Monumento Máximo Gómez

Monumento Máximo Gómez Review

This bronze equestrian monument honors the great military leader of Cuba's 19th-century wars of independence. It was erected in 1935 in modern Havana's most pivotal location—in an important traffic circle and at the entrance to the tunnel leading to the fortresses across the harbor. The Dominican-born General Gómez led the mambises (a term used by the Spanish for Cuban rebels) in the Ten Years War, refused to surrender when an unsatisfactory treaty was signed in 1878, left the island, and returned with José Martí almost 20 years later to continue the fight in the 1895 Second War of Independence. Martí died in the opening battle; fellow general Antonio Maceo fell in December of 1895, but Gómez survived.