Camagüey.- When the Constitution of Guáimaro of the Republic in Arms was proclaimed on April 10th, 1869, six months after the beginning of Cuba’s fight for independence, the revolution took decisive steps to fight for the island’s freedom at any price.
Many did not count on carrying out a radical war at the time because the articles of the first Constitution surpassed the possibilities of the conflict declared on October 10th, 1868 at the Demajagua plantation located in the eastern part of the island by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes.Its preamble revealed the reason and need for that law of laws: “The representative of the free people of the island of Cuba in its right as a sovereign territory provisionally establishes the following political Constitution which will rule the war of independence.”
If that part of the document reaffirms the essence of expanding the independence war across Cuba, articles 24 and 25 demonstrated that the conflict was in fact death against the colony and what it represented.
Proclaiming all the inhabitants of the Republic free men and women (Article 24) constituted an important and strategic step in ending slavery which was considered for many independence leaders of the time premature.
However, the social justice sought by the Revolution could not allow such injustice to remain in Cuban society as the basis in the relation among peoples.
The war needed men and women in order to win the battles and free the western part of the island.
That is why article 25 read: “All of the citizens of the Republic are considered soldiers of the Liberation Army”.
As simple as it is: the Homeland needed soldiers to gain its independence.
In addition to setting the basis of the Revolution over the Supreme Law which offered strength inside and outside Cuba, the Constitution of Guaimaro, as said by the President of the island’s Parliament, Ricardo Alarcon constituted “a need to define a program and strategy of combat and those that lead the battle”.
The leaders of the uprising met in Guaimaro to carry out and proclaim the Constitution in the town located in the eastern part of Camaguey and close to the regions in arms of the time.
Among the top leaders were Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, who began the struggle and elected President there and Ignacio Agramonte, young attorney from Camaguey who later became an outstanding General.
The House of Representatives was born and the head of the rebel forces was designated.
This demonstrated that the historic struggle, bloody in the beginning, went beyond what it seemed and the Constitution of Guamaro, the first of the four declarations of the Republic in Arms reaffirmed.
Alarcon recognized this when he expressed: “It was not only a movement to separate a colony from its metropolis and create another sovereign state. It was in reality, in the words of Antonio Maceo, ‘the war for justice”.
