Joaquín de Agüero Agüero

He was born in the city of Puerto Príncipe, today Camagüey, and was a Cuban independence advocate, protagonist of the first coherent and endogenous anti-colonial movement in Cuba, carried out without many objective conditions but with the tacit consent of almost all of his countrymen.

He was held in high esteem by the people of Puerto Príncipe (inhabitants of the city of Puerto Príncipe) of that era. He was descended from a traditional and prestigious family of the locality.

Today his name honors a district within the city, an important street in the "La Vigía" neighborhood, a primary school, a plaza... His name, work and memory are parts of the intangible legacy of the city and a symbol of it.

As a consequence of the local anti-colonial tradition and continental influences, he rose up (declared armed war) in the manigua (relatively inaccessible fields and forests), compromising his privileged social and economic position, against the Spanish metropolis.

He presided over the Liberadora Society of Camagüey. He printed pamphlets against the colonial government. Despite gathering several rebel groups around him, the lack of organization and limited military knowledge they possessed led them to fail in all their actions, as was the case with the attempted takeover of the City of Las Tunas (about 130 km east of Camagüey). As a result of intense persecution by Spanish troops, he decided to attempt to flee to the United States, but he was betrayed, captured and tortured on the way back to the city of Puerto Príncipe (Camagüey).

There he was sentenced to garrote vil, but the executioner was poisoned, so he was shot along with three of his companions on August 12, 1851 in what was then called the Sabana de Méndez, when he died he was only 34 years old. Today there is a Plaza bearing his name there, at the end of the Avenida de los Mártires, in the north of the city of Camagüey.

In the city of Puerto Príncipe anti-colonial sentiment was very consolidated. Upon the death of this hero the city fell into general and profound mourning. It is said that the houses were left empty as everyone went to their properties in the countryside as a protest.

Time later in the former Plaza de Armas (today Parque Ignacio Agramonte) four royal palms were planted to honor Joaquín de Agüero and his 3 fallen companions: Tomás Betancourt, Fernando de Zayas and Miguel Benavides, in silence and discreetly, since there was an express ordinance that prohibited any attempt to erect monuments to the independence fighters of Camagüey.

Even oral tradition has passed down to us that young local women felt offended if they were confused with Spanish women and for this reason they carried specific symbols in their characteristic attire and headdresses to identify themselves as Creoles and patriots.

There is a story that is not proven at all, but which underscores the importance that the locals gave to this martyr for independence and the degree of identification that this precursor had with the subsequent political and military history against Spain, which says that Ignacio Agramonte, the main Camagüey leader of the Ten Years' War of Cuban independence and civic and patriotic model for Camagüeyans today, as an adolescent dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Joaquín de Agüero and swore before his body to finish the work for which he gave his life.