Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Note on language and translations
- Introduction
- 1 James J. O'Kelly at Jiguaní (1873)
- 2 José Martí at Vega del Jobo (1895)
- 3 Richard Harding Davis in Santiago de Cuba (1897)
- 4 Edward Stratemeyer at Siboney (1898)
- 5 Andrew Summers Rowan in Bayamo (1898)
- 6 Josephine Herbst in Realengo 18 (1935)
- 7 Antonio Núñez Jiménez on Pico Turquino (1945)
- 8 ‘Less than human’: Guantánamo Bay (2002)
- Envoi
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - James J. O'Kelly at Jiguaní (1873)
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Note on language and translations
- Introduction
- 1 James J. O'Kelly at Jiguaní (1873)
- 2 José Martí at Vega del Jobo (1895)
- 3 Richard Harding Davis in Santiago de Cuba (1897)
- 4 Edward Stratemeyer at Siboney (1898)
- 5 Andrew Summers Rowan in Bayamo (1898)
- 6 Josephine Herbst in Realengo 18 (1935)
- 7 Antonio Núñez Jiménez on Pico Turquino (1945)
- 8 ‘Less than human’: Guantánamo Bay (2002)
- Envoi
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There are two Cubas, Spanish and free Cuba, or Mambi-Land. The slave-holding, sugar-producing Queen of the Antilles, with her legions of fierce voluntarios, has become commonplace, while the vague, unvisited territory of Cuba Libre is full of romantic interest. Few from the outer world have crossed its shifting frontier, so full of unknown perils and awe-inspiring mystery.
(James J. O'Kelly)Cuba's national day is 10 October because on that date in 1868 Carlos Manuel de Céspedes freed the 30 slaves on his small sugar plantation at La Demajagua, just outside Manzanillo, in the heart of Oriente, beginning the movement for Cuban independence from Spain which came to fruition in 1898. That night Céspedes and his supporters advanced on the town of Yara, some thirty miles away, which they attacked on the morning of 11 October. They were repulsed, but this first military action of the campaign which would become the Ten Years' War was called by the Spanish the ‘Grito de Yara’ [the cry of Yara], through analogy with the Grito de Lares proclaimed a few months earlier in Puerto Rico—and which had quickly come to nothing. Though the Cuban rebels proceeded to capture the city of Bayamo, Céspedes's birthplace, the uprising was unsuccessful in the short term: Bayamo had to be burned and abandoned, and the insurgency was limited to parts of Oriente before its eventual defeat in 1878.
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- Information
- Cuba's Wild EastA Literary Geography of Oriente, pp. 17 - 72Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011