Francisco Carrillo Morales

Major General of the Cuban Liberating Army. Fighter in the three wars for Cuban independence. He was an active collaborator of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and one of the principal organizers of the War of '95 in Cuba. He survived the war and had an active political life in the Neocolonial Republic.

He was born in San Juan de los Remedios, Las Villas on October 4, 1851. He took up arms in early 1869 in Las Villas, joining the forces of Major General Salomé Hernández. Subsequently he marched to Camagüey with the troops from Villa Clara.

On May 10, 1873 at the Jimaguayú camp, Major General Ignacio Agramonte, on the eve of his fall in combat, gave then Captain Carrillo a revolver as encouragement for having obtained the best grades in the academy he directed. On September 28, 1873, while subordinate to the new chief of Camagüey, Major General Máximo Gómez Báez, he distinguished himself in the attack on Santa Cruz del Sur and was wounded in the second Combat of Jimaguayú. He participated in the actions of La Sacra, Palo Seco, and Las Guásimas. In 1874 Gómez ordered him to go to Las Villas with the rank of commander. At Hondones he joined then Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Jiménez. On September 23, at the head of 30 men, he attacked Fort Tetuán near Remedios. He participated in the combats of Corojal, Hondones, and Las Chacas and in the attacks on Sancti Spíritus and Remedios.

On June 29, 1875 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. On June 29 he received a wound in the combat of Nuevas de Jobosí. On May 6, 1877 he fought in combat at Aguada del Tinglado, Remedios. He was promoted to colonel on October 1, 1877.

With the Pact of Zanjón agreed upon on February 10, 1878, he laid down his arms on March 18 of the same year together with General Carlos Roloff.

He was one of the organizers of the Little War in Las Villas. He rose up on November 9, 1879 in Remedios and that month sustained an encounter with Spanish troops in the Savannas of Pedro Barba, near Zulueta, in which he engaged in personal combat with Hermann Brandeyrs, a Prussian officer in the service of Spain.

Throughout that period he fought in the actions of Ingenio Viejo, Caraballo, Itabo, Juan de Vera, Pesquero, and Sábanas Nuevas de Jobosí. Upon capitulating on September 30, 1880, he held the rank of brigadier general.

He went to the United States where he resided for 12 years and obtained United States citizenship. Upon returning to Cuba in 1892, he joined in conspiratorial work, becoming one of the principal organizers of the Necessary War within the Island.

In the morning of February 24, 1895, he was detained in Remedios and sent to the fortress of La Cabaña. The United States government demanded his extradition due to his condition as a United States citizen.

He left for that country on May 30, 1895, and returned at the head of the expedition on the steamship Horsa, together with then Brigadier General José María Aguirre. He landed on November 16, 1895 at Cabañas, west of Santiago de Cuba. He then headed to the province of Camagüey in search of the Government Council of the Republic in Arms. On December 28 he was ordered to go to the eastern province, where he fought in Las Tunas and Holguín. On March 27, 1896, Commander in Chief Máximo Gómez assigned him the mission of marching to Las Villas to take the position of chief of the 4th Corps, which he accomplished on April 7.

He came to the aid of the expeditionaries from the fourth voyage of the steamship Dauntless, which under the command of Miguel Betancourt Guerra landed at Río Hondo de San Juan, the boundary between Trinidad and Cienfuegos, on October 13, 1896. He was in the Combat of Paso de Las Damas, where Major General Serafín Sánchez fell on November 18, 1896, and in which Carrillo received a severe contusion to his face.

On December 4 he attacked Mayajigua and from the 27th to the 30th of that same month he attacked Arroyo Blanco. On December 3, 1897, he fought the combat of Las Delicias.

On April 29, 1898, Máximo Gómez sent him to Key West with the order to coordinate with the United States high command the actions concerning the intervention of United States troops on the Island. Upon completing the mission, he returned to Cuba on May 12, 1898. His final action in the War of '95 was the entry into Mayajigua on August 21, 1898.

During the Republic, he held various political positions: He was senator for Las Villas from 1902 to 1910; provincial governor of Las Villas from 1913 to 1918; and vice president of the Republic, alongside President Alfredo Zayas, from 1921 to 1925.

He died in the city of Havana on November 11, 1926.