Francisco Vicente Aguilera y Tamayo

Francisco Vicente Aguilera y Tamayo (1) was born on June 23, 1821,[1] in Bayamo, the son of Antonio Maria Aguilera y Tamayo and Juana Tamayo e Infante.  In 1841, he received a degree in civil law from la Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Gerónimo de La Habana, and, on the death of his mother, inherited an immense fortune of sugar mills, coffee plantations, cattle ranches, farms, and hundreds of slaves.  He was the second cousin, twice removed, of Perucho Figueredo.

        He was regidor alguacil mayor [an officer of the court] de Bayamo, and a patron of the cultural and literary life of Bayamo.  He supported the building of a rail line to connect Santiago de Cuba with Bayamo, and promoted the completion of a plan to open the river Cauto to navigation.

        With Emilia de Roxas Aispurbas, he had a son, Francisco. Later, on September 8, 1848, in the parish of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, Santiago de Cuba, he married Ana Manuela Kindelan y Sánchez Grinan, daughter of Juán Kindelán y Mozo de la Torre and María Magdalena Sánchez Griñán y Mozo de la Torre.  Ana Manuela was born in about 1828.

        Aguilera was one of the leading conspirators in the months leading up to the start of the Ten Years’ War and he founded the masonic lodge, Redención in Bayamo which became, as others had in Manzanillo, Las Tunas, and elsewhere in Oriente, a center of revolutionary tumult.  On August 2, 1867, the Comité Revolucionario de Bayamo was formed with Aguilera president, Francisco Maceo Osorio, secretary, and Perucho Figueredo, the committee’s spokesman.  Aguilera said “… nada tengo, mientras no tenga patria …” [He has nothing, who has no homeland].

        At a meeting to discuss the date of the proposed uprising, Aguilera favored waiting until they were better armed and organized, while Carlos Manuel de Céspedes pressed for an immediate uprising.  As it turned out, on October 8, 1868, the Spanish General, Lersundy, having heard of the planned revolt, ordered the arrest of Céspedes, Figueredo, Aguilera, and other leaders of the revoltionary committees, an act which precipitated Céspedes’ proclamation of Cuba’s independence and the start of the Ten Years’ War, days later.

        In one of the first actions of the war, Aguilera led a group of friends and liberated slaves against a section of the Batallón de San Quintín near a place called Babatuaba.  At the Asamblea Constituyente de Guáimaro [constitutional assembly of Guáimaro] on April 10, 1869, he became secretary of  war, with the rank of major general, and in February 1870, was named vice president of the republic, under Céspedes.  In 1871, Céspedes sent Aguilera to the US to attempt to unite the Cubans in New York and elsewhere, and to return to Cuba with a powerful expedition with weapons and men for the cause.

        Aguilera donated his entire personal fortune to the cause and lived in New York in poverty and ill health.  When Céspedes was deposed in 1873, Aguilera was unable to return to Cuba to succeed him, and remained in the US, where he continued to raise money and solicit support for the Cuban cause.

        He died on February 22, 1877, in New York, and he lay ‘in state’ in City Hall before his funeral.

        Carlos E. Forment, in his Crónicas de Santiago de Cuba wrote that on December 8, 1883, a group of men, led by Eduardo Codina, went, at the request of Ana Kindelan, the widow of Aguilera, to the Marble Cemetery, at 43 Second Avenue, in NYC, where an employee of the cemetery extrajo [extracted] an iron coffin with a plaque that said “Francisco Vicente Aguilera, born in Bayamo the 23rd day of June, 1821.  Died in New York, the 22nd day of February 1877.”  On October 10, 1910, Aguilera’s remains were transferred to Bayamo.

[1] Spengler says Aguilera was born on July 23, 1821.  He also calls him Francisco Antonio Vicente Aguilera y Tamayo.