Today marks the 110th anniversary of the death of Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, a man of unavoidable patriotic stature.
He was born in Camagüey with a noble title, in one of the richest and most influential cities in Cuba, on October 10, 1828.
As a young man he went to the U.S. to study civil engineering. Here he became acquainted with democracy and the liberal ideas that would become the compass of his civic thinking.
He returned to Cuba in 1846, when he was 18 years old. He then married his cousin Micaela Betancourt y Recio, with whom he had seven children, two of whom died in infancy.
He was elected mayor of Camagüey on three occasions and from that position he founded newspapers, created the Philharmonic Society and the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, the Principal Theater and the Timima Lodge, where he conspired against the colonial power along with other Camagüey patriots.
He was part of the Revolutionary Junta that contacted Francisco Vicente Aguilera, Francisco Maceo Osorio and Pedro Figueredo to establish the start date of the first war for our independence, set for 1869 but advanced by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.
On November 4, 1868, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt left for the war after giving freedom to his slaves. Her property was confiscated and her family suffered harassment from the metropolis, so she had to move to the manigua. Years later, the patriot would recount: “My family lived constantly threatened and uneasy. In November 1869 there were 25 of us. Everyone was sick except for Micaela, my wife, and Carmita, my daughter. It was precisely at that time that both of them, the only healthy ones, died.”
Soon after, the patriot sends his surviving sons abroad and is left alone in the war, surrounded by misunderstandings, intrigues and the disunity of the libertarian forces.
Céspedes, Betancourt, the reiterations of history.
Although Salvador Cisneros Betancourt did not vote against the dismissal of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes as the first president of the Republic in Arms, the resentment of the Father of the Nation against him is clearly seen on the last page of his diary.
However, before the House of Representatives, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt said: “Céspedes is not the man who has ceased to be President, but the one who engendered the Revolution. The personality of citizen Carlos Manuel de Céspedes is so attached to the Cuban Revolution that to abandon him, because he has ceased to be President, at his own resources, would be ungrateful.”
But the legislature did abandon Cespedes to his fate, a decision that was decisive in his death.
Approximately two years later, when Major General Vicente García led the sedition from Lagunas de Varona, Salvador Cisneros, being President of the Republic in Arms, almost alone and showing extraordinary courage and civility, appeared at his camp to demand an interview and impose legality.
Despite the fact that Vicente García’s emissaries told him that they did not recognize him as president, Cisneros said he would not leave the place. Faced with his firm attitude, the seditious broke camp and left.
Then the House of Representatives gave in and Cisneros Betancourt had to abandon the presidency submitted by the legislature, as happened to Céspedes.
Uncompromising until his death.
It is known that caudillismo, the struggles between the high officers and the legislative power, as well as regionalism, were the causes of the disunity between the patriotic forces, something very well taken advantage of by the astute Captain General Arsenio Martínez Campos, who managed to sign the Pact of Zanjón on February 10, 1878 without the Mambi forces having achieved the two main objectives of the war: independence and the abolition of slavery.
Two days before such a sad date in the history of the country, the Chamber decided to dissolve it and did so with only one vote against, that of Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, who then had to go into exile at the age of 50, all his property confiscated or destroyed, widowed and with dead children or in the care of several relatives. That man who owned vast tracts of land, several sugar mills, a large endowment of slaves and a title of nobility, went into exile with only one suit of clothes and hardly any money for the journey.
He settled in New York, where he had to sell cigars, cigars, and lottery tickets to make ends meet. There he met Martí and the impetus of the young rebel won the support of the nobleman who had become poor.
He returned to Cuba in 1884. Throughout this period known as “the fecund truce” he maintained correspondence with Martí. In it we can see the high esteem that the Apostle had of him.
When the independence struggle resumed on February 24, 1895, Salvador was 67 years old. On June 5, 1895, he set out with only 12 men and set out to meet the Generalissimo, who would say of him: “The handsome old man, the one with a good stock.”
In September 1895, in the pastures of Jimaguayú, he was elected President for the second time. And when he ceased to be one by decision of the House, he continued in the struggle as a simple soldier.
After the sinking of the battleship Maine, the U.S. declares war on Spain. The Mambi forces coordinate military actions with the U.S. military and the conflict ends quickly.
However, the danger of Cuba becoming a U.S. dependency is warned by Cisneros Betancourt, who was one of the assemblymen who voted against the Platt Amendment and had no qualms about publicly criticizing President Tomás Estrada Palma for his position on the matter.
And when the Assembly of Cerro votes to remove Máximo Gómez as head of the Liberation Army, Cisneros opposes it.
Without belonging to any political party, he was re-elected senator for Camagüey several times. In that position, he is surprised by death.
For his defence of the democratic order, legality and for his intransigence in defence of national dignity and independence, he has been described as “The Great Citizen”, the last of the great patriots of our wars for independence.
On February 28, 1914, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt departed for eternity. We owe him, at least, a grateful remembrance for all that he did for the independence of the homeland.
Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces
Note: For the writing of this article we have taken information from “Wikipedia”; of the articles “De Cisneros el modelo sublime”, by Elda Esther Cento Gómez and “Salvador Cisneros Betancourt: El viejo guapo”, by Yunier Javier Sifonte Díaz, published by Cubadebate on 26-5-2016 and 15-3-2021 respectively. We have also used the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cuban Military History.