On August 23, 1906, General Alejandro Rodriguez, chief of the Rural Guard, informed President Tomas Estrada Palma of the fulfillment of his order to kill General Quintin Banderas, but his macabre task was not finished: the president demanded that his remains be thrown into a common grave so that he would not have a tomb of his own where he would be remembered and flowers would be placed.
Estrada Palma’s intense hatred for the brave pro-independence fighter was due to the fact that he was black and opposed both annexation and the Platt Amendment and had risen up in the so-called “August Little War” in Havana, waged by the Liberal Party against the politician’s attempts to change the laws in order to remain in office.
Quintín Banderas was not the only mortal victim of the president’s ambitions, directly involved in the assassination in 1905 of his youngest and most capable opponent, the mambí colonel and lawyer Enrique Villuendas, who earned his ranks by dint of courage at only 21 years of age and at 26 earned a seat in the House, where he distinguished himself for his oratory and great charisma.
The omnipotence of Estrada Palma and his accomplices was so great that they did not worry too much about hiding the General’s crime, nor the identity of his material executors—a group of soldiers under the command of an officer subordinate to the head of the Rural Guard—the reason that the newspaper La Lucha published “Captain Delgado arrived carrying the corpse of Quintín Banderas. In the Palace this news has caused a magnificent effect…”
He had fought in the three wars of independence and was the legendary leader of the infantry force that Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo and Generalissimo Gomez led in the invasion of the west in the War of 1895-1898.
When the neocolony was established in 1902, with no means of subsistence, he asked President Estrada Palma for a job and the latter offered him a job as a garbage man and he could only support his family by becoming a traveling salesman of the soap brand Candado, in a cart that he drove with his worn general’s suit with all his decorations through the neighborhoods of Havana, where he was acclaimed by the people.
Estrada Palma’s mandate was scheduled to end in 1906. However, supported by a number of sycophants and privileged members of his administration, he tried to change the Constitution in order to be reelected, which was opposed by the Liberal Party that in August rose up against those pretensions.
Quintín Banderas, 71, joined the movement and participated in several actions such as the assault to villages and a train, but when he realized the failure of the insurrection, he sent a petition to the president for a safe conduct that would allow him, with a guarantee for his life, to abandon his weapons. He would be awaiting the answer in a farm near the area where he operated.
The president received the letter, but wishing to give a lesson to his political enemies, he unloaded all his hatred against the old mambi who confidently saw the Rural Guard arrive on August 23 and, believing that they were complying with his request, he told them: “Boys, this is over! I knew that you were coming to look for me with the Government’s paper. I have many friends!”
Those were his last words before falling down, shot by the soldiers who finished him and some of his comrades off with machetes.
His corpse was taken in a rough cart to the cemetery of Colón, where the priest Felipe Augusto Caballero placed an epitaph on the tomb to identify it and then told Quintín’s widow: “Justice has been done with the General. His children will not miss out on the remains of their father”.
It would take 53 years for the true ideals of independence and a dignified homeland for which the brave General Quintín Bandera had fought and given his life to succeed on January 1st, 1959, when the nightmare of a neo-colonial republic came to an end for good.
