Florida, March 25 – On this day in 1903 died José María (Mayía) Rodríguez, combatant of the Ten Years’ War, major general of the Liberation Army, participant with Antonio Maceo in the Baraguá Protest, and one of the organizers of the Chiquita War where he could not participate because he was arrested and sent to Spain.
In that nation he married, but his commitment with the Homeland was stronger than the family claim, and very soon he was linked to the preparations of a new emancipation process that José Martí was zealously organizing.
Mayía Rodríguez worked very closely with Máximo Gómez, to whom he was linked by friendly ties since the previous conflict, and commissioned precisely by him to represent him, he traveled to New York and there, together with Martí and Enrique Collazo, he signed the order for the uprising, and then arrived on the island on July 24, 1895, in the Sánchez-Roloff expedition that landed in Tayabacoa, Tunas de Zaza, and for his knowledge, experience and qualities he was appointed chief of the Third Military Corps, which corresponded to the territory of Camagüey.
Mayía Rodríguez was among the nine Cuban generals invited by the American interveners to the ceremony of change of powers on January 1, 1899; he accompanied Gómez in his entrance to the city of Havana on February 24 of that year and was discharged from the Liberator Army on June 1 to occupy the position of director of the House of Beneficence and Maternity.
During the first years of peace he had an active political life, stage in which he was director of the House of Beneficence and Health; qualified by José Martí as the most virtuous of the companions, Mayía was until the end of his days next to the independence, helping it by the good ways with his loyalty and integrity.
123 years after his physical death, the Cuban people pay tribute to the brave warrior who achieved glory in the redemptive manigua, with a record of service to the homeland characterized by his conscientious discipline, courage, loyalty, nobility and clear convictions.
