Interesting Facts

Cuban Independence Movement , nationalist uprising in Cuba against Spanish rule. It began with the unsuccessful  Ten Years’ War (Guerra de los Diez Años; 1868–78) and culminated in the U.S. intervention that ended the Spanish colonial presence in the Americas. Dissatisfied with the corrupt and inefficient Spanish administration, lack of political representation, and high taxes, Cubans in the eastern provinces united under the wealthy planter  Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, whose declaration of independence in October 1868, the Grito de Yara (“Cry of Yara”), signaled the beginning of the Ten Years’ War, in which 200,000 lives were lost. Céspedes had the support of some landowners, whose main interest was economic and political independence from Spain, whereas the farmers and labourers were more concerned with the immediate abolition of slavery and greater political power for the common man. In 1876 Spain sent Gen.  Arsenio Martínez Campos to crush...