 18, 1868. His incorporation into the struggle took place in the emblematic city of Bayamo, when the mambí troops assaulted and took that city, converting it in fact into the first capital of the nascent Cuban revolution. Important missions and commitments were quickly assigned to him. Among the positions and responsibilities he held, it stood out that he had been personal secretary to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes del Castillo, Father of the Homeland and first president of the Republic of Cuba in Arms since the Assembly of Guáimaro in April 1869. Subsequently he became chief of the president Céspedes's aides.

In the last quarter of 1873, when Céspedes was deposed at Bijagual de Jiguaní, General Calixto García appointed him chief of staff under the orders of General Manuel de Jesús (Titá) Calvar. By this date he already held the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was wounded in the action at Veguita, near the city of Bayamo, in November of that year.

He firmly opposed the known sedition of Lagunas de Varona, in April 1875, led by General Vicente García. From June 1875 he served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs under interim president Juan Bautista Spotorno. In March 1876 he was elected member of the Chamber of Representatives for the eastern zone of the country.

However, Figueredo is more recognized in Cuban history for having been personal aide to Major General Antonio Maceo and one of his trusted men in the final years of the struggle; furthermore, for also being an exceptional witness to one of the great events of that revolution: the Protest of Baraguá, which took place on March 15, 1878. That same night, he was tasked, along with two other mambises, with drafting the known provisional constitution of Baraguá. When the deliberations concluded to form a new revolutionary government, he was appointed secretary of the Provisional Government.

Figueredo Socarrás embodied his testimonies and experiences of this revolutionary period in one of the most relevant works of campaign literature from that heroic struggle, La Revolución de Yara, an essential text for understanding the main facts and issues of the Revolution of '68. In that conflict, Fernando Figueredo achieved the military rank of colonel.

In May 1878 he concluded his participation in the war by laying down his arms and leaving Cuba on the 29th bound for the Dominican Republic. In 1881 he moved to Key West, in Florida, United States. He remained there for several years until the second Cuban independence war concluded in 1898. From his stay in the Key, it is important to recall the series of lectures he gave between 1885 and 1888 on the Ten Years' War, which subsequently formed the texts of his aforementioned book. From 1891 onward he offered José Martí all his support for the genesis of the coming stage of struggle.

During the Revolution of 1895 or War of Independence he remained in the Cuban revolutionary emigration in the United States, holding the position of delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party in the small city of Tampa, Florida; the first Government Council also elected him general agent of the Republic in Arms in that American state. From there he provided all his support and collaboration to the new cause. Once the conflict ended, he returned to Cuba after 20 years of absence.

In January 1899 he held the position of second chief of the customs house of the city of Cienfuegos. Months later, the government of the first American military occupation in Cuba appointed him undersecretary of Government. Finally he published his aforementioned work for the first time in 1902.

In the early years of the republic he was general director of Communications (1902) and General Comptroller of the Republic (1904).

During the second American military occupation in Cuba in 1906 he was the General Treasurer of the Republic. He held this position for 12 years. In 1912 he assumed the presidency of the Academy of the History of Cuba, from which he continued his intellectual work. At age 80, already in delicate health, he wrote Elogio a José Miró Argenter, which he was unable to read personally at the Academy of the History.

He died in the nation's capital on April 13, 1929, although some historians place his death on August 13, 1929.

Active Bibliography

La Revolución de Yara 1868-1878, M. Pulido y Compañía, La Habana, 1902.

La toma de Bayazo. San Antonio de los Baños, 1913.

Elogio a José Miró Argenter, La Habana, 1926.

Passive Bibliography

Colectivo de autores: Diccionario enciclopédico de historia militar de Cuba, t. I, Editorial Verde Olivo, La Habana, 2001.

Instituto de Historia de Cuba: Historia de Cuba. Las luchas por la independencia nacional y las transformaciones estructurales. 1868-1898, Editora Política, La Habana, 1996.

Izquierdo Canosa, Raúl: Días de la Guerra. Cronología de los principales acontecimientos de la Guerra de Independencia de 1895-1898, Editorial Verde Olivo, La Habana, 1994.

Tremols y Amat, Abdon: Los patriotas de la Galería del Ayuntamiento de La Habana, Imprenta La Prueba, La Habana, 1917.

Source: En Caribe.org