Mariana Grajales

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Mariana Grajales Coello

Mariana Grajales Coello (born June 26, 1815 in Santiago de Cuba , † November 23, 1893 in Kingston ) was a Cuban freedom fighter against slavery .

biography

Mariana Grajales was born on June 26, 1815 in Santiago de Cuba to Dominican parents. In 1851 she married Marco Maceo. She had thirteen children, nine of them from Maceo; she got the last one when she was 52. Mariana lived with her family in the La Delicia refuge in the Barrio Majaguabo in San Luis , where she later ran a mountain settlement and a makeshift hospital.

Mariana and her family served in the Ten Years' War , the Little War (1868–1878), and the 1895 war . José and Antonio Maceo Grajales , sons of Mariana, served as generals in the Liberation Army from 1868 to 1878. During the wars, Mariana managed nursing and supplies at her son Antonio's base camp. She frequently entered the battlefield to help wounded soldiers; both Spaniards and Cubans.

After witnessing Mariana Grajales and Antonio's wife Maria Cabrale entering the battlefield to save the wounded Antonio, José Martí remarked: “Fáciles son los heroes con tales mujeres” (It is easy to be a hero in the presence of such women to be).

Mariana died on November 27, 1893 at the age of 78 in Kingston, Jamaica.

Posthumous recognition

In 1957, Justo Luis Pozo del Puerto, the mayor of Havana, named Mariana Grajales de Maceo "Mother of Cuba".

On September 4, 1958, Fidel Castro founded the all-women platoon "Marina Grajales Women's Squad", which was equipped with light M-1 submachine guns.

The airports " Mariana Grajales " ( Guantánamo ) and "Antonio Maceo" (Santiago de Cuba) were named after them in memory of the contributions Mariana and her son made to the struggle in Cuba.

Individual evidence

  1. a b c K. Lynn Stoner, (1991). From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Woman's Movement for Legal Reform, 1898-1940. Duke University Press. Page 20. ISBN 0-8223-1149-6 .
  2. a b c d Verene Shepherd, (1995). Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan. Page 296. ISBN 0-312-12766-9 .
  3. Marysa Navarro, (1999). Women in Latin America and the Caribbean: Restoring Women to History. Indiana University Press. Page 66. ISBN 0-253-21307-X .
  4. ^ Office of Research and Policy (1992). Cuba Annual Report: 1989. Transaction Publishers. Page 227. ISBN 1-56000-016-3 .

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