Perucho Figueredo, at the Service of Homeland

This was also a Revolution of poets, of educated men who loved beauty and who assumed that without freedom there could be no dignity, of patricians who renounced their wealth and privileges to lead armies of free men. Pedro Felipe Figueredo y Cisneros, Perucho (1818-1870), was a lawyer, trained in the best colleges and universities of his time; He was a musician and a poet; he was mambí rebel.
The whirlwind of Revolution did not drag him down: he was part of that whirlwind. And long before the uprising of October 10th, 1868, he was already a patriot recognized and under surveillance by Spanish authorities.

He actively participated in previous conspiracies, he was part of the war preparations, he attended key meetings, listened and gave his opinion on procedures and deadlines. In years of unique uproar, his services to the cause were many, but history highlights an essential contribution: he endowed Cubans with his combat march, our Bayamesa, which became the Anthem of Homeland.

One of the highlights of the immense history of the nation is the image, (perhaps idealized but powerful) of Perucho on his horse, in the Plaza de Bayamo, letting his compatriots know the lyrics of the march that was already known and hummed, but that at that moment made whole its meaning: To combat run, Bayamesans!

On August 17th, 1870, less than two years later, a prisoner of the Spanish army, Perucho Figueredo, major general of the Liberation Army, was shot. They say that his last words were those of his immortal verse: For to die for the Homeland is to live!