page_title: Carlos Manuel de Céspedes
section_title: Ten Years' War
hierarchical_section_title: Carlos Manuel de Céspedes / Ten Years' War
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in Cespedes Park, in Bayamo, Cuba.
context_page_description: Carlos Manuel de Céspedes del Castillo was a Cuban revolutionary hero. Cespedes, who was a plantation owner in Cuba, freed his slaves and made the declaration of Cuban independence in 1868 which started the Ten Years' War, which ultimately led to Cuban independence.
  Because of his actions during the Independence War, he is known in Cuba as the "Father of the Fatherland".
context_section_description: Céspedes was a landowner and lawyer in eastern Cuba, near Bayamo, who purchased La Demajagua, an estate with a sugar plantation, in 1844 after returning from Spain. On October 10, 1868, he made the Grito de Yara (Cry of Yara), declaring Cuban independence, which began the Ten Years' War. That morning, after sounding the slave bell, which indicated to his slaves it was time for work, they stood before him waiting for orders, and Céspedes announced that they were all free men and were invited to join him and his fellow conspirators in war against the Spanish government of Cuba. He is called Padre de la Patria (Father of the Country). In April 1869, he was chosen as President of the Republic of Cuba in Arms.
  The Ten Years' War was the first serious attempt to achieve independence from Spain and to free all slaves. The war was fought between two groups. In eastern Cuba the tobacco planters and farmers, joined by mulattos and some slaves, fought against western Cuba, with its sugarcane plantations, which required many slaves, and the forces of the Spanish governor-general. Hugh Thomas summarized that the war was a conflict between criollos (creoles, born in Cuba) and peninsulares (recent immigrants from Spain). The Spanish forces and the peninsulares, backed by rich Spanish merchants, were at first on the defensive, but in the longer run, their greater resources held.
  Céspedes was deposed in 1873 in a leadership coup. Spanish troops killed him in February 1874 in a mountain refuge, as the new Cuban government would not let him go into exile and denied him an escort. The war ended in 1878 with the Pact of Zanjón, which made concessions: liberation of all slaves and Chinese who had fought with the rebels and no action for political offenses but no freedom for all slaves and no independence. The Grito de Yara had not achieved enough, but it had lit a long-burning fuse. Lessons learned in it would be put to good use during the Cuban War of Independence.
caption: Statue of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes in Cespedes Park in Bayamo
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