Guillermo Moncada

José Guillermo Moncada Veranes (born June 25, 1840 in Santiago de Cuba in Cuba , † April 5, 1895 in Mayarí Arriba , Cuba) was general of the Cuban independence movement against Spanish colonial rule and commander in chief for the Oriente province.

He fought in the first phase of the War of Independence ( Guerra Larga ) against the Spanish colonial power and participated as a general in the War of Independence ( Guerra de Independencia ) from 1895 to 1898.

Guillermo Moncada, also known as Guillermón because of its size, was born in 1840 as the son of Dominga Trinidad Moncada and Narciso Veranes in Los Hoyos , a district in Santiago de Cuba that is mainly inhabited by blacks . He worked as a carpenter until the beginning of the independence struggle against Spain. When Carlos Manuel de Céspedes releases his slaves with the war call of Yara and proclaims Cuba's independence from the Spanish colonial power, Moncada joins the independence movement. In 1871 Moncada succeeds in defeating the militias of the large landowner Miguel Pérez Céspedes in Guantánamo, loyal to Spain. This success established his military fame.

Together with Antonio Maceo, he belongs to the minority of the Cuban independence movement, which in 1878 in protest from Baragua rejects a peace with the Spanish colonial power and continues the fight in the Guerra Chiquita (Little War) . He is arrested by the Spanish troops and imprisoned first in Cuba and later in the Balearic Islands . In 1887 he returned to Cuba after six years in prison. In 1893 he was arrested again for his political activities and released again in 1894.

At the beginning of the War of Independence in 1895, José Martí appointed Guillermo Moncada as Commander-in-Chief for Oriente. Shortly afterwards, however, he dies of tuberculosis .

The Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba was named after him.