MADRID, Spain.- José Quintino Bandera Betancourt, known as Quintín Bandera, was a Mambí general who was present in the three wars for independence from Spanish colonialism in Cuba.
Quintín Bandera was born on October 30, 1834 in Villa de El Cobre in Santiago de Cuba. There he spent his childhood and, being very young, without finishing his studies, he had to work as a bricklayer, agricultural day laborer and charcoal manufacturer, due to the precarious economic situation of his family.
From 1850 he joined the conspiracies against the Spanish Government of the Island and in January 1869 he joined the Ten Years’ War, in Palma Soriano, under the orders of Donato Mármol.
He was the protagonist, along with Guillermón Moncada and José Maceo, of the events of August 26, 1879 in Santiago de Cuba, which began the Little War. He was among the organizers of the War of ’95.
Quintín Bandera, who started the fights as a soldier, became a general. According to Cuban historiography, his machete charges became famous and he was greatly feared by the Spanish soldiers.
In 1906, after the Guerrita de Agosto, an armed rebellion by the candidacy for re-election of Tomás Estrada Palma, the first president of the Republic of Cuba, the rural guard, in retaliation, murdered Quintín Bandera with machetes.
Currently, a discreet monument remembers the mambí general, located in the park that bears his name, but known as “Parque Trillo”, in Central Havana.
In this monument, one of the few in honor of Bandera that exist in the country, in 2017 the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara placed a floral offering to pay tribute to him on the 111th anniversary of his assassination.
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