Florida, Mar. 7 – The Cuban patriot Ramón Leocadio Bonachea, major general of the Liberation Army who kept up the armed fight in the insurgent manigua for 14 months after the signing of El Pacto del Zanjón, was shot by the Spanish army in the Morro of Santiago de Cuba, on March 7, 1885.
On April 15, 1879 he wrote a manifesto in which he affirmed that he was abandoning the weapons without taking advantage of any pact; this action was recorded in history as the Protesta de Hornos de Cal or Protesta de Jarao, place where it took place, 22 km southeast of Sancti Spíritus; the only thing he accepted from Spain was to provide him with the means to travel to Jamaica, which he did that same day through Tunas de Zaza, together with his main followers.
He made several unsuccessful attempts to arrive in Cuba during the Guerra Chiquita ; convinced that conditions existed to restart the fight, he embarked on the schooner El Roncador with 14 expeditionaries seeking to disembark between Júcaro and the Jatibonico River, but on December 2nd, 1884 he arrived at Bélic, Las Coloradas beach, the exact place where Fidel Castro arrived on the Granma 72 years later; captured by the Spanish, court-martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad, along with four of his companions.
In assessing the transcendence of the heroic resistance of Ramón Leocadio Bonachea, José Martí wrote: «The man from Hornos de Cal has no equal among those who protest peace. With less resources than Maceo, less prestige, less ascendancy, he persisted for a longer time in the supreme gesture and never cast an iota of shadow on that page that does not yield even before the stupendous feat of Baraguá».
