On November 18, 1836, Máximo Gómez Báez was born in Bani, Santo Domingo, the man who considered himself and acted as a loyal soldier of the Cuba’s freedom and whose transcendence in the independence struggles made him worthy of the appellative of Generalísimo and allowed him to assume the responsibility of General in Chief of the Liberating Army during the Necessary War.
Gómez Báez dedicated more than three decades of his fertile life to the cause of the people of Cuba; he participated in about 235 combats in which he received only two wounds; it was he who led the first machete charge in the 10 Years War, he took charge of the Camagüeyan troops after the fall of Major Ignacio Agramante and signed together with José Martí the Manifesto of Montecristi.
He joined the Mambísas troops on October 14, 1868 and, from that moment on, the revolutionary movement had a military chief, capable of preparing a popular army and facing the enemy with extraordinary possibilities of triumph; as in the invasion of Guantánamo and Las Villas, and the Camagüey Campaign.
His firm decision to fight for the independence of Cuba led him to declare himself a Cuban citizen; like José Martí, Antonio Maceo and the most radical exponents of independence, Máximo Gómez conceived the liberation process as one of broad and profound political and social transformations.
Faithful collaborator of José Martí, together with Antonio Maceo, he stood out as one of the great strategists of the Campaign of Invasion to the West and of the war against the Spanish elite troops; after the intervention of the United States in the war that the Cubans were waging against the Spanish colonial rule, he was removed from his position.
In a manifesto to the nation he said: «Nothing is owed to me and I retire happy and satisfied to have done what I could for the benefit of my brothers. I promise Cubans that, wherever I pitch my tent, they can always count on a friend».
