María Josefa Eufemia Cabrales Fernández

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Example of Cuban women in the struggle for the freedom of the Homeland, and for maintaining the dignity of their people high. Cuban history records her as a woman of great values, whom bonds of love, respect and ideals led her to seal her union with Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo.

She was born at the San Agustín estate, located in colonial times in the jurisdiction of Jutinicú, in San Luis, Santiago de Cuba. Daughter of free people of color Ramón Cabrales and Antonia Fernández. Her siblings were: Fabián, Santiago, Caridad and Dolores. María was the youngest of them all.

The Cuban patriot was born when separatist ideas were beginning in Cuba in the mid-nineteenth century. During the childhood years of María Cabrales, the country was developing amid the burning problem of slavery. The Cabrales family owned a piece of land in San Agustín, then jurisdiction of Jutinicú. They were free people of color, but despite this they suffered the consequences of racial discrimination. Neighbors of Marcos Maceo and Mariana Grajales, free people of color like them and owners of several plots of land.

This friendship, which would later become family bonds, likely came from the Antillean roots of the Maceo family's mother. María Cabrales spent her youth between the San Agustín estate and Santiago de Cuba, just as the Maceos did. Her parents had a comfortable economic and social position, so they associated with prominent people in Santiago de Cuba. They related to white Creoles, among them merchants, storekeepers and cultured people.

María was a young mulatto woman with a pretty face, curly hair, slender, with graceful bearing. She was a beauty inherent to the mixture of races. She possessed knowledge proper to women of her time and social condition. She could read and write, which was already something important in a woman of her time.

Neighbors and intimate friends, the Maceos and the Cabrales strengthened their friendship even more when on February 16, 1866 Antonio Maceo married María. That union born of love came to strengthen further the virile character of the young mulatto, who already had a reputation for being serious in his actions and upright in his principles, inherited from his father and even more from his mother.

Antonio Maceo and María Cabrales then went to live at the La Esperanza estate. They had two children, María de la Caridad Maceo Cabrales and José Antonio. Little by little, Antonio began to become involved in political matters and his continual travel from Santiago and to other neighboring towns made him accustomed to freedom and justice, his two great passions. María was an understanding companion and consistent with the revolutionary ideas that were taking root in her husband. Her family bond with the Maceos led her to feel enormous respect toward the parents and elders and thus she easily adapted to the new life with Antonio.

One always hears it said that behind an extraordinary man is the support of a great woman. Perhaps no better phrase can exist to describe María Cabrales's dedication to her husband Antonio Maceo y Grajales, in peace and in war, in exile and in the rebel field.

Of extraordinary natural intelligence, she could not develop intellectually because of the characteristics of the era, but she knew how to adapt to the economic precariousness of revolutionary life. In the wilderness, she cared for the wounded and worked to guarantee food and clothing for the troops. There, in the midst of hostility and hardships, she gave birth to her children and, desperate, powerless, saw them die in her hands without being able to save the fruits of the love that, like every good and passionate mother, she had carried in her womb with so many hopes.

María Cabrales had to recover from that disaster. The example of the iron will of Mariana Grajales, the mother of the Maceos, served her greatly, who goes with her to the camps of Cuban patriots, where her sons and husband are, to care for the wounded after battles or to bring them food and clothing.

Difficult times those were during the war of 1868 in which Mariana and María and other family members moved toward nearby places where Antonio operated. They were the first nurses of the war, as they provided assistance at the end of battles.

The devoted patriot suffered all the hardships of war, endless risks and sacrifices, without expressing a complaint. She shared with Maceo the rebel attempts, the persecutions, the war, the forests and exile. She lived through the heroic deeds of 1868, the inflexible rebellion of the Mangos de Baraguá, the revolutionary attempt of the Little War and also the sublime period of 1895.

After the war of 1868 she accompanies her husband in wandering through Caribbean lands: Jamaica, Honduras, Panama, until settling in Costa Rica, where she founded the Club of Cuban Women of Costa Rica. Her personal charm served to increase the funds collected and her proselytizing work had no equal of any kind.

The triumphal march from East to West was followed by María Cabrales and on some occasions it has been said that the Spanish pursued the mammoth colossus by the footprints of María's shoes. If at some moment she could not be at his side, very powerful causes prevented her. María Cabrales was for Maceo, the inspiration that animated his spirit, because both were deeply immersed in the patriotic ideal.

She managed to bear with terrible pain the death of Antonio Maceo on December 7, 1896. Celebrated are her famous words and attitude, when the brave mambi received seven bullet impacts, in the battle of Mangos de Mejías, Oriente. She protected him with her body and allowed him to escape from the enemy, because "To save the General or to die with him."

At the end of the conflict begun in 1895, María Cabrales resided at the San Agustín Estate, near the town of San Luis, in Santiago de Cuba. During that time she founded the Asylum for Orphans of the Homeland, to care for children who had lost their parents in the war of independence.

On the morning of July 28, 1897, she bid farewell to life, perhaps thinking of one of her two great loves: Antonio Maceo and Cuba. The mortal remains of the extraordinary patriot rest in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery of Santiago de Cuba.

María Cabrales de Maceo assumed the leading role of the Cuban woman who contributed, with her work and revolutionary attitude, to forge the historical destiny of her people.