Cuba's Ten Years' War begins

On October 10, 1868, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a sugar planter, freed the enslaved people on his estate at La Demajagua in eastern Cuba and called for Cuban independence in what is known as the Grito de Yara. Other planters, lawyers and landowners joined, forming the first Cuban independence army. The rebels, called mambises, were strongest in the eastern provinces. The war ended in 1878.¹²

Cuba and Puerto Rico were the last major Spanish colonies in the Americas, and Cuba was one of the world's largest sugar producers, based on slave labor. Creoles complained of heavy taxes, of limited political rights and of being governed from Madrid. A revolution in Spain in 1868 weakened the home government. The rebels debated slavery: Cespedes and the Guaimaro assembly of 1869 backed abolition in principle, but moved slowly, because western planters feared losing their workforce.¹³

Spain sent tens of thousands of troops. The rebels used guerrilla tactics, and leaders such as Maximo Gomez, a Dominican veteran, and Antonio Maceo, an Afro-Cuban general, became legendary. Disease and the cost of the war took a heavy toll on both sides. The Pact of Zanjon in February 1878 ended the fighting with promises of reform but not independence. Maceo rejected it in the Protest of Baragua. Slavery was abolished in Cuba in stages, ending in 1886. Many veterans, including Gomez and Maceo, fought again in the final war of independence that began in 1895.¹²³