Ignacio Mora de la Pera

Ignacio Mora, landowner and cultured man, was one of the 76 Camagüeyans who took up arms at the Paso de Las Clavellinas, on the road to Nuevitas, less than 15 kilometers from the capital Puerto Príncipe.

Born in Puerto Príncipe, Camagüey. He married on August 17, 1854, with Ana Betancourt.

Ignacio Mora, suffering from leg ulcers, was arrested on October 5, 1875 and killed by gunfire and then macheted, on the 14th at El Chorrillo de Najasa after refusing pardon if he accepted renouncing his ideas.

In open defiance of Spanish colonialist propaganda, Ignacio Mora ennobled the derogatory term mambí attributed to Cuban patriots and gave that name to his newspaper founded in Guáimaro, at the birth of the Republic of Cuba in Arms.

With his patriotic rhetoric he lifted the spirits of his companions in difficult moments.

Before the Revolution of 68, Mora had collaborated in the newspaper El Camagüey, founded by Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, and in the creation of El Oriente (March 1, 1867), directed by Francisco Muñoz Rubalcava, together with Eduardo Agramonte Piña, Cristóbal Mendoza Durán and other future insurgents.

He took command of one of the seven groups (platoons) and, on November 26, he reaffirmed his position when the rebels rejected at the meeting of Las Minas a reconciliation proposal from the Count of Valmaseda.

He had his baptism of fire on November 28 in the Battle of Bonilla where the inexperienced forces ambushed a Spanish train.

For his fine tact and political intelligence, in March 1869, he achieved a meeting between Ignacio Agramonte and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a task entrusted by the Assembly of Representatives of the Center with a view to unifying the revolutionary movement.

This led to the meeting on April 10 and 11, 1869 in Guáimaro, in free territory of Camagüey, in a Constitutional Assembly of delegates from all patriotic forces. There the legal foundations of the Republic of Cuba in Arms were established and the reorganization of the Liberation Army.

From Oriente, Mora returned ill and in the days of the birth of the Republic he was in Guáimaro, but bedridden, with his wife Ana Betancourt who asked the assemblymen to also free women.

It was in the following days when he prepared the edition of his newspaper with the support of his beloved Anita until they had to leave Guáimaro.

On May 7, 1869, El Mambí was born, whose first issue was a loose sheet of 10 inches by six (approximately 26 centimeters by 15), with blurry printing and poor typography, in which Mora exposes, in aggressive and concentrated style, his political creed and the reasons and purposes of the war that was beginning.

"Upon launching our country into its revolution, it was neither to ruin it, nor to dishonor it, but to ensure its existence and the happiness of its children… We launched ourselves into insurrection without fear of the destructive elements with which we were threatened, because in our conscience it was already determined to completely fulfill our duty… The only good that the oppression and contempt of the Spanish government has brought to Cuba has been to inspire a terrible hatred of that domination, a hatred so great that rather than return to Spanish rule we prefer to all perish, men, women and children on the battlefield."

General Manuel de Quesada made the decision to burn the town as the people of Bayamo had done before surrendering it to the enemy.

Aided by Clodomiro Betancourt Varona, Mora continued publishing the newspaper in a print shop that was moved to the Sierra de Najasa. He sent materials to Anita for her corrections.

"Cuba is lost forever to Spain. Cuba is American and free, because it wants and can be, because its children are conquering that freedom with a patriotism and valor as no people has done until now," Mora states in the second issue of El Mambí, published the day after Cuban forces left Guáimaro, on May 9, 1869.

Thus he responded to a circular from Captain General Domingo Dulce that declared the independence revolution concluded.

On January 11, 1871, when recounting the events of the previous year, he expressed: "Meanwhile Cuba, heroic Cuba, continues in the hour of its regeneration and independence, forgotten by America, slandered by the first Magistrate of the Republic of the United States, it has managed to achieve its power and maintain the conquered ground with valor and self-denial."

To the publication he brought the main events taking place in the territory of free Cuba and which he knew firsthand. The last issues came out in 1871.

He was secretary, successively, of generals Augusto Arango, Manuel de Quesada and Manuel Boza Agramonte (November 1868 to December 1870).

In December 1869, the meeting took place at his estate El Horcón de Najasa, in which the Chamber of Representatives removed Quesada from the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army.

Mora continued fighting with some 20 patriots before holding the same position alongside Boza Agramonte. In January 1871, he became seriously ill with bronchitis and retired to the hut where his wife was.

That turned out to be a very hard year for Ignacio. On January 6, his sisters Juana and Mercedes were murdered along with their six cousins Mola Mora; filled with indignation and pain over the unjustified act, he wrote a letter to the Count of Valmaseda, which El Mambí published.

That year (April 22) he also lost his brother Vicente Mora –organizer of the mambí mail service–, victim of tuberculosis and persecuted by the Spanish.

On July 9, 1871, Ignacio and Anita were surprised by the Spanish at the San José del Chorrillo ranch. She, suffering from rheumatism in a knee, forced him to run and ended up arrested. They threaten her with execution so she will send a letter to Mora, asking him to turn himself in to colonial authorities. Faced with her firm refusal, the military governor of Puerto Príncipe orders that she leave the country within 24 hours.

Although afflicted by suffering, he assumed the position of Secretary of Foreign Relations of the Republic of Cuba in Arms, in Céspedes's government, from mid-1871 until March 11, 1872, when he became ill again.

He rejected the surrender of those who abandoned the battlefield, in his Manifesto to the Camagüeyans, on January 3, 1872.

Already recovered, six months later he joined the General Staff of Calixto García; he fought in Guisa, Holguín.

This patriot, unwavering in his commitment to Cuban independence, was the same one who, seeking a way out of colonial oppression, admired and shared the annexionist ideas of Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros and Narciso López –of whom in 1851 he had been secretary and almost took part in one of his expeditions to Cuba.

Ignacio Mora, suffering from leg ulcers, was arrested on October 5, 1875 and killed by gunfire and then macheted, on the 14th at El Chorrillo de Najasa after refusing pardon if he accepted renouncing his ideas.

He had the vision to record the significant events of the independence war in his journalistic articles, in the notes of his campaign diary (1868-1875) and in the letters to his beloved Ana Betancourt, wife and collaborator.

His Campaign Diary fell into enemy hands but Anita managed to recover part of it.