Calixto Garcia

(1839–1898) was a general in the War for Independence. At the age of 18, he joined the first Cuban uprising and fought in the Ten Years’ War against Spanish rule for five years until his capture. In an attempt to avoid giving the Spanish the satisfaction of his seizure he shot himself under the chin with a pistol. Although the bullet went out of his forehead and rendered him unconscious, he survived. When the Spanish authorities came to Holguín to inform Calixto’s mother, she said that wasn’t her son. When the officials explained to her that Calixto had tried to commit suicide she replied that her son was, ‘first dead than captured!’ He was imprisoned until the end of the Ten Years’ War and joined with Maceo in the Little War from 1879 to 1880, as well as the 1895 War for Independence. In that latter conflict he succeeded Maceo as the second in command. García died of pneumonia at the age of 59, while on a diplomatic mission in Washington DC.